It was an uncompromisingly forthright, fatefully binding statement, and Mendès-France the radical was more than backed up by his Socialist Minister of the Interior, François Mitterrand. He had equally refuted any parallel between French policy in Morocco and Tunisia on the one hand and Algeria on the other at a session of the Assembly’s Commission de l’Intérieur on 5 November, adding the challenge that here, in Algeria, “the only possible negotiation is war”. … In a vote of confidence on the 12th, Mendès-France scraped home with 294 to 265, saved, in effect, by the score of votes controlled by René Mayer’s pro-pied noir lobby. Such subsequent “hawks” as Bidault, Soustelle, Mollet and Lacoste all voted for the government. No ultra-conservative imperialist could have been much more forthright than Mitterrand, and in view of his subsequent career his statements may seem additionally surprising. But in November 1954 the unyielding gospel of l’Algérie, c’est la France very much represented French political opinion of almost all hues; on the other hand, Mendès-France also had reasons of internal politics for making quite such bellicose noises. The fate of his reforming government was at stake. The initial charisma acquired by his liquidation of the Indo-China war in the summer had waned; the Assembly was suspicious (as it had shown on 12 November) of his dealing in Tunisia and Morocco, and it disliked the way he had simply shrugged off responsibility for the torpedoing of the European Defence Community in August; the vocal bistro-owners were up in arms at his worthy but much derided campaign to replace alcohol by milk. Mendès-France was, however, profoundly a reformer and, privately, he was pledged to introduce a “new deal” for Algeria. To him it was clear that colonial rule in Algeria would have to end ultimately, as it was about to do in Morocco and Tunisia. The question was, when? And with whom to negotiate? In Indo-China, Tunisia and Morocco there had been the leaders who were present on the spot — the Ho Chi Minhs and Bourguibas. But in Algeria, because a century and a quarter of francisation had destroyed the native cadres, there existed no ready-made interlocuteurs valables with whom Mendès-France could negotiate, if and when he so wished. Therefore, although initially he would have to act unilaterally, with his incisive intelligence he grasped what it would take his successors another five years to realise; namely that, sooner or later, contact would have to be taken up with Algerians who were, to some extent or other, associated with the revolt. … But All Saints had struck him a mauvais coup; if he were now to start implementing the 1947 statute and instituting honest elections (as he desired) — let alone negotiating with any Algerian nationalists — then the pied noir lobby would cause his government to fall overnight. Thus order had first to be restored. He found himself clad in an “iron maiden” that successive French governments after him — left, liberal and conservative — would be forced to don.

XREF: Connects to broader decolonization history across Indo-China and North Africa, where local nationalist leaders provided negotiating counterparts.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 317