When the Blum-Viollette Bill collapsed, however, an impossible predicament confronted the liberals: on the one hand, they saw themselves looked on as renegades by Messali and the Ulema; on the other, they were rejected by the French. It was a bitter personal disillusion for Abbas, who, from this moment, began to move away from the ideal of assimilation towards some form of autonomy for Algeria. Thus, at least ideologically, he and his supporters were brought a long step closer to the "revolutionaries" — a progression, tragic for France, that was to be repeated each time "moderate" Algerian nationalists found their overtures repulsed by the government of France, or by the pied noir lobbies. Modest as were the reforms it would have introduced, the abortion of the Blum-Viollette Bill undoubtedly marked a vital turning-point for the Algerian nationalist movement. At the same time it also bestowed on the pieds noirs a first dangerous awareness that they could call the tune on any reform initiated by a government in Paris.

XREF: Echoes a general pattern: state rejection of moderate reformers radicalizes the opposition. Connects to similar dynamics in other colonial and postcolonial independence movements.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 115