France’s ‘burdens of empire’

Press, 31 August 1984, Page 14

France’s ‘burdens of empire’

From

“The Economist,”

London

The French like to tell themselves that they still have an empire, but they do not always relish the problems that go with it. Last month France’s disputed heritage in the Caribbean was forcibly brought home to them by the death of four autonomists in Guadeloupe who accidentally blew themselves up. On the other side of the globe, the French Government’s efforts to give internal autonomy to New Caledonia has run foul of the conflicting interests of a big native population and a large, non-established settler group. In the Indian Ocean, France faces an awkward diplomatic tangle over its dependency of Mayotte. At least French Polynesia is happy: its internal autonomy bill is going through the French Parliament with the minimum of fuss. . France has 10 overseas territories, departments and dependencies. Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion and SaintPierre et Miquelon are counted as departments like those in metropolitan France, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Antarctica and French Polynesia are territories with their own local administration. Mayotte, whose 52,000 people are expected to vote in a referendum at the end of the year to stay French rather than join the nearby Comoro Islands, has the misty status of a “terri-

torial collectivity of the republic.” While Mayotte loves France (to the consternation of the Comoros and the Organisation of African Unity), the autonomist movement in Guadeloupe has shown its pep. The outlawed Alliance Caraibe Revolutionaire (A.R.C.) claims responsibility for 60 bomb attacks in the last year. In April, on the 136th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in France, 15 bombs went off in Guadeloupe. The bombs that killed four autonomists at the end of July exploded accidentally while being carried in two cars. The four dead were supporters of the main independence movement on the island, the Union Populaire pour la Liberation de la Guadeloupe (U.P.L.G.). This movement had not previously been associated with violent action. It has called on its supporters to abstain in French elections and runs a model “indigenous” farm. One of those killed was a noted local architect, Mr Jack Berthelot. The leader of the U.P.L.G., Dr Claude Makouke, says armed struggle will never win Guadeloupe its independence. Some of his followers are not so sure.

The bill to give autonomy to New Caledonia, which the Mitterrand administration has been pushing through Parliament, has run into stiff opposition. Right-wing

parties see it as an unwelcome step towards giving the Pacific territory full self-government under the control of its native Melanesian population. Melanesians make up 44 per cent of the 145,000 inhabitants. Under the plan drawn up by Mr Georges Lemoine, Secretary of State for overseas departments and territories, New Caledonia will get a territorial assembly to run its internal affairs, balanced by a consultative chamber with considerable power to influence legislation. The assembly will be elected, but the consultative chamber will automatically include Melanesian chiefs, and is meant to perpetuate tribal traditions. Settlers of European origin, who make up 35 per cent of New Caledonia’s population, are afraid they will lose out. In the past their votes have been predominant. In the election for the European Parliament in June, New Caledonia gave 75 per cent of its votes to the opposition list and 15 per cent to the far-Right National Front; the Socialist vote dropped from 29 per cent at the previous European election in 1979 to 5 per cent. The conservative majority in the French senate voted against Mr Lemoine’s bill, but the Socialist majority in the national assembly passed it on a final reading.

Beyond internal autonomy, the bill provides for a referendum on the territory’s future to be held in 1989. Opponents of the bill warn darkly that “foreign powers” are already scheming to gain control over New Caledonia. The existing local assembly in New Caledonia voted against the bill before it went to the French Parliament. Conservatives reckoned it went too far. Independence supporters thought it did not go far enough. The main independence movement says it will call for a boycott of territorial assembly elections due later this year. Mr Lemoine has some tricky footwork ahead of him. Whatever their differences, France’s far-off lands have one thing in common: economic dependence on the mother country. Their economies are, for the most part, backward. In Guadeloupe, sugar production, the island’s mainstay, is a Caribbean equivalent of France’s own subsidy-gobbling steel industry. New Caledonia’s big mining firm, Le Nickel, has had to be bailed out by the State. Martinique depends on rum and bananas and spends five times as much on imports as it earns from exports. The latest

figures for French Guyana put the import-export earnings ratio at 7:1. , Anyone still for full independence? Copyright, “The Economist.”