No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Before 1936 few Moroccans were concerned with or affected by French syndicalism. This condition was hardly modified by the promulgation of the dahir of 24 December 1936, under the impetus of the Front Populaire in the metropole, which accorded syndical liberties to the European populace of Morocco, nor was it changed by the dahir of 24 June 1938. These laws did not deter the French Congrès Général du Travail (CGT) from recruiting Moroccans, especially in the mining areas where it enjoyed considerable success. By the end of 1937 more than a thousand Moroccan miners had been enrolled at the Khouribga phosphate mines; but a series of rather violent strikes led to the repressive dahir of 1938. Disturbed by the entry of Moroccans into unions, the French administration presented to the sultan, Mohammed Ben Youssef, a dahir forbidding his subjects to form unions and established penalties applicable to Europeans permitting Moroccans to join their labor organizations. The sultan was only too ready to sign, seeing in union membership a grave threat to the authority of the Makhzen. Fortunately for the Moroccan labor movement, the formal interdiction of the 1938 dahir was never seriously applied.
page 271 note 1 No less an official than the Resident General, Eirik Labonne, reckoned that ‘unionism could, at the worker level…. divert Moroccans if not from nationalism, at least from traditionalist and separatist movements’ (Jean, and Lacouture, Simonne, Le Maroc a l'Epreuve [Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1958], p. 297).Google Scholar
page 272 note 1 One of the first nationalist demands was the right to form trade unions. The demand is stated in an article of the ‘plan de reformes’, 1934.Google Scholar
page 272 note 2 Abderrahim Bouabid, then the party's specialist on syndical affairs explained: ‘In our capacity as leaders of the national movement, we asked ourselves the question: Are we to allow Moroccan workers to go to the CGT and there defend their most vital interests — their salaries, improvement of social conditions? Obviously, the risk was great:…. the influence acquired and the training given by the C.G.T. We took a negative attitude: we issued a policy directive to all the workers telling them not to enter the C.G.T.’ (Lacouture, op. cit. p. 297).Google Scholar
page 272 note 3 According to Bouabid: ‘The militants who had followed our advice were discontented … We then took the decision to enter the C.G.T. en masse and to begin the fight in the midst of the C.G.T.’Google Scholar (ibid. p. 298).
page 274 note 1 Ibid. p. 298.
page 274 note 2 Portes, Jean-Louis, ‘L'Union Marocain du Travail’ (Mémoire de Stage, Ecole de l'Administration, Casablanca, December, 1955), p. 6.Google Scholar
page 275 note 1 The same dilemma has confronted the present regime.Google Scholar
page 276 note 1 Portes, op. cit. p. 7.Google Scholar
page 276 note 2 Ibid.
page 276 note 3 The discussion of the attitude of the Administration found in this and the next three paragraphs is adapted from Lacouture, op. cit. pp. 298–300.Google Scholar
page 277 note 1 The Administration's case is essentially as follows: ‘On the night of December 6 and 7 riots took place in the Carrières Centrales. On the 7, at the Bourse du Travail of Casablanca, Moroccan syndicalist leaders — the Europeans had not been summoned — held a forbidden meeting in the course of which they invited the workers to violence against French authorities. This meeting was in no way a union meeting. On the morning of the 8 the same scenario occurred again…. the Maison des Syndicats was surrounded; a considerable number of… arms were seized by the police’ (Portes, op. cit. pp. 7–8).Google Scholar
page 278 note 1 Also on 7 March it is said that Ben Seddiq and Bouazza met with a French socialist deputy and a senator who had come to point out to the union officers the ‘dangers’ of affiliation with the ICFTU. The Moroccans were not persuaded by the argument of the Frenchmen and stuck to their decision to affiliate. A proposal by the deputy to create a Moroccan socialist party affiliated with the Second International was not unacceptable to Ben Seddiq who found the Istiqlal too strongly bourgeois for his tastes. Ben Seddiq's francophobia and his understanding of the political situation in Morocco prevented his acting upon these suggestions (Marchés Coloniaux du Monde, 2 April 1955, p. 872).Google Scholar
page 278 note 2 Abdelkader Awab was elected Treasurer-General and Mohammed Tibari became Deputy Treasurer-General. At the time of the Union's appearance on the Moroccan political scene, the working class, whose interests the leaders of the UMT claimed to represent, was rather amorphous. To the extent that these leaders had not genuinely received a mandate from their constituents, early charges that they had acted solely in their own interests were not unwarranted. Quite candidly Ben Seddiq has acknowledged:‘By virtue of the circumstances, the UMT was created at the summit. In a way the leaders made a bet and assumed that the masses would approve their action. This wager has been won’ (Al-Istiqlal, 25 May 1957, p. 6).Google Scholar
page 278 note 3 Marchés Coloniaux du Monde, 26 March 1955, p. 815.Google Scholar
page 279 note 1 Lacouture, op. cit. p. 301.Google Scholar
page 279 note 2 The Moroccan labor drama was a reflection of the struggle for influence raging between the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the ICFTU in the international arena. According to Marchès Coloniaux du Monde, high-ranking officials of the WFTU, an emanation of the Communist party, visited Morocco and were followed shortly after by Monsieur Klain, another WFTU leader, who remained in the country from 1 to 15 March. Klain, a journalist and editor of Cahiers Internationaux, as well as a member of the WFTU, was the official principally responsible for the reorganization of the CGT in Morocco, a reorganization intended to intensify propaganda in the cities and above all in the countryside by utilizing existing newspapers or by creating, through circulars and emissaries, opposition to the implantation of the ICFTU in Morocco and to the UMT itself. All means, including force, were to be employed. The Moroccan CGT, acting upon orders received from Klain, issued handbills violently attacking the activities of Ben Seddiq and Bouazza. The postal federation of the CGT was to edit a newspaper designed to combat the ICFTU. The activity deployed by the CGT leaders gained the union about a thousand Moroccan memberships, all members or sympathizers of the Communist party. It was also known that the CGT, while it still collected dues, no longer delivered a card to its members in order to avoid their being identified by the police if subjected to search. To counteract the activity of the WFTU, the ICFTU organized a congress scheduled to open in Paris on 9 April, a congress attended by Ben Seddiq (Marchés Coloniaux du Monde, 2 April 1955, p. 872).Google Scholar
page 280 note 1 Lacouture, op. cit. pp. 301–2.Google Scholar
page 280 note 2 For a detailed explanation of these reasons, see Portes, op. cit. p. 10.Google Scholar
page 280 note 3 Berenguier, Henri, ‘Le Syndicalisme Marocaine’, L'Afrique et L'Asie, vol. 53 (1961), 30Google Scholar
page 280 note 4 Portes, op. cit. p. 11.Google Scholar
page 280 note 5 Berenguier, op. cit. p. 28.Google Scholar
page 281 note 1 In Bulletin No. a of the UMT, June 1955, a motion demands the release of political detainees, the lifting of the state siege, and the establishment of public liberties. See Portes, op. cit. p. 11.Google Scholar
page 281 note 2 Lacouture, op. cit. p. 302.Google Scholar
page 281 note 3 Ibid. pp. 302–3.
page 281 note 4 ‘…you would see in reading it that we have never hesitated to criticize the authorities, whether they are Istiqlal or not’Google Scholar (ibid. p. 304). The date of this remark is important; differences between the Union and the party were already evident.
page 282 note 1 Ibid.
page 282 note 2 The UMT building was constructed by the French to house the CGT. In the French tradition the Moroccan government gave this building and others in the country to the UMT for its use. All utilities, furniture, and office equipment are paid for out of the public treasury.Google Scholar
page 282 note 3 Al-Istiqlal, 30 March 1956, pp. 8, 11.Google Scholar
page 282 note 4 Ibid. p. 8.
page 282 note 5 Ibid.
page 283 note 1 Combat (Paris), 22 March 1955, p. 1.Google Scholar
page 283 note 2 Le Monde, 20 April 1955, p. 5.Google Scholar
page 283 note 3 Al-Istiqlal, 25 May 1957, p. 5Google Scholar
page 283 note 1 Le Monde, 18–19 November 1956, p. 5.Google Scholar
page 283 note 5 Ibid.
page 284 note 1 Maroc Monde, September 1957, p. 3. Later legislation introduced new modifications in the status of foreigners employed in Morocco.Google Scholar
page 284 note 2 Cohen, Mark I. and Hahn, Lorna, Morocco: Old Land, New Nation (New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 208.Google Scholar
page 284 note 3 Amended by the dahirs of 1 February 1944 and 20 May 1949.Google Scholar
page 284 note 4 This discussion of collective conventions is drawn from the following articles: ‘Les Conventions Collectives’, Bulletin Mensuel de la Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Rabat, June 1956;Google Scholar ‘A l'heure des conventions collectives’, La Vie Française, 18 April 1958, pp. 1, 3–4;Google Scholar ‘Le nouveau régime des conventions collectives au Maroc’, La Revue Marocaine de Droit, June 1958, pp. 245–53;Google Scholar and Marchés Tropicaux du Monde, 25 January 1958, pp. 149–51.Google Scholar
page 285 note 1 An annotated analysis of the prototype is found in ‘A l'heure des conventions collectives’, La Vie Française, 18 April 1958, pp. I, 3–4.Google Scholar
page 286 note 1 Ashford, Douglas E., Political Change in Morocco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 286.Google Scholar
page 286 note 2 See Al-Istiqlal, 25 May 1957, p. 5. Throughout the interview Mahjoub never once mentions the role of the Istiqlal in the labor movement.Google Scholar