From London to Ottawa, State terrorism in the history of Quebec
De Londres à Ottawa, le terrorisme d’État dans l’histoire du Québec. par Andrée Ferretti L’Action nationale, vol. 90, no 8, octobre 2000, pp. 67-79.
Invited to testify of its misdeeds on several platforms, at the time of the thirtieth birthday of the promulgation of the War Measures Act, Andrée Ferretti, herself arrested and imprisoned for 51 days, prefers to deliver this analysis of the event and gives it to L'Action nationale for publication.
On October 16, 1970, at four hours of the morning, Pierre-Elliot Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada proclaimed the War Measures Act and before even sunrise, the Canadian Army which the day before had surreptitiously started to invade Quebec, officially occupied it under the terms of this law. At same hour and in virtue of the same law, 242 people including several writers and artists, trade unionists and PQ candidates during the preceding elections were arrested and sent to prison. The day was not over that tens of others experienced the same fate. In a few days, 465 people had been imprisoned, their houses searched and sometimes ransacked, their family frightened and in certain cases, their children left alone. They were almost all released without even being questioned. The 21e day of this demonstration of force, only 32 people were committal for trial, detained during several more weeks and finally released without undergoing a lawsuit, the Court declaring that there were no grounds for prosecution (nolle prosequi).
The operation started under the pretext of the urgency to counter a sudden rise of the illegal acts and political violence of the FLQ, while the members of the movement's cells exerting violence were already known and filed by the police force and could have been stopped by the sole means of usual police techniques, which is what in fact occurred a few weeks later, the evidence proves, after the passing of years, was a carefully planned undertaking. The real purpose of it was to terrorize the Quebec people and to indirectly crush the independence movement which raised to a level unequalled before their national conscience and their desire for self-determination.
Because it is indeed what it is about. The simultaneous promulgation and application of the War Measures Act in October 1970 which made it possible for the Canadian Army to invade Quebec and the manpower of the Royal Mounted Police of Canada, the Sûreté du Québec and the various municipal police corps to arrest without mandate and to imprison without specific charges hundreds of partisans of the Independence of Quebec are not a mishap, an exceptional act which would have been caused by the political violence of the FLQ. In the tens of books and the hundreds of articles published for thirty years, devoted to the history and the analysis of the October Crisis (1), it has been irrefutably demonstrated that the members of the various cells claiming membership to the FLQ were all, not only well-known to political and police authorities, but that they had been for several months and even, in certain cases, for a few years, the object of a constant shadowing and other forms of surveillance.
From where it clearly follows that the illegal actions of the FLQ, in particular the kidnapping of James Cross, commercial attaché in Montreal to the High Commissioner of Great Britain and of Pierre Laporte, Minister for Labour and Deputy Premier in the Quebec liberal government of Robert Bourassa, were only the occasion desired and awaited by the Canadian government, then under the rule of Pierre Elliot-Trudeau, to move to the action in order to strike, through the alleged necessity to combat an alleged clandestine movement, all of Quebec's independence forces. Those forces had just express their power of attraction in a brilliant manner, during the past elections of April 29, in bringing 24% of voters to grant their vote to the Parti Québécois, in spite of a fear campaign carried out by the establishment which did not hesitate to resort to the most dishonest tactics, including the famous "Brinks coup", to make the electorate believe that an election of the PQ would imply a vertiginous fall of its standard of living. Rene Lévesque rightly qualified this threat of "economic terrorism". Rightly also, in the evening of the election, he claimed with pride in front of thousands of militants who welcomed his remarks with enthusiasm: "This defeat resembles a victory". This comprehension of the event was entirely shared by all the political community and economic of Canada and federalist Quebec. A few months later, it gave the sign of it by promulgating the War Measures Act, passing from economic terrorism to political and military terrorism which is one of the constants of the internal logic of Canadian history since the English Conquest. This terrorism forms part of the many processes of repression of the conquered nation. The State has recourse to it each time that it catches this nation in the act of wanting to have an autonomous existence and before it does become capable to assume its sovereignty, even when the rapport de force involved does not justify it at all. Terrorism which, already, signed the passage of the British army on the banks of the St. Lawrence, during the War of Conquest. At the beginning was terrorism, could we say.
All indeed started as of the end of the summer of 1759, when the troops of Wolfe disembarked on the Côte de Beaupré set fire to the villages under the dismayed eyes of their disarmed inhabitants, incapable to defend them. Across, on the Southern Coast, from Saint-Vallier to Lévis, other soldiers invaded villages behind their cannons, placarded on the doors of churches the Proclamation issuing the fall of New France and hung in front of their house the few daring ones who protested, such as, Captain Nadeau of Saint-Michel (2), "to have tried to raise his fellow-citizens against us", as recorded in the campaign log of a so-called Knox, captain of squadron in the army of His British Majesty which thus carried out its War of Conquest of New France following the usual rules.
(Because there of course was War of Conquest. All the denials à la Jacques Godbout and other hawkers on our big and small screens of a cession by France to Great Britain without any opposition from Canada won't do it. It took place and it lasted nearly four years. It started in 1757, with the arrival to power in London of William Pitt, an avowed francophobe. This statesman, determined to extend the hegemony of the British Empire, as well in America as in Asia, hastened to yield to the pressures of the Anglo-American colonies which hardly tolerated the vicinity of a French and Catholic Canada and were ready to engage the battle against it, as it were considered as an important and importunate competitor on the markets. It continued during more than two years during many confrontations won in hard battles by the French and Canadian forces though considerably lower in a number, until the British army strong of 63 000 men definitively got on top at the end of the summer of 1759 and made them, after a long siege, experience a defeat on the Plains of Abraham. The War of Conquest nevertheless did not end until a year later, in September 1760, with the capitulation of Montreal and the surrender of all the country. It is only three years later, on February 10, 1763, that the Treaty of Paris ratified the de facto situation created by the defeat of the soldiers and militiamen of Montcalm and Vaudreuil to the hands of the British invader).
The War of Conquest completed and the act of cession ratified, the British then later Canadian Parliaments, were not constantly in need of deploying their military and police forces against the conquered nation then annexed to subject it and alienate it. It was generally enough for them to have recourse to legislative measures and economic policies which were unfavourable to her to maintain their domination, as well as constitutional coups: the Union of Upper and Lower Canada, in 1840; the Repatriation of the Constitution in 1982, for example. However, under the British regime, the State by twice at least, in 1810 and 1837-1838, repressed by violence the attempts of the Canadiens - who will identify as Canadiens français only with the coming of the Union, obliged to specify themselves as such, the conqueror having appropriated to the very name of the conquered people - to exercise their rights and to take their destiny in their own hands. Under the Canadian federal regime, the State had three times, in 1870-1885, in 1918 and 1970, recourse to the army to subdue rebellious movements to its imperialists and centralizing policies.
1810. Although from the 1800s, it formed a majority in the Legislative Assembly, the Canadian Members of Parliament remained powerless to really exerting the power held, in fact, by the Executive Council and the Legislative Council, both in the hands of the English Party. The Canadien MPs could only make obstruction to the bills unfavourable to the interests of the majority of the people. In 1810, the MPs of the Parti canadien refused to vote the budget. In order to counter this opposition, Governor Craig dissolved the Legislative Assembly for a second consecutive year. Under the pressure of the English Party, he had the newspaper Le Canadien seized, the principal support of the parliamentary action of the Canadien MPs, and its editors arrested and imprisoned. He held new elections to prevent the population from returning the same elected officials to the Parliament, and he deployed, during the election days, with the intention to terrorize, of military contingents in the streets of Montreal and Quebec.
1837/1838. Is necessary to recall how, after having militarily crushed the active movements of rebellion in its colonies the Upper and Lower Canada which demanded a responsible government, the State carried out its war of repression only in Lower Canada, by setting fire to some villages of which those of Saint-Eustache and Saint-Benoît, while elsewhere plundering and setting fire to the farms of the inhabitants favourable to the movement, by confiscating the goods of the combatants, by raping many women found alone in their homes, not to forget the exiles, the deportations and hangings. Is it necessary to underline the cause of this difference of treatment applied to the rebels for the two colonies. Who is unaware that the political demands of the Anglo-Saxon patriots of Upper Canada were mainly founded on objections of an economic nature, while those, as well economic, social and political, of the Canadien patriots were all determined by the national question. It is because the main objective of the Canadien patriots was the independence of Lower Canada, considered the only means of freeing their nation from the political and economic domination of the English industrialists, merchants and financiers of the colony supported by all the authorities of the colonial State, that this State was devoted to terrorist acts useless to ensure its military victory, but necessary to break in the conquered people any will to keep up the fight.
(Still, although these rebellions failed and its Lower Canadian movement was completely crushed, the revolt of the Canadiens continued to frighten the British authorities which ordered a vast investigation into its causes and dispatched Lord Durham on the premises to carry it out. In his report published in January 1839, the investigator not only recognizes the existence of the French Canadian nation, but allots the responsibility of the disorders to her national conscience and her desire for self-determination. To prevent it from causing trouble again, he proposes the bringing into force of policies designed to make her into a minority and to assimilate her. And it is the coup de force: The Union of Upper and Lower Canada sanctioned by Queen Victoria on July 23, 1840. The inauguration of the annexation and confinement process of the French Canadian nation in constitutional, legal, political, demographic and economic gears which marginalize her, subjects her to foreign interests and alienates her. Prelude to the federative union of 1867 which, under the name of "Confederation" - abusive denomination since the purpose of it was never the association of politically sovereign communities -, preside to the destinies of the French Canadian nation which, today, in Quebec, constitutes the majority of the Quebec people, majority which aspires to independence and fight for its advent.)
1870-1885. The history which leads to the bloody repression of the second rebellion of the White and the Métis of the North-West, and to the hanging of Louis Riel is a long one. It starts in 1868, when Canada buys from the Hudson Bay Company the vast territory which today comprises the three provinces of the West and the territories of the North-West, to make it a colony of Ottawa. The inhabitants who had not been consulted reacted badly to this annexation. The Métis and the White, in majority Catholic and French-speaking, united to request laws and powers which would guarantee them their territorial, linguistic and religious rights. Under the leadership of Louis Riel, they established at Red River a provisional government, drew up a "list of rights", requested the opening of negotiations with Ottawa. This first battle, after many violent adventures, lead to the creation of the province of Manitoba, in July 1870. The Quebec population had supported the movement and had required the government of Ottawa that it negotiates with Riel clauses which would add to the list of rights the linguistic and school equality between French and English. The British of the area, supported by the Ontarians did not understand things the same way. There was no question of letting a French-speaking and Catholic province develop in the heart of the Prairies and thus open the door of the West to French Canadian emigration from Quebec. They were opposed to the amnesty of Louis Riel whom they accused of murder, put a price on his head, after he had been exiled. They ceaselessly attacked the Métis who, dispossessed of their land and without a leader, left Manitoba to settle further West where they were victims of the same troubles and persecutions. In 1885, they recalled Louis Riel and the history was repeated. But vis-a-vis an army of 8,000 men supported by guns and machine-guns, the troops of Riel succumbed quickly, the villages and the farms of the Métis were plundered and set on fire and the inhabitants driven back even further West. Riel surrendered, underwent a trial in front of an English and Protestant jury who found him guilty of high treason and condemned him to death by hanging. All this operation once again, beyond its immediate causes, was carried out against French Canada. It was a question of making it clear to the population of Quebec that Westward expansion was to be the fact of English Canada and to serve its sole interests of any and all order.
TO BE TRANSLATED
1918. Quand en 1917, de retour de Londres où il avait participé à une séance du Cabinet anglais de guerre, Robert Borden, alors premier ministre du gouvernement canadien, décida d’imposer la Conscription, les Canadiens français firent immédiatement connaître leur farouche opposition à l’adoption d’une telle mesure. Ils ne voyaient pas pourquoi ils serviraient de chair à canon à l’armée de sa Majesté britannique, certainement pas parce que le Canada anglais s’était engagé à lui fournir des soldats, alors qu’ils venaient de perdre coup sur coup les batailles de l’enseignement du français en Ontario et des écoles séparées au Manitoba. Borden tenta alors de former un gouvernement d’Union nationale et d’y faire entrer Laurier. Celui-ci refusa. Le premier ministre réalisa néanmoins son projet et forma un cabinet composé de treize conservateurs et dix libéraux dont deux Canadien français qui s’en retireront bientôt, puis il déclencha des élections qui auront lieu le 17 décembre. Deux semaines avant ce jour, Borden, inquiet de l’opposition grandissante à la conscription, tant au Canada qu’au Québec, fit publier un décret ministériel qui en exemptait les fils des agriculteurs. Manoeuvre qui lui permet de remporter une victoire éclatante, mais non de faire taire l’opposition à la conscription qui, au Québec, est presque unanime, très active et parfois violente. La situation atteignit son point culminant au printemps 1918. Suite à l’arrestation dans la rue, le 29 mars, à Québec, d’un homme qui ne pouvait pas fournir sur le champ son certificat d’exemption du service militaire, la révolte des témoins se répandit comme une traînée de poudre et des émeutes éclatèrent qui durèrent jusqu’au 2 avril. La police fit appel à l’armée, un bataillon canadien anglais basé à Toronto fut dépêché à Québec, la loi martiale appliquée. Dans la soirée du premier avril, les soldats tirèrent sur la foule désarmée, firent cinq morts et des dizaines de blessés, en plus d’emprisonner sans mandat et sans cautionnement de très nombreux citoyens. L’État, une fois de plus, tentait de mater par la force la résistance du peuple conquis à ses politiques impérialistes.
1970. Les événements immédiats et officiels qui ont déclenché la Crise d’octobre remontent longuement mais directement à la naissance, à la fin des années 1950, du mouvement indépendantiste contemporain. C’est un mouvement révolutionnaire qui, à l’instar de mouvements similaires à l’oeuvre partout dans le monde, depuis la fin de la Seconde guerre mondiale, appelle le peuple à lutter contre toutes les formes d’assujettissement : domination politique, exploitation économique, oppression sociale et culturelle. Les forces indépendantistes québécoises d’alors conçoivent l’indépendance non seulement comme une lutte politique ayant pour objectif essentiel la création d’un État souverain, mais aussi comme un projet de libération nationale, c’est-à-dire une remise en question globale du système colonial canadien et une prise en main par le peuple de tous les instruments de son développement collectif. La réalisation d’un tel projet nécessite la formation d’une véritable conscience nationale, plutôt que nationaliste, qui amène la nation conquise puis annexée à affirmer et à défendre tous les attributs de son identité, dont son droit inaliénable à l’autodétermination, de même qu’à croire à sa capacité de l’assumer.
Les enjeux du combat s’avèrent ainsi colossaux. En effet, l’indépendance du Québec en tant que préalable indispensable à une véritable libération nationale menacent objectivement les intérêts capitalistes de la grande bourgeoisie canadienne dont l’État canadien est non seulement le représentant mais, plus fondamentalement, le noyau institutionnel et le soutien inconditionnel (3). Il s’agit donc en premier lieu de fissurer ce noyau. Toutes les organisations qui composent le mouvement indépendantiste, poursuivent cet objectif. Malgré la diversité des discours qu’elles tiennent et des stratégies qu’elles adoptent, inspirés par des idéologies et des intérêts sociaux plus ou moins différents, elles s’attaquent donc avec une même détermination aux institutions, aux symboles et aux entreprises de cette classe dominante qui possède alors la presque totalité des ressources naturelles, financières et industrielles du Québec et en contrôle ainsi le développement économique et l’organisation politique, en plus d’imposer à la main d’oeuvre québécoise sa langue et ses conditions de travail. Engagés dans une lutte à finir avec le colonialisme et ses séquelles, les mouvements et partis engagés dans la lutte pour l’indépendance basent leur action sur la nécessité de politiser et de mobiliser le peuple, conscients que sa détermination constitue la seule force susceptible de renverser les pouvoirs établis. Tous sont animés par ce même souci démocratique, y compris le FLQ. Seul, cependant, celui-ci agira dans la clandestinité et aura recours à des actions violentes (si l’on excepte la dizaine de membres de l’ALQ et de l’ARQ dont l’existence sera de courte durée et dont les actions d’éclat seront confondues dans l’opinion publique avec celles du FLQ), tous les autres n’auront toujours recours qu’à des moyens légaux, bien que non conventionnels, pour convaincre les Québécois de la nécessité de l’indépendance et de l’urgence de la réaliser.
De plus, jamais, jusqu’à la création du Mouvement Souveraineté-Association, ils ne tenteront d’occulter l’ampleur et la difficulté de la tâche à accomplir, en diluant l’objectif de liberté dans celui d’égalité, en diluant la revendication d’une autodétermination pleine et entière à celle d’un partage de la souveraineté du Québec avec l’État canadien dominant et ennemi.
Pourtant, en 1970, deux ans après la fondation du Parti québécois, issu du MSA, et l’ascendant hégémonique qu’il exerce sur le mouvement indépendantiste qu’il finira par réduire à la marginalité, les bourgeoisies canadienne et québécoise au pouvoir à Ottawa et à Québec et dont les intérêts sont intégrés, s’opposent aussi farouchement au compromis lévéquiste de réaménagement de la Constitution qui accorderait à l’État québécois un pouvoir politique égal à celui de l’État canadien, qu’à celui de l’indépendance du Québec. Elles jugent irrecevable cette proposition de partage de leurs lieux de pouvoir et de décision, même si le projet ne remet aucunement en question les tenants et aboutissants du développement global du capitalisme nord-américain. Et ces puissantes bourgeoisies ont peur. Malgré tous les moyens qu’elles ont mis en oeuvre pour manipuler l’élection du 29 avril, les résultats se sont avérés plus importants que prévus et lui font craindre que le Parti québécois puisse prendre le pouvoir dès l’élection suivante. Ainsi averties et affolées, elles somment leurs gouvernements et leurs médias d’utiliser toutes leurs ressources pour empêcher cette éventualité de devenir réalité, leur enjoignant de ne reculer devant aucun moyen. Elles se sentent d’autant plus menacées que l’agitation ouvrière ne cesse de prendre de l’ampleur partout au Québec et qu’elle est soutenue par plusieurs groupes et groupuscules indépendantistes et socialistes et par le FLQ, d’une part. D’autre part, un parti progressiste qui épouse la plupart des revendications populaires de tous ces mouvements voit le jour au début de l’été, à Montréal. Le Front d’action politique (FRAP) a pour objectif de merer la lutte, lors des élections prévues pour le 25 octobre, à l’administration Drapeau-Saulnier qui les représente sur la scène municipale montréalaise.
C’est dans ce contexte que les Partis au pouvoir, particulièrement le Parti libéral du Canada par la voix de son chef, Pierre Elliot-Trudeau, ennemi juré du nationalisme québécois, a fortiori de l’indépendantisme, opposant farouche à toutes les revendications nationales du peuple québécois exigeant des pouvoirs accrus pour le Québec, entreprirent de discréditer le Parti québécois en associant souverainisme et terrorisme. Il s’agissait, comme les en a accusé René Lévesque « de condamner le Québec à l’impuissance ». La mise en vigueur de la Loi des mesures de guerre en octobre 1970 n’avait pas d’autre but.
En 1970, comme aujourd’hui, comme jadis et naguère, le Canada anglais refuse l’existence nationale du peuple québécois et, aujourd’hui comme autrefois, il est prêt à utiliser tous les moyens pour le réduire à néant ou, tout au moins l’empêcher de nuire au développement de ses intérêts nationaux. Il est le peuple conquérant qui trouve justifiée sa domination sur le peuple conquis, qui trouve justifié de déployer son armée contre lui, chaque fois qu’il a l’impudence de s’affirmer. En 1970, pour préserver l’intégrité de son pouvoir mal acquis et mal conservé, bien que le rapport des forces en présence ne l’exigeait pas, il a sauté sur l’occasion que lui offrait le FLQ. pour écraser la démarche éminemment légitime et démocratique et l’action politique légale du Parti québécois, représentant alors à ses yeux la menace indépendantiste.
Car, il est important de le souligner, les moyens de la lutte employés par les forces indépendantistes importe peu à l’État canadien, seule compte à ses yeux leur efficacité réelle ou appréhendée. Et le terrorisme fait partie des armes à sa disposition pour la contrer.
Tant qu'en grande majorité nous n'aurons pas une conscience aigüe que nous sommes en guerre et tant que nous ne serons pas vraiment déterminés à vaincre l'ennemi, nous serons victimes de ses coups de force et de ses actes de terrorisme. Il faut espérer que nous développerons ces qualités avant qu'il ne soit trop tard pour que les luttes de nos parents et aïeux pour la reconnaissance de nos droits et pour notre souveraineté n'aient pas été menées en vain.
Author's Notes
1. To write this article, I have mainly referred to the work of Louis Fournier : FLQ histoire d’un mouvement clandestin, reedited in 1998 by Lanctôt éditeur, and, for general history, published by the same editor, in 1999, the 2 tomes of Robert Lahaise and Noël Vallarand : La Nouvelle France (1524-1760) and Le Québec sous le régime anglais (1760-1867), as well as Le Canada pourquoi l’impasse, by Kaye Holloway, published in Montréal, in 1984 by Les éditions Nouvelle-Optique.
2. Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, vol. III, p.64, cited in a monograph dedicated to the history of Saint-Michel de Bellechasse.
3. See on this topic the work of historian Stanley Bréhaut-Ryerson : Capitalisme et Confédération.