In the underworld that lies behind the lovely façade of Paris, a new population has moved in on the oldtime apache. In the argot they are les Bicots, but respectable Parisians call them les Algériens. After 1946, when the people of Algeria were granted full French citizenship, they began pouring into France at the rate of 30,000 a year. Arriving in Paris on the slow trains from the Midi, they drift with their bundles into the old, revolutionary districts of Belleville and Ménilmontant, where whole blocks now have the sound and smell of Algerian medinas. Only one in five of the Algerians in Paris has regular employment; the others live in the tradition of the Paris demimonde, vociferously free, but desperately poor.
Among this population, against whom a strong racial prejudice is developing in France, the French Communist Party has found violent adherents. Last week les communistes Algériens turned the last hours of Bastille Day, traditionally a gay but tranquil celebration into a riot.
At the tail end of the Communist Party's afternoon parade came 2,000 olive-skinned Algerians, marching in disciplined formation and bearing posters demanding the release from jail of Algerian Nationalist Leader Messali Hadj. At the Place de la Nation, a sudden rainstorm sent paraders and bystanders rushing for shelter. When police tried to hold back the stampede, the Algerians overwhelmed the barricades and began attacking with stones, bottles, chairs and broken barriers. Riot squads came sirening to the scene, threw a cordon around the Place de la Nation, opened fire with rifles. When it was all over, six Algerians and one French labor union secretary were dead, and some 130 people, including 82 cops, were injured.
Paris was shocked, but many saw the problem in its real light. "Pilgrims of hunger," said the conservative Le Monde, "to whom we granted full citizenship seven years ago . . . Why do they come to France? Simply because they cannot feed themselves and their families in Algeria." Said Paris-Presse: "We must take care of them on a social scale, unless we want to take care of them on a criminal scale later." While the newspapers discussed improved housing and job training, les Bicots drew back into the old, dark, protective alleyways of Paris.