Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
French South Pacific Policy 1981-1996
by Dr W. S. McCallum © 1996
7. The Question of Decolonisation
I want to speak about the French presence in the Pacific. This has for a long time been badly explained and consequently badly understood and questioned. It has sometimes also been ill-informed. Happily, the course of affairs has today changed and I believe I played a certain part in this. As you know, I am a socialist. I spent part of my youth struggling against colonialism. And the responsibilities which I have assumed today have in no way led me to renounce my past convictions. [...] This is why today, in New Caledonia, in French Polynesia and in Wallis and Futuna, my Government is responsible for a policy which to me seems in no way comparable to a colonial policy.
Prime Minister Rocard at the Christchurch Town Hall, 30 April 1991.[i]
Both Territories and Colonies
Rocard's image of his enlightened Socialist administration over the Pacific TOM overcoming the mentalities of yesteryear was tailored for consumption in a part of the world where the French Pacific presence had repeatedly been pejoratively characterised as colonialist. Rocard and other Socialist leaders since 1981 were selective in their references to colonialism, tending to use it in the past tense, in negative association with former French Governments of the Centre and Right, and in reference to a pre-World War II colonial past. Several examples of this outlook have already been presented in this work. Mitterrand was cited at the beginning of chapter 2 referring in 1986 to the need to eradicate colonialism in New Caledonia, while Rocard himself had in 1988 referred to the New Caledonian heritage of colonialism as the reason why the living standards of the indigenous Melanesians there were lower than those of the immigrant population.[ii] Socialist parliamentarians, along with Communist representatives, employed negative references to colonialism when haranguing their RPR and UDF opponents in the National Assembly. Thus Socialist representatives used the concept of colonialism when referring to the distant past, or to periods in the more recent past when the Left was not in government. As Rocard did above, they refused to accept that their own policies could be associated with the term, owing to its antediluvian and reactionary connotations for them. RPR and UDF leaders rejected accusations assimilating a colonialist mentality to their policies, although they did not hesitate to use similar accusations to attack Socialist Government reforms.[iii] For Giscardians and Gaullists, as for the Socialists, the DOM-TOM were neither colonies nor the remnants of French colonialism, but stood as fully-fledged components of the Fifth Republic, representing a stake in France's global future, symbols of modernity and diversity.
In the 1980s the selective French use of the term 'colonialism' was rejected, both within the Pacific TOM, where indigenous nationalist groups such as the FLNKS regularly referred to France as the colonial power, and by their sympathisers in the South Pacific, who viewed France as the last of the European colonial powers in the zone. From these South Pacific vantage points, French colonialism was neither an outlook associated merely with the distant past, nor with periods of liberal-conservative government in Paris. French colonialism stood rather as the direct consequence of the annexation of lands which were not those of the Republic by right of original occupancy, and over which unjust French claims of sovereignty had not been relinquished. Colonialism was viewed as existing irrespective of whether the Left or Right was in government in Paris, and was dependent on the consideration that Paris ultimately determined the administration of its South Pacific possessions from half a world away.
For the purposes of this chapter, the words 'colony', 'colonialism', and 'colonial', are not used in the limited senses ascribed above to metropolitan French political leaders. Analysis below is derived from broader, more neutral definitions that coincidentally agree with the characterisations of indigenous nationalists in the Pacific TOM. A clear-cut starting point is the standard French dictionary Le Petit Robert, which refers to a colony as an "establishment founded in a less developed country by a nation belonging to a dominant group; this country is made subordinate to the occupying country, which benefits from it". Under this definition, New Caledonia and French Polynesia were colonies by virtue of the military subjugation by France of their indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century, and their concurrent settlement by French colonists. New Caledonia and French Polynesia consisted of islands less developed than France, if considered by European economic criteria, over which Paris had imposed the preeminence of French settler communities. France had exploited its sovereignty over those two territories to various ends, although unevenly and not always with great success. New Caledonia served as a naval base, as a penal colony for those of its citizens considered undesirable, and later as a "colonie de peuplement" for law abiding citizens. While the local agricultural production of French colonists failed to become important on a national level, the exploitation of territorial mineral resources proved more significant. French Polynesia, while traditionally of little economic importance to France, has been strategically important. In the nineteenth century Papeete offered France a naval base in a region of expanding British influence. The significance of nuclear testing operations for the Fifth Republic has already been discussed. Wallis and Futuna does not fit the definition above very well, due to its original status as a French protectorate, the marginal level of French settlement there, and the minimal nature of both French economic and military activities there. Even though it was not a demographic colony, Wallis and Futuna had nevertheless been colonised in the sense that it was financially dependent on France and, like the other Pacific TOM, was ultimately controlled from Paris.
'Overseas Departments and Territories', the official nomenclature for these and the other French overseas possessions, was modernistic terminology introduced to replace the term 'colonies' after World War II. The name change was part of an attempt by Paris to retain its overseas possessions by introducing various administrative renovations which would allow the claim that France's relations with its domains had broken free of the model of a European colonial power reigning over its colonies. The change in administrative status was accompanied by the granting of French citizenship to inhabitants there, and voting rights to those of age. Under the Fourth Republic, it was hoped in Paris that the secession of French dominions would be staved off by placating nationalist aspirations to self-rule there through greater local participation in Republican institutions. This measure did not prevent the large-scale reduction of the colonial empire. During the 1950s the nationalists in most of the newly-instituted DOM-TOM became dissatisfied with the limited nature of the self-administration granted to their respective areas. The departmental standing of French Algeria could have been thought to have deterred indigenous nationalist claims until the second half of the 1950s, but it did not, just as the granting of territorial status to the components of Sub-Saharan French Africa did not block the growth of indigenous nationalism there.
Like the metropolitan French Departments, the remaining French DOM-TOM are still controlled from Paris. In the cases of the Pacific TOM, certain allowances have been made for a large degree of local administration, while the statute of each reserved sovereign control for Paris. Although their administrative standings had been redefined under the Fifth Republic, the DOM-TOM remained French possessions to which metropolitan French citizens might migrate and where, in the case of New Caledonian Kanaks, a degree of subjugation was necessary as recently as the 1980s. In these respects, New Caledonia was not unique. For example parallels existed between the political situations of New Caledonia and Corsica. The Corsican nationalist minority has, like the FLNKS, resorted to violence in its assertion of local identity in the face of metropolitan French administration, the primacy of French institutions, culture, and immigration. The policy of successive French Governments since the 1970s has consisted of efforts to placate nationalist claims through the recognition of Corsican identity within the Fifth Republic.
Colonialism, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary is "a policy of acquiring or maintaining colonies". Le Petit Robert offers a narrower definition, listing "colonialism" as meaning a "system of colonial expansion". The term is described as pejorative, a standing in line with its usage by French politicians in the 1980s. While France has not actively pursued the acquisition of colonies since the nineteenth century, the persistent policy of its governments into the 1990s has been to maintain its remaining possessions as long as most eligible voters there do not vote to leave the Republic. Paris has retained sovereignty over the DOM-TOM because they are considered either useful, or potentially useful to the Fifth Republic. France continues to exploit its sovereignty over those possessions to various ends. The DOM-TOM provide France with a global network of military bases, centres for high-technology projects in the cases of French Polynesia and Guyane, points for the spread of French cultural and economic influence, and hubs for regional development and cooperation work. In a literal sense deprived of emotive French overtones, administrative control exerted by Paris over the Pacific TOM, whether determined by French Governments of the Left or Right, can be defined as colonialism.
Rocard rejected any assertion that such administration constituted a colonial policy, for the reason that he considered such a description pejorative. If this French interpretation of the word 'colonialism' is taken alone, then Rocard could be considered correct. His policies could not plausibly be characterised as expansionary or reactionary, yet they do conform to the broader definition of 'colonialism' to be found in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. During Rocard's period as Prime Minister, the rule of French law, the primacy of French institutions, and the priority of administrative policy determined by Paris were maintained in New Caledonia by the Matignon Accords of 1988, and in French Polynesia by the revision of the Internal Autonomy Statute in 1990. To this extent Rocardian reforms constitute colonial policy.
Under international law, in the mid-1940s France had been considered a colonial administrator of the Pacific TOM. The UN had never recognised New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna or French Polynesia as sovereign nations. Aiming to avoid provoking controversy among its founding members, the UN did not go so far as to define these and other territories as colonies, preferring instead to apply a technocratic euphemism to them 'non-self-governing territories'. However enlightened the administrative policies of French Governments may or may not have been since then, and no matter what degree of administrative autonomy the Pacific TOM might have attained, legally France could not be considered to have decolonised them when it had neither formally nor informally renounced sovereignty. France was not alone in this regard. Other nations which had not renounced their sovereignty over various South Pacific islands were Chile, Britain, the United States and New Zealand. Directly because of South Pacific Forum lobbying, in the 1980s France was the only one of these external administering powers in the South Pacific to attract disapproval by the UN of its policies.
Representatives of the Chirac Government argued in 1986 that the South Pacific TOM had become integral parts of the Fifth Republic that should not be considered under UN decolonisation provisions. It was declared that New Caledonia, like French Polynesia and to a lesser extent Wallis and Futuna, had attained a large degree of self-administration within the Fifth Republic and could not properly be considered non-self-governing territories. Moreover, under French constitutional practice full allowance was made for these territories' democratic self-determination. Nevertheless France could not be considered to have decolonised by having pursued a policy leading to the complete integration of its Pacific possessions into the Fifth Republic. Unlike the DOM, the Pacific TOM retained the constitutional right to self-determination, an important indication that they had not become indissolubly attached to the Fifth Republic.
Among other considerations, part 1 discussed the consequences of lobbying by indigenous nationalist movements in the Pacific TOM, notably New Caledonia, and the effect this development had on the formulation of French internal policy. This chapter is concerned with the implications that indigenous nationalist demands in the Pacific TOM posed for French foreign policy in the South Pacific. Attention below falls on the external dimension of the question of New Caledonian decolonisation. The assumption existed among the leaders of South Pacific governments that New Caledonia in the 1980s, like the New Hebrides in the 1970s, was on the verge of attaining sovereignty. The decolonisation of the New Hebrides falls outside the chronological frame of reference of this work, although mention of the implications of that event for Vanuatu support for New Caledonian Kanaks is made below. Because of the presumed imminence of Kanak independence, regional leaders gave the claims of the FLNKS a degree of prominence which they would not otherwise have gained. While Maohi nationalist parties of French Polynesia were sporadically active in soliciting international support, their marginal following in the territory in the 1980s left regional governments reluctant to take up their cause to the extent that they did in the case of the FLNKS. The high point of international lobbying for Maohi nationalists during the period under consideration came in October 1990. Temaru travelled to New York to lobby the UN and the Solomon Islands representative called, to no effect, for the reinscription of French Polynesia on the UN list of non-self-governing territories.[iv] No further significant observations can be made about the influence of Maohi claims to self-determination on French regional policy. The indigenous population of Wallis and Futuna did not have an independence movement, and thus French sovereignty there was an issue of neither internal nor international debate.
Political questions in the Fifth Republic related to its colonial heritage and demands for decolonisation were commonly considered in Paris to have been resolved under de Gaulle in the 1960s. Events in the 1980s suggested that this chapter of French history was not yet closed.
The Case for French Sovereignty
Whereas its nuclear testing was a policy issue which governments of the Fifth Republic had imposed on the South Pacific, decolonisation was a question which political representatives of the South Pacific pressed on Paris. As part of efforts to explain their regional policy by means of the sort of patient dialogue outlined by Cheysson in November 1981,[v] French Governments of the 1980s found themselves having to respond to the governments of the newly-independent states of the South Pacific, which wanted to know why the self-determination demands of nationalists in the French TOM were not being met. In their attempts to improve French relations with the region through dialogue, French Governments tackled the problematic task of justifying the Fifth Republic's maintenance of sovereignty over its South Pacific territories to governments which had recently attained their own self-rule and were manifestly unsympathetic. In this section French justifications for sovereignty over the Pacific TOM are examined.
The defence of France's South Pacific presence in the 1980s rested on certain historical faits accomplis and constitutional points coherent to those who defended them, but which were less convincing to those who held that Kanak or Maohi claims had primacy. Those who advocated the case of indigenous nationalism likewise had recourse to historical precedent. They stressed the fact that Kanak and Maohi nationalists were the descendants of the original occupants of their respective islands. At its simplest level, the dispute between the two contesting nationalist legitimacies could be reduced to the slogans used in New Caledonia during debate over the question of independence. Banners belonging to French loyalists would proclaim words to the effect of "Ici, c'est la France! [This is France!]", while Kanaks brandished the slogan "Kanaky vaincra [Kanaky will overcome]".
For the representatives of the French State, established French sovereignty was of overriding importance. New Caledonia was French, an "integral part of the Republic" as Jacques Lafleur referred to it.[vi] The future of the territory would therefore be determined according to French law. Supporters of Kanak nationalism pointed to the comparative recentness of the establishment of French sovereignty over New Caledonia, and France's decolonisation of most of its colonial empire in the twentieth century, to suggest that French rule was a passing phase. They displayed a disregard for French law and questioned its legitimacy, considering indigenous rights to be paramount. However the FLNKS did not totally reject French institutions which, from a militant nationalist viewpoint, was perhaps its major philosophical inconsistency. The combative rejection of French democratic institutions expressed in the FLNKS charter, the document's accompanying declaration of a Kanak national liberation struggle, and the foundation of the provisional government of Kanaky, might be attributed greater credibility if the Front had not opted to participate in French democratic institutions since 1984. Having cooperated with the Pisani/Fabius Interim Statute, and the Matignon Accords, as well as having accepted the conditions of the Rocard Government for a self-determination vote in 1998, the FLNKS can no longer consistently claim to be above French constitutional considerations.
The defenders of French sovereignty hold that in 1853 New Caledonia was occupied, but it had not previously constituted a sovereign entity, because it was balkanised among the numerous Melanesian clan groupings present. Although Mitterrand and Socialist Governments since 1981 have shown some sympathy for claims of Kanak nationalists, the authenticity of Kanak nationalism was contested by French loyalists in the 1980s. Nationalism, French loyalists pointed out, was a philosophical concept alien to traditional Melanesian values. It had taken until the 1970s for the concepts of Kanak nationalism and an independent Kanaky to begin to be accepted among New Caledonia's Melanesians. By that stage, French sovereignty had long been established, to the point of being incontestable. The inhabitants of New Caledonia were French by nationality, and benefited from essentially the same rights under Republican law as citizens of metropolitan France. Under these conditions, to claim Kanak independence in New Caledonia by reference to the right of prior occupancy, French loyalists argued, was unrealistic and historically illegitimate. You might as well try, it was argued, to give metropolitan France back to the Gauls.[vii] Clearly, the difference between the two groups was that the Melanesian tribes of New Caledonia, unlike the Celtic tribes of Gaul, had not receded into history. For all its internal divisions, and in the face of French cultural dominance, New Caledonia's indigenous Melanesian population had managed to form its own ethnic identity. In the 1980s the rising claims to self-determination of the Kanak majority of the Melanesian population could not simply be ignored in Paris. Both Socialist and liberal-conservative reforms constituted responses, of greater or lesser advantage as the case may have been, to the activism of the FLNKS.
The spirit, if not the letter, of the French Constitution, required that Kanak claims be heeded, although assessed according to formal democratic criteria. From 1981 President Mitterrand and Socialist Governments were constrained to act according to the dictates of French constitutional law. While reform attempts were made, in the face of RPCR opposition, to improve the disadvantaged material and social situation of Kanaks, the requirements of the Constitution had to be observed. These elements provided the basis for Socialist Government refusals to respond to Kanak demands for immediate independence through a restricted self-determination vote likely to result in a majority poll for secession. Instead in Paris the preference of the electoral majority had to be recognised, whether with reservations on the part of Socialist Governments, or more enthusiastically by the Chirac Government.
Under constitutional criteria, the foremost sign of the legitimacy of French sovereignty over the Pacific TOM was that their populations were French by choice thanks to local majority votes for adherence to the Fifth Republic in the self-determination referenda held in September 1958 in New Caledonia and in French Polynesia, and in December 1959 in Wallis and Futuna. Since then, no nationalist movement in any of these three TOM had commanded the majority following of the local electorate necessary to lead the way to independence. As an anonymous writer for the High Commission in Nouméa pointed out in August 1980:
France has stayed in New Caledonia because this is the will of its inhabitants, and has been reaffirmed several times. In 1958, [New] Caledonian voters massively approved, by referendum, the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic [...]. This choice of the [New] Caledonian population has always been maintained.[viii]
This observation was reiterated by Cheysson when he addressed the National Assembly on French South Pacific policy in November 1981. He concurred in stating that the legitimacy of the French Pacific presence rested on "the freely expressed wish of the inhabitants of the territories".[ix] This legitimacy was reaffirmed in the case of New Caledonia in the territorial self-determination referendum of 1987.
The agitation of the FLNKS in 1984 and 1985 led to speculation by liberal and conservative French politicians that New Caledonian independence might push the first of a series of toppling French dominoes in the remaining DOM-TOM.[x] The decolonisation of the New Hebrides in 1980s had already set a precedent of sorts in the South Pacific, although as a Franco-British Condominium it had been a special case. In 1984 and 1985 the RPR and the UDF sounded the alarm over the contemplation of the issue of New Caledonian independence, accusing the Fabius Government of leading a policy of abandonment in the DOM-TOM.
Should New Caledonian independence be won, it was asserted, a chain of events could be set in motion which would diminish France's status as a great power. Not only members of the Opposition professed to be concerned about the implications of possible decolonisation. Calling into question the correctness of the UDF and RPR assertion that all members of the Fabius Government were in favour of decolonisation, Hernu lent official credence to the domino theory when he stated in April 1985 "It's not only the defence of New Caledonia which is at stake, but also that of Guyane and [French] Polynesia".[xi] The Pisani Plan responded to such concerns by preserving vestiges of French sovereignty over New Caledonia in the unlikely eventuality that it acceded to a form of independence in association with France. Although the Fabius Government was concerned with the maintenance of the French global presence, it did not succeed in reassuring its opponents concerning this point. In January 1985, shortly after the announcement of the Pisani Plan, Chaban-Delmas declared to an RPR meeting in Bordeaux that decolonisation in New Caledonia could spread and threaten the standing of France as a nuclear, global power:
If France withdraws from New Caledonia, it will not just be New Caledonia that will go, next it will be [French] Polynesia. Now, this is the only possible place for a French nuclear test centre. It's the domino theory in action. New Caledonia will drag down [French] Polynesia, and France will disappear. In the 21st century your children will be the poor little inheritors of nothing at all for if France ceases to be a nuclear power, she will cease to be a power period.[xii]
This conjecture represented more the individual reaction of an old-guard Gaullist than an expression of RPR policy. It should be noted that, at this time, Chirac, Pons, and Jacques Toubon, then the Secretary-General of the RPR, did not argue that Socialist policy in New Caledonia would lead to a succession of toppling dominoes in the rest of the DOM-TOM. The scenario presented by Chaban-Delmas was in any case unrealistically alarmist.
Chaban-Delmas voiced an extreme, unofficial reaction to the question of decolonisation that the world standing of France might be diminished by the loss of any further territories. The possibility of the loss of French territory through internal nationalist campaigning was, like projections about the Soviet threat to the French Pacific, an illusory menace. In 1985, the dominant parties in both New Caledonia and French Polynesia opposed independence. The RPCR controlled the territorial electoral majority in New Caledonia, while Tahoeraa Huiraatira enjoyed political dominance in French Polynesia. Certain conservatives in the metropolitan French Opposition held that the attention the FLNKS was receiving through negotiations with Pisani and the formulation of reforms to meet some of its demands would serve to encourage the rise of nationalist movements elsewhere in the DOM-TOM. A Conference of the Last of the French Colonies, held on Guadeloupe from 5 to 7 April 1985, and attended by nationalist delegations from all the DOM-TOM except Wallis and Futuna and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, where there were no nationalist movements, appeared to offer confirmation of the impression that nationalist movements were being encouraged by events in New Caledonia.[xiii] In the National Assembly on 3 April 1985, Michel Debré called for the meeting to be banned. Pierre Joxe, then Minister of the Interior, replied by saying that he had no recourse to law to ban a private meeting, although he expressed disapproval of it.[xiv] A decolonising domino effect did not materialise as a threat to the DOM-TOM. Of all the nationalist parties in the DOM-TOM, the FLNKS was the one with the proportionately largest following on its home ground. Both the FLNKS and its counterparts elsewhere in the DOM-TOM commanded insufficient electoral backing to achieve independence through a majority vote in a referendum, assuming that Paris would have been prepared to undertake such an exercise in the case of the DOM. Like the spectre of Soviet expansionism, New Caledonian independence was an illusory prospect exploited by members of the Opposition as political capital in metropolitan French debate. That same image of independence was exploited even more in the context of political debate by South Pacific leaders, although for regional motives diametrically opposed to the French Republicanism of individuals such as Chaban-Delmas and Debré, as will be discussed in the following section on the campaigning of the South Pacific Forum.
Claims by members of the Opposition in Paris that the power of the Fifth Republic would have been seriously damaged by the loss of its Pacific territories were contentious in other respects. Militarily, France did not stand to lose a great deal through the loss of New Caledonia. Despite government and opposition declarations of their strategic worth, the islands had not been a major military base since US forces had used them in World War II. The partial and short-lived militarisation of New Caledonia in the 1980s was more a response to internal unrest than a sign of the strategic value of the islands. The loss of French Polynesia would have been more significant due to the presence of the CEP. If possible, any relocation of the test facilities would have involved great expense.
Moreover, France would not have been greatly affected economically by the loss of New Caledonia or French Polynesia. As Jean-Christophe Victor pointed out in 1990, New Caledonia and Polynesia contributed almost nothing to the French state budget, whereas the yearly public funds transfer from metropolitan France to New Caledonia amounted to about 2,500MFF. The figure was almost double that amount for French Polynesia. Considering the populations of the two territories, this was a disproportionately heavy level of expenditure, although these figures combined were the equivalent of less than 1% of the annual national budget.[xv] Setting aside geostrategic arguments and constitutional considerations, fiscal pragmatists could argue that a marginal saving would be made in state spending if the Pacific TOM were no longer components of the Republic.
The natural resources of the Pacific TOM were usually pointed to by French political leaders as adequate justification for continued French sovereignty there. Yet apart from New Caledonian nickel reserves, little else in the way of natural resources had been exploited in the Pacific TOM by the 1980s. The value of mineral resources on the ocean floors surrounding the three territories had not been established, and whatever might be found there was not yet commercially viable to extract. While nickel had been proclaimed by the Billotte law of 1969 to be a national strategic resource for France because of its uses in the armaments industry, by the 1980s very little New Caledonian nickel was being used by France for this purpose. In 1985 for example, 97% of New Caledonian nickel was exported, not to metropolitan France, but to Japan.[xvi] Canada and other suppliers, geographically closer to metropolitan France than New Caledonia, could supply nickel cheaper thanks to lower freight overheads.[xvii]
Victor concluded with regard to the purported necessity of the Pacific TOM for the maintenance of France's standing as a global power: "Whether it is true or not is more a question of faith or perception than a calculation of figures".[xviii] This faith was based on a long-term strategic view in Paris that valued the future potential that the Pacific TOM offered. However in the past, the potential of other French possessions had not been realised. A French economic historian, Jacques Marseille, had come to this conclusion in response to the larger question of whether the French colonial empire contributed to France's economic strength as a great power. In 1984, his Empire colonial et capitalisme français challenged both the French colonialist and Marxist theory that the acquisition of a global empire contributed to national economic growth through the exploitation of resources for use in metropolitan France. At the height of its economic power, the colonial empire was the largest trading partner of metropolitan France, although Marseille insisted that its influence should not be overestimated. In 1928, when the colonial empire acceded to this status, trade with the colonies comprised 12.7% of French imports and 17.3% of its exports, and thus constituted a small relative majority of national external trade overall.[xix] Marseille found that economic expansion in the French colonial empire was artificially supported through government subsidies and protectionist measures against foreign goods on the metropolitan French market. Rather than contributing to French national economic growth, colonial trade held it back, as French Governments preferred to develop dealings with the colonies in preference to opening more profitable new markets in foreign nations. To the contrary of predictions of France's economic ruin upon decolonisation in the 1950s, the Fifth Republic experienced a period of rapid economic growth after the loss of French African and Asian domains.[xx] Clearly the possession of overseas dominions was not a condition of the economic well-being of the nation. There are strong grounds for the application of these conclusions to the economic relationship between metropolitan France and the Pacific TOM, as well as to the relationship of the former with the DOM-TOM in general. In the 1980s the DOM-TOM, like the French colonial empire before them, possessed economies heavily dependent on subsidies and technical assistance from the French State. Only with difficulty could they be characterised as anything except a financial burden, however minor, to the state budget.
Formal democratic considerations dictated by the Constitution, and the influence of geostrategic arguments asserting the long-term value of the DOM-TOM, determined much of the outlook of French Governments since 1981 on the issue of the decolonisation of the Pacific TOM. A component of the defence of French sovereignty in the South Pacific resided in unwillingness to have what was considered an internal affair the subject of political declarations by foreign governments. In response to a question from Lafleur which observed that South Pacific Forum lobbying on New Caledonia was inadmissible, Cheysson, Foreign Minister to Mauroy and Fabius, agreed. He outlined the position of the Fabius Government in November 1984:
France does not accord any rights of inspection to the South Pacific Forum over affairs which are solely a matter of its sovereignty. [...] The relations which we maintain with each of the Oceanic States provide us with the opportunity to remind our interlocutors of our refusal of any interference and, at the same time, to dissipate any incomprehension or misunderstandings.[xxi]
However much the PS and the RPR may have disagreed on the appropriate measures to take to remedy New Caledonia's problems, they were in accord on the point that as an internal aspect of French government policy it was none of the business of Forum members. In the 1980s French Governments, whether Socialist or not, displayed irritation over official foreign statements concerning self-determination, particularly in times of civil unrest in New Caledonia. This irritation was expressed in various ways, which affected French relations with South Pacific states, although not durably, and which demonstrated a mental gulf between attitudes in Paris and in the region.
On 27 November 1984, during the first FLNKS active boycott, Bill Hayden, the Australian Foreign Minister, declared on behalf of the Hawke Government that New Caledonia was "one of the last vestiges of colonialism in the South Pacific".[xxii] The following day Peter Curtis, the Australian Ambassador to Paris, was summoned to the Quai d'Orsay. He was informed by Michel Combal, Director for Asia and Pacific Affairs, of the astonishment of the Fabius Government over Hayden's comment about New Caledonia, and was told that the future of New Caledonia was a domestic French matter of no concern to Australia.[xxiii] Some unofficial reactions came from the RPR too. In January 1985, Toubon sent a letter to the Australian Ambassador in Paris expressing the discontent of the RPR with comments by the Hawke Government on New Caledonia, in effect telling it to mind its own business.[xxiv]
These early indicators showed that the RPR shared the Socialist position of rejection of the right of foreign governments to comment negatively about New Caledonian affairs. At the time of the Ouvéa troubles from late April to early May 1988, the Chirac Government became annoyed with statements by New Zealand Labour Government Ministers. On 27 April 1988 Judith Trotter, then New Zealand Ambassador to Paris, was the recipient of remonstrations from the Secretary-General of the Quai d'Orsay after Lange had made disapproving comments at a press conference in London on Chirac's handling of New Caledonia.[xxv] French discontent was expressed at a higher level in Paris from April to May 1988. Reacting from Wellington, Russell Marshall, the New Zealand Foreign Minister, asserted on 30 April that the Chirac Government was responsible for the implementation of overly colonialist, repressive policies in New Caledonia which were reminiscent of the French response to Algerian independence claims.[xxvi] On 2 May Jean-Bernard Raimond, the French Foreign Minister, described Marshall's comment on New Caledonia as constituting an "intolerable interference" in French affairs.[xxvii]
The reaction of French Governments in response to the claim of any South Pacific government to speak on New Caledonian affairs did not stop official regional comments. The position of the Australian and New Zealand Labour administrations was that they were justified in speaking on New Caledonia due to the relative geographical proximity of their countries to the territory. The Hawke Government responded to French complaints in late November 1984 by stating that Australia had the right to comment on affairs that affected regional security in the South-West Pacific.[xxviii]
The New Zealand Labour Government responded in similar terms. As Fran Wilde, then Associate Foreign Minister, indicated in Nouméa in October 1987 "France gives its opinions on European problems. Why shouldn't New Zealand do likewise regarding the Pacific? We are from the South Pacific. We belong to a regional community. It's normal for us to make our voice heard."[xxix] Wilde's analogy was false. French politicians saw no comparison between their commentaries on European affairs and South Pacific leaders' commentaries on New Caledonian affairs. France had the right to comment on the former due to its membership of the EC and the growing interdependence of its community partners. No such formal political partnership existed between Paris and the South Pacific Forum. France had policy aspirations in the direction of regional integration with the South Pacific, but they did not extend to allowing the Forum to advise it on New Caledonian policy. The Forum could not consistently exclude New Caledonia and French Polynesia from its ranks and still assert the right to involve itself in their internal affairs.
The Chirac Government weathered foreign criticisms about New Caledonian policy less passively than the Fabius Government had. Michel Debré, as noted earlier, had been hostile to the Hawke Government since 1983, acting on the assumption that it was the leader of regional criticisms of France. Chirac picked up the arguments of Debré to some extent. On 26 August 1987, at an RPR youth section meeting at Arles, Chirac similarly accused Australia and New Zealand of leading "a policy of destabilising our country".[xxx]
Chirac appealed to a suspicion harboured by French conservatives. Regional critiques of the French presence reinforced the central suspicion subscribed to by followers of a theory to explain anti-French sentiment in the South Pacific. Certain French figures of the Right had chosen to portray regional opposition to the French South Pacific presence in a fashion which could best be described as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant conspiracy theory. According to the exponents of this theory, opposition to aspects of the French presence in the zone represented evidence of a Francophobic hangover from Anglo-French colonial rivalries of the nineteenth century. Although Britain had decolonised the region by the 1980s, the independent states it had left behind were presumed to have retained an adversarial mentality inherited from their former colonial master. Their ultimate goal was asserted to be the eviction of France from the South Pacific, so that Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance could be asserted over New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia, resulting in a united culture stretching from Australia to Canada.[xxxi]
In 1986 and 1987, such disquietude was acted upon. On 19 December 1986, following disparaging comments from Hawke and his colleagues about the conduct of New Caledonian policy, the Australian Ambassador in Paris was informed by Raimond that the Chirac Government had decided to suspend ministerial contacts between the two countries. On 5 January 1987, Raimond's office issued a declaration confirming the measure. It made reference to:
the French Government's decision to suspend, for an indeterminate period of time, all [ministerial] contacts between Australia and France, given the unfriendly attitude of the Australian Government in recent months in terms of French policy in the South Pacific and particularly as regards New Caledonia. [...] during this time Australia has lead an ongoing campaign against French policy in spite of willingness by the French authorities to entertain dialogue and make efforts to explain the situation.[xxxii]
Patient explanation having proven inadequate, Paris had resorted to more vigorous measures. Hayden regretted the French decision, although any apology that might have been expected was not forthcoming from the Hawke Government, which claimed to be mystified as to why the action had been taken.[xxxiii] Canberra was playing the part of a provocative ingénue.
Five days later the Quai d'Orsay announced the expulsion from New Caledonia of John Dauth, the Australian Consul-General, for purported interference in local politics.[xxxiv] Dauth's error, the Quai d'Orsay asserted, had been to establish overly friendly contacts with Kanak political groups. Dauth had dispensed Australian aid funding to Kanak groups, and had held meetings with Kanak political leaders. Dauth responded that the High Commission had been notified of the aid, which consisted of 30,000FF for a school bus, 20,000FF for the Kanak cultural centre at Hienghène, and 5,000FF for a Catholic aid group to assist in cyclone recovery work. Moreover, similar Australian funding to Kanak groups had been going on throughout the 1980s. As for Dauth's meetings with Kanak political leaders, these were stated to be a normal part of his diplomatic duties, and were complemented by his meetings with French loyalist leaders.[xxxv] The expulsion appeared unjustified on the level of the Quai d'Orsay's complaint that Dauth had been aiding and abetting Kanak nationalism, although it was consistent with the suspension of ministerial exchanges. It is more likely that Dauth was being used as the object of French discontent with broader Australian "interference" over New Caledonia, including its lobbying at the UN in December 1986, which will be discussed further below.
French subscribers to the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy theory were in fact hard put to find evidence of material support for FLNKS militants from South Pacific governments. Dauth's distribution of aid for a school bus, cultural purposes and cyclone recovery work did not constitute striking evidence of succour for Kanak activism. In September 1987, while visiting New Caledonia, Chirac accused Australia and New Zealand of searching to destabilise France's South Pacific presence through support for the FLNKS.[xxxvi] Other than paper protests and lobbying at the UN, proof to lend weight to this accusation was difficult to find. Some evidence existed of official funding for the FLNKS that could be viewed as political in intent, but it was not substantial. For example, in July 1985, the New Zealand Labour Government funded a visit to Wellington by Jean-Marie Tjibaou.[xxxvii] Lange denied that his Government had supplied aid to the FLNKS,[xxxviii] although paying for its president's air fares represented a minor contradiction of this assertion.
The most overt campaigning for the FLNKS in Australia and New Zealand came from non-governmental bodies. In 1985 Australian church groups and teachers' unions had been active in raising funds for the Kanak Popular Schools.[xxxix] In January 1985, the Australian Federation of Secondary Teachers had raised the equivalent of 75,000FF to assist the FLNKS in setting up its own press.[xl] Roland Jacquard, a reporter for Le Point, attempted to portray New Zealand non-governmental aid for Kanak education as evidence of the veracity of Chirac's theory. After sounding a warning by making vague, unsubstantiated reference to purported Libyan and Soviet destabilisation, he quoted a letter dated 4 June 1986. The letter had been written by David Small, a representative of CORSO, a private New Zealand aid agency, and discussed a donation of $NZ7,000 for the Kanak schools. Jacquard then made reference to the presence of an FLNKS office in Sydney, and to the financial support of Australian trade unions for the Front.[xli] The article was sensationalist. The only specific example of aid mentioned, whether Australian or New Zealand, was not of an illegal nature. While revelations of money for Kanak arms trafficking would have been more convincing in affirming allegations of a foreign conspiracy, no evidence for such close links has been found. Nor is there reason to suggest it exists. Non-governmental support for the FLNKS similar to that of private New Zealand and Australian agencies was offered by private French groups in the 1980s, including the pacifist Larzac Foundation, and the Association of Information and Support for the Rights of the Kanak People among others.[xlii] The activities of these organisations tended to dispel the impression that support for the FLNKS was limited to the so-called Anglo-Saxons of the South Pacific, even if these French groups contained Protestant supporters.
Franco-Australian ministerial contacts were unofficially resumed on 26 September 1987, when Raimond met Hayden in New York to discuss South Pacific issues.[xliii] They were officially restored when André Giraud, then Defence Minister, attended the Australian bicentenary celebrations in February 1988 as the French representative.[xliv] The importance of the differences between the Chirac Government and the Hawke Government should not be overestimated. Sub-ministerial contacts between Paris and Canberra continued during the suspension of interministerial relations, and it could be argued that the French suspension was largely diplomatic window-dressing. Neither Paris nor Canberra wished to leave their spat unresolved for too long. The halt of ministerial exchanges had been a nuisance for Australia, which had planned talks with French Ministers over European trade for 1987.[xlv] To allow relations with France to deteriorate during a period of economic depression might have been damaging for the national economy.[xlvi] For its part, the Chirac Government, while discontented, did not desire a complete break in relations with Canberra. Prior to taking retaliatory measures, Raimond had outlined the governmental position in the National Assembly on 17 November 1986. He noted French discord with Australia and the South Pacific Forum over New Caledonia, but declared:
However, our policy in this region is aimed at strengthening dialogue with all of our partners and neighbours [...]. On this point it should be stressed that Australia is an influential country in the region, an ally with which we maintain close political relations, substantial economic relations, and beneficial scientific and cultural cooperation, both for France and Australia and for all the States of the Pacific.[xlvii]
To continue a suspension of ministerial contacts for more than a few months would have been contrary to the long-term French policy of South Pacific integration, which had been supported by successive governments in Paris since the 1970s.
That Franco-Australian differences over New Caledonia were not allowed to develop too far calls into question the extent of division between Paris and Canberra in 1986 and 1987. Regardless of Chirac's hostile comments about Australia, and Hawke,[xlviii] differences were not allowed to become irreparable. Certainly no personal animosity seemed to exist on the part of Chirac or Hawke. On 19 June 1989 during a visit to Paris on the eve of the French bicentenary celebration of the French Revolution, Chirac and Hawke had what the latter described as an amicable meeting. As Mayor of Paris, Chirac received Hawke to accept an Australian gift to the city, a bust of La Pérouse.[xlix]
Negative comments on the political stance of the Australian and New Zealand Governments by RPR leaders were also partly motivated by demagogy. Such statements appealed to patriotic conservative voters in metropolitan France and to French loyalists in the Pacific TOM. Caldoche loyalists held as an article of faith that Australia and New Zealand aimed to extend 'Anglo-Saxon' influence over New Caledonia. The fact that for most of the 1980s these two countries were led by Labour Governments sympathetic to the FLNKS aggravated this suspicion.[l] From 1982 to 1985 Australophobia was evident in the physical harassment and death threats made by French loyalists to Helen Fraser, the only Australian journalist permanently present in the territory.[li] In 1987 the RPCR approved of the expulsion of Dauth, stating it was a good lesson for Canberra.[lii]
Wellington and Canberra, of course, rejected the accusation that they were pursuing nationalistic interests in supporting New Caledonian self-determination. Hawke's reply to the thesis was:
It is nonsense and a palpable nonsense. [...] I and my government have our hands completely full in conducting the affairs of Australia and in handling, within the limit of economic resources, the amount of aid that we were able to make available to the countries of the region. We have neither ambition nor capacity to take the place of France in the region. And I must say that any view that we want to do that is both a misapprehension and if I may say so borders on the paranoic.[liii]
While betraying a predilection for giving advice where it was not wanted, neither Canberra nor Wellington had designs on New Caledonia in the 1980s. Certain French commentators have been more moderate than members of the French Right in their assessment of Australian foreign policy in the South Pacific. They have more plausibly indicated that expansionist designs were beyond Canberra's financial means, and that there existed no great public interest in such a goal.[liv] The same arguments applied to a greater extent to New Zealand.
Another French position related to the sentiment that South Pacific nations were not justified in passing judgement on ethnic problems in New Caledonia, was the belief that they were hypocritical in doing so. Australia and New Zealand were former colonies where massive European immigration had marginalised indigenous identity to a far greater extent than French settlement had done in New Caledonia or in the other Pacific TOM. Defending the New Caledonian policy of the Chirac Government from accusations of colonialism in the UN General Assembly on 2 December 1986 Claude de Kemoularia, the French representative, riposted with an attack on the state of inter-ethnic relations in Australia and New Zealand.[lv] Chirac, at Arles on 26 August 1987, accused Australia and New Zealand of hypocrisy in venturing to comment on New Caledonia when they too had internal ethnic problems stemming from their colonial histories.[lvi] Although Pons refrained from naming countries, he had employed the same argument on 8 November 1986 when addressing the National Assembly on the matter of South Pacific Forum lobbying at the UN.[lvii] On 2 December 1986 Charles Pasqua, speaking as Minister of the Interior, declared at the time of South Pacific Forum lobbying in the UN on New Caledonia:
We [the French Government] do not need lessons from Australia and New Zealand, either with regard to democracy or civilization. It is clear that the problems of the independence of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand were settled, a long time ago, and in their own manner, by the Australians and the New Zealanders.[lviii]
Pasqua was alluding to repressive colonial policies which had extended to the point of genocide in the nineteenth century. The underlying message of such comments was that Australia and New Zealand should resolve their own ethnic problems before venturing to pass judgement on those of France in New Caledonia, and that they were ill-equipped, both politically and morally, to extend such judgement.
Of all the members of the South Pacific Forum, Australia was a prime target for French critiques. The treatment meted out to Australian Aborigines since the beginnings of British colonisation had been particularly brutal, and the indigenous population was still a disadvantaged minority in the 1980s. In an interview with TF1 on 16 December 1984, Mitterrand criticised disparaging Australian commentaries referring to unjust French colonialism in New Caledonia, considering them singularly inappropriate if the number of Aborigines killed in the name of British colonialism was taken into account.[lix] In February 1988 Giraud responded to Australian surprise that France should be displeased with South Pacific lobbying at the UN by asking:
Imagine the French Ambassador at the UN writing a letter to everybody trying to make an issue of [the Aborigines] and putting it on the list of decolonisation because in the Northern Territory of Australia you have about the same percentage of Aborigines that we have Melanesians in New Caledonia. Would your Government be happy?[lx]
This scenario was not implausible. By the 1990s, the Aborigines of Australia had moved beyond claiming land rights and were contemplating seeking self-determination, in much the same way as Kanaks had in the late 1970s. In May 1993 Bob Weatherall, the Queensland leader of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, declared that if Australia was going to become a Republic, Aborigines should be granted the right to a self-determination vote to ascertain whether they wanted to join or regain their own sovereignty.[lxi] In October 1993, it was reported that Torres Strait Islanders had hopes of forming a self-governing territory by 2001.[lxii] Aboriginal leaders may yet seek UN support for their claims.
French critics have had ample material to back their claim that, taking into consideration the heritage of oppression of Aborigines, white Australians were hypocritical in advising France how to solve ethnic and political problems in New Caledonia. The policy of genocide in the nineteenth century which led to the eventual eradication of Tasmania's aboriginal population was more brutal than the colonial repression practised by the French against tribal insurgents in New Caledonia.[lxiii] Injustices to Aborigines persisted beyond the colonial period. Aborigines were not accorded the full civil rights that non-indigenous Australians enjoyed by law until 1967.[lxiv] The question of indigenous land rights has been just as divisive in Australia as in New Caledonia. Aboriginal tribes lost huge tracts of their tribal domains to British colonisers, who did not recognise any prior right of ownership resultant from the status of Aborigines as the original inhabitants of the continent. It was not until 1992 that the Australian High Court declared, with what became known as the Mabo High Court ruling, that Aborigines, as the original inhabitants of Australia, had prior rights of occupation. The decision called into question the legality of land titles issued by State Governments to private companies as they had not taken into consideration indigenous title.[lxv] The Mabo ruling opened up to Aborigines the prospect of claiming title over all Crown land in Australia. Aboriginal land claims followed. In 1993 the Australian Government still had a long period of confrontation ahead of it over the question of the role of Aborigines in the transplanted immigrant society which had become culturally dominant over the two centuries since Britain had proclaimed sovereignty over the continent.
When asked in March 1987 by a reporter from Le Monde if Australia's relations with the Aborigines could be compared to France's problems with the Kanaks, Bill Hayden's defensive response was "I don't see how it compares at all".[lxvi] Avoiding blatant historical parallels such as the fact that the European immigrant societies in New Caledonia and in Australia were both founded largely by transportation, and that the colonisation of New Caledonia and of Australia had alienated indigenous populations from their lands, Hayden preferred to indicate how much the Australian Government was doing to improve the welfare of Aborigines and how much their situation had improved since World War II. However he could not deny that Aborigines were disadvantaged compared to the non-indigenous majority in Australia. When questioned on the matter in January 1987, Hawke stated that the situation of the Australian Aborigines was different from that of Kanaks in New Caledonia because Australia was a sovereign nation and New Caledonia was not.[lxvii] It was an indisputable but fine distinction, ignoring the parallel that legally New Caledonia was a component of a larger sovereign entity, in much the same way as the Torres Strait Islands were part of the Australian Commonwealth. Australian leaders such as Hawke and Hayden were not very convincing in their defensive arguments. They seemed to dislike being confronted with the ambiguity of their self-proclaimed authority to give pointers to the French on decolonisation. As the leaders of a state established upon the imposed legitimacy of British sovereignty over Australia, they did not enjoy a position of moral superiority over the French on colonial matters.
Similar arguments could be applied to New Zealand in the 1980s. The legacy of British colonialism there was far from being resolved. State recognition of Maori claims to land and other natural resources under the Treaty of Waitangi represented one of the major political issues of the decade. Maori language and culture had been in decline until the 1970s, due to the dominance of English culture. Only belatedly was recognition given to indigenous culture by the state education system. Lange and other Pakeha New Zealand Government Ministers were as much the leaders of a state founded on an imposed legitimacy as their Australian counterparts were. The misfortune of the Caldoches perhaps, was not to have eroded the identity of New Caledonian Melanesians as far as white Australians had marginalised the Aborigines, and New Zealand Pakeha in culturally dominating the Maoris.
That the nations of the South Pacific Forum were selective in their pronouncements on decolonisation provided further grounds for French observations of hypocrisy. In September 1988 Pierre Lellouche, then deputy director of the French Institute of International Relations, and an adviser to Chirac, asked why it was that Australia freely passed comment on the French in New Caledonia while hesitating to criticise Indonesian suppression of indigenous peoples such as the Melanesians of Irian Jaya, and the East Timorese.[lxviii] Australian Governments have repeatedly avoided confronting Indonesia over its atrocious human rights record, and have failed to support the decolonisation claims of East Timorese nationalists since the Indonesian invasion of their nation in 1975.[lxix] Australian unwillingness to aggravate a large, undemocratic, occasionally aggressive state is related to fears that such action could provoke border tensions, lead to a loss of Australian trade, and hinder developing wider Australian links with Asia. Lellouche rightly pointed out the selective morality of the Australian Government. Expressions of support for Melanesian nationalism by Papua New Guinea have also involved selective morality. Compared to its comments condemning French treatment of the FI and later the FLNKS in New Caledonia, Port Moresby has been reluctant to condemn the situation of Melanesians in Irian Jaya. Papua New Guinea does not wish to aggravate border tensions with Indonesia.[lxx]
The South Pacific Forum in general could be accused of selective morality over its willingness since the 1980s to pass judgement on French domestic policy in New Caledonia. Far more restraint was demonstrated by the Forum when certain of its own members were confronted with internal unrest stemming from ethnic divisions and undemocratic responses to them. The Forum avoided criticising the Fijian coups by Rabuka in 1987,[lxxi] and showed hesitancy over embroiling itself in the problems experienced by Papua New Guinea with nationalists on the island of Bougainville from 1989, even when that conflict spread to border clashes with the Solomon Islands.[lxxii] A major barrier to the arbitration of the internal and international disputes over Bougainville has been the insistence of Port Moresby that the conflict was an internal matter.[lxxiii] Thus Papua New Guinea adopted an argument which had been voiced by France over New Caledonia. Cautious to preserve its unity, the Forum has been more willing to embroil itself in France's domestic problems in the Pacific TOM than in the internal unrest of its own members.
The Forum Mobilises
The previous section established the differing attitudes of French and South Pacific governments concerning the adherence of the Pacific TOM to the Fifth Republic. Although France rejected claims by the Forum and its members expressing support for the decolonisation of New Caledonia and, more rarely, French Polynesia, from the late 1970s till 1988 it was largely unpersuasive in deflecting such regional commentary. In this and the following section the course of French diplomatic efforts to justify and explain French sovereignty over the Pacific TOM in the face of regional opposition is charted. Through this examination, the extent to which the question of decolonisation affected French foreign relations in the South Pacific is assessed.
As decolonisation was an issue raised by South Pacific leaders at the prompting of indigenous nationalists in the French Pacific, preliminary attention must accordingly be devoted to wider regional policy on decolonisation so as to understand the context of debate between the South Pacific Forum and Paris. While the French defence of the Republic's sovereignty over the Pacific TOM was motivated by a concern for constitutional demands, by an unwillingness to act against local electoral majorities opposed to independence, and by the maintenance of its standing as a global power into the twenty-first century, South Pacific leaders exhibited contrary political predispositions stemming from a different political culture. With the exception of Vanuatu leaders, independent governments in the region in the 1980s had had neither prior experience with, nor could plausibly claim any great understanding of, French democratic institutions.
For example, Hayden unrealistically suggested in January 1982 that the Mauroy Government should "declare a firm target date for independence - preferably one within five years - just as quickly as possible".[lxxiv] In the absence of majority support for this option among the New Caledonian electorate, the Mauroy Government could not do this. Hayden was either blasé about, or ignorant of, the French constitutional dimension as well as the New Caledonian electoral dimension. He described the argument that the minority status of Kanaks prevented such a declaration as "spurious". He incorrectly asserted that by the end of the 1980s Melanesians would once again represent a majority of the territorial population, and might as well be given independence sooner than later.[lxxv] This argument was in itself spurious, as Melanesian population increase in the 1980s would not affect voting patterns until the late 1990s or the 2000s, when the new generation would attain voting age, and by that time there would be no guarantee they would all be adherents to the cause of Kanak nationalism. Hayden also downplayed the importance of those he described as "French settlers", whom he said should "acknowledge the Kanak people's rights to determine the future of their own country".[lxxvi] This prospect was as likely as that of white Australian settlers unconditionally surrendering their interests to Aboriginal nationalism.
The political cultures South Pacific politicians had inherited from their colonial pasts had been derived from British democratic values, which placed less store than French democracy in the observation of a formal written constitution. Regional leaders were ill-equipped to comprehend the French concern to observe constitutional demands over the matter of self-determination and, as in Hayden's case, were unrealistic or ill-informed in their assessment of certain political realities in the Pacific TOM. Again, with the exception of Vanuatu, their experience of British decolonisation compounded their incomprehension. Apart from Pitcairn Island, Britain had willingly ceded sovereignty to its possessions in the South Pacific, both because it no longer desired to assume the expense of their maintenance, and because local political leaders in each of these domains had been amenable to this evolution.
Regardless of the important difference that no such conjunction of interests existed in the case of the French Pacific, English-speaking politicians in the South Pacific assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that the British decolonisation scenario would be applicable there. Their assumption underestimated the preparedness of Paris to maintain its control of its remaining global possessions, as well as overestimating the strength of indigenous nationalism in the Pacific TOM. And while the leaders of Vanuatu understood all too well the priorities of French political values, and French resistance to decolonisation, for them French preoccupations were deemed to be of far lesser significance than pan-Melanesian solidarity with New Caledonia's Kanaks.
Because of their own experiences of decolonisation, member states of the South Pacific Forum imagined that France would shortly follow the British example. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, French decolonisation of the South Pacific was considered by various regional leaders to be an historical inevitability. In 1979 Tom Davis, the Cook Islands Premier, optimistically predicted the total decolonisation of the South Pacific by 1985.[lxxvii] This was a tall order. Setting aside the French Pacific TOM, there was no indication in 1979, and there has been none since, that the United States was prepared to decolonise American Samoa, that Britain was cutting ties with Pitcairn Island, that Chile was prepared to renounce possession of Easter Island, that Australia intended to grant independence to Norfolk Island, or that New Zealand would abandon the Chatham Islands.
Regardless of the consideration that none of the other colonial powers in the South Pacific intended to renounce their island possessions in order to follow the British precedent, the idée fixe that France was on the verge of decolonising was expressed by the most conservative leaders in the Forum. Although Prime Minister Muldoon reacted unfavourably to suggestions that the Forum should lend immediate backing to Kanak nationalist claims, he portrayed French regional decolonisation as ultimately being ineluctable. At the South Pacific Forum held at Honiara in July 1979, he refused to back a motion tabled by Papua New Guinea calling for France to organise self-determination votes in French Polynesia and New Caledonia.[lxxviii] At the Port Vila South Pacific Forum in August 1981, Muldoon only reluctantly went along with the majority support for a statement backing New Caledonian independence, thinking the motion was peripheral to the interests of the body.[lxxix] After a meeting in February 1983 with Muldoon in Wellington, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who had asked for New Zealand support for the FI, said of Muldoon "I don't think he favoured [Kanak] claims to independence."[lxxx] Notwithstanding his reluctance to have the Forum support indigenous nationalism in the Pacific TOM, Muldoon had declared in July 1979 that he thought the French Pacific would be decolonised by the year 2000.[lxxxi] In May 1981, he told New Zealand journalists that Mitterrand would accelerate what Muldoon had perceived as the process of French decolonisation in the Pacific that had supposedly been set in motion by the Franco-British withdrawal from the New Hebrides.[lxxxii] Mitterrand informed Muldoon to the contrary at their meeting in Paris on 17 June 1981, that he had no intention of organising self-determination referenda in the Pacific TOM.[lxxxiii] There had been no indication in territorial elections in the late 1970s that pro-independence support approaching that of an absolute majority of local electorates existed in any of the French TOM.
In spite of his conservatism on decolonisation issues, Muldoon subscribed to the theory that one day French decolonisation would occur. His successor was more fervent in this assumption. Just after his visit to New Caledonia from 6 to 7 October 1984, Lange conjectured confidently to the House of Representatives in Wellington: "That territory will be independent in a relatively short time".[lxxxiv] In May 1986, heedless of evidence that the opposite might be the case, Lange described New Caledonian independence as "an irresistible tide".[lxxxv] By that time, the New Zealand Labour Government held that independence should be granted as soon as possible, but did not go so far as to recognise Kanak primacy in the manner that Vanuatu did.[lxxxvi] The advocacy of indigenous rights above those of immigrants in New Caledonia would have been an undemocratic position difficult for the Lange Government to justify. As the authority of Lange's administration rested on a political system founded on the imposition of British colonialism, at the expense of Maori identity, such an undemocratic, pro-indigenous stance would have led to uneasy repercussions on the New Zealand domestic political scene. Since the independence of Vanuatu, Prime Minister Lini had pushed for Kanak sovereignty in New Caledonia, in accordance with the demands of the FI and later the FLNKS.[lxxxvii]
Like Vanuatu since 1980, the South Pacific Forum at the height of its support for the FLNKS from 1985 to 1988 was less interested in the minority level of territorial support for Kanak nationalism than in the unconditional recognition of Kanak demands for self-determination. This outlook was formulated in fulfilment of a collective assumption that regional decolonisation was inevitable, and that, as a part of that assumed trend, Kanak independence was both practicable and just. This position was prefigured by the Forum communiqué issued in July 1979:
Noting the desire of Pacific Island peoples, including those in the French territories, to determine their own future, the Forum reaffirmed its belief in the principle of self-determination and independence applying to all Pacific Island peoples in accordance with their freely expressed wishes.[lxxxviii]
This motion was a moderated version of the original text proposed by Papua New Guinea, which specifically targeted the French Pacific, and was consistent with FI demands at the meeting. The term " all Pacific Islands peoples" went beyond reference to indigenous peoples due to the reservations of Australian, New Zealand and Fijian representatives. They could not adopt unqualified support for indigenous nationalism because non-indigenous inhabitants constituted absolute demographic majorities in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
That decolonisation issues were being discussed at the Forum in 1979 was partially attributable to the question of the impending independence of the New Hebrides. Yann Céléné Uregei, Nidoïsh Naisseline and Tjibaou attended the Forum meeting to remind its members that the VP was not the only Melanesian party seeking independence from France. Before the meeting, a petition signed by leaders of the UC, Palika, the PSC, the UPM and FULK had been sent to the member delegations in Honiara. It asked the Forum to petition the UN decolonisation committee[lxxxix] to list New Caledonia as a non-self-governing territory.[xc] Such a UN move would have been of considerable assistance to the FI. It would have given international recognition to the political agenda of the Front and would have placed pressure on France to respond to FI calls for self-determination. Like the FI, the FLNKS canvassed Forum members for support. After the foundation of the FLNKS in September 1984, Tjibaou made visits to Vanuatu, while Uregei, as his foreign minister, extensively toured the South Pacific soliciting support. Foreign recognition of the Kanak cause was considered by the FLNKS to be of great importance for the achievement of independence. In its founding charter it made "a call to our brother peoples in the Pacific [...] to bring support and aid to the struggle of the Kanak people."[xci] The Hienghène congress of the FLNKS in May 1985 reiterated the earlier demands of the FI that the South Pacific Forum take its case to the UN.[xcii]
The Forum resisted demands for this step until 1986, although it did directly lobby Paris over New Caledonia. On 13 March 1982 Mara led a delegation to Paris to press the issues of New Caledonian and French Polynesian self-determination. Mitterrand indicated that reforms were under way in response to Kanak demands. At the Rotorua meeting of the South Pacific Forum on 10 August 1982, Mara recommended that its members should constructively encourage steps toward decolonisation in New Caledonia by allowing the Socialist Government time to undertake the necessary reforms to this end.[xciii] The Forum outlined this position in its official communiqué, where it stated that it "urges the French Government to work closely with the Kanak people of New Caledonia in formulating a political programme for a peaceful transition to independence".[xciv] This 'wait and see' attitude persisted until the Forum's meeting in 1986. Forum communiqués in 1983, 1984 and 1985 backed Socialist reforms and the shortening of the self-determination timetable in the declared belief that independence was becoming a more likely prospect. While Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea were enthusiastic to offer more vigorous Forum support to the political agenda of their fellow Melanesians in New Caledonia through UN lobbying, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji were reluctant to lend their backing. Like Suva, Canberra and Wellington were confident that under Mitterrand a solution would be found to New Caledonian tensions without the need to resort to UN lobbying. Australia supported the New Caledonian reforms of Henri Emmanuelli,[xcv] Georges Lemoine[xcvi] and Edgard Pisani.[xcvii] So too did Fiji[xcviii] and New Zealand.[xcix] The position of these three countries was pivotal as they were the only Forum members with large enough diplomatic corps to effectively lobby UN members for a vote on the territory. The commitment of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji was also necessary for the maintenance of a platform of consensual agreement within the Forum.
Giraud, while in Australia in February 1988, accused the Labor Government of leading the South Pacific Forum's UN campaign over New Caledonia. He said the Chirac Government was "very much shocked that Australia was really leading an anti-French game in the UN corridors" and that its members could not understand "why Australia has been so active at the UN to bring on the international scene a delicate issue which we consider to be essentially internal".[c] Australia and New Zealand were not the originators of Forum support for New Caledonian decolonisation, although by 1986 they had inevitably become the ringleaders of this campaign. The Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu were the most vigorous supporters of Kanak nationalism at the Forum, but lacked the means to present New Caledonia's case effectively at the UN. The desire of Papua New Guinea to see the issue presented at the UN has already been noted, as has Vanuatu's close support for the positions of the FI and FLNKS. The Solomon Islands shared their positions on Kanak independence,[ci] which were substantially different from the moderate stance of Fiji. In 1985 Mara declared that the concept of Kanak independence in New Caledonia was contrary to the multiracial principles that Fiji had been founded on.[cii] After the Forum resolved in 1986 to take action at the UN, as founding members of the UN with extensive diplomatic networks, Australia and New Zealand conducted the bulk of Forum lobbying, along with Fiji, which happened to be on the UN decolonisation committee at the time. It was this predominant Australian and New Zealand role in lobbying which aroused the ire of the Chirac Government.
A lack of Australian, New Zealand and Fijian confidence in the Chirac Government enabled the Forum's change of heart about going to the UN. This shift in stance was adopted officially at the meeting of the South Pacific Forum held in Suva from 8 to 11 August 1986. There Australia, New Zealand and Fiji abandoned support for French Government reforms. The Hawke Government was troubled by the appointment of Chirac. In May and in August 1986 Hayden had declared the Australian rejection of Pons's reform plans for New Caledonia, stating that the centralisation they envisaged was a retrograde step that would be antagonistic to Kanaks.[ciii] In August, Hawke warned Chirac that he was embarking on a dangerous, divisive course.[civ] Lange shared Hawke's position,[cv] while since the advent of Chirac, Mara had changed his mind about non-interference in New Caledonian affairs.[cvi] By 11 August 1986 all of the Forum's members except the Cook Islands were in favour of taking the New Caledonian case to the UN. Davis, who had arrived at the meeting just after holding discussions with Chirac on French assistance to the Cook Islands, at first suggested that the new administration in Paris be given the chance to prove itself. Other Forum members were unconvinced.[cvii]
The Forum communiqué declared:
While the Forum acknowledged that there were some positive aspects to the approach of the new French Government they did not, in its view, adequately recognise the aspirations of the Kanak people. In particular it noted that whereas the previous Government had appeared committed to a form of independence for New Caledonia the new Government appeared committed to New Caledonia remaining a territory of France. [...] the change in French policy towards New Caledonia over the previous year was a significant backward step.[cviii]
Here the Forum simplified and possibly misread the positions of both the Fabius and the Chirac Governments. Under the self-determination conditions projected by the Fabius Government in 1985 it was by no means certain that New Caledonia would have attained independence in association with France. As the Chirac Government had not gone back on the previous administration's commitment to a self-determination vote, and as the conditions of that vote had at that stage not been finalised, it was perhaps premature to state that a significant backward step had taken place in the recognising the aspirations of the Kanak people.
It is significant that this Forum communiqué, unlike that of 1979, had an ethnic bias. "All Pacific Island peoples" had been succeeded by specific recognition of "the Kanak people", tacitly considered to be one and indivisible. In this regard, at the insistence of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and of Vanuatu, the South Pacific Forum had adopted the definition of the FLNKS. The past democratic concerns of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji were overridden. Although the Forum communiqué had earlier announced its concern for "the rights and interests of all inhabitants"[cix] in New Caledonia, the reference to "the Kanak people" in the resolution demonstrated bias toward the Kanak section of the population. The declaration of August 1986 went on to announce that the Forum had decided to request the reinscription of New Caledonia on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, to ensure that the UN would monitor the situation there.
On 2 October 1986, Fiji informed the UN decolonisation committee of the Forum decision to pursue New Caledonia's case.[cx] The status of New Caledonia was special, in that it had already been on the list of non-self-governing territories. Although it was one of 74 such territories on the UN's first decolonisation list in 1946, the Fourth Republic had signalled its refusal to transmit information about New Caledonia since 1947, thus resulting in a lapsed status. Governments of the Fifth Republic maintained their predecessors' position that New Caledonia, as a TOM, was an integral part of France with a large degree of self-administration which excluded it from qualifying for the UN list.[cxi]
On 2 December 1986, a motion was tabled at the UN General Assembly. It stated that New Caledonia qualified as a non-self-governing territory, that France was obliged to transmit information on New Caledonia to the UN and should cooperate with the UN decolonisation committee to this end, and announced the inalienable right of the New Caledonian people to independence. Here the UN resolution differed from the Forum communiqué of August 1986, which had accorded recognition to the rights of "the Kanak people". Kanak identity was thus subsumed by recognition of a larger group in the UN motion. The item, listed as General Assembly resolution 41/41A, was adopted with 89 votes for, 24 against and 34 abstentions.[cxii] Among those in favour were Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, the only Forum members with UN representation. France voted against, as did several of its former African colonies such as Chad, the Comoros, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal and Togo. It was asserted by Forum members at the UN that France had attempted to influence its former colonies on the vote. If this was the case it was not universally successful. Certain former French possessions voted for the motion notably Algeria, Kampuchea, Laos, Madagascar and Vietnam. Others abstained, such as the Central African Republic, and Mali. Britain and the United States likewise abstained. As both countries retained overseas possessions from their days of colonial expansion, they were not prepared to call into question French sovereignty. Neither did they oppose the right of New Caledonians to accede to independence.[cxiii]
The reaction of the Chirac Government, as outlined by the Quai d'Orsay on 3 December, was a total refusal to accept the recommendations of the resolution. The French rejection of "interference" was similar to that which it had already declared to South Pacific governments:
France will not respond favourably to demands for information regarding New Caledonia emanating from the Decolonisation Committee at the United Nations and will not follow them up [...]. Neither does France accept the presence of missions or observers in the territory, with the aim of monitoring the progress of the referendum set up [...]. We hold [...] that the United Nations General Assembly has no right to interfere in France's internal affairs for the reason [...] that it is up to the [New] Caledonian population to cast judgement on its own future by means of a referendum.[cxiv]
The UN vote had in no way sought to predetermine the choice of the New Caledonian electorate, even though those who tabled the motion were sympathetic to the FLNKS. The Quai d'Orsay's statement went on to downplay the importance of the UN vote, comparing it to a UN motion on the Falklands War, when against British claims 116 countries had backed Argentinian claims of sovereignty over those disputed islands.
Paris refused to be influenced by the UN any more than by the South Pacific Forum, resting on its argument of non-interference and on its commitment to self-determination. French representatives at the UN indicated that as a democratic self-determination vote in New Caledonia was already being organised, the interest of the UN was superfluous. The Forum campaign at the UN was the most concerted effort it had made on the issue of New Caledonia's future; ultimately it achieved little in the face of a French refusal to comply. As was the case with nuclear issues, the South Pacific Forum members did not have the power necessary to force French compliance. None of the countries in the UN which backed the Forum campaign were prepared to take any more than paper and media action over New Caledonia, and it is unlikely they would have gone any further. France, as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and as a G7 member, had too much influence in global affairs. The pro-independence lobbying of an electoral majority among the approximately 63,000 Melanesians inhabiting an obscure group of islands in the South-West Pacific was not sufficient cause to arouse international interest to that extent.
Nor was resolution 41/41A in itself an undertaking which furthered the cause of Kanak independence. The resolution placed New Caledonia within the context defined by chapter XI of the UN Charter, the declaration relative to non-self-governing territories. This chapter declares the obligation of powers administering such territories to work to improve their prosperity and to develop their capacity for self-administration while taking into account the political aspirations of their inhabitants.[cxv] This piece of text makes no reference to any obligation by the administering power to lead its non-self-governing territories to independence. France could claim to be in the process of fulfilling all of these stipulations quite adequately. Resolution 41/41A also made reference to UN General Assembly motion 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960. Resolution 1514 (XV) specified notably that all peoples have the right to self-determination.[cxvi] The question this item begs is whether the Kanaks of New Caledonia constituted a people and a people to the exclusion of other territorial groups. The Chirac Government maintained that they did not. Moreover, resolution 41/41A itself referred to "the people of New Caledonia" rather than specifically to Kanaks. The UN decolonisation committee had rejected the narrower emphasis of the South Pacific Forum on promoting the interests of the "Kanak people" as undemocratic and imprecise. Resolution 41/41A was of symbolic importance only, and did not constitute international diplomatic backing of FLNKS demands for Kanak independence.
Although the Forum declaration of August 1986 on New Caledonian self-determination had expressed support for the priority of "the aspirations of the Kanak people", it did not specifically voice backing for Kanak sovereignty in answer to FLNKS calls for recognition. To the disappointment of Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, other Forum members such as Australia, New Zealand and Fiji were reluctant to promote Kanak independence explicitly and exclusively. A compromise of sorts was reached to account for the presence of other ethnic groups in New Caledonia. In August 1986 the Forum referred to Kanaks and "other peoples":
It [the Forum] concluded that if the results of that plebiscite ruled out the prospect of independence, this was likely to exacerbate rather than resolve problems in the territory. It urged the French Government to give careful attention to the question of those eligible to vote, so that the result accurately reflected the aspirations of the Kanak and other peoples who had a long-term residence in and commitment to New Caledonia.[cxvii]
There was some slack logic involved in this proclamation. If the results of the self-determination referendum ruled out the prospect of independence, it was precisely because they demonstrated the lack of majority electoral backing in New Caledonia for Kanak positions, thus clearly reflecting the aspirations of the "other peoples" who were present.
The looseness of Forum thinking on the self-determination referendum was to become more apparent as time passed. The Forum meeting of 29 to 30 May 1987 in Apia reiterated the earlier position of the body on self-determination:
The Forum once again expressed its firm support for an early and peaceful transition to an independent New Caledonia in accordance with the innate and active rights of the indigenous people and in a manner which guaranteed the rights and interests of all inhabitants of this multi-racial society.[cxviii]
It was recommended that a self-determination vote should involve "Inclusion in the franchise of only those who can demonstrate long term residence in and commitment to New Caledonia. It should ensure that the rights and interests of all inhabitants are guaranteed, with special recognition of Kanak rights."[cxix] This final condition loosely suggested some sort of special voting rights for Kanaks. This point clashed with the earlier stipulation that the transition to independence would guarantee the rights of "all inhabitants", unless one adheres to the Orwellian maxim that some are more equal than others.
The Quai d'Orsay responded to the Forum position with reference to UN legislation. It indicated in October 1987 that a vote based on ethnic origin was incompatible with UN principles as well as with French constitutional practice, which demanded that such an exercise not be influenced by distinctions of race, belief or colour. It declared that the three-year residential qualification for local voter eligibility, introduced by Chirac in February 1987, satisfied considerations concerning long term residence. Normally under French law, only six months' residence was required for eligibility in an electoral consultation. The three year period was the same that had been used by France for the self-determination vote which led to the independence of Djibouti, an exercise which had been approved by the UN General Assembly.[cxx] To round off its tight argument, the Quai d'Orsay suggested that the self-determination referendum thus fulfilled UN conditions for a such a vote and was democratic.
As well as being vague and confused in its logic, the demand of the South Pacific Forum was fundamentally unachievable. The Forum lambasted the Chirac Government for setting up a vote that the FLNKS could not win, heedless of the fact that if the vote were weighted to the advantage of Kanaks, it would violate French law and UN principles, and would doubtless lead to a backlash from French loyalists. It was highly improbable that, under the conditions the Forum wished established, France could have managed a "peaceful transition to an independent New Caledonia in accordance with the innate, active rights and aspiration of the indigenous people and in a manner which guaranteed the rights and interest of all inhabitants of this multi-racial society." The Forum might as well have asked the Chirac Government to square a circle. The Quai d'Orsay indicated the difficulties and contradictions involved in following Forum demands:
The argument reserving the right to vote to a segment of the population, especially on ethnic grounds, is obviously unacceptable. In particular it would bring into question such fundamental principles as non-discrimination and "one person one vote". This latter principle was expressly affirmed by the General Assembly in the case of South Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe (Resolution 1747 (XVI), and Fiji (Resolutions 1951 (XVIII) and 2068 (XX)). Manifestly contrary to the principles of the United Nations, the idea according to which full political rights should be reserved only for a part of the [New] Caledonian population is moreover dangerous. It can only be a source of violence and instability, as certain recent developments which have occurred in the South Pacific region go to show.[cxxi]
For the French Government setting up a biased vote for Kanaks was unacceptable in that such an undertaking would have led to a constitutional crisis, and to civil disorder. The reference to recent developments in the South Pacific clearly alluded to events in Fiji, although specific mention was avoided to avoid antagonising Suva. In September 1987, Sitiveni Rabuka had established a Fijian Republic which enshrined the supremacy of the indigenous Fijian minority of the population. The Quai d'Orsay's resort to UN resolutions to back its case was somewhat hollow given its own rejection of that body's motion concerning New Caledonia, although the statement made a valid point in indicating the problems of a restricted vote excluding a large segment of New Caledonia's non-indigenous voters.
The Forum kept pushing its demands through the UN as well as through its own declarations. On 17 March 1987, the UN decolonisation committee urged the French Government to undertake a New Caledonian self-determination referendum in accordance with UN principles and in cooperation with the committee.[cxxii] France rejected this for the reasons already outlined. Such cooperation would have been superfluous, and the self-determination vote organised by the Chirac Government fulfilled UN conditions.
After the self-determination referendum of September 1987 reaffirmed the will of a majority of New Caledonian voters to stay with France, (Table 11) support for the Forum declined. On 28 October 1987, the UN General Assembly failed to approve a motion tabled by the decolonisation committee condemning the New Caledonian self-determination referendum. Of 158 countries, 43.67% backed the motion69 voted for, 27 against, 46 abstained and 15 failed to vote.[cxxiii] The support presented the previous December did not stretch to the extent of calling France to account over a democratic self-determination vote. The international community did not lend majority backing to the assertion made by the FLNKS that the vote was unjust. On 4 December 1987, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution reaffirming the right of the New Caledonian people to self-determination and independence. While this motion covered the same ground as resolution 41/41A a year before, this time support had fallen by 20 votes 69 countries were for the motion, 29 against and 47 abstained. The South Pacific Forum no longer enjoyed the support of an absolute majority of the Assembly for its motion of generalised support for New Caledonian self-determination in consultation with the UN.[cxxiv]
The Quai d'Orsay pointed out this decline in backing in a communiqué released that day. Noting that 90 countries had refused to support the decolonisation committee, this outcome was taken as a sign of confidence in the actions of the Chirac Government.[cxxv] This reading of the motive for the vote was open to question. The decline in international support for New Caledonian decolonisation could as plausibly be seen as a sign of lack of interest in an obscure and marginal matter in the wider scheme of global politics. The Forum had originally aroused support from various countries which assumed that New Caledonia was on the verge of independence. The self-determination vote proved otherwise. It is doubtful whether many of the countries which voted either for, against, or not at all, had any detailed conception of the political situation in the territory, still less of the import of the Regional Autonomy Statute being prepared by Pons.
By the end of 1987 the internationalisation of political debate over New Caledonia had turned out to be inconclusive and unsatisfying for the FLNKS, for the South Pacific Forum, and for France. FLNKS efforts to gain international support fell short of a vigorous, unqualified recognition of Kanak sovereignty which would have served its cause better than the motions of general support for the self-determination rights of the New Caledonian people expressed by the UN. The lobbying of the South Pacific Forum had not induced a change in the New Caledonian policy of the Chirac Government. And for all of French representatives' efforts to rebutt the lobbying of South Pacific nations, and to outargue their adversaries' loose logic, they had demonstrated themselves incapable of dissuading these critics. Neither the cutting of ministerial relations in the case of Australia, nor the logic of the French diplomatic corps, served to sway the regional conviction that New Caledonian independence would come and that regional states were justified in exercising their prerogatives on the matter. Whereas the position of the Chirac Government was that the self-determination vote had settled the question of independence, it did not satisfy the South Pacific Forum, which continued calling into 1988 for a 'genuine' act of self-determination. It had been asserted at the May 1987 meeting of the Forum that the non-participation of the FLNKS invalidated the referendum.[cxxvi] At the UN, Forum members continued opposing the result of the referendum on these grounds, stating that the vote had caused the situation in New Caledonia to deteriorate rather than improve. The worsening internal situation in the territory during the first months of 1988 was asserted by Forum members to represent vindication of regional claims.
Although its initiatives had failed to influence the New Caledonian policy of the Chirac Government, and had not advanced the cause of New Caledonian independence, the South Pacific Forum showed no sign of abating its criticisms of French policy. To the contrary, regional comments became more intense at the time of the FLNKS active boycott of April and May 1988. Forum members expressed the opinion that FLNKS activism was the direct consequence of an administration in Paris insensitive to Kanak political demands. It was a valid assessment to the extent that Pons showed little regard for the Front following the self-determination vote. But equally, the FLNKS had shown little regard for the self-determination vote. Even had Pons wanted to appear conciliatory to the FLNKS, this was politically difficult for him in the face of the refusal of the Front to participate in new territorial institutions.
Several members of the Forum issued individual statements objecting to Chirac's handling of the Ouvéa incident. Although members of the FLNKS had initiated violence on Ouvéa by killing four gendarmes at Fayaoué, France was portrayed as the aggressor by the PNG Government.[cxxvii] Mara talked dismissively of French "gunboat diplomacy".[cxxviii] Vanuatu concurred with these assessments and went a step further in organising a protest which disrupted the voting of French residents in the second round of the presidential elections on 8 May. Barak Sope, the Immigration and Tourism Minister, padlocked the gate of the French Embassy in Port Vila in a demonstration of support for the FLNKS boycott. While around 200 protesters tried to prevent French nationals from entering to vote, many voters sneaked in through a side entrance.[cxxix] From Wellington, Marshall made his aforementioned comparison to the Algerian War.[cxxx] Hawke was more measured in his assessment, hoping that the FLNKS would renounce violence and that the French Government could open dialogue.[cxxxi]
The Matignon Accords
By the time of the meeting of the South Pacific Forum in Tonga in September 1988, New Caledonian self-determination was not a major issue of debate. Criticism of French treatment of the New Caledonian portfolio had been replaced by praise for the new atmosphere of reconciliation installed by the Matignon Accords.[cxxxii] The reintroduction of self-determination by the Accords, scheduled this time for 1998, had served to satisfy Forum demands regardless of the fact that the conditions involved were as unlikely to guarantee Kanak independence as the conditions of the 1987 vote. In the place of ill-reasoned opposition to French policy on New Caledonian self-determination, the Forum had substituted equally ill-reasoned support. The consequence was that from 1988 New Caledonian policy became less of an obstacle to French regional diplomacy than it had been, although as the Forum has analysed the Accords more it has become more critical.
The departure of the Chirac Government in May 1988, the re-election of Mitterrand, and the negotiations which led to the signature of the Matignon Accords, allowed a calming of regional tempers over New Caledonia, and enabled the beginning of a period of more relaxed dialogue between France and the Forum over the territory.
Nevertheless the willingness of the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu to back Kanak self-determination above the interests of non-Kanaks did not diminish in the months following the signature of the Accords. Although he had sent letters to Rocard and Mitterrand congratulating them on their role in setting up the new territorial framework,[cxxxiii] Lini called in November 1988 for the immediate decolonisation of New Caledonia, and his VP Government maintained its backing of FLNKS primacy.[cxxxiv] This position was at odds with the policy of the FLNKS at the time. By signing the Matignon Accords, the FLNKS had recognised French loyalists as partners in territorial development, and had deferred the issue of independence at least ten years. Since 1988 Vanuatu has been less vocal in its position over New Caledonia. This change has come partly out of concern to restore aid links with France, and partly because for Port Vila, as with the rest of the South Pacific Forum members, it was politically untenable to make vehement statements about the malevolent influence of French colonialism in New Caledonia when the FLNKS was working in cooperation with French institutions there. As is shown in the next chapter, the period of the Matignon Accords, along with the arrival of a new Vanuatu Government in December 1991, coincided with the improvement of aid relations between Paris and Port Vila.
The Hawke Government declared its relief that Mitterrand had been re-elected, so that the Socialists could sort out New Caledonia, and was united with the Lange Government in approving the signature of the Matignon Accords.[cxxxv] The time of marked temperamental differences based on party political divergences between Paris, and Canberra and Wellington came to an end. The end of civil disorder in New Caledonia for the time being removed Australasian worries about the decline of regional security.
Changed Franco-Australian attitudes were perceptible during the visit to New Caledonia from 14 to 15 September 1988 by Gareth Evans, the Australian Foreign Minister. Among his entourage was Dauth, serving as a ministerial adviser, whose presence aroused no official protests in spite of his controversial departure from Nouméa the year before.[cxxxvi] The visit was hailed by Bernard Grasset, the local High Commissioner, as a sign of Franco-Australian reconciliation over New Caledonia. Ukeiwé expressed on the RPCR's behalf the hope that past differences would not be renewed. Both declared their preparedness to work with Australia to improve trade and cooperation links with New Caledonia.[cxxxvii] By February 1992, Evans had visited the territory four times in an effort to diversify Franco-Australian cooperation,[cxxxviii] showing greater interest in the territory than his predecessors. The removal in February 1992 of trade barriers affecting Australian exports to New Caledonia marked just one of the signs of improved relations between Nouméa and Canberra.[cxxxix] Hawke made an effort to improve relations with New Caledonia too. Breaking a remarkable symbol of Australian indifference towards New Caledonia, from 27 to 28 July 1989 he paid the first visit to the territory by an Australian Prime Minister since 1941. Hawke congratulated France's progress in New Caledonia with the Matignon Accords, and stated his support for greater bilateral trade and cooperation.[cxl]
Following the signature of the Accords, Franco-New Zealand relations similarly improved. On 30 April 1989, Marshall arrived in Nouméa and praised the Accords.[cxli] Grasset and Marshall resolved to organise student exchanges between New Caledonia and New Zealand. The installation of a National Government in Wellington from November 1990 calmed the situation further. Bolger had disagreed with commentaries made on New Caledonia by Labour Governments, concurring with the French position that the situation in the territory was an internal matter. He had responded negatively to comments made by Lange during the Ouvéa incident.[cxlii] Bolger's Foreign Minister, Don McKinnon, arrived in New Caledonia for a tour from 21 to 24 November 1991. McKinnon announced a different New Zealand response to territorial politics "Contrary to the preceding Government [the Labour Government], we are not going to tell you what to do". McKinnon said he would not make pronouncements on the question of independence, and that the Bolger Government would not push the issue at the South Pacific Forum.[cxliii] This stance was a major change from the days of the Lange Government, when New Zealand had ventured to ask France to annul the self-determination referendum of 1987.[cxliv] McKinnon was enthusiastic about the improvement of New Zealand contacts with New Caledonia, placing emphasis on the liberalisation and expansion of bilateral trade.[cxlv] The days when Wellington, along with Canberra, had been considered the ringleaders of a campaign to push France out of the South Pacific, were now clearly over. The two most developed nations of the region were prepared to respond to French efforts at regional integration under the Accords, a trend which was applicable to New Caledonia's nascent relations with the island states. As is discussed in chapter 8, the Matignon Accords spurred French regional cooperation.
Since 1988, with some reservations from Melanesian member countries, the South Pacific Forum has expressed encouragement of the Matignon Accords, and has declared its support for development work taking place under them.[cxlvi] The Forum responded positively to the Rocard Government's aim to encourage territorial trade and development cooperation with the nations of the South Pacific. In other respects, however, differences which separated France from the Forum over New Caledonia have not been eliminated by the Matignon Accords.
The Forum has continued issuing advice to France on how it should conduct itself. The 1991 and 1992 Forum communiqués, for example, urged Paris to expand its education and training assistance to Kanaks, and advised it on how the 1998 self-determination referendum should be run.[cxlvii] The Forum has maintained its call on France to permit visits by UN missions to New Caledonia, in line with UN resolution 41/41A. Whatever doubts might have subsisted about the Forum's claim that the transition to independence should take into account the interests of all the communities in New Caledonia were dispelled by its statement of July 1991. This declaration mentioned that the Forum "offered to assist the FLNKS in developing a programme of action for ensuring that their [sic] objectives were met through the Matignon Accords. It further agreed to the establishment of a fund to assist with the training of Kanaks within and outside the region to be administered by the [Forum] Secretariat".[cxlviii] Since 1988, the FLNKS has not publicly disavowed its advocacy of Kanak sovereignty, meaning that the above statement offers direct Forum support for Kanak-led independence. Interestingly, as a Forum member New Zealand supported this statement, which appeared to contradict the claim made by McKinnon in Nouméa in November 1991. In 1991 the Bolger Government was simultaneously trying to be conciliatory to France and to Melanesian nations in the Forum.
Under the Fabius or Chirac Governments, such a Forum declaration would have received an outraged response from the Quai d'Orsay about intolerable interference in French internal politics. Such sentiment still exists in Paris, although objections to Forum commentary on, and involvement in, New Caledonian affairs have not been as strenuous. As might be expected, French Governments since 1988 have been happy to see regional governments make positive comments about New Caledonian policy, even though such comments too could strictly be seen as an aspect of foreign meddling in domestic affairs. There was a time when the Forum's Kanak training fund might have been perceived, in the same way as Australian aid administered by Dauth, as interference in domestic affairs. This attitude had been discarded. No complaints were made about the training fund, which was in operation by 1992,[cxlix] as it was seen by Paris to be in harmony with the spirit of Kanak integration promoted by the Accords.
Certain limits remain. Under the Matignon Accords, France has maintained its refusal of any UN involvement. Forum calls to permit UN monitoring teams to visit New Caledonia during the lead up to the self-determination referendum of 1998 have been rejected. The stance of Paris over this matter has been in line with arguments previously put forth about the superfluousness of such assistance. After the Forum reiterated this call at its meeting on Nauru on 11 August 1993 Jacques Le Blanc, the Permanent Secretary to the South Pacific, rejected the demand "we [France] don't accept any foreign intervention, especially from the United Nations, since self-determination is exactly what the UN is looking for".[cl]
With regard to visits to New Caledonia by Forum delegations, French authorities have been more flexible than might be presumed from Le Blanc's comment. Rocard rejected a Forum application in 1990 to allow members of its Ministerial Committee on New Caledonia to visit the territory to monitor the Accords, on the grounds that this constituted interference in internal affairs.[cli] However, after FLNKS prompting, two members of the Ministerial Committee, the Fijian Trade Minister Berenado Vunibobo and the Solomons Foreign Minister, Sir Peter Kenilorea, were eventually allowed to tour New Caledonia from 13 to 22 July 1991 on the understanding that they did not refer to themselves as a monitoring team. This subterfuge could not conceal the fact that the pair did in fact constitute a monitoring team, which travelled around the provinces reviewing developments under the Accords, and later submitted a report of its findings to the Forum meeting at Pohnpei.[clii] Paris in addition permitted Ieremia Tabai, the Secretary-General of the South Pacific Forum, to visit New Caledonia in August 1992 to hold discussions with the partners in the Matignon Accords and to view their progress. The visit was hailed by RPCR leaders, and by officials from the High Commission, as an indication of the degree to which a rapprochement had taken place between France and the Forum over New Caledonia.[cliii]
The Balladur Government and the commencement of a second period of cohabitation did not cause a souring of relations between Paris and the Forum. During a stop in Suva on 18 June 1993, on his first tour of the Pacific TOM as Minister to the DOM-TOM, Dominique Perben stated French willingness to maintain contacts and cooperation established between New Caledonia and the Forum. After a meeting with Perben at the offices of the Forum Secretariat in Suva, Tabai was globally positive about Franco-Forum entente over New Caledonia "I reiterated to the Minister the Forum's support for the Matignon Accords and its gratification that all parties are committed to accelerating economic and social progress under the accords. The Minister assured me of the French Government's continuing commitment to the process."[cliv]
That the relaxing French attitude to the South Pacific Forum had not been reversed by the installation of the Balladur Government was further demonstrated in July 1993. Just before the South Pacific Forum meeting held on Nauru in August, a full Forum delegation was permitted to travel around New Caledonia to gather material for its annual report. The Ministerial Delegation on New Caledonia was led by Francis Saemala, the Solomon Islands Foreign Minister. He was accompanied by Ratu Jo Nacola, the Fijian Minister for Women, Culture, Social Welfare and Multiethnic Affairs, Vinsen Detanamo, the Nauruan Minister of Public Works, and Willie Star, a Nauruan parliamentarian.[clv] This time there was no pretence that the party was not an official delegation.
By the mid-1990s the question of decolonisation no longer represented the hindrance to French relations with the states of the South Pacific that it had in the 1980s. In the absence of further troubles in New Caledonia, these cordial foreign relations should remain intact. While the South Pacific Forum has expressed certain misgivings about French unwillingness to cooperate with the UN in the self-determination vote scheduled for 1998, and has urged that greater efforts be made to improve the lot of Kanaks, it has nevertheless welcomed the Matignon Accords as a positive, peaceful response to the future of New Caledonia.
Notes
[i] In order to protect against unscrupulous operators, no notes, bibliography or other references are provided in this Web publication. Readers wanting a specific reference may contact me at wsmccall@maxnet.co.nz.
© Wayne Stuart McCallum 1996.
Contents Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Web site © Wayne Stuart McCallum 2003-2017