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The Tunisian national movement took its principles from the reforming action of the second half of the 19th century, illustrated particularly by the bold initiatives of Khereddine Ettounsi (better known as Khereddine Pacha). This modernizing, reforming spirit has inspired other national figures right up to the present time. It has no equal in other parts of the Arab or Africa.
The Young Tunisians movement The timid protestations of Tunisians, continued. From 1881 to the First World War, it took various shapes such as the demands for Tunisian education presented by the Young Tunisians movement from 1906-11 under the leadership of Béchir Sfar and Ali Bach Hamba, or the opposition to the transfer of the Jellaz Muslim cemetery, in 1911, and the bloody events that followed (better known as the Tramway riots). {mospagebreak} The Tunisian Constitutional Liberal Party
After the First World War, the 14 Points of the American President Woodrow Wilson that advocated peoples’ self-determination, the strengthening of the powers of the direct administration of the Protectorate, the marginalizing of Tunisians of every social class, the confiscation of the best agricultural land, and the unbridled pillage of the country’s resources supplied arguments to the Tunisian nationalists and the leaders of the Tunisian Constitutional Liberal Party, set up in spring 1920 by Cheikh Abdelaziz Thaâlbi and Mohieddine Klibi. This also attracted young Tunisians who have studied in France (like Habib Bourguiba, Mahmoud Matri and others). This party, soon called the “Old Destour”, set itself the aim of gaining Tunisian independence. But its means of action were very far from attaining this objective. For Tunisians, independence remained a distant dream. The Old Destour did not make a direct appeal to the masses (often misperceived by leaders of that party as ignorant and unable to know their interests) The only people who counted for them were lounge intellectuals and notables. Thus the party’s action went no further than a few formal protestations. But the 1920s witnessed other significant events that should not be passed over in silence, particularly the setting up by Mohamed Ali El Hammi of the first Tunisian trade union movement. His activities irritated the Protectorate authorities, and he was exiled to Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a driver until his death in a traffic accident. Also in the social field, a precursor of women’s emancipation, Tahar Haddad, surprised everybody with his avant-garde ideas on the need for Tunisian women to have access to education and modernity. His ideas were fiercely assailed by the conservative Ulemas, and there was a rush of pamphlets against his work Our Women in Chariaâ and Society.
Politically, Bourguiba and his young companions felt uneasy in the Old Destour and disliked its approach to mobilizing the masses and awakening national feeling. A golden opportunity for leaving the Old Destour presented itself to the young lawyer. In 1933, at what came to be called the ‘naturalization crisis’, a young man from Monastir, Chaâbane Bhouri, was shot dead by French policemen outside the Monastir Muslim cemetery while attempting to physically prevent a naturalized Tunisian being buried there.  The town notables entrusted Bourguiba, as a lawyer and a local figure, with the task of bearing a letter of protest to the Bey containing a complaint against the Caïd (ministerial representative) of Monastir. He did this, but the party’s Executive Committee gave him an official warning for not having informed them beforehand. Bourguiba’s pride could not accept this humiliation; he unleashed a formal country-wide offensive against the leaders’ opposition to change and denounced their sterile methods of action. The Neo-Destour On 2 March 1934, in Ksar Helal, Habib Bourguiba, working with some of his companions, convened an Extraordinary Congress of the Party. It disowned the members of the Executive Committee and gave birth to a new party – the Neo-Destour. It very quickly got down to work. Cells were created everywhere, especially in the Sahel.
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Direct contact: the Party’s motto
From then on, direct contact with the people became the guiding principle of the new political leaders. The Protectorate authorities allowed them free rein at first, hoping to exploit the division between the Old and the Neo-Destour. But when bloody rioting broke out, particularly in the villages of the Sahel, they quickly exiled the Neo-Destour leaders to Borj le Bœuf (now Borj Bourguiba) in the middle of the desert. They, however, turned deaf ears to the discreet appeals of the Resident Peyrouton promising them freedom if they irrevocably renounced all political activity. When the Popular Front came to power in France (1935-7), it was determined to start talking to the nationalist leaders, and the exiles were allowed back.
A gleam of hope Hope sprang up in Tunisia. Pierre Viennot, the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, came to Tunisia on 1 March and raised the possibility of granting Tunisians a certain form of internal autonomy.
The “Neo-Destour” looked favorably on the new Metropolitan Government. Meanwhile, Cheikh Abdelaziz Thaâlbi, the founder of the Old Destour, came home after a voluntary spell in exile. The Neo-Destour gave him a hero’s welcome to mark the sacred union on the national cause. As soon as Pierre Viennot was back in France, the "Résidence Générale" stepped up its policy of repression. This fell particularly harshly on the mining areas, in Métlaoui, Gafsa and Jerissa, where many Tunisian workers fell martyrs to the struggle.
The fall of the Popular Front in France and the increasing severity of the Résidence Générale’s policy in Tunisia forced the Neo-Destour to withdraw its trust from the French Government. The Party’s policy-making committee called for a general strike for 20 November 1937. This hardening of the Neo-Destour line meant that Dr. Mohamed Materi, who did not share its views, resigned on 13 January 1938. Popular demonstrations broke out almost everywhere in the country, particularly in Bizerta, after the activist Hassan Nouri had been removed. Several of the demonstrators were killed or wounded. Arrests were made, among them that of Habib Bougatfa, the President of the Bizerta Neo-Destour Federation.
Dr. Materi’s resignation in no way hampered the determination of the Neo-Destour’s Policy-making Committee to mobilize the popular masses against the escalating repression of the Protectorate. Students of the Zitouna Grand Mosque went on strike; 108 were dismissed (88 Tunisians and 20 Algerians) in 1936-7 for Party activities, setting up student groups linked to the Neo-Destour, and unlawful association. And thus Tunisia’s young people became the spearhead of the national movement. On 10 March 1938, Ali Belhaouane (nicknamed the ‘youngsters’ leader’) read a brilliant paper on the ‘role of young people in the fight for national liberation’. 700 pupils from different educational institutions were present. The Neo-Destour’s National Council, meeting on 13 and 14 March 1938, adopted a motion calling for demonstrations in every part of the country, the non-payment of taxes and a boycott of military service. Ali Belhaouane was sacked from the Sadiki Secondary school where he taught. {mospagebreak} The bloody events of April 1938 
The Neo-Destour drew up a schedule of political meetings to be chaired by executive committee members. But the authorities got wind of this and preempted the meetings by arresting Youssef Rouissi, Hédi Nouira, Salah Ben Youssef and Slimane Ben Slimane, all of whom were charged with incitement to racial hatred and harming the interests of France in Tunisia. On 7 April 1938, the Neo-Destour held a protest meeting of 2,500 people in front of the beylical palace in Hammam-Lif. Mongi Slim, a member of the Party’s National Council, met the Bey and urged him to intervene to obtain the freedom of the Party leaders who were in prison. When nothing happened, the Neo-Destour called a general strike on 8 April, and on the same day a big demonstration, led by Mongi Slim and Ali Belhaouane, started off from Halfaouine, in the centre of the medina, and took to the main avenues of the capital to march to the French Résidence Générale. For a Tunisian Parliament Party leaders, activists, the Tunisian scout movement, and youth organizations joined the demonstration. Everywhere banners calling for the creation of a Tunisian Parliament were brandished.
In front of the Résidence Générale, where a crowd of 10,000 people were massed, Ali Belhaouane harangued the demonstrators: ‘We are here today to show our strength…that of the young people who will shake off the shackles of colonialism…The Tunisian Parliament can only be created by the martyrdom of the activists and the sacrifices of our young people.’ For the first time, Tunisian women took part in this – impressive – demonstration.
Before the demonstrators left, Mongi Slim in a speech went through the Party’s claims and announced that there would be another demonstration on 10 April. Before this could happen, on 9 April, Ali Belhaouane was summoned by the examining magistrate. A vast crowd turned out in front of the law courts. But the French forces appeared and without warning started shooting in the air to terrify the demonstrators. In the bloody clashes that followed, 22 people died and almost 150 were wounded.
The Résident Général went to the Bey and promulgated a law instituting a state of siege in Tunis, Sousse and the Cap Bon. On the next day, Habib Bourguiba and Mongi Slim were arrested and appeared with the rest of the Neo-Destour leaders before the military tribunal, charged with plotting against national security. The Neo-Destour itself was dissolved on 12 April 1938, its premises closed and its documents confiscated. All the national papers were suspended. The Neo-Destour activists went underground. {mospagebreak} The underground national resistance (1938-1941)
The Second World War offered a favourable climate for the national struggle. The foreign radio stations (both Allied and Axis) put out propaganda that played a major part in making the masses support the idea of independence. The arrest of the leaders opened up the path to underground activity, and a new Policy-making Committee (the Fifth) was created under the leadership of Bahi Ladgham; among its members were Hédi Khefacha and Hédi Saïdi.
Tracts were distributed illicitly and led to acts of sabotage. A resistance commission was set up. Radio Berlin acted as a megaphone for this activity, to break the isolation imposed by the Protectorate on the Neo-Destour and its imprisoned leaders. But once again, repression beat down on the Party’s underground leaders (July 1940). In Ksar Helal and Le Kef, demonstrations broke out in protest. Dr. Habib Thameur, home from France after completing his higher education, took over, heading the Sixth Policy-making Committee that was made up of figures like Taïeb Selim, Rachid Driss, Ferjani Belhaj Ammar, Jallouli Farès, Slaheddine Bouchoucha and Ammar Dakhlaoui.
But Dr. Habib Thameur and Taïeb Slim were quickly arrested in their turn (21 January 1941). Rachid Driss took over as head of the Neo-Destour and formed the Seventh Policy-making Committee, among whose members were Youssef Ben Achour and Slaheddine Bouchoucha. An undergound group, the ‘Black Hand’, was set up.
High point of the national movement (1942-1943)
When Moncef Bey came to the throne on 19 June 1942, this was very good news for the national movement, for the new King had from his youth been sympathetic to the Neo-Destour. Right from the start he showed a spirit of reform, and presented a 16-point memorandum demanding, among other things, that a Tunisian Advisory Council be created, the political prisoners freed, and the Decree of 1898 that allowed the colons to take possession of habou land repealed.
Despite Italo-German propaganda, Moncef Bey remained neutral, rejecting the orders from the Vichy Government to oppose the Allies, and informing US President Roosevelt and Hitler’s Adviser of his decision on 12 November 1942. From his prison in Fort Saint Nicolas, Marseilles, in a letter to Habib Thameur, written on 8 August 1942, Habib Bourguiba warned Neo-Destour activists against Nazi propaganda and urged them to make speedy contact with the Free French of General de Gaulle. {mospagebreak} When the Party leaders were released from military prison in December 1942, Moncef Bey treated the prerogatives of the Protectorate authorities with disdain and announced that a national government was being formed on 1 January 1943, including such major figures as M’Hamed Chenick, Mahmoud Materi, Salah Ferhat and Mohamed Aziz Jellouli. The newspaper Ifriqya El-Fatat, which had just started to appear, published on the front page of its first January 1943 issue pictures of Moncef Bey and Habib Bourguiba. With the exception of Habib Bourguiba, the Neo-Destour leaders were released from their French prisons and returned to their native soil on 25 February 1943.
They injected order into the Party structures and made contact with activists all over the country. On 8 April 1943, Bourguiba came home, after a brief stay in Italy, where he had used Bari Radio in Rome to send a message to the Tunisian people, highlighting the role of young people in the fight for freedom. This enhanced the Party’s activites. 
But once they had the situation in hand, the Protectorate authorities tried to get rid of the nationalists. A wave of arrests and repression took place. The nationalists were accused of collaborating with the Nazis. A lively reaction by the activists followed the arrests (the Mrazig revolt in 1943, and civil disobedience at Zarmeddine).
To continue their propaganda abroad, a group of leaders left Tunisia on 3 May 1943. Among them were Rachid Driss, Sadok Besbès, Hassine Triki and Taïeb Slim. On 21 July they formed the Arab Maghreb Committee in Berlin. Habib Thameur, Hédi Slim and Youssef Rouissi joined them. In September, Rachid Driss went to Paris. Meanwhile, General Juin, the Commander of the French Army in North Africa, ordered Moncef Bey to resign. He refused. He was deposed and sent to Laghouat, in the Algerian Sahara. On 6 July 1943 he had to sign an abdication. From Laghouat, he was moved to Tinès in Algeria, and then Pau in France (on 7 October 1945).
When Moncef Bey was deposed there was an outcry. The Zitouna Grand Mosque was the centre of protests. Forming a National Front and demanding independence Although a lot of Tunisians were being put in prison for “connivance with the Axis forces”, and many others were being exiled, this did not stop the resistance. The Party’s Destourian cells were reactivated, tracts were printed and circulated, and underground newspapers were passed around by the activists. At the same time, attempts were made to dialogue with the Protectorate, particularly after the Brazzaville Conference of January 1944, which recognised the popular right to self-determination, within the context of the French Union.
On 8 March 1944, the Tunisian nationalists sent a note to the French Government rejecting the ‘French Union’ project. After fierce repression of the nationalists, these made contact with the British and American consuls in Tunis. The two diplomats showed a certain understanding regarding the Tunisian claims and promised to submit them to the French authorities. On 30 October 1944, a 60-member National Front was set up – the ‘Committee of the 60’. Both the Old and the Neo-Destour were present, plus the Moncef Bey movement, teachers from the Zitouna Grand Mosque and representatives of the Jewish community. It met on 13 November and drafted a report claiming internal autonomy and a constitutional monarchy. Only the Communists failed to join this Committee, which seriously harmed their success. The Allied victory on 8 May 1945 encouraged the Party leaders to step up their activity: publishing manifestos, going on demonstrations. Students in the Zitouna Grand Mosque were arrested. Faced with the intensification of the Neo-Destour action, the Protectorate made a few vague attempts at reform – creating a Tunisian Minister for Social Affairs, establishing parity between Tunisian and French members of the Grand Council. But leaders of the national movement could not accept such lukewarm reform, and decided to internationalise the national cause. The creation of a League of Arab States on 22 March 1945 was an encouragement; Habib Bourguiba was sent off to Cairo on 26 March to publicise the Tunisian issue.
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The Neo-Destour strategy (1946) After the end of World War Two, the Neo-Destour adopted a pragmatic policy based
on incremental action. After Bourguiba left for Cairo in March, the Policy-making Committee, led by its General Secretary, Salah Ben Youssef, encouraged the constituting of professional and youth organisations. Thus the General Tunisian Labour Union (UGTT) was set up in January 1946 by Farhat Hached.
The leader of the Party, Mongi Slim, urged the Destourian workers to leave the Communist-inspired CGT (General Labour Confederation). Joint meetings between Farhat Hached and Mongi Slim took place regularly to strengthen the ranks and action of the UGTT. In 1946 the UGTT enrolled over 12,000 members. On 9 June of that year, Rachid Driss and his companions, exiled in Spain, joined up with Bourguiba in Cairo, where they set up the Neo-Destour Bureau. The idea of a decisive battle started to take shape. On 23 August 1946 the ‘Night of Destiny’ Congress brought together all the various elements of the national movement. A claim for total independence was made for the first time. The Protectorate authorities arrested 46 delegates from the 300 at the Congress. Salah Ben Youssef, Mongi Slim, Salah Farhat, and Cheikh Fadhel Ben Achour were at the head of the list of those imprisoned.
The reaction of the national organisations was almost immediate. On 30 August they went on strike, demanding that the prisoners be freed. But General Mast’s announcement of his reform programme brought the Neo-Destour back to limited demands merely asking for internal economy, (note to the French Government dated 24 November 1946). Although the Arab League put the Tunisian issue on its agenda, the colonial authorities stubbornly tried to integrate the countries of the Arab Maghreb within the French Union. Bourguiba then worked to strengthen the Neo-Destour’s relations with the Anglo-Saxon countries, and went to the US in November 1946. Farhat Hached did much to enhance the national resistance. He went to France on 20 December and at the head office of the Association of Muslim Students of North Africa highlighted the UGTT’s role in the national struggle. {mospagebreak} Claiming independence (1947-1949) When Jean Mons was appointed Résident Général in Tunisia (1947-9), the atmosphere in the country lightened. 
Freed in April 1947 from censorship, the nationalist press revived; new papers appeared. In January 1947, in Paris, the activist Jallouli Farès brought out with some of his companions a periodical, La Tunisie vous parle (Tunisia is talking to you), intended for the French political parties. The Résidence Générale made some reforms; it set up a Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Industry and Trade, and extended the prerogatives of the Prime Minister. But such reforms did not gain the support of the nationalists, and the appointment of Mustapha Kaâk as Prime Minister only added fuel to the fire.
On 5 August 1947, the UGTT started a strike in Sfax which led to terrible clashes where 29 of the strikers died and 150 were wounded. In Cairo, the League of Arab States helped strengthen inter-Maghrebi relations. An Arab Maghreb Conference was held from 15 to 22 February 1947 under the chairmanship of the League’s Secretary General, and adopted several motions, most of which stressed the claim for independence and for the evacuation of the foreign troops. {mospagebreak} The Neo-Destour takes things in hand (1948-1949) The Neo-Destour recovered its influence and central place in the national movement. Two weeklies were organs for its message – El Hourria in Arabic, the first issue of which appeared on 28 February 1948, and Mission in French, published on 25 April 1948 under Hédi Nouira.
The war in Palestine also touched the activists; they formed a Commission to Defend Arab Palestine in late 1947.
Volunteers joined the front line in March, April and May 1948, travelling via Egypt. 2,230 volunteers were registered. In Cairo, a Commission to Liberate the Arab Maghreb was set up in January 1948, bringing together all the Maghreb political parties. In Paris, Jallouli Farès made a number of contacts with political parties, particularly those that were represented in the French Parliament, as well as human rights groups.
An Oppressed Peoples’ Congress was set up that year in Paris. In the French capital, Farhat Hached took part in a meeting organised by the International Congress of Colonised Peoples.
On 28 August 1948, Jallouli Farès and Salah Ben Youssef left Paris for Cairo to keep the Leader, Bourguiba, informed about their contacts with the French authorities. The death of Moncef Bey on 13 September 1948, and the return of his mortal remains to his native land on the 16 of that month, immensely saddened both the people, the Party leaders and the grass-roots activists. The UGTT, represented by Farhat Hached himself, and the Neo-Destour’s Policy-making Committee, jointly organised a memorable funeral.
On 17 October, the Neo-Destour held its periodic Congress in Dar Slim. Salah Ben Youssef was officially elected Secretary General, and Habib Bourguiba was made Party Chairman. Habib Thameur and Mongi Slim were respectively appointed Vice-president and Director of the Neo-Destour. On 8 September 1949 Bourguiba set foot once more on his native soil and immediately started to perfect a new strategy. Internally, preparations were made for a decisive battle, and abroad, the Party enhanced its presence in Cairo and Baghdad (Ali Belhaouane), Damascus (Youssef Rouissi), Turkey (Sadok Joumni), Washington (Abed Bouhafa and Bahi Ladgham), London (Dr. Tahar Khémiri), Rome (Hédi Majdoub), and New Delhi and Karachi (Rachid Driss and Taïeb Slim).
From when in December 1949 the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (CISL) was set up, the UGTT, under Farhat Hached’s urging, withdrew from the Communist-inspired World Trade Union Federation (FSM) and joined the free world’s CISL. The Neo-Destour strengthened its support for the nation’s workers and for national organisations like the Tunisian Union of Trade and Industry (April 1949), and the Tunisian General Agricultural Union (May 1949). {mospagebreak} The Chenik Government: preparing for the final battle From September 1949 to late May 1950, Bourguiba made numerous contacts with the basic Neo-Destour structures and called on all political groups and tendencies to come together and agree on a realistic programme. He pointed out with great frequency that if the Protectorate authorities did not commit themselves to making real reforms likely to lead to internal autonomy, there would be no alternative to the national liberation struggle (as was happening in Indo-China).
On 12 April 1950, he went to France to gain sympathizers for the national cause, especially among the French left. He showed his various hearers, and the press, a 7-point draft reform statement that would bring Tunisia to internal autonomy: • Creating a Tunisian executive that would guarantee Tunisian sovereignty
• Forming a strictly Tunisian government that would be responsible for general security, headed by the Prime Minister, and authorized to effectively chair a Ministerial Council
• Abrogating the office of Secretary General of the Government
• Abrogating the office of civil inspector
• Abolishing the French police force
• Creating elected town councils to represent French interests where French minorities existed
• Creating a National Council elected by universal suffrage whose first task would be to draft a democratic Constitution that would define the relations between Tunisia and France on the basis of respect for Tunisian sovereignty and legitimate French interests.
These claims met with a favorable response form the French Socialist Party and the MPR (Popular Republican Movement) as well as people that were opposed to colonialism, such as the historian Charles André Julien and the independent journalist Jean Rous.
The Parisian press hailed Bourguiba as someone that the Government could deal with, expressing their admiration for the head of the Neo-Destour. Echoing his initiative, on 9 June 1950 in Thonville the French Foreign Affairs Minister, Robert Shumann, marked the appointment of Louis Perillier Résident Général in Tunisia, stating that Perillier’s assignment would be to ‘lead Tunisia to independence’. However, shortly afterwards he retracted his words and made it clear that by independence he meant internal autonomy. On 17 August, a negotiating government was set up under M’Hamed Chenik. The Neo-Destour’s National Council met three days earlier and decided to take part in this government, appointing Salah Ben Youssef as Minister of Justice.
Although the Old Destour, the Tunisian Communist Party and independents were against the forming of such a government, the Neo-Destour continued to make contacts with the UGTT, the General Agricultural Union and the Union of Trade and Industry. On 12 May 1951, a Working Committee for Constitutional Guarantees and Popular Representation was set up. The Résident Général’s policy of dialogue did not stop the resistance or the strikes to put pressure on the Protectorate. And in Enfidha, on 20 November 1950, bloody clashes left 5 dead and 30 wounded. Seeing that the negotiations would probably come to nothing, the Neo-Destour’s Policy-making Committee started forming armed underground groups that would be ready to act when the final battle was declared.
The limited reforms of 8 February 1951, and the blocking of the negotiations under the pressure of those playing a predominant part, sparked off the next events. Bourguiba went abroad, to Cairo in February, to India, Pakistan and Indonesia in March, and to Saudi Arabia, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden and the US between March and September. This resolute action made France change its tune. On 15 December, the French Foreign Affairs Minister sent a note to the Tunisian Prime Minister expressing the French option of joint sovereignty. This note fell like a cold shower on the activists, the Neo-Destour leaders and the population generally. A general strike lasting three days broke out on 21 December 1951.
On 13 January 1952, in Bizerta, the Leader Habib Bourguiba, addressing a popular meeting, announced that the time had now come to make sacrifices for the country.
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