France (AIL): The Age of Colonies Is Over! The Antiimperialist League Holds Major Conference in Paris

The Age of Colonies Is Over! The Anti-Imperialist League Holds Major Conference in Paris

Around fifty people gathered on Sunday, June 21, at the CICP, following a call by the Antiimperialist League (AIL) and Ka Ubuntu, as part of the campaign against the French colonies. For several days, graffiti has been appearing on walls across France proclaiming, “Down with French imperialism!” and “The land can neither be seized nor sold,” heralding the emergence of an antiimperialist unity organizing the fightback against French imperialism.

The Antiimperialist League opened the conference by reaffirming what it described as the logic of history: imperialism, a paper tiger, is in deep crisis, and the trend is toward revolution. France embodies this reactionary order through its direct colonial domination of Corsica, Réunion, Kanaky, Guadeloupe, and Tahiti, alongside more indirect forms of semi-colonial domination. Everywhere, the French state has left behind nothing but poverty, yet everywhere resistance is taking shape.

Ka Ubuntu then dismantled what it described as the illusion of departmentalization, presented as integration but in reality serving only to widen the poverty gap between Réunion and metropolitan France while maintaining the island under colonial domination. A powerful speech emphasized the need to unite peoples in struggle across the world, particularly on the African continent, through the political and economic unity of Africa as a whole in order to finally break free from the grip of the former colonial powers.

A video statement from the Cumitatu di Ricustruzzione d’u Partitu Cumunistu painted a damning picture of Corsica. The island, it argued, suffers from extreme poverty and widespread land grabbing by settlers, while the French state exploits mafia networks to spread terror. In response to resistance, the state relies on judicial repression: systematic harassment and arbitrary arrests that turn activists into political prisoners. The Corsican comrades demanded their immediate release, alongside that of Ahmed Sa’adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who has been imprisoned for twenty years in occupied Palestine, illustrating the international solidarity that must unite all anti-imperialist struggles.

The question of youth was central to the interventions of the Student Trade Union Federation (FSE) and the Young Communists (JC). They denounced the racist “Bienvenue en France” policy as a symptom of the imperialist crisis, one that justifies the increasing militarization of the state while strangling the higher education budget. The JC also condemned the deadly ideological offensive embodied in the call to “accept losing our children,” which accompanies the expansion of the Voluntary Military Service program, transforming working-class neighborhoods into recruitment pools for the army and preparing young people for the coming imperialist war.

Above all, this new generation warned against repeating the mistakes of the past, particularly the betrayal of the French Communist Party (PCF) during the Algerian War. By denouncing the anti-colonial demonstrations of 1945 and later offering only “pacifist” support to the national liberation struggle, the PCF contributed to the marginalization of its comrades in the Algerian Communist Party (PCA), eliminating any opportunity for proletarian leadership within the National Movement. According to the speakers, this historical lesson remains crucial today: hard-won independence cannot lead to the complete emancipation of oppressed peoples without proletarian leadership, supported by a revolutionary movement in metropolitan France that breaks decisively with legalistic and colonial-chauvinist conceptions.

The concluding discussions explored the distinction between autonomy—seen as merely a renewed form of dependence—and independence, presented as the only path to genuine emancipation. The Committee in Support of the Revolution in the Philippines (CSRP) warned of France’s involvement in the counter-revolutionary war being waged in the Philippines, while participants debated the relationship between economistic struggles and broader revolutionary strategy. The conference concluded with a firm political synthesis: the socialist revolution in metropolitan France is inseparable from national liberation struggles. It is the proletariat, the driving force of history, that will strike the final blow against the Beast by overthrowing the Old World.

As the audience joined together in chanting the historic slogans, “Algeria was victorious, Kanaky will be victorious; Vietnam was victorious, Réunion will be victorious,” one conviction prevailed: the age of colonies is over.

Down with imperialism!