The strike collapsed within forty-eight hours due to its excessive length.

Evidence

On the first day of the strike the postal and telegraph service reported seventy-one per cent of its Muslim personnel absent in the Algiers area, forty-one per cent in Oran and only twenty-eight per cent in Constantine; on the railways there was an almost total walkout in Algiers, fifty per cent in Oran and twenty-five per cent in Constantine. The next day, the figures had dwindled substantially and forty-eight hours after the beginning of the strike it had been effectively broken. In the opinion of Colonel Godard, Ben M’hidi had committed a cardinal error in endeavouring to keep the strike going so long; a short strike would have been hard to break, but eight days made it much more vulnerable. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 573

Categorization

• XREF: The participation gradient Algiers/Oran/Constantine maps onto the regional differences the reader is tracking in colonial Algeria. — connects to: The F.L.N.’s eight-day general strike was broken within forty-eight hours

Related

• The F.L.N.’s eight-day general strike was broken within forty-eight hours (similarity 0.93)
• The eight-day strike proved the FLN’s gravest tactical error of the war. (similarity 0.79)