Manifesto of the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale
French Canadians form a nation whose origin goes back to the time of New France. Conquered by the force of arms, isolated from its motherland, delivered to numerous and prolonged assimilation attempts, the French Canadian Nation has always manifested an irrepressible will to survive and blossom freely, in conformity with its origins and its own particular genius.
The Confederation, resulting from the Conquest and British Imperialism, placed and maintained the people of Québec in an abnormal position of weakness and inferiority. This regime, in addition, was not established by the express will of the peoples involved, rather it was improvised by the law of an imperial metropolis. Moreover, the rights officially granted by the British North America Act to the French Canadian people, aiming to ensure its survival and its protection, were unceasingly violated, and continue to be violated, by the federal government, in Ottawa. Logic and law thus make it possible to affirm today that the confederative pact, by its origins and the course of history, is void and outdated.Moreover, the federal centralization, carried out at an increasing pace, which tends to transform the confederative regime into that of a unitary Nation State, compromises not only the development, but also the very existence of the French Canadian Nation, already seriously threatened by its cultural and social insulation and the Anglo-American influence. internationalism, is valid in French Canada as everywhere else. Independence is, first and foremost, in line with the history of French Canada: prepared by the Confederation and then by the establishment of provincial autonomy, independence represents the normal result of the historical evolution of French Canada.
Nowadays, peoples no longer need excuses to want to be free. Because if national freedom is not an end in itself, it is the essential condition to any real flourishing of man and peoples. The first of civil liberties being the independence of the homeland, the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale claims total independence for Québec in order to make it possible for the French Canadian people to freely determine their future. Once independence is acquired, the French Canadian Nation will have to give itself, through democratic means, the institutions which it will judge to be appropriate.
Such are the principles and the ideal that the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale aims to defend and propagate. The RIN is not connected, associated nor affiliated to any other existing organization. In addition, the members of the RIN are entirely free to express and to promote, on a purely personal basis, their own ideas and convictions on questions which pertain to internal policy, religion, economic theories and social doctrines, because the only raison d'être of the RIN is to support and accelerate the introduction of the national independence of Québec, without hatred nor hostility towards others, but in a spirit of justice and freedom for all.
By claiming total independence for Québec, the RIN rejects the pessimism born of the Conquest and proclaims its faith in the French Canadian Nation, rooted in the greatest civilizations of History.
Original source: André D'ALLEMAGNE, Le RIN et les débuts du mouvement indépendantiste québécois. Le R.I.N. de 1960 à 1963. Étude d'un groupe de pression au Québec, Montréal, Éditions de l'Étincelle, 1974, 160 p. Préface de Marcel Rioux. Voir ANNEXE III, p. 139-140.
The manifesto was adopted during the first general assembly of the RIN, held in October 1960.
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