Here’s another video clip from one of Muhammad Bayoumi’s works: “Amon Newsreel: Saad Zaghlul returns from Exile,” about the Egyptian nationalist leader’s return from his second exile in 1923.
Government and mainstream historians always focus on kings, presidents, “leaders” and “heroes”. Saad Zaghloul may have disliked the Brits, and wanted them out, but his class loyalty was always clear. We are taught how “Saad Zaghloul led the revolution”, but you hardly hear about those who ignited the revolution were in fact the tram workers whose strike brought the capital to halt, encouraging their brothers at the railways to join in… then confrontations with the British troops (and the Egyptian police) broke out all across the country… They don’t tell you how Saad and his exiled friends, horrified by the increasing militancy of their workers and peasants (yes, they were rich in case you forgot), rushed in to send messages “denouncing violence” and asking the protesters to stop “destroying private property,” while their minions back in Egypt were doing their best to control the protests, not push them forward… MORE IMPORTANTLY the Wafd Beiks and Bashas were pissing in their pants by the thought that their peasants were getting armed to fight the Brits…. “What will happen when the peasants are done with the Brits?” Saad and his comrades must have been thinking in exile… “Damn, they’ll turn them on us later if we mess with their land rights….” Such thoughts I’m sure did not amuse them… And once in power, Saad legislated anti-strike laws, and unleashed his police on leftists and labor activists. The successive security crackdowns and infiltrations led to the decimation of the first Egyptian Communist Party in 1924.
For more background on the 1919 revolution in Arabic, check this and this.
We need to write our history from below.
sigh…(at the Hoss:)
Good find. Thanks, Hoss.
I don’t care if he was rich. I like Saad Basha. Same as I like all the rich socialists today.
Maybe it’s just my bougie mentality that makes me see Saad Basha’s nervousness more charitably, but maybe he was just thinking that a revolution that destroys the country and results in hundreds of thousands of deaths is no way forward? Maybe it was just a question of timing, and a desire not to send the workers and farmers out to be mowed down by machine guns?
“I don’t care if he was rich. I like Saad Basha. Same as I like all the rich socialists today.”
While being born rich or poor plays a role in shaping your political thought for sure, but what matters at the end of the day in the case of political activists is what class project they’ll commit themselves to. There are socialists who happened to be born from bourgeois backgrounds, but they commit their lives to the destruction of the system that made them privileged while enslaving the rest of the population, in exchange for a system they view to be better for the majority, those who deserve the say in how things run since they are the ones who work and produce the wealth in the first place….. And on the other hand, you can meet people who happened to be born poor, but commit their lives to the protection of the status quo and defending the existing regime.
“but maybe he was just thinking that a revolution that destroys the country and results in hundreds of thousands of deaths is no way forward?”
Who said this was the March and April 1919 revolt about? Your words give the impression that there were some angry crazy mob running around destroying things… It may help if you follow the links in the posting to the Arabic articles (and I know you know Arabic, so don’t fuck with me, or else I’ll call your tutor and express my disappointment).
“Maybe it was just a question of timing, and a desire not to send the workers and farmers out to be mowed down by machine guns?”
I think indeed it was a question of “timing” when it came to the machine guns… coz interestingly many of Saad’s counterparts from the elites under occupation in Third World countries who preferred compromises with the colonial authorities and refrained from militant mass mobilization used your above-mentioned argument, yet they were the first to use those machine guns on their populations following independence…. so yeah, “timing” is everything…