Testimony from a labor organizer, involved in Mahalla’s 6 April Uprising…
The factory floor in the days preceding the 6th of April was a battleground between the Textile Workers’ League activists who were agitating for the strike on the one hand, and the security and Attar’s group on the other. Every day, in the week before the strike, at least four statements would appear and each distributed in thousands among the workers in the factory… There were two camps as I said: The (Textile Workers’) League’s activists and the others who belonged to Attar, Habib and their group. Statements would appear in the factory signed by “Al-3ommal el-Shorafaa” (The Honorable Workers)… These would be mainly Attar’s and Habib’s… Then you get another statement by “Al-3ommal al-Ahrar” (The Free Workers).. These were the security.. One statement at least, signed by the “Nasserist Workers” appeared and was distributed… More statements appeared in other names I can’t even remember. All these (statements) I mentioned would be agitating against the strike and accusing the “communists” and “trouble makers” of having “hidden agendas”… You add to that of course the statements that were coming from the management itself under its name that was threatening the workers if they joined the strike. Countering that there were thousands of leaflets agitating for the strike that were circulated by the Textile Workers’ League. But, with the help of security, activists, like Attar and Habib, were allowed to tour the different sections of the factory to persuade the workers not to join the strike, while the League’s workers were under tight monitoring in their sections and were not allowed access to the rest of the factory. They (Attar and Habib) were subject to slurs from the workers on several occasions. But when you get these big number of statements and counter-statements circulating, this created some level of general confusion in the factory whether there will be a strike or not. Some statements said the strike was canceled, while other statements said it was still going ahead…. The mood was very angry in the factory, especially in the garments section among the women, and I say the strike could still have gone through if the factory hadn’t been occupied by the security.