ABSTRACT
THE INCOMING Conservative government was prepared to fight back against Egyptian guerrilla activity. The new, if ageing, Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was a firm believer that all non-white peoples acting up should be faced down with force. This meant a more aggressive policy against the Egyptian terrorist campaign in the Canal Zone. A vicious undeclared war raged between the British and the guerrillas, which by January 1952 had claimed the lives of over 100 Egyptians and 33 United Kingdom servicemen.1 Churchill gave the British commander, General Robertson, permission to take aggressive measures against the Egyptians. This strategy led to disaster in January 1952. Some 50 Egyptian Auxiliary police were killed when British troops used force to bring about their removal from a police station in the Canal Zone. The next day entered popular parlance as ‘Black Saturday’, as the Cairo masses rioted, their anger directed against the European population of the city Numerous British and foreign citizens were killed before order was restored. The Egyptian King and his Prime Minister were deliberately slow calling out the army to quell the disorder on the streets.2 The feeling in British circles was that the mobs had the tacit acquiescence of the King. Churchill wrote that the ‘Egyptians cannot be classed as a civilised power until they have purged themselves’.3 A plan codenamed ‘Rodeo’ had been drawn up for a full-scale occupation of Egypt in event of the situation getting out of control. However, the plan was not implemented because the growth of fanaticism in all strata of Egyptian society from the streets to the army made such an operation too risky. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff warned that any further operations in Egypt would denude Britain of a strategic reserve.4 What was most evident was the bankruptcy of British policy. Stephens points to the fact that the forces in the country who had ruled it for the previous 30 years-the King, the British and the Wafd-‘had now between them made Egypt ungovernable’.5 It meant that the only other force in the land,
the army, came under pressure to save the country from what seemed like certain anarchy. Britain, the dominant foreign influence in Egypt for so long, was about to be superseded by other suitors, untainted by 70 years of, often unfriendly, association.
