ABSTRACT
The group of ‘Free Officers’ who seized power in July 1952 had no definite political programme. Some of them had had connexions with the Moslem Brotherhood, and one at least with communists. All were passionate nationalists, determined to regenerate the nation, to free Egypt from all foreign domination and to make it great. They had felt the British ultimatum to Faruk of February 1942 as a national humiliation. The defeat in Palestine had embittered them still more. They hated the dynasty as the embodiment of corruption and of subservience to the foreigner. The nation was to them more than an abstraction. They were concerned with the miserable condition of the flesh-and-blood Egyptians who composed it. They therefore passed the Land Reform Act of September 1952. But though this was an act of social reform, the Free Officers were not committed to a general left-wing attitude. On 12-13 August there were disorders in the spinning mill at Kafr el-Dawar. When the police proved unable to deal with the workers, army units were sent, eight workers were killed, 200 arrested, and two workers’ leaders were tried by court-martial and hanged. The Free Officers at first made Ali Maher, the elder statesman, Premier but in September replaced him by the man whom they had adopted as the titular leader of their group, General Mohammed Neguib. The leaders of the political parties, especially of the Wafd, had greeted the July coup d’état, both because they were glad to be rid of Faruk and because they hoped that by offering the benefit of their ‘experienced counsel’ to the young heroes they would return to power. But Abd el-Nasser and his friends had little use for the old gang. They showed great skill in splitting the Wafd, and in January 1953 they finally dissolved all political parties and confiscated their property. A new official mass movement, the ‘National Liberation Rally’, was created in their place. In June 1953 Egypt was proclaimed a Republic. General Neguib became President of the Republic and Prime Minister, while Abd el-Nasser came for the first time into the political limelight as Vice-Premier.
