Contribution to a history of the labour movement in Egypt

After Senegal and South Africa, in a new series, we present a history of the workers' movement in Egypt. This new contribution pursues the same main aim as the previous ones: to provide evidence of the living reality of the history of the African labour movement through its struggles against the bourgeoisie (see Contribution to a history of the workers' movement in Africa (part 1): Pre-1914, International Review, no. 145, 2nd quarter 2011).

The emergence of the working class in Egypt

As capitalism began to develop in Egypt, the proletariat made its presence felt in the country's first industrial concentrations. As author Jacques Couland points out:

“We know that Egypt was one of the first (in the region) to embrace capitalism. This, at least, is the general assessment of Muhammad Ali's experience in the first part of the 19th century. There would seem to have been a gap between the earliness of the first attempts to create new relations of production and the access to forms of organisation that reflected an awareness of the new social relations that ensued. Some authors trace the emergence of the Egyptian working class back to the state industrial monopolies created by Muhammad Ali. Arsenals, shipyards, spinning mills and weaving mills brought together some 30,000 workers in an Egypt that was already one of the most industrialised countries in the world, whose population was then estimated at less than three million. (...) Estimates are often contradictory, let us retain the most accurate one which marks the end of a phase. The urban workforce was estimated at 728,000 workers or 32% of the urban population (2,300,000 inhabitants); to this should be added 334,000 non-agricultural jobs in the countryside. Industry, crafts and construction employ 212,000 urban workers (29% of urban jobs) and 23,000 in the countryside. According to another estimate, the largest concentration is in the railroads, with some 20,000 workers, a quarter of whom are foreigners"[1].

The process that led to the emergence, then development, of the productive forces in Egypt in the second half of the 19th century saw the working class make up as much as a third of the urban population, notably as a consequence of the transfer of part of the cotton production from the United States to Egypt, at a time when the Civil War was disrupting the American economy. It seems that the formation of part of the working class in this country can be traced back to the state industrial monopolies under the former semi-feudal regime of Muhammad Ali.

The large workforce in construction (ports, railways, wharves, etc) and tobacco manufacturing included a significant proportion of European foreigners recruited directly by European industrial employers. This was later confirmed by the chronology of class confrontations between the bourgeoisie and the working class, in which a minority of workers of European origin, whether anarchists or socialists, played an important role in the politicisation and development of consciousness within the Egyptian working class.

Elements of precursors to the Egyptian labour movement

These were the result of the spread of capitalism, as the following quote indicates:

“Presenting a picture of the history of radicalism in early twentieth-century Egypt requires not limiting oneself to Arab networks or expressing oneself only in Arabic. Cairo and Alexandria were cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multilingual cities, and socialism and anarchism found many sympathisers among immigrant Mediterranean communities. One of the most active groups was a network of anarchists composed mainly (but not exclusively) of Italian workers and intellectuals, whose ‘HQ’ was Alexandria, but which had contacts and members in Cairo and elsewhere"[2].

In Egypt, there were also other non-anarchist currents in the workers' movement:

“For the record, since the turn of the century, there have been Armenian, Italian and Greek socialist groups, albeit isolated, with the appearance of Bolshevist tendencies in their midst around 1905. We know that it was in 1913 that Salamah Musa published a pamphlet entitled “Al-Ishtirakiya” (Socialism), which, despite theoretical hesitations, was similar to Fabianism. But Marxism also reached these shores. Research has brought to light an anonymous reader's article published in 1890 in “Al-Mu'ayyid” under the title ‘The Political Economy’ which shows a good knowledge of Marx's work. But if this milestone is worth mentioning only as a curiosity, the same cannot be said of the book by a young schoolteacher from Mansurah, Mustafa Hasanayni: ‘Tarikh al-Madhahib al-Ishtiraktyah’ (History of Socialist Principles), also published in 1913 (though only found in 1965); the documentation is more extensive and more precise (tables of the influence of the various socialist parties); the assimilation of Marxism more evident, as can be seen from the long-term programme proposed for Egypt”.

So, alongside the anarchist currents, there were other currents or individuals on the marxist left, some of whom were influenced by the Bolshevik Party. Many of them may well have been among those who decided to leave the SPE (Egyptian Socialist Party of Egypt) to form the ECP (Egyptian Communist Party) and join the Third International in 1922. Thus, in Egypt, the conditions were ripe for the participation of the Egyptian proletariat in the wave of revolutionary struggles of 1917-23.

It was in this context that Egyptian and immigrant workers of European origin took an active part in the first movements of struggle under the era of European-dominated industrial capitalism in Egypt.

First protest movements (1882-1914)

The first expression of struggle took place in a context where the particularly arduous working conditions of the emerging working class were conducive to the development of combativeness.

Wages were very low, and working hours could be as long as 17 hours a day. It was the dockworkers who first set the example, striking frequently between 1882 and 1900 for higher wages and improved living conditions, gradually followed by workers in other industries, so that strikes were a permanent feature of the 15 years leading up to the First World War. In addition to wages and working conditions, the workers fought for reforms in their favour, including the possibility of forming associations or unions to defend themselves.

In 1911, Cairo's railway workers were able, among other benefits, to set up their own union, the ‘Association of the Railway Depot Workers in Cairo’. Through its struggle, the Egyptian proletariat was able to wrest real reforms. Between 1882 and 1914, they had to learn the art of class struggle in the face of harsh working and living conditions imposed by the European capitalists who owned the means of production in Egypt and were also responsible for recruiting labour and organising work in the companies. This led to a practice of segregating Egyptian and European workers by granting “advantages” to the latter and not to the former, a deliberate strategic choice by the bosses to divide the struggles. Thus, the first strikes (in 1882 and 1896) were instigated by Egyptian workers. In 1899 and 1900, Italian workers also went on strike alone (without the Egyptians). However, the Egyptian proletariat, aware that it was being exploited, soon demonstrated its fighting spirit and, at times, its solidarity with workers of all nationalities, notably during the famous strike by cigarette factory workers, which brought together Egyptians and Europeans.

The first expression of open working-class struggle occurred in the same year (1882) as the occupation of Egypt by British imperialism. Some historians have seen it as an expression of resistance to English colonialism, in other words, a form of defense of the ‘Egyptian nation’ as a whole, uniting exploiting and exploited classes, with the working class allying itself with its (Egyptian) ‘progressive bourgeoisie’ against colonialism and reactionary forces to create a new nation. History has shown the limits of such a theory with the definitive entry of capitalism into decadence. In fact, the continuation of strike action has amply demonstrated that the working class is seeking above all to defend itself against the attacks of the capitalists who own the means of production, whatever their nationality. Nevertheless, as subsequent struggles illustrated, the Egyptian proletariat was unable to prevent the penetration of nationalist ideologies, particularly following the founding in 1907 of the Egyptian Watani (national) party, which clearly stated its determination to rely on the labour movement to strengthen its influence.

However, it was during this struggle that the Egyptian working class was able to develop its own identity, that of a class associated with exploited producers, whether or not they came from the same country, or from different cultures, including Italians, Greeks and others. In fact, the trajectory of the working class in Egypt is no different, in essence, from that of other fractions of the world proletariat, forced to sell their labour power in order to live, and to enter into collective struggle against the exploiting class.

British imperialism takes advantage of the 1914-18 war to break workers' strikes

The outbreak of war upset relations within the ruling class, in this case British imperialism and sections of the Egyptian bourgeoisie. As a colonial power, Great Britain decided to establish a protectorate in Egypt at the end of 1914, thereby imposing its authority and imperialist options on the fractions of the Egyptian national bourgeoisie. It thus decided to place parties and other social organisations (trade unions) under its strict control, notably the Watani Party, which had a strong presence in working-class circles and was particularly targeted by repression, eventually being dissolved and its main representatives imprisoned. This nationalist party had been created in 1907 in the wake of the major strike movements preceding the outbreak of the First World War, when the Egyptian proletariat fought hard against the rates of production imposed by companies, particularly those owned by European bosses.

This party, along with another nationalist current, the Wafd (‘Delegation’), played a central role in diverting proletarian struggles towards nationalist demands and perspectives, and in organising the workers. In other words, the party managed to disorientate many inexperienced workers with little class consciousness. In order to better attract workers, who were more or less influenced by socialist ideas, the party's leader did not hesitate to claim to be a ‘Labourist, thus moving closer to the right-wing of the Second International.

The working class took up the struggle once the slaughter of 1914-18 was over, but came up against the political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie.

The introduction of the state of war, with all its repressive measures, was designed to prevent or repress struggles. The Egyptian proletariat, like others around the world, was paralysed and dispersed. In spite of this, certain sectors of the workforce demonstrated their discontent in the midst of the war, notably cigarette factory workers in Alexandria who went on strike between August and October 1917, and those in Cairo in 1918. Of course, they were unsuccessful in the face of a particularly repressive environment. However, as soon as the war was over, the struggles began again. Between December 1918 and March 1919, numerous strikes took place in the railroads, cigarette factories, printing works and elsewhere. These strikes were organised by the fringes of the Watani Party.

But despite their desire for autonomy, the workers came up against both the repression of the colonial power and the undermining work of the nationalist parties, Watani and Wafd, which were very influential within the working class, and whose control they vied for. In fact, the working class was obliged, on the one hand, to fight to defend its own interests against British imperialism, which dominated the whole of society, and on the other hand, could not avoid ‘allying’ with the nationalists, themselves victims of the repression of the colonial power. This is illustrated by the following quote:

“The announcement of the arrest (on March 8) of the delegation (Wafd) set up to negotiate with the British led to a generalisation of workers' strikes and their participation with other sections of society in the major demonstrations that marked the last three weeks of March. The transport strike, backed-up by the actions of sabotage by the peasants, played an important role in hindering the movement of British troops. In the months that followed, the protest movement and the formation of unions continued. On August 18, 1919, a Conciliation and Arbitration Commission was set up, which encouraged the first collective labour contracts, but which once again insisted on the recourse to legal advisors. The preoccupation of the Watani Party (whose influence was waning) was to ensure that workers' interventions, through the Syndicate of Manual Industries, were limited to national demands, the installation of purchasing cooperatives being likely, in its view, to alleviate many difficulties. But the Wafd, which was asserting itself as a political force, had gauged the importance of the unions and was endeavoring to control them: ‘They are a powerful weapon not to be neglected’, thanks to their rapid capacity to mobilise in response to the call of the national movement. ‘(...) But if these competing forces are to be noted, what prevaied at the time are the trends in favour of organising workers on an autonomous basis. The center of this movement was in Alexandria, at the initiative of a mixed leadership of foreign and Egyptian socialists (Arab or naturalised, like Rosenthal) who had perceived the echo of the October 1917 Revolution.” (J. Couland, Ibid.) As we shall see later.

The echo and influence of the October 1917 Revolution on the Egyptian working class

The 1917 revolution undoubtedly had an impact on the Egyptian workers' movement, particularly among the most consciously politicised elements, who embarked on a process of rapprochement with the Communist International. This was against a backdrop of repeated strikes in the factories and struggles for control of the unions, pitting the genuinely proletarian fractions against Watani and Wafd.

“In February 1921, a General Confederation of Labour (GCL) with 3,000 members was finally formed around a federation of cigarette, tailor and printing unions, which had been in existence since 1920, and not without a few setbacks (followed in the same year by the founding of the Socialist Party of Egypt (SPE)). The GCL asserted itself as a member of the Red Trade Union International, while the SPE itself decided to join the Communist International in July 1922 and transformed itself into the Egyptian Communist Party (PCE) in January 1923. The split of a group of intellectuals, including Salamah Mussa, who contested this development, did not detract from the nationally Egyptian character of the CPE, whose membership was estimated at 1,500 in 1924.” (J. Couland, Ibid.)

The transformation of the SPE into the ECP and the GCL's accession to the Red International of Labour Unions were elements of clarification and decantation within the Egyptian labour movement. This led, on the one hand, to the installation of a majority of workers at the head of the GCL and ECP leadership and, on the other, to the reaffirmation of the right-wing fraction of the SPE, which took up reformist and nationalist positions in opposition to the Communist International. From then on, the battle was waged between internationalist revolutionary forces and reformist forces in the company of Egyptian national capital. Moreover, during the period of decantation, the nationalist Watani/Wafd parties decided to create their own trade unions in order to compete with and oppose head-on the unions affiliated to the Red International of Labour Unions. To the same end, they waged violent campaigns against Communist workers' organisations, as illustrated by Fahmi's statement to a group of workers: “We must beware of Communism, whose ‘principle’ is ‘the ruin (and) chaos of the world”. The Wafd party, in its brief presence in power in 1924, immediately went to war with the CPE and the GCL:

“The CGT, which is abandoning parliamentarian reformism, is very active. It led dozens of strikes, but not only in foreign plants; Egyptian plants were not spared. Factory occupations, which streetcar and railway workers had exemplified before the war, were frequent. Egyptian capitalists could not remain indifferent to this movement, whose organisation became even more clearly defined with the creation of Misr Bank in 1920 and the Federation of Industries in 1922. Neither could the Wafd, triumphantly swept to power by the electorate and installed in government on January 28, 1924, ignore these developments. The first step was to forcibly ban the congress convened for February 23 and 24, 1924 in Alexandria by the CPE. The second was to use factory occupations to try to break up both the GCL and the CPE. The evacuation of factories was achieved on February 25 at the Egoline oil company in Alexandria, and again, but with greater difficulty, on March 3 and 4 at the Abu Sheib factories in Alexandria. Nonetheless, from the beginning of March, this was the pretext for a wave of arrests of communist and trade union leaders, all Egyptian, as well as searches and seizures of documents. Between October 10, 1923 and March 1, 1924, the militants were accused of disseminating revolutionary ideas contrary to the Constitution, inciting crime and aggression against the bosses. Their trial took place in September 1924, and several of them received heavy sentences”. (J. Couland, Ibid.)

This repressive episode marked a turning point in the balance of power between the working class and the bourgeoisie, in favor of the latter, both inside and outside the country. In fact, in Egypt itself, the Egyptian proletariat's combativeness in reaction to the deterioration of its living conditions led it to unite against Watani /Wafd, on the one hand, and the entire Egyptian and British bourgeoisie, on the other, who were under attack from strikes during this period. Outside the country, the counter-revolution was already underway by 1924. From then on, the Egyptian working class was unable to rely on truly proletarian organisations, or on the Third International, and thus suffered defeat after defeat throughout the counter-revolutionary period, both under British colonial rule and under the Egyptian bourgeoisie, which became ‘independent’ in 1922.

The Third International and the Egyptian workers' movement in the 1920s

As we have seen, the emerging vanguard of the Egyptian working class, struggling in the face of very difficult living conditions, eventually drew closer to the international labour movement by joining the Communist International, breaking with the reformist and nationalist elements of the old party (SPE). At a time when the working class, faced with very difficult living conditions, was beginning to forge a class identity, the Third International was taking an opportunist course, particularly in its policy towards the new communist parties of the East and Middle East. The Baku Congress was a tragic illustration of this, marking a clear retreat from the spirit of proletarian internationalism and, as a result, a blatant advance in opportunism, as the following quotation illustrates:

“The fine speeches of the congress and the declarations of solidarity between the European proletariat and the peasants of the East, despite much that was correct about the need for soviets and revolution, were not enough to hide the opportunist course towards indiscriminate support for nationalist movements: ‘We appeal, comrades, to the warlike sentiments that animated the peoples of the East in the past, when these peoples, led by their great conquerors, advanced on Europe. We know, Comrades, that our enemies will say that we are appealing to the memory of Genghis Khan and the great conquering caliphs of Islam. But we are convinced that yesterday (at the congress) you pulled out your knives and revolvers, not to conquer, not to turn Europe into a graveyard. You brandished them, together with workers from all over the world, with the aim of creating a new civilisation, that of the free worker’ (Radek's words). The congress manifesto concludes with an injunction to the peoples of the East to join ‘the first real holy war, under the red banner of the Communist International’” (Communists and the National Question, Part 3: The Debate during the Revolutionary Wave and the Lessons for Today. International Review no. 42).

This call from Baku for the whole of the East to ‘stand up as one’ under the banner of the International brought pan-Islamism, which had been thrown out the door at the Second Congress of the International, back in through the window, preceded by the ‘Treaty of Friendship and Fraternity’ signed in 1921 between the USSR and Turkey, while Mustapha Kemal's government was massacring Turkish communists (Communists and the National Question, Part 3: The Debate during the Revolutionary Wave and the Lessons for Today., International Review no. 42).

The consequences were dramatic: “The results of all this opportunism were fatal for the workers’ movement. With the world revolution sinking into deeper and deeper defeat, and the proletariat in Russia exhausted and decimated by famine and civil war, the Communist International more and more became the foreign policy instrument of the Bolsheviks, who found themselves in the role of managers of Russian capital. From being a serious error within the workers’ movement, the policy of support for national liberation struggles was transformed by the late 1920s into the imperialist strategy of a capitalist power.” (Communists and the National Question, Part 3: The Debate during the Revolutionary Wave and the Lessons for Today., International Review no. 42).

Indeed, in the years following the Baku Congress and throughout the 1930s, the Third International applied harmful and contradictory orientations towards the colonies, always inspired by the defense of the strategic interests of Russian imperialism. Clearly, following this congress, the general orientation was: “In the colonies and semi-colonies, the communist parties must orient themselves towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, which is transformed into the dictatorship of the working class. Communist parties must by all means inculcate in the masses the idea of organising peasant soviets”. (Theses of the VIth Congress of the Comintern 1928, quoted by René Gallissot in Les Tâches des communistes dans le Mouvement national, in La Correspondance internationale, no. 1, January 4, 1933.

“In view of the fact that the U.S.S.R. is the only fatherland of the international proletariat, the principal bulwark of its achievements and the most important factor for its international emancipation, the international proletariat must on its part facilitate the success of the work of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R., and defend it against the attacks of the capitalist Powers by all the means in its power.” The programme of the Communist International, Comintern Sixth Congress 1928)

“In various Arab countries, the working class has played and is already playing an ever-increasing role in the struggle for national liberation (Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, etc.). In various countries, working-class trade union organisations are already being formed or are re-establishing themselves after their destruction, although for the most part they are in the hands of national-reformists. Workers' strikes and demonstrations, the active participation of the working masses in the struggle against imperialism, certain layers of the working class distancing themselves from the national-reformists, all this signals that the young Arab working class has entered the path of struggle to fulfill its historic role in the anti-imperialist and agrarian revolution, in the struggle for national unityC[3].

This opportunist course was none other than the Stalinist counter-revolution on the march in the East. It was in this context, in the aftermath of the Baku Congress, that the working class in Egypt had to fight to defend its class interests, its vanguard being massacred by the ruling nationalists of Wafd, without any reaction from the CI, which was already trapped by its policy of support for Eastern and Arab nationalist movements.

But Stalin was forced to change his line as many Arab nationalist parties escaped his control, turning increasingly towards rival imperialist powers (England, France). From then on, the CI denounced ‘national-reformism’ in the ranks of the Arab bourgeoisie, embodied in particular by the Wafd party. The latter was then denounced by the CI for ‘treason’, for having suppressed the slogan “(national) independence”!

In fact, this ‘directive’ from the Third International was addressed to the Egyptian CP and the ‘Red Syndicate’, ordering them to implement this ‘umpteenth new orientation’ in order to wrest control of the Egyptian unions from the ‘national’ traitors allied with ‘English imperialism’.

The intersecting impact of the nationalism relayed by the degenerating Communist International

This situation also confirms that the unions had become veritable instruments for the control of the working-class, in the service of the bourgeoisie. In other words, between the Baku Congress and the end of the Second World War, the Egyptian working class, though combative, was literally disoriented, tossed about and framed by the counter-revolutionary forces of Stalinism and Egyptian nationalism.

The degenerating C.I. now placed itself exclusively at the service of Russian imperialism, supporting and disseminating its imperialist projects and policies and slogans such as ‘class against class’, ‘four-class front’ and so on. The consequences of this orientation, and of Stalinist counter-revolution in general, weighed deeply and durably on the working class, in Egypt and throughout the world, adding to the poison of the nationalism of ‘national liberation’ struggles which infected working-class struggles for years. The Egyptian proletariat is highly illustrative of such a situation, its ranks having been infested since the mid-1920s by a large number of Stalinist agents charged with applying counter-revolutionary orientations. This same ‘doctrine’ was applied to the letter by the Egyptian Stalinists, who systematically described every strike movement of any size in a ‘foreign’ (European-run) company during the colonial period as a ‘national liberation’ (or ‘anti-imperialist’) struggle.

For their part, from the 1920s/1930s, Wafd and Watani, with their strategy of winning power, encouraged workers to strike above all against foreign companies established in Egypt, while trying to spare national companies, with varying degrees of success depending on the episode. More significant is the fact that some historians have not hesitated to equate the strike movements that took place at the same time as the nationalist uprisings against British occupation (1882, 1919 and 1922) with ‘national liberation’ struggles. In fact, the workers were first and foremost fighting against the deterioration of their working and living conditions, before their struggle was immediately diverted towards nationalist demands, not without resistance from some of them.

Since the creation of the first (recognised) trade union by railway workers in 1911, the bourgeoisie has always sought to (and often succeeded in) effectively controlling the working class to divert it from its terrain as an exploited and revolutionary class. Thus, in the immediate aftermath of its creation in 1907, the Watani party penetrated the ranks of the working class, gaining acceptance as a nationalist and ‘labour’ party by relying on the trade unions, before being joined in this endeavor by other bourgeois organisations (liberal, Islamist, Stalinist). Yet, despite the bourgeoisie's determination to prevent it from struggling on its own class terrain, the working class continued to fight, albeit with enormous difficulty. This is what we will see in the next part of this article.

Lassou (January 2025)

[1] Jacques Couland, ‘Regards sur l’histoire syndicale et ouvrière égyptienne (1899-1952)’, in René Gallissot, Mouvement ouvrier, communisme et nationalismes dans le monde arabe, Éditions ouvrières, Paris 1978.

[2] Ilham Khuri-Makdisi: ‘Intellectuels, militants et travailleurs: La construction de la gauche en Égypte, 1870-1914’, Cahiers d’histoire, Revue d’histoire critique, 105-106, 2008.

[3] ‘Les Tâches des communistes dans le Mouvement national’, dans La Correspondance internationale, n°1, 4 January 1933, published by René Gallissot, Ibid. Also published, under the name Annexe, on page 49, in René Gallissot, Mouvement ouvrier, communisme et nationalismes dans le monde arabe, Éditions ouvrières, Paris 1978.