Young Egypt Party (1933)

Young Egypt Party (1933)
The Young Egypt Party (Misr El-Fatah) also known as the Green Shirts was a fascist Egyptian nationalist political party. It is notable for counting a young Anwar Sadat as a member.
Historical Context
Egypt in the 19th century had undergone massive modernization and Westernization, including the construction of the Suez Canal. The Egyptian khedive Ismail Pasha went so far as to say, "My country is no longer in Africa; we are now part of Europe." However, Egypt accumulated unpayable amount of debt to European creditors, eventually having to create the Caisse de la Dette Publique ("Public Debt Commission") to supervise payments. The growing political influence of the commission angered Ahmed Urabi, an Egyptian officer, who led an uprising against the government. It was during the revolt that the famous nationalist phrase "Egypt for the Egyptians!" was coined. After Egypt's defeat in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War, Britain would govern Egypt as a "veiled protectorate", with British officials like Evelyn Baring being the de-facto ruler of Egypt.
During this time, the Egyptian state was morphed into a de-facto British colony. Foreigners in Egypt were not subject to Egyptian law, but a separate legal system called the Capitalations. During this time, a new generation of Egyptian nationalists, such as Muhammad Farid and Mustafa Kamil, organized the new liberal nationalist movement in Egypt. A new generation of variably-educated moder Egyptian nationalists, called the effendi, became emerged as the new social class to march Egypt in the modern world. During the 1919 Egyptian revolution, Egyptian nationalists formed the Wafd Party, a liberal Nationalist party that dominated post-1923 constitution Kingdom of Egypt.
Major cities like Alexandria and Cairo experienced a major explosion in progressive art and values. Art decos, dancers, movies and nightclubs were established. Women activists like Rose al Yusuf, Safiya Zaghloul, Nabawiyya Musa, Saiza Nabarawi and Doria Shafik fought for women's rights in the socially conservative environment of Egypt. As an exmaple, the Egyptian Feminist Union was founded by Huda Sha'arawi in 1923. Alexanderia and Cairo had large populations of French, Greeks and Italians who contributed to the cosmopolitan atmosphere and culture of the big cities.
However, the new constitution did not turn Egypt into a completely independent nation. The Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence gave Britain several special legal rights in Egypt, including the right to station troops in Egypt, the right to govern the Sudan, and the right to the Suez Canal. Britain was still the real power behind the throne. Politically, Egypt was divided between the conservative palace led by the king and his allies and the liberal nationalists led by the Wafd and their allies, with the British acting as the tie breaker. Political parties at the time were not organizations separated by ideology, but political cliques set run by members of the political elite. As the Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim, said:
"In Egypt there is no party in the true sense of the word, a party as the word is understood and used in genuine democratic regimes. Rather, in Egypt there are separatist factions called parties. None of these factions has a goal other than dividing up the seats in parliament, obtaining government office, and managing election campaigns through passing out ballots. But as for any program, none of them. even thinks about it!"
The situation in the early 1930s
The 1929 Great Depression revealed the stark economic disparities between the peasents, the majority underbelly of Egyptian society, and the well-off land-owning elite, motivating social unrest in Egypt.
In 1930, prime minister Ismail Sidqi formed his cabinent. His first major change was the creation of a new constitution, which granted the executive - the King - more powers over the democraticlly elected parliament. The king had the sole power to propose financial bills, had the power to appoint three-fifths - the majority - of the senate, and had the power to appoint the leaders of major religious institutions such as the Shiekh of Al-Azhar, while the parliament was weaken, such as the lowering of a minimum of parliamentary session to five months instead of six, and the requiring of an absolute majority for ten days for a no-confidence vote to be passed. Opponents of Sidqi, the Wafdist Mustofa el-Nahhas and the Liberal Constitutionalist Muhammed Mahmud, were vehemently opposed to the new constitution, organizing protests against this move. The British backed the 1930 constitution, believing that the re-instatment of the 1923 constitution would bring the Wafd back into power. During the 1935-36 protests in Egypt, the opposition agreed to enter negotiations with Britain, specifically regarding the lack of an Egyptian military, British troop presence, and the Mixed Courts. On the 12th of December 1935, the new government ledt by Mohammed Nasim reinstated the 1923 Constitution.
It was during this time in the early 1930s that the local youth leaders organized nationalist outbursts against foreign domination. Local Wafdists demanded the boycott of British good and the encouragement of local industry. On March 3rd, 1931, a manifesto was published arguing for local industrialists to product Egyptian made products. In 1930, Salama Musa formed the "Society of the Egyptians for Egypt", urging Egyptians to buy Egyptian made products for a "re-awakening of the nation's economic consciousness."
History of the Party
Beginning of the Party
In late 1931, a committee of students headed by Ahmad Hussein formed the Piastre Plan, which was a drive to raise funds for developing Egyptian industry, using the funds to establish a local fez factory. This was after discovering that the famous Egyptian headdress was produced in a foreign country. Hussein had been a supporter of the Liberal Constitutionalists leader Muhammed Mahmud during his last year in secondary school. One of the principles of the party was buying only Egyptian-made products. The party was formed on the 12th of October, 1933 as a nationalist party with "religious elements" by Ahmed Hussein. Its aim was the pursue a more nationalist anti-British policy than the established Egyptian parties. Its name was similar to the nationalist Young Italy and Young Turks parties. Young Egypt emerged as a student organization that existed outside of the control of the traditional Egyptian parties.
Involvement in Egyptian politics
On the 5th of December 1935, the party founders Ahmed Hussein and Fathi Radwan left Egypt for Great Britain, where they met with British politicians, spreading the message of Egypt's case against Great Britain, later returning to Egypt as heroes. Young Egypt played a major role in the 1935-36 Egyptian protests. It was during this time that future Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser joined these protests, though whether he was a formal member is debated among historians. Members mostly engaged in street demonstrations, with the most commited wearing a green shirt, the party uniform.
The paper - Al Sarkha - would publish letters to officials and collect signatures in petitions for publicity. In late 1933 Hussein sent an open letter to the British prime minister demanding the complete independence of Egypt and the removal of British troops from Egypt and the Sudan; in 1934 Young Egypt collected signatures for a petition to the king demanding the abolition of the Capitulation system and the Mixed Courts of Egypt.
One of the main issues of the time was the exact relationship between Egypt and Britain, especially regarding the Mixed Courts, the Suez Canal and the stationing of British troops in Egypt. The nationalist slogan had long been "No Negotiation Except After Evacuation!", so when the Wafd agreed to seek a compromise with Britain, Hussein wrote "There is no way for us to achieve all except by means of force, physical force". Young Egypt opposed the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, because it allowed British troops to be stationed in Egypt for 20 years, in effect legitimizing British domination over Egypt. During the Montreux negotiations of 1937 for the abolition of the Capitulatory system in Egypt, Hussein wrote:
"If he [Nahhas] had a spark of patriotism, he would prefer to remain in his own house, strong, and to invite the foreigners to come to him. The Capitulations must be abolished. The Mixed Courts must be abolished. But their abolition should occur in Egypt, not in Switzerland, because Egypt is the competent authority, the deciding element, the master in its own house."
The Wafd Party, the mainstream liberal party, viewed Young Egypt with suspicion, believing it to controlled opposition sponsered by the king. After the Wafd's victory in the 1936 elections, the Wafdist leader Mustofa al-Nahhas accused Young Egypt with collaborating with a foreign power, implying Italy. This incited a series of street battles between the Green Shirts and the Blue Shirts - the Wafdist youth branch. Frequent clashes took place between the Green Shirts of Young Egypt and the Blue Shirts of the Wafd, culminating in the unsuccessful attempt on the life of al-Nahhas by a member of Young Egypt in November 28th, 1937. While there are similarities between the Green Shirts and the fascist paramilitaries of the Italian Black Shirts and Nazi Brown Shirts, a key distinction is that Young Egypt's "fighters" were college students fighting with clubs and bricks - not demobilized, brutally experienced and disillusioned World War One veterans. These "shirt" organizations would participate in marches and street brawls. After numerous incidents of violence between militant students, paramilitary organizations were banned on March 1938.
Despite being formally founded as a party in 1936, Young Egypt never sent representatives to the Egyptian parliament. Until its wartime ban in 1941, the only parliamentary election it could have participated in was in 1938, however none of its members met the minimum age of 30 to run for office. Young Egypt claimed to have almost 2,000 members, though the historian James Jankowski claims that the true number was around one thousand at its peak. It was around this time that Young Egypt began to decline, due to the Wafdist government ordering crackdowns such as preventing meetings and issues fines and arrests for members, ironically under the government of Muhammed Mahmud Pasha, whom Hussein was a suppporter of before founding Young Egypt.
The group was renamed the Nationalist Islamic Party in 1940, when it took on a more religious, as well as anti-British tone. After the war it was renamed yet again, now the Socialist Party of Egypt. The group's one electoral success came when it sent Ibrahim Shukri, its vice-president, to parliament in 1951. However, it was disbanded, along with all other parties, in 1953 following the 1952 coup d'etat.
After political parties were allowed again in Egypt, Ibrahim Shoukry formed a group, the Socialist Labor Party in 1978, which despite its name look much like the social nationalistic ideology of Young Egypt. It consists of members from different economic and social levels.
Ideology
Young Egypt espoused the most extreme Egyptian nationalism at the time, going further than any of the existing party. It believed in the complete rejection of foreign influence. One of its Ten Principles was to "cling steadfastly to your nationality, making it an obsession." Ahmed Hussein saw in his vision of Egypt a country that has only been recently held back by foreigners, and Egypt should instead return to its former glory, saying:
"I will tell you, gentlemen, a reality which I discovered in Europe. It is that most of its peoples are close to the primitive, primal stages of life. The only thing responsible for their progress in life is the great amount of learning which they receive all over Europe. Their knowledge, their character, their virtues, their peculiarities - all of these have been acquired by striving and only by that. This means that if you strip from them this learning and this knowledge which they have won through striving and study, you will find Europeans close to the barbarism of prehistoric times."
Hussein believed that while Europe had abandoned religion for "godless, materialist principles", modern Egypt's religious culture made it superior. This is in stark contrast to the Wafd, who were secularists. Young Egypt railed against foreign-owned factories, "anti-Islamic" entertainment, gambling, cinemas and alcohol. Young Egypt combined the religious values of the Egyptian urban worker with the nationalist values of the modern Egyptian student.
References
Sources
Further reading
Banned political parties in Egypt
Defunct political parties in Egypt
Political parties established in 1933
Political parties disestablished in 1953
1933 establishments in Egypt
1953 disestablishments in Egypt