King Farouk's sudden ouster in the July 1952 Revolution left Egypt prone to a power struggle that was to elevate the leader of the Free Officers, the military group that ousted him, to a position of almost absolute power. But the rise was not a smooth one, for it was challenged first by fellow Free Officers and then again by the Muslim Brotherhood. Eventually, it was future president Gamal Abdel-Nasser's challenge to Great Britain and other world powers through his daring nationalisation of the Suez Canal that catapulted him to international fame and turned him into the region's most popular leader. A member of the Free Officers, Wahid Ramadan, later recalled that they had been eager to find leaders among the country's youth. Ramadan was a dedicated revolutionary, but he disappeared fast from public life. Having served as the first chief of the Revolution's Youth Organisation, he was then made Egypt's ambassador to Switzerland, a comfortable job that removed him from the inner circle of the revolution in which he had taken part. According to Ramadan, those who took part in the army movement on the night of 23 July 1952 numbered about 100 officers. Not one of them was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even before the revolution broke out the Free Officers and the Brotherhood were already having their differences. The Brotherhood, whose army representative at the time was Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Raouf, wanted the army to do its bidding. “They wanted the army to take power, expel the king, and impose Sharia law,” Ramadan said. Abdel-Nasser and future defence minister Abdel-Hakim Amer did not like this idea at all, though Ramadan made one attempt to reconcile the two sides. “I brought Abdel-Raouf and Amer together as my relations with both were good. Amer told Abdel-Raouf that he should assist the Free Officers but without getting involved in any acts of violence, terror, or assassinations such as those that the Brotherhood had carried out in the past,” Ramadan said. This meeting, which took place in the late 1940s, led to nothing, however. Abdel-Raouf did not like the idea of cooperating with the Free Officers, and tensions between them and the Brotherhood continued to grow. Yet, after the 1952 Cairo fire, a crucial way-station towards the revolution, the Free Officers and the Brotherhood seemed willing to work together. “Everyone then gathered around general Aziz Pasha Al-Masri,” Ramadan recalled. “He was liked by all, and people used to go to listen to him and learn from him. Among those who attended the sessions were Abdel-Nasser, Amer, and [Brotherhood Supreme Guide] Hassan Al-Hodeibi,” Ramadan added. According to Ramadan, the Free Officers and the army in general were a microcosm of the political scene in the country. “The political activities that were taking place in the army reflected what was happening in the streets. Everyone wanted the same thing: to expel the British and get rid of the king,” he remarked. Immediately before the revolution broke out, the Free Officers tried to build consensus among the country's political currents including the Wafdists, the communists, the Free Constitutionalists, and the Brotherhood around an agenda for change. The Brotherhood was hard to bring into the fold, partly because of its secretive ways that depended on absolute deference to its leader, and partly because of its tendency to settle accounts through force. According to Ramadan, the Brotherhood failed to integrate itself into mainstream politics because the Supreme Guide Hassan Al-Hodeibi, was not as charismatic and influential as Hassan Al-Banna, the group's founder, and the Egyptian public did not sympathise with the Brotherhood because of its tendency towards violence and political assassinations. After the death of Abdel-Rahman Al-Sindi, a junior clerk in the ministry of agriculture, the Brotherhood's special operations branch was run by a carpenter called Youssef Talaat who had no political acumen or sensitivity. Abdel-Nasser himself also returned from the siege of Falluja during the 1948 Palestine War with the conviction that the Brotherhood and the Free Officers must be kept apart. Another man who witnessed events in the early years of the revolution at close hand was Salah Al-Shahed, chief of ceremonies to King Farouk, who retained his job until the presidency of Anwar Al-Sadat in the 1970s. In his memoirs, Al-Shahed writes that a deal was reached on 19 October 1954 providing for the evacuation of British troops from Egypt within 20 months. “On Thursday 21 October 1954, a luncheon was held at the Qanater Rest House in honour of the negotiating team. Abdel-Nasser had wanted to go to Alexandria to rest, but his plans were postponed because of the arrival of prince Naim Khan, the Afghan deputy prime minister, in Cairo for talks,” Al-Shahed recounts. Abdel-Nasser met the Afghan official on the morning of Saturday 24 October at the presidential offices and then hosted a luncheon for him at the Officers Club in Zamalek. Two days later, an attempt was made on Abdel-Nasser's life while he was delivering a public speech in Manshiya Square in Alexandria. Al-Shahed went to the president's residence in Cairo to be with his family, while also trying to get in touch with officials in Alexandria to ascertain what had happened. “I heard the president speaking on the radio. He was saying that ‘I celebrate with you today the day of evacuation, the day of freedom, the day of dignity.' Then shots rang out. They could be clearly heard on the radio, and the broadcast was suddenly interrupted,” he recalled. “Fearing for the life of the president, I went immediately to his house in Manshiet Al-Bakri and tried to reassure his wife. I also played with his children who were young at the time. Then I got in touch with officials in Alexandria on the phone and was told that the president had gone to dinner in a hotel. [Free Officer] Salah Salem spoke to me and said that the president was safe. About an hour-and-a-half later, the president himself called and spoke to his wife and children,” Al-Shahed said. The next day, Abdel-Nasser returned to Cairo on a special train and received a tumultuous public welcome. He proceeded to the cabinet offices, where thousands had already gathered to see him. Without resting from the trip, he went out and delivered an impromptu speech to the crowd. “When Abdel-Nasser came back into the office he was tired and sweating all over. He tried to take off his necktie but couldn't manage it, so I cut it off from the back and gave him mine instead. It was a red tie, and he kept reminding me afterwards that he would always keep it as a souvenir of that day,” Al-Shahed added. Two years later, Abdel-Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal to raise money to build the Aswan High Dam and other development projects and to signal his independence from the West. It was a risky step, but the war that followed was to boost his popularity across the region and beyond. The international crisis triggered by the nationalisation of the canal threw world diplomacy into high gear. A high-level conference was held in London in August 1956, during which the then US secretary of state John Foster Dulles submitted a proposal to internationalise the Suez Canal. The proposal was approved by 18 countries, but rejected by the Soviet Union, India, Indonesia, and Ceylon. Abdel-Nasser, as expected, turned down the idea. As international tensions rose, many countries signaled their support for Egypt by declaring a five-minute strike at noon on 16 August, the day on which the London Conference was underway. Al-Shahed recalls that Abdel-Nasser also took part in the strike by ceasing activities for five minutes on that day. The London Conference decided to send a five-man team led by Australian prime minister Robert Menzies to negotiate with Abdel-Nasser. Comprising Australian, American, Ethiopian, Iranian, and Swedish diplomats, the team arrived on 2 September and stayed at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo. Al-Shahed did not expect the meeting to go well. “The president told me that if he rang the bell twice, I should walk in immediately and ask Menzies to leave the office,” he recalled. There were no bell rings that night, and Menzies was treated with the courtesy befitting his position. However, just two months later, Egypt was at war. Historians still debate the Suez War, known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression, as it pitted Egypt's army against the combined forces of Israel, Britain, and France. But at home, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal struck a patriotic chord and catapulted Abdel-Nasser to unprecedented popularity. When Mustafa Al-Nahhas Pasha heard the speech of Abdel-Nasser on 26 July 1956 in which he announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the former prime minister and leader of then disbanded Wafd Party clapped his hands and said “may God protect this young man who has succeeded where we failed.” According to Al-Shahed, Abdel-Nasser was moved when he heard this remark coming from Egypt's once most popular politician. At the time, Al-Nahhas was 77 and in poor health. “When he heard this story, Abdel-Nasser asked me about Al-Nahhas's pension, and I told him that it was LE125 a month. He immediately ordered that the pension be increased to LE400 a month to help with Al-Nahhas's medical and other expenses,” Al-Shahed recalled in his memoirs of the period.
