The Gazette and the 1952 Revolution (151), The Revolution and students (4), 'Pre-Revolution' students. In his book “The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt: 1923-1973”, Ahmed Abdullah states that by the mid 1930s, the liberal regime in Egypt was confronted with a demonstrated progeny of its own. The spread of liberal education gave students a numerical strength while the country's low level of economic development frustrated their ambitions for future careers. The rocky course of the country's constitutional life led increasing numbers of students to doubt the adequacy of the country's political system. The regime's inability to achieve the complete independence for which the nation had revolted in 1919 was the concrete proof of its overall failure. In the 1930s, the British instigated the government of Ismail Sidqi Pasha to repeal the 1923 constitution and replace it with a less populist version. The action sparked off a fresh wave of political turbulence aimed at restoring the original constitution. Students played the most prominent part in this fresh wave. On November 13, 1935, Saad Zaghloul Pasha, the leader of the Wafd Party, gave a public speech in which he called for non-co-operation with the British. Encouraged by the Wafd attitude, students took to the streets of Cairo. According to Ahmed Abdullah, observers said that students displayed a very determined, bitter and aggressive spirit. They were much more difficult to deal with than in the past. On November 14, students clashed with the police (led by British constables) at Abbas Bridge which connects Giza (and hence Cairo University, then known as Fouad I University) with central Cairo. An agricultural student, Mohamed Abdelmajeed Morsi was shot and killed by the police. A second-an arts student named Abdelhakim Al-Garrahi-was seriously injured and died in hospital a few days later. His funeral turned into a national demonstration. The immediate outcome of student demonstrations was the formation of a United Front comprising all political parties. Students kept moving from one party HQ to another, urging party leaders to unite. Seeing that students have become a force to be reckoned with, the various parties began to recruit students in their ranks. The Wafd was the quickest to realise the important role with which students can influence politics. It should be remembered that the 1919 Revolution-which broke out spontaneously-was sparked off at the Law School of the Egyptian University. The Secretary of the Wafd's Central Committee, Abdelrahman Fahmi, relied on students to convey and execute his directives throughout the country. Students also formed cell members of the Wafd's secret apparatus led by Fahmi himself. When Saad Zaghloul Pasha returned from exile 1923, he found that the Wafdist students had already formed an executive committee to organise their activities. He endorsed the development and allowed the committee to meet twice a week at his own residence, Beit Al-Umma (House of the Nation). He also promised to place its leader, Hassan Yassin on the Wafd's slate as a candidate in parliamentary elections. Yassin eventually won a seat in parliament thus becoming the first student to be elected as MP. Zaghloul Pasha praised students' efforts to explain the complexities of the electoral system and guide voters, especially in rural areas. Students came to be known as the Army of the Wafd. It is surprising that students had played a big role in internal party affairs, as in the conflict within the Wafd Party itself. In a bid to assert its authority over the turbulent youth, and in response to the challenge posed by the para-military Green Shirts of Young Egypt, the Wafd encouraged the formation of its own Blue Shirts squads (consisting mainly of students). The Wafd had attempted to control the country's youth. Before the Blue Shirts, it had established Wafdist Youth Committees, consisting mainly of young workers in urban areas. Those committees adopted a hostile attitude towards the Blue Shirts. The latent hostility between the two groups came into the open when they clashed in public. This, together with British pressure, prompted the Wafd leadership to take direct control of the Blue Shirts until the squads were dismantled in 1938. Rivalry within the Wafd Party helped create a radical faction of the Wafdist students, and the Party's conference of 1943 marked the growing influence of young Wafdists. Subsequently, a separate forum, the Wafdist Vanguard, was created by the radical elements within the Party. It consisted mainly of students and intellectuals eager to formulate a radical programme to solve Egypt's grave social problems. The Vanguard had considerable support among students and was represented on the Executive Committee. There was also the League of Wafdist Youth, an organ created to prompt the Wafd to address social problems seriously. [email protected]
