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British Policy Toward Egyptian Labour Activism, 1882–1936

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Zachary Lockman
Zachary Lockman
Affiliation:
Department of History Harvard University
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Extract

In May 1896 Lord Cromer, the British Agent and Consul-General in Egypt and that country's de facto ruler, received a “very numerously signed petition” from the coalheavers of Port Said. These workers, most of them migrants from Upper Egypt, were employed through labor contractors by several English and other foreign-owned companies to carry coal onto ships transiting the Suez Canal. The coalheavers complained of ill-treatment by the contractors (shuyuūkh), who “buy and sell us like slaves”, stealing part of their wages and forcing them to buy all they needed at stores owned by the contractors. Cromer acknowledged receipt of the petition in a letter to the coaling companies, commenting that the workers “seem to have some real grievances, notably in connection with the truck system”. Suggesting that the employers seek to avoid a strike, he expressed the opinion that the government “should deal with a strike at Port Said on the same lines as a strike in England, that is to say, that they should preserve order and not interfere to any serious extent between employers and labourers.”

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , August 1988 , pp. 265 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

1 See FO 141/322 and the Cromer papers, FO 633/8. It was the late Professor Gabriel Baer who first brought the Port Said coalheavers to scholarly attention in his book Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964). I do not however agree with all aspects of his analysis of the coalheavers or of the Egyptian guilds. For a history of the Egyptian workers’ movement, as well as a bibliography, see Beinin, Joel and Lockman, Zachary, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class. 1882–1954 (Princeton, 1988).Google Scholar

2 I refer to officials at the Residency, advisors to government ministries and officials in the security apparatus, which comprised both the Public Security Department at the Ministry of the Interior and the police forces of the major cities. It was these British officials who, in consultation with the Foreign Office, generally shaped policy in this sphere even after the imposition of a limited form of independence on Egypt in 1922.Google Scholar

3 In this connection see Owen, Roger, “The Attitudes of British Officials to the Development of the Egyptian Economy, 1882–1922”, in Cook, M. A., ed., Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London, 1970), pp. 485–500.Google Scholar

4 FO 141/160 (April-May 1882) and FO 141/165 (October-November 1882).Google Scholar

5 Vallet, Jean, Contribution à l'létude de la condition des ouvriers de la grande industrie au Caire (Valence, 1911), pp. 101–2;Google Scholaral-Dīn, Amīn 'Izz, Ta'rikh al-'ābaqa al-'amila al-misriyya mundhu nash 'atiha haita thawrat 1919 (Cairo, 1967), pp. 56–66;Google Scholar'Abbās, Ra'ūf, al-Haraka al-'ummaliyya fī Misr. 1899–1952 (Cairo, 1967), pp. 50–54;Google ScholarLockman, Zachary, “Class and Nation: The Emergence of the Egyptian Workers’ Movement”, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1983, Ch. 2.Google Scholar

6 See Vallet, Contribution, and Bent Hansen, “Wage Differentials in Italy and Egypt: The Incentive Migrate before World War I”, Working Paper no. 164, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, October 1982.Google Scholar

7 See for example al-Mu'ayyad, October 18, 1908.Google Scholar

8 Farīd, Muhammad, “Ta'rikh Misr min 1891”, manuscript, quoted in 'Abbas, al-Haraka, p. 49.Google Scholar

9 See Lockman, Zachary, “The Social Roots of Nationalism: Workers and the National Movement in Egypt, 1908–1919”, Middle Eastern Studies (forthcoming).Google Scholar

10 On the strike see al-Mu'ayyad and The Egyptian Gazette for October 1908, as well as Belgium, Ministère des Affaires Etrang`res, J. de Villenfaquy to Davignon, October 24, 1908.Google Scholar

11 On this strike see al-'Alam and The Egyptian Gazette for July-August 1911, and Belgium, Ministère des Affaires Etrang`res, Charles de Royer to Davignon, August 7, 1911.Google Scholar

12 Vallet, Contribution, pp. 42–43;Google ScholarEgypt, Mahfūzāt Majlis al-Wuzarā', Nizārat al-Ashghāl, Maslahat al-Sikka al-Hadīd, carton marked “28 February 1910-November 1923” (hereafter referred to as “ESR 1”), report of October 19, 1910.Google Scholar

13 ESR 1, October 19, 1910, and Macauley to the Prime Minister, October 27 and November 28, 1910.Google Scholar

14 el-Maraghi, Aziz, La législation du travail en Egypte (Paris, 1937), p. 127.Google Scholar

15 See Seth, Ronald, Russell Pasha (London, 1966), p. 130.Google Scholar

16 See al-Rāfi'ī, 'Abd al-Rahmān, Thawrat sanat 1919, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1946), pp. 117–26, 131–32;Google ScholarFO 141/748/8839/I, notes by Thomas and Molesworth; FO 141/687/8705/8, Macauley to General Officer, Commanding Forces in Egypt, March 22, 1919.Google Scholar

17 'Alī, Muhammad Zakī, Taqrīr 'an hālat 'ummāl al-trām b'il-Qāhira (Cairo, 1920), p. 12;Google ScholarFO 141/687/8705/ 14, Intelligence, April 28, 1919, and /28, Blakeney to Cheetham, October 23, 1919; 141/781/8915, General Staff Intelligence, April 10, 1919; FO 407/184, Allenby to Curzon, 277, May 1–2, 1919.Google Scholar

18 See for example the somewhat exaggerated but nonetheless perspicacious comments of 'Abd al-Rahmān Fahmī, the secretary of the Wafd's central committee in Cairo, on the importance of the new unions in his secret report to Sa'd Zaghlūl in Europe, in Anīs, Muhammad, Dirāsāt fī wathā'iq thawrat 1919, Vol. 1, al-murāsalāt al-sirriyya bayna Sa'd Zaghlūl wa-'Abd al-Rahmān Fahmī (Cairo, 1963), p. 154.Google Scholar

19 See for example FO 141/781/8915, reports of April 28 and May 7, 1919.Google Scholar

20 FO 407/185/57, Allenby to Curzon, July 22, 1919.Google Scholar

21 On this episode see FO 141/781/8915, May 14, 1919; FO 141/487/7392/2,3,4,5; FO 141/787/7392/23, June 23, 1919; Lefèvre-Pontalis to S. Pichon, June 5, 1919, carton 39, archives of the French Embassy in Cairo.Google Scholar

22 The French had managed to convince themselves that the strike was the product of a dangerous Bolshevik-Egyptian nationalist conspiracy that had to be vigorously suppressed. See for example Services des Informations de la Marine dans le Levant, nos. 198/CE-214/CE, Port Said, Rapports de l'agent D …, carton 510, archives of the French Embassy in Cairo.Google Scholar

23 FO 141/748/8839, Department of Public Security/Military Intelligence, August 10, 1919; FO 407/185/57, Allenby to Curzon, July 22, 1919; FO 407/185/171, Cheetham to Curzon, September 8, 1919; FO 141/781/8915, August 12, 1919.Google Scholar

24 FO 407/185/137,171,215; FO 141/781/8915; archives of the French Embassy in Cairo, carton 39, letter from Alexandria, September 20, 1919.Google Scholar

25 FO 407/185/205, Cheetham to Curzon, August 18, 1919; FO 141/781/8915, August 26, September 6, 1919.Google Scholar

26 FO 141/781/8915, August 18, 1919.Google Scholar

27 FO 407/185/181, 202, 208, Cheetham to Curzon, September 25, 26, October 6, 1919; /219, Curzon to Cheetham, October 13, 1919.Google Scholar

28 FO 141/779/9321, Allenby to the Foreign Office, January 27, 1921; FO 407/187/289,340,395; FO 371/E2811, Granville to the Residency, February 23, 1921.Google Scholar

29 Numerous secret reports by the security police on leftist and labor activities can be found in the Dār al-Wathā'iq, Cairo. On the role of the left in the labor movement of the early 1920s, see Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, Ch. 5.Google Scholar

30 FO 371/E1916/16; FO 141/779/9065/43–44. British officials were also instrumental in pressing for the deportation of Joseph Rosenthal, the founder of the Egyptian socialist movement. They relented only after no country could be found that would take him, Rosenthal brought legal action to avoid expulsion and the Labor Party took an interest in his case.Google Scholar

31 Official vigilance went to such lengths that Shapurji Saklatvala, the communist Member of Parliament for North Battersea, was denied permission even to land in Egypt on his way to India in 1926–1927, and the British Embassy in Rome required that the Fascist government certify that each Italian worker sent to the Sudan for a dam construction project was free of communist tendencies, lest the contagion spread. The zeal of the security agencies sometimes had tragic consequences. For example, some of the Russians in Egypt identified by police informers as communist agents and deported to the Soviet Union were shot upon their arrival in Odessa as Whites and monarchists, leading the police to the rather belated conclusion that certain of their informers were unreliable. FO 141/779/9065/200,201; FO 371/J2372/ 16/16, August 26, 1927; FO 141/779/9065/220, R. M. Graves to the Residency, September 21, 1925.Google Scholar

32 In March 1927, for example, Keown-Boyd forced the Cairo tramwaymen's leader (and Wafd activist) Zuhayr Sabrī to withdraw a strike notice by means of threats and by orchestrating a press campaign accusing Sabrī of being a communist. See FO 141/748/8839/42, 43.Google Scholar

33 See FO 141/658/164/27/30, Loraine to the Foreign Office (draft), December 27, 1930.Google Scholar

34 See file T1903, archives of the Trades Union Congress, London.Google Scholar

35 Schevenel's report on his trip to Egypt can be found in the TUC archives, London, file T1903.Google Scholar

36 FO 141/770/361/10/31, Graves to Sidqi, September 30, 1931; FO 141/763/506/36/31, Graves to Smart, December 14, 1931.Google Scholar

37 FO 141/733/894/1–5/340.Google Scholar

38 FO 141/617/237/11/35, Note by Keown-Boyd, March 21, 1935; FO 141/713/259/1,5,6/35.Google Scholar

39 FO 371/J1043/2/16, Graves, “Note on Labour Developments in Egypt during 1935”; FO 141/713/259/3/35, note by Smart to the High Commissioner, January 30, 1935; FO 141/617/ 237/17,19,22/35.Google Scholar

40 FO 141/713/259/14/35, Anson to Keown-Boyd, April 3, 1935; FO 371/J1553/110/16, Graves to the Undersecretary of State, April 7, 1935, and Keown-Boyd to the Residency, April 8, 1935; FO 371/J1634/110/16, Thomas to Keown-Boyd, April 15, 1935.Google Scholar

41 See Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, Ch. 9, and the 1940 “Statement of Policy on Colonial Development and Welfare,” Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers. 1940, Cmd. 6175.Google Scholar On Jamaica see Ken Post, “The Politics of Protest in Jamaica, 1938: Some Problems of Analysis and Conceptualization,” in Cohen, Robin, Gutkind, Peter, and Brazier, Phyllis, eds., Peasants and Proletarians: The Struggles of Third World Workers (New York, 1979), pp. 198–218.Google Scholar