counter-attacks that culminated in a British as-
sault on the Egyptian police headquarters in
Ismailia. Forty-one policemen were killed in the
battle that followed, martyrs of the Egyptian
nationalist cause. With nationalist feeling aroused
to a frenzy, Cairo was burnt and looted by mobs
of angry Egyptians. Within Egypt, the only force,
other than the British, able to restore order was
the Egyptian army. The politicians had lost
control and the army leadership now held the key
to the future of Egypt. Farouk had long since
become a spent force.
Inside the army a nationalist group of middle-
ranking and younger officers conspired to seize
power to provide Egypt with new leadership.
Calling themselves the Free Officers, they were
led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.
To provide a figurehead among the generals,
General Neguib was won over to the conspiracy,
but most of the senior military commanders
remained loyal to the king.
Farouk believed he could rely on the army and
underestimated the conspirators. They seized
power in a bloodless coup in July 1952. The old
order had collapsed without a fight. Farouk was
allowed to depart on his luxury yacht into exile.
It was a revolution from above without any really
popular participation. But there was no lament
over Farouk and the departed politicians either.
They had made too many enemies among influ-
ential groups, including the powerful Muslim
Brotherhood, to be able to offer any effective
resistance. Nor did the British see any reason for
defending Farouk, who had so recently turned
violently on the British presence in Egypt. They
adopted a wait-and-see approach. There was no
rioting in Cairo and the people evidently accepted
the transfer of power.
The revolutionary colonels purged the army
of the senior officers who had remained loyal to
Farouk. Beyond this the Free Officers had no
constructive plans for a new society or state.
They knew, however, what they wished to end:
the monarchy and corruption, British imperialism
and Egypt’s military weakness. When General
Neguib sought real power, Nasser ousted him in
the spring of 1954 and became Egypt’s sole
authoritarian leader. The Muslim Brotherhood,
however, and the Wafd, both of which could still
command popular mass support, stood in his
way. They had taken the side of Neguib, so
Nasser now marked them down for suppression.
His own support, he noted, had come from
the army and from the poor. Socialism, with its
promises, appealed to the masses, and Nasser
realised that by espousing it he would strengthen
his popular base. He had come to power with
no ready-made ideology; the two characteristic
features of his regime, socialism and pan-Arabism,
were only gradually developed and adopted.
Fundamentally, however, it remained a military
dictatorship which won mass support from the
Egyptian people. It relied heavily on his personal
charisma.
Was there a clear division in the mid-twentieth
century between those countries that used force
to get their way and those that accepted inter-
national standards and took their obligations
under the Charter of the United Nations seri-
ously? The Suez Crisis and the Hungarian ris-
ing occurring at the same time in November
1956, should have demonstrated to the world
that contrast in the international behaviour of the
powerful when confronting the weak. But it did
not, at least to begin with. Yet it was British scru-
ples, the wish to appear to be acting with right
on its side, which ensured the failure of the
Anglo-French attack on Egypt. The figleaf of rec-
titude with which the ingenious French had
attempted to cover the aggression proved too
transparent. There was an outcry in Britain and
the government lost the necessary backing of a
deeply divided electorate at home. Without that
backing a democratic country could not for long
wage a distant war. In the end the free world did
not behave as the Soviets were doing in Hungary,
and for one reason: the most powerful democ-
racy, the US, compelled Britain and France to
withdraw and to accept the will of the United
Nations, whereas Soviet control over Hungary
after the brutal repression was allowed to endure.
None of the countries involved, Egypt, Israel,
Britain, the US, France and the other Arab
nations, followed clear and consistent policies
from the beginnings of negotiations in 1954 to
1
1956: CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST – SUEZ 441
