Davis 397Iraq State Railways, among the port workers of Basra, and in the oil sector.
Indeed, it was the Association of Artisans and the new labor unions that
played the central role in organizing opposition to the British. Once again,
cross-ethnic cooperation was critical to the strike’s success.^25
any other examples can be given to demonstrate cross-ethnic M
cooperation, such as strikes against British and Iraqi-owned firms that
refused to give workers decent salaries and working conditions. What was
notable about many of these strikes was the workers’ refusal to return to
work until imprisoned strike leaders were returned to their jobs, espe-
cially when this refusal came even after offers of increased salaries or bet-
ter working conditions. The solidarity manifested by workers from a wide
variety of ethnic backgrounds was indicative of the lack of penetration
of sectarian consciousness among large segments of Iraq’s lower classes.
After the July 1958 revolution, there was a veritable outburst of labor
union activity and organization. By the summer of 1959, over 200 labor
unions were registered with the Iraqi government.^26
e post-World War II nationalist uprisings, such as the WathbaTh
[Great Leap] of 1948, the Intifada of 1952, and the demonstrations and
riots of 1955 and 1956 against the Baghdad Pact and the Tripartite inva-
sion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel respectively, were hallmarks
of cross-ethnic solidarity. The June 1954 elections, the most open in Iraqi
history prior to those held in 2005, underscored not only the ability of
Sunni and Shi‘i Arabs to work together to win seats in the Iraqi parlia-
ment but to unite political parties of different ideologies.^27 Despite efforts
by the newly formed Arab Socialist Ba‘th Party to disrupt the National
Electoral Front [al-Jabha al-Intikhabiyya al-Wataniyya], formed in 1952
between Iraqist, or local nationalists, and moderate Arab nationalists, i.e.,
the Independence Party [Hizb al-Istiqlal], the parties in the Front never
wavered in their solidarity.
Commitment to associational behavior
The second conceptual component that underscores the existence of a
public sphere in Iraq is a commitment to associational behavior. From the
onset of the nationalist movement, Iraqis have been joiners and began
developing a network of civic, commercial, intellectual and political