The British refused to evacuate until arrangements were made for peacetime maintenance of the base facilities in Egypt and for their defense against sudden attack. Field Marshal William Slim traveled to Cairo in early June to persuade the Egyptians that peacetime defense cooperation with Britain would serve Egypt's interests. Although the Egyptians seemed to recognize this, they refused to consider joint defense planning until Britain agreed to evacuate Egypt. The reconciliation of Egyptian national aspirations with British strategic interests seemed impossible, and Bevin failed to achieve a new base pact.

Only five days later, British and Egyptian soldiers exchanged gunfire in Ismailia. Five Egyptian troops fell dead, Egyptians across the country sought revenge through a campaign that included Fedayeen attacks on British troops and sabotage of transportation, communications, and other facilities in the Suez Canal Zone. The British responded by airlifting paratroopers into the zone, establishing roadblocks, seizing electricity plants and telephone exchanges, and temporarily suspending the delivery of fuel oil to Cairo. The oil embargo drew thousands of Egyptians into the streets of the capital in a wild display of anti-Western sentiment and ruined the goodwill of Britain's most powerful Egyptian sympathizer, King Farouq, Jefferson Caffery the American ambassador in Cairo, observed that the king has lost most of his friendly feeling for the British.

The British willingness to use force increased when Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden returned to office as prime minister and foreign secretary on 26 October 1951. In early December, however, Egyptian fedayeens killed two British soldiers, and British officials again shut off all fuel oil deliveries to Cairo. Egyptian demonstrators filled the streets of every major town in protest, and Fedayeens bombed the British army water filtration plant near Suez and ambushed soldiers who drove through town to the scene of the explosion, killing ten. In response, on 8 December British troops constructed a new road between an army outpost and the plant, a task that required them to raze 107 houses in the village Kafr Abou. Popular protests erupted across Egypt, violence increased, and Prime Minister Nahhas recalled his ambassador from London.

The escalating violence and tension ruined the American hope that Egyptian leaders would reconsider the MEC proposals. Mohammed Salah el-Din the Egyptian foreign minister complained to Caffery that the British have regrettably succeeded in dragging you in as a third party on their side of the dispute, and he refused to reconsider MEC membership. Moreover, American attempts to convince other Arab powers to join MEC were blocked by Egyptian pressure on them publicly to 
endorse Egypt's policy. The Arab states refrained from that step, but they also refused to consider MEC until Britain and Egypt settled their disputes. Furthermore, the violence provoked Egyptian nationalism to anti-Western extremes. The fedayeens had become "national heroes," Caffery reported, and the press calls upon them daily for bigger and better outrages against British troops.

Disturbing assessments of the violence in Egypt contributed to Acheson's new interest in the situation. It is time for us to take note of what we may be in for, Caffery warned. In the absence of British concessions, the canal zone may explode at no distant date, an explosion with a potential chain reaction of occupation, revolution, and eventual Communist domination. Although current British policy could safeguard immediate interests, army planners agreed, a formula must be found which will respond more adequately to genuine Egyptian national aspirations, since Egypt has an abiding strategic importance to the West. 

After visiting Cairo in early December, US army planners agreed with Caffery. They found anti-British sentiment so strong that it threatened American interests such as access to operational air bases in the Suez Canal Zone.

The United States must use its remaining prestige in Egypt, US  army planners advised, to revamp the concept of the MEC in order to give more flattery to Egyptian vanity. However quick to detect insincerity, the Egyptians preferred frankness to flattery. The British had forfeited the confidence of the Egyptians by arousing expectations they were not willing to fulfill. They had, for example, according to Egyptian count, promised sixty-six times between 1882 and 1922 to withdraw from Egypt. By 1950 they had little credibility left, for they seemed not to take Egyptians seriously. In addition, some concession on the Sudan issue seemed essential, Egypt was rapidly going down the drain and will soon be lost unless the trend is soon reversed. If this happens the US will have to revise its policy toward the whole Arab world.

In December 1951,  Dean Acheson agreed that the current British policy would lead to disaster. We consider Egyptian nationalism, he explained to Eden, a deeply-rooted movement which will neither subside nor alter its course by mere passage of time.

Egypt would not consider any Western proposals as long as British troops remained on Egyptian soil, especially after Churchill invited American "token forces" to the Suez Canal Zone. This response confirmed to Acheson and his advisers that the success of MEC depended on British concessions.

Nahhas Pasha then called some 40,000 Egyptian workers off their jobs in the Suez Canal Zone. The British suspended oil to Egypt. Guerrilla warfare broke out in the Suez Canal Zone between British "Tommies" and the "Liberation Phalanxes" of Egyptian students and Moslem Brothers, assisted on occasion by the Egyptian auxiliary police, known as Buluk Nizam.

By the end of 1951 it had, however, become abundantly evident that the Egyptians would no longer accept the British presence, whatever the display of Anglo-American solidarity. Dean Acheson explained the situation to Churchill and Eden on their visit to Washington in January 1952 in a parable. The United States and Great Britain, he said, were like two lovers in a boat drifting down to Niagara Falls. To save themselves they must break off their embrace.

On January 19, a pitched battle took place between British troops and Egyptian commandos marching on the supply depot at Tel El-Kebir. on the 25th, six days after a Fedayeen bomb killed two British soldiers, British soldiers in retaliation attacked the barracks of the Buluk Nizam at Ismailia with tanks and artillery pieces to disarm the police.  The police resisted, shooting started, and seventy Egyptian policemen and four British soldiers died in the battle. The next day, Cairo erupted in massive protests against the British action at Ismailia. 

January 26 was "Black Saturday" in Cairo. Rioting began in the center of the city near the opera house at about noon and continued until late in the afternoon, while Farouq entertained about 600 Army and police officers at a banquet in Abdin palace. The demonstrations turned violent, and frenzied mobs ransacked the capital, torching 750 buildings and killing twenty-six Westerners before Farouq ordered the Egyptian army to quell the violence. 

The first tremors of an upcoming revolution were felt in January 1952 when the Egyptian government momentarily lost control of its capital to the mob. As one British official rightly observed, Egypt seemed to approach "the jaws of revolution."
 

TO BE CONTINUED
 
 

(1) See, for example, Herken, Gregg. The Winning Weapon : The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945-1950 , pp 224-29. New York: Knopf, 1980.

(2)Borowski, Harry R.  A Hollow Threat: Strategic Air Power and Containment before Korea., pp. 95-107, 123-25.  Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1982. 

(3) McGhee, George. Envoy to the Middle World. New York: Harper and Row p. 53. See also Condit Kenneth W. The History of chiefs of Staff. Vol.,2 The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, pp. 240-46 1947=1949 Wilmingtom, Del.: Glazier, 1979.

(4) Leffler, Melvyn  "The  Americain Conception of National Security and the Beginning of the Cold War, 1945-1948," pp. 374-77 " Americain Historical Review 89 ( April 1984) 346-400.

(5) James V. Forrestal diary, 7 Jan. 1948. Forrestal Papers. Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. 

(6) Report by S.A.C. Headquarters , 2 Apr. 1948. 

Video --BBC cameraman Kenneth Higgins 
                  filmed this report on the Riots in Egypt, January 26, 1952