E59: The Bread Intifada, part 1
Working Class History
Working Class History
5.0 • 813 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Music used in this episode under fair use was “Build Your Palaces” by Sheikh Imam. Available to stream here. We attempted to find copyright holders but were unsuccessful; if anyone has any information about this, please email info@workingclasshistory.com.
For more information on the Bread Intifada, reading Hossam’s 2001 Master’s thesis on the subject: https://arabawy.org/111742/1977/
See also Lafif Lakhdar’s ‘The development of class struggle in Egypt’ in Khamsin: Journal of revolutionary socialists of the Middle-East, issue #5: https://libcom.org/library/development-class-struggle-egypt
Full acknowledgements, show notes, photos, sources and more information on the webpage for this episode here: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e59-60-the-bread-intifada/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the 18th of January, 1977, Egypt erupted into a huge popular uprising against the government's removal of food subsidies. |
| 0:08.0 | For two days, hundreds of thousands of people across the country were variously involved in strikes, riots, occupations, looting and sabotage, |
| 0:16.0 | while around 70 people were killed and over 500 injured. |
| 0:20.0 | Described by the President at the time, while Sadat as the uprising of thieves, |
| 0:25.5 | the Egyptian people called it by a different name, the bread uprising. |
| 0:29.7 | This is working-class history. Just before we're only able to continue making these podcasts because of our listeners on Patreon. |
| 0:53.3 | If you like what we do and want to help us |
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| 1:00.5 | early access to episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted books, merch and more. You'll also be |
| 1:06.3 | able to listen to Part 2 and the bonus content for this episode right now. Link in the show notes. |
| 1:12.6 | In order to talk about the 1977 uprising, it's important to put it in the context of social |
| 1:17.6 | tensions which had been growing in Egypt in the decade leading up to it. As such, this episode will |
| 1:22.9 | focus a bit more on the increasingly radical struggles of workers and students in Egypt leading |
| 1:27.5 | up to 1977, while the next episode will look at the events of the uprising itself. |
| 1:33.7 | For these episodes, we spoke to Egyptian journalist and revolutionary socialist |
| 1:37.8 | Hossam El Hamalawi. As Hossam explains, many countries around the world were affected by the |
| 1:43.2 | post-1968 wave of radicalism |
| 1:45.4 | and rebellion. Egypt was no exception. When uprisings happen, they don't just happen out of the blue. |
| 1:54.3 | They usually are preceded by a long process where dissent and anger is brewing on the one hand. |
| 2:04.1 | And on the other hand, the people or the masses have been struggling and getting into |
| 2:11.2 | small fights here and there, whereby they are gaining experience, they are tweaking their own strategy and tactics related to the |
| 2:21.6 | struggle. So when an uprising explodes, it is usually a climax of a long process that started |
... |
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