E60: The Bread Intifada, part 2

Working Class History

Society & Culture, Education, History

5.0 • 813 Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Concluding part of our double podcast episode on the 1977 Bread Intifada in Egypt. We speak with journalist and revolutionary socialist, Hossam el-Hamalawy, about the uprising and its significance today.

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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 show notes, acknowledgements, sources, more information and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/blog/e59-60-the-bread-intifada/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to our double episode on Egypt's 1977 bred Intifada, in which we speak to journalist and revolutionary socialist Hossam El Hamalawi.
0:09.7	If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, it's probably best you go back and listen to that first, as it goes through the struggles which set the stage for what we talk about in this episode.
0:37.2	When we left off in the previous episode, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had begun introducing his infathech or
0:38.4	open-door policy of neoliberal reforms against the backdrop of growing political and social unrest.
0:44.3	These reforms and opposition to them would come to ahead in January 1977.
0:50.4	When January 1977 arrived, it was time for the government to declare its new financial budget.
0:59.7	And everyone was expecting the so-called flow of wealth from the West, you know, I mean to flood the country, as that was promising them.
1:08.8	Instead, on the night of the 17th of January, the government decided to buy shock therapy,
1:19.5	as Sadat called it, to shock the public into lifting all the subsidies, or most of the subsidies from the basic commodities that the Egyptian
1:30.6	people were dependent on. In Egypt, you know, we call bread, and Aish is also Arabic for living.
1:38.7	And this just tells you how much important is this item in the food basket of Egyptians.
1:46.9	So the government shocked the public into announcing that, you know,
1:50.7	they are lifting the subsidies and they were doing away with all the subsidies
1:54.2	and the prices of bread and the basic commodities that Egyptians were dependent on
1:59.9	increased by more than 100%.
2:02.9	So the reaction came immediately.
2:08.7	Few protests started on the night of the 17th in the working class neighborhoods in Cairo.
2:16.4	But on the following day, the entire country went on strike,
2:23.2	not organized by any political group or by any trade unions. The people took to the streets,
2:31.2	students, workers, all sectors of society that was oppressed by the state took to the streets, students, workers, all sectors of society that was oppressed by the state, took to
2:38.0	the streets. They were confronted by the Central Security Forces who opened live ammunition,
2:45.8	but still could not repress the revolt. And in scenes that were more or less repeated decades later on the Friday of Anger,
	...

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