The Egyptian Uprising of 1968 was an uprising of workers and students in Egypt in 1968 for calls for political, military and educational reform.
Background
In Egypt, in the early 1950s, a military coup had displaced the British puppet king and led to the establishment of a regime under Gamal Abdel Nasser, which, while ‘speaking for the people’ (the peasants and workers) was hostile not only to the feudal landowners but also to any political opposition or any attempt to create independent trade unions to represent the working class directly. Egypt’s defeat by Israel in June 1967 led to a political as well as a military crisis and Nasser’s resignation as president. He returned after massive popular demonstrations in his support. But his credentials were damaged.
Events
Febuary
In February 1968, students and workers launched protests calling for political reforms. The first move was made by steel workers in Helwan (to the south of Cairo) protesting the military court’s lenient ruling in the case of the military aviation officers accused of negligence during the June war. They were joined on 21 February – which is Egyptian Student Day – by up to 100,000 students from major universities in Cairo and Alexandria. The Cairo uprising alone resulted in the death of two workers and the wounding of 77 citizens, as well as 146 police officers. Some 635 people were also arrested, and some vehicles and buildings were destroyed in the capital. The protest obliged Nasser to give a major speech in response, which, in the light of the June 1967 defeat, was exceptionally conciliatory. Seen by some as the most significant public challenge to is regime since workers’ protests in March 1954, this popular movement forced Nasser to issue a manifesto promising the restoration of civil liberties, greater parliamentary independence from the executive, major structural changes, and a campaign to rid the government of corrupt elements. A public referendum approved the proposed measures in May 1968, and elections were held for the Supreme Executive Committee. Hailed at the time as signaling an important shift from political repression to liberalization, the manifesto and the promised measures would largely remain unfulfilled.
Further student unrest broke out in November 1968 following the announcement of a new education law. The uprising began with protests by high school students in the city of Mansoura. They were joined by university students and others, including peasants, and the next day, demonstrations resulted in clashes with the security forces which led to the death of three students and a farmer as well as the wounding of 32 protesters, nine police officers and 14 soldiers. News of the events in Mansoura reached Alexandria University, where leaders of the student movement from the engineering faculty launched massive protests and clashed with police forces, in which some 53 policemen and 30 students were injured.
The head of the Faculty of Engineering Student Union, Atef Al-Shater, and three of his colleagues were arrested. The governor of Alexandria tried to convince the students not to escalate the situation, but they held him inside the faculty and did not allow him to leave until Al-Shater and his colleagues were released. The national assembly discussed the problem of the new law the day after the governor of Alexandria was detained. On 25 November there was a strike by workers in Alexandria as well as large-scale demonstrations which ended in clashes with the police, resulting in 16 deaths.
Fifty public buses were smashed, along with 270 tram windshields, 116 traffic lights, 29 stalls, 11 shop windows and a number of other public transport and private vehicles and lampposts. A sit-in staged by the Faculty of Engineering ended without achieving any significant results because of the lack of food during the days of Ramadan and power outages suffered by the protestors, as well as the withdrawal of the union leader from the sit-in and the governor’s threat to evacuate the building by force. Those who were arrested during the sit-in were transferred to the courts for trial, but ultimately, no trials were held. After three months of being detained, the students were released but their leaders were sent for military service.