Wafd Party - Rise To Preeminence

Rise To Preeminence

The three-decade period between Britain's nominal exit in 1922 and the nationalist revolution of 1952 saw the erection of an uneasy balance of power between the King, the British Residency, and the Wafd leadership, of which the Wafd was the least powerful. In the fragile stability of this triangle, the Wafd became Egypt's preeminent political organization, described by contemporary historians as "the first in the field," "the best organized," and "the strongest numerically." In the 1924 parliamentary election the Wafd won 179 of 211 parliamentary seats. In 1936 it won 89% of the vote and 157 seats in Parliament.

However, ties between the Wafd and the two other axes of power - the King and the Residency - were strained by the party's raison d'être of opposing British intervention in Egypt and the King's collusion therein. King Fuad I's relations with the Wafd were described as "cool," and ties between the unelected monarch and the largest political party further deteriorated after Fuad's son Farouk, who succeeded his father to the sultanate, signed an unduly quiescent treaty with the British in 1936. This alienated the party that had arisen primarily out of popular resentment of British control of Egypt and commanded popular support by associating itself most closely with the nationalist struggle for full Egyptian independence.