Mature Life and Career
In 1934, Darwish returned to Egypt and started his career as a labour lawyer and political organizer. Together with two other Egyptian Jewish activists - Ahmad Sadiq Sa'd and Raymond Douek- he established a new secret Egyptian communist organization known as Al-Fajr Al-Jadid (Arabic: لفجر الجديد) or the New Dawn, that was linked to many trade unions. By the mid-1940s, Darwish had become the legal representer to 67 of Egypt's then 170 labour unions, for which he worked with minimal or no fees.
In 1946, Darwish co- founded the Workers Committee for National Liberation (WCNL), the first formal Marxist organisation in Egypt. WCNL was an anti-imperialistic movement that demanded ending the British occupation of Egypt, liberation of the Egyptian economy from foreign influence, development of the Egyptian economy, nationalization of all monopolies including the nationalization of Suez Canal and other health, educational and political reforms such as voting rights for women and expansion of civil liberties. WCNL later turned to the "Workers and Peasants Communist Party (WPCP)" and then fused with other communist organizations at the time in the "Communist Party of Egypt (CPE)" (Arabic: الحزب الشيوعى المصرى), which then split into CPE and HADETU.
In 1958, the former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser arrested and jailed all known communist activists, including Darwish. He remained in prison for 6 years, during which he was frequently beaten and tortured. After his release, he became a secretary for the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) . He was rearrested again in 1973 during President Sadat's regime: imprisoned for 3 months for communist agitation, he subsequently left Egypt for 13 years to live in Algeria and Czechoslovakia. After returning to Egypt in 1986, he worked in supporting and advising the Center for trade Union and Workers Services in Helwan. He also helped Ahmed Nabil El-Hilali establish the People’s Socialist Party.
Read more about this topic: Youssef Darwish
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