If the Wafd’s Sa’d Zaghlul was the hero of Egypt’s liberal age, then Ismail Sidqi was certainly its villain. Sidqi had gone to the Paris Peace Conference with the Wafd delegation in 1919, only to fall out with Zaghlul and be expelled from the party on his return to Egypt. He was one of the architects of the 1922 treaty conferring limited independence on Egypt—which Zaghlul had always opposed. The further Sidqi fell from Zaghlul’s graces, the greater he grew in King Fuad’s esteem. By 1930 Sidqi and his monarch were united by a common goal of destroying the Wafd party under its new leader, Mustafa al-Nahhas. The Wafd swept to power once again in January 1930 after a landslide victory in the 1929 elections in which the nationalist party secured a record 212 of 235 parliamentary seats. The king invited al-Nahhas to form a government. Given his electoral mandate, al-Nahhas entered into a new round of negotiations with British Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson to secure Egypt’s illusive independence. Between March 31 and May 8, the governments of Egypt and Britain engaged in extensive negotiations. The two sides came to a deadlock over Sudan, with Britain insisting on separating discussion of Egypt’s independence and Sudan’s future, and the Egyptians refusing independence exclusive of Sudan. The breakdown in Anglo-Egyptian negotiations provided an opportunity for the Wafd’s enemies—the king and rival parties—to call for a new government. Al-Nahhas tendered his government’s resignation in June 1930. In the summer of 1930 the king and the British were in agreement: the government had to be placed in a ?safe pair of hands.? Sidqi was the obvious candidate. The king’s chamberlain called on Sidqi at his gentleman’s club in Cairo to sound out his willingness to form a minority government. “I am honoured by His Majesty’s confidence in me,” Sidqi replied, “but I wish to inform him, should he decide to appoint me at this critical juncture, that my policies would start from a clean slate and that I would reorganize parliamentary life in accordance with my views on the Constitution and the need for stable government.”²⁹ Sidqi’s response only confirmed the king’s high opinion of the man. Sidqi had already declared his hostility to liberal democracy, denouncing the “parliamentary autocracy which the 1923 Constitution afforded, with the tyranny of the majority over the minority.” He wanted to free government from constitutional bonds and rule by decree in partnership with the king. The king sent his chamberlain to inform Sidqi that he was “very comfortable with his policies” and invited him to form a cabinet. Taking the helm of government for the first time in June 1930, Sidqi consolidated his grip over government by claiming three cabinet portfolios. In addition to the premiership, he assumed control of the ministries of finance and the interior. Fuad and Sidqi worked together to dissolve the Parliament, postpone elections, and draft a new constitution conferring yet more power on the king. For the next three years, Egypt’s parliamentary democracy was overthrown and the country ruled by royal decree. Sidqi made no attempt to hide his autocratic politics and his disregard for the democratic process. “It was inevitable that I would suspend the Parliament” at the end of June 1930, Sidqi confided in his memoirs, “in order to proceed to the reorganization that I had come to initiate.” When al-Nahhas and his colleagues called for mass demonstrations protesting the suspension of the Parliament, Sidqi did not hesitate to crush the movement. “I did not wait until this opposition turned to a civil war” before taking action, Sidqi explained. He sent out the army to break up the demonstrations, and violence ensued. Three days after the royal decree that terminated the parliamentary session, twenty-five demonstrators were killed in Alexandria; nearly 400 were wounded. “Unfortunately,” Sidqi continued, with the moustache-twirling panache of a vaudeville villain, “painful events occurred in Cairo, Alexandria and some rural cities. The government had no alternative but to preserve order and prevent the offenders from disturbing public order and breaking the law.”³⁰ The British cautioned both Prime Minister Sidqi and nationalist leader al-Nahhas but did not interfere in a fight that would divert the Egyptians from their pursuit of greater freedom from British rule. Sidqi justified his political philosophy on grounds that, in a time of economic troubles, leaders could only achieve progress and prosperity through peace and order. The crash of 1929 had ushered in a global depression that had left its mark on the Egyptian economy, and in the face of economic disruption, Sidqi viewed the Wafd and its brand of mass politics as a grave threat to public order. In October 1930, Sidqi introduced a new constitution that expanded the powers of the king at the expense of the Wafd. It reduced the number of deputies in the Parliament from 235 to 150 and gave the king control over the upper chamber by expanding the proportion of appointed senators from 40 to 60 percent, leaving only a minority to be chosen by popular vote. Sidqi?s constitution reduced universal suffrage, replacing the system of direct elections to a more complex two-stage voting process, in which the voting age was increased for the first round and introducing restrictions to the second round of voting based on financial criteria or levels of education. These measures served to take voting power from the masses (on whose support the Wafd relied) and concentrate electoral authority in the propertied elite. The powers of the legislature were reduced, as the length of the parliamentary session was reduced from six to five months, and the king?s powers to defer bills were expanded. The new constitution was blatantly autocratic and provoked nearly unanimous opposition from politicians across the political spectrum and the general public. When the press criticized Sidqi and the 1930 Constitution, he simply closed the papers down and locked the journalists up. Even those who initially supported Sidqi found their papers closed. The journalists responded by printing underground leaflets that made virulent attacks against the autocratic government and its authoritarian constitution. Sidqi formed his own party in 1931, when parliamentary elections loomed under the terms of the new constitution. Ever the political loner who had consistently eschewed party affiliation, Sidqi knew that he needed a party behind him to secure a parliamentary majority. He called his new party the People’s Party, an inversion of reality worthy of George Orwell’s 1984. Sidqi attracted ambitious defectors from the Liberal Constitutional Party, and from the palace’s own Unity Party—men of the elite, not of the people. The party’s program gave ample material for satirists in the opposition press, pledging “assistance to the constitutional order,” the “preservation of the people’s sovereignty” and upholding “the rights of the throne” (King Fuad had chosen well).³¹ The Wafd and the Liberal Constitutional Party both boycotted the elections of May 1931, and Sidqi’s People’s Party achieved an outright majority. His autocratic revolution seemed on the verge of success. Yet ultimately Sidqi failed. His autocratic reforms provoked opposition from the real people’s party, the Wafd, and the other major political parties. The press, refusing to be silenced, kept up a steady barrage to turn public opinion against Sidqi’s government. Security conditions began to deteriorate as the public grew more outspoken against Sidqi’s government. Sidqi had always justified autocratic rule in terms of providing law and order. Faced with growing disorder, the British began to pressure for a new government to restore public confidence and curb political violence. Sidqi’s revolution had stalled and was now coming undone. In September 1933 the king dismissed his prime minister. Down but not out, Sidqi would remain one of Egypt?s most influential politicians until his death in 1950. King Fuad made a brief stab at absolute rule. He repealed Sidqi’s 1930 Constitution by royal decree without restoring the earlier 1923 Constitution, and he dissolved the Parliament elected in 1931 without calling for new elections. The king assumed full power over Egypt for a transition period of unspecified duration. Needless to say, these measures were no more successful in restoring public confidence in the Egyptian government, and King Fuad came under pressure from both the British and the Wafd to restore Egypt’s 1923 Constitution and prepare for new elections. On December 12, 1935, King Fuad conceded defeat and decreed the restoration of the original constitution. The political deadlock between the British, the palace, and the Wafd was finally broken in 1936. In April of that year, King Fuad died and was succeeded by his handsome young son, Faruq. Elections were held in May and returned a Wafd majority. These two developments—the return of the Wafd to power and Faruq’s coronation—were greeted with a great sense of optimism, a sort of Cairo spring. This was matched by a new British openness to renegotiate the terms of its relations with Egypt. The rise of fascism in Europe, and Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, gave new urgency to securing Egyptian consent to Britain’s position. German and Italian propaganda against British colonialism had begun to turn some heads in Egypt. Ultra nationalist new parties like Young Egypt espoused openly fascist ideologies. To counter these dangers, the British high commissioner, Sir Miles Lampson, opened new negotiations in Cairo in March 1936. A new treaty was concluded between an all-party Egyptian delegation and the British government and signed into law in August 1936. The Treaty of Preferential Alliance expanded Egypt’s sovereignty and independence, though like the Iraqi treaty it gave Britain preferential standing among foreign nations and the right to keep military bases on Egyptian soil. It also left Sudan under British control. The gains were enough to secure Egypt’s admission to the League of Nations in 1937, five years after Iraq’s entry and the only other Arab state to join the international organization. But the compromises made, and the twenty-year duration of the treaty, pushed Egyptian aspirations for complete independence beyond the political horizon. The experiences of the 1930s left many Egyptians disenchanted with the party politics of liberal democracy. Though the Egyptians rejected Sidqi’s autocracy, they were never satisfied with the results the Wafd obtained. Zaghlul had promised to deliver Egypt from British rule in 1922, and al-Nahhas promised the same in 1936, yet the elusive promise of independence remained a generation away.