Wafd Party
와프드당
An Egyptian liberal nationalist party that grew out of the "Egyptian Delegation" (Wafd) formed by Saad Zaghloul after the First World War to demand independence. After the Revolution of 1919 it was Egypt's most popular and influential party from the end of the war through the 1930s, played a major part in the 1923 constitution, and held office for most of the period from 1924 to 1952. It was dissolved with all other parties in January 1953 after the 1952 revolution and resumed activity in 1978 as the New Wafd Party.
In depth
According to the Arabic source, Saad Zaghloul conceived of forming an Egyptian delegation to take up the Egyptian question after the armistice of 1918. On 13 November 1918 Zaghloul and his Legislative Assembly colleagues Abd al-Aziz Fahmi and Ali Sha'rawi met the British High Commissioner Wingate to ask leave to go to London and present Egypt's demands. When Wingate suggested that they did not represent the Egyptian nation, the founders drew up the founding rules of the "Egyptian Delegation" (Wafd) within an hour of the meeting, chose Zaghloul as its head, and gathered signatures to prove their representative standing. The English source states that the party was founded in November 1918.
The arrest and exile of Zaghloul and his colleagues to Malta on 8 March 1919 set off the Revolution of 1919, which did much to establish Zaghloul's leadership and the Wafd's strength. In the first genuine legislative election in 1924 the Wafd defeated the Liberal Constitutional Party and the National Party, won a parliamentary majority and formed Egypt's first parliamentary government under its leader Zaghloul. Thereafter the Wafd, the majority party, held office for most of the period from 1924 to 1952; the English source records 179 of 211 seats in 1924 and 89% of the vote and 157 seats in 1936. Its leaders were Zaghloul (1919 until his death in 1927) and Mustafa el-Nahhas (1927 until the dissolution in 1953).
In 1936 the party formed an open paramilitary youth organisation, the "Blue Shirts", but a decree banning paramilitary organisations followed in 1937. Quarrels over the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 led to the expulsion of Ahmad Mahir and Mahmoud Fahmi el-Nokrashy in 1938, who founded the Saadist party, and in 1942 secretary-general Makram Ebeid was expelled after a dispute with el-Nahhas and founded the Wafdist Bloc. The English source attributes the loss of popular support to the failure of youth mobilisation and to the party's accommodation of the British presence after the 1936 treaty.
After the Free Officers' revolution of 1952 the Revolutionary Command Council dissolved all parties in January 1953, the Wafd among them. The party resumed political activity under the name New Wafd Party in 1978, after President Anwar Sadat permitted a multi-party system, under the leadership of Fouad Serageldin, who had joined the Wafd in 1946 and become its secretary-general in 1948.