21 February 1946 On Thursday 21 February 1946, British troops opened fire, with machine guns, on protesters in Midan Ismailiya (now better known as Tahrir Square) in central Cairo, killing twenty and injuring about 300.1 According to a report in the Scotsman the following day: ‘The Square outside the Kasr El Nil Barracks was a smoke-filled battleground…
[ 11 July 1882 ] On 11 July 1882, shortly after sunrise, a British fleet of fourteen warships began a deafening bombardment of Alexandria’s coastal defences and harbour area. It followed Egypt’s refusal to accept Britain’s supposed right to oversee and manage the country’s budget, which included huge payments in interest to the Suez Canal…
23 December 2005 Today in 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair, his wife Cherie and four children flew off to Egypt on, as his spin doctor Alistair Campbell politely put it, ‘another of his controversial holidays.’ Campbell also noted in a footnote to the diary entry that ‘Blair had previously been criticized for accepting hospitality from…
2 November 1956 In the early hours of 2 November 1956, the U.N. General Assembly expressed ‘its grave concern’ that the ‘armed forces of France and the United Kingdom are conducting military operations against Egyptian territory,’ that ‘the armed forces of Israel have penetrated deeply into Egyptian territory’, and that as a consequence the shipping…
1 November 1956 On 1 November 1956, an editorial in the Daily Mail was headlined ‘Britain at War’, however neither Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd nor Minister of Defence Antony Head were able to confirm whether or not the country was actually at war with Egypt. The infuriating lack of clarity fomented consternation among MPs and the speaker…
13 September 1882 Today in 1882, a British army advancing on Cairo, under the command of General Sir Garnet Wolseley, butchered hundreds of Egyptians, who were either fleeing for their lives or lying wounded and helpless on the battlefield of Tel el-Kebir.  A reporter who watched the battle, informed his readers that British cavalry committed ‘fearful…
3 August 1956 On 3 August 1956, The Times reported that Billy Butlin, the owner of Bultins amusement parks and holiday homes, would not allow any Egyptians to participate in the annual cross-Channel swimming race he sponsored. The surprise announcement came a week after Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. The Egyptian swimming team…
10 June 1893 Tora prison, on the southern edge of Cairo, is notorious for housing thousands of Egyptian political prisoners in dire conditions. As a former inmate, I can assure anyone that there are few, if any, prisons anywhere in the world which are more feared. It had a similarly unenviable reputation under British rule….
21 February 2011 On 21 February 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Cairo, ostensibly to support Egypt’s first tentative steps towards a possible democracy, in the wake of the protests which had just toppled the former dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Accompanying the PM, were a coterie of British businessmen, including several senior CEOs from the…
25 January 1952 By January 1952, the British Army, which was still stationed in Egypt’s Suez Canal Zone, was growing increasingly frustrated by attacks on its positions by small groups of Egyptian guerrilla fighters, who were determined to force their former colonial masters to evacuate. The British suspected the Egyptian police of failing to crack…
