the corrupt and repressive Hashemite monarchy was British colonialism's legacy to the people of Iraq. At the end of the First World War the first king, Faisal, had briefly created an Arab kingdom centred on Damascus, before being ejected by French troops. British advisers now lobbied for him to be offered the throne of Iraq. Creating the new Iraqi monarchy proved to be a difficult task. It took thousands of British troops and £40 million to suppress a huge uprising in 1920. Unrest and nationalist agitation continued for months afterwards.
A combination of repression and bribery eventually secured Faisal's place on the throne. Iraq gained nominal independence in 1932 and a seat in the League of Nations. In reality little changed: British advisers remained firmly in power behind the scenes, and a treaty between the two governments maintained Britain's military domination of Iraq.
16 It was the negotiations over the extension of this treaty which provided the spark for a wave of mass protests across Iraq in 1948.
Even in the 1920s the social base of support for the Iraqi monarchy had been very thin. By the 1940s this layer was even more isolated, as new social forces, such as the growing working class, the urban poor and the new middle class, combined in protest at its continued domination. The government's usual answer was increased repression. Parties were banned, strikers shot down, and Communists executed in public. As early as 1946 even the British embassy was wringing its hands in despair. A report from the chancery in Baghdad to the Foreign Office noted: 'With the old gang in power this country cannot hope to progress very far'.
A growing sense of social polarisation added to the tension. The cost of basic goods sky-rocketed during the 1940s, and although wages rose as the war economy expanded, they could not keep pace with the cost of living.
18 With the end of the war, jobs dependent on the British army evaporated, adding thousands to the ranks of the unemployed when prices and rents remained ruinously high. War profiteering combined with an oil boom allowed a thin layer of the elite to indulge in conspicuous consumption. The arrogance of the rich sharpened the anger of the nationalist demonstrations. In the minds of many Iraqis, the interests of their own ruling class were indistinguishable from the interests of British imperialism.
Moreover, foreign capitalists were not the only people who were getting rich. Large landowners dominated the small local ruling class. A boom in agricultural production increased the wealth and power of this tiny handful. In an effort to provide a social base for their imported monarchy, British colonial officials had played an important role in consolidating the power of this class. Changes to the property laws during the 1920s made tribal sheikhs' and politicians' fortunes overnight. The landlords had every interest in continuing to work with the colonial powers to maintain their domination of the Iraqi economy. As Phebe Marr explains: 'Iraq [was] highly dependent upon the export of two primary products--oil and agricultural products--the one controlled by foreign interests and the other by a group of wealthy landlords'.
Meanwhile industrialisation, even on a small scale, pulled people out of the villages into the great urban centres. Baghdad's population doubled in size between 1922 and 1946. However, many migrants did not find the work they were looking for. Instead they swelled the growing ranks of the urban poor and unemployed. 'Sarifahs'--mud-walled houses thatched with reed matting--sprang up on the outskirts of Baghdad to absorb the newcomers, who featured prominently in the crowd scenes of the crisis.
21
However, despite the bankruptcy of the monarchy, none of Iraq's nationalist opposition parties developed a mass membership while nationalist leaders of an earlier generation often played a leading role in the repressive governments of the period.
22 In fact, as in Egypt in the same period, the nationalist movement moved quickly leftwards, drawing its leaders from precisely those new social groups which had no stake in the existing system. Iraq's political future was being decided at the level of the street, where the parliamentary parties had little influence.
Majid Khadduri sums up neatly the dilemma of the establishment after the fall of Salih Jabr's government in 1948. The leaders of the parliamentary opposition parties:
...seem[ed] to have co-operated only to force the Jabr government to resign, but were wholly unprepared to follow up their victory and achieve power. Their weakness became the more apparent when the parties appealed to the mob (presumed to have been under their control) to stop street demonstrations; the mob would not listen to them
