Speech Delivered by President Gamal Abd al-Nasser at Port Said on the Occasion of Victory Day on 23 December 1961 Please provide a historical comment to the following text: * DOCUMENT, EXCERPT Speech Delivered by President Gamal Abd al-Nasser at Port Said on the Occasion of Victory Day on 23 December 1961 President Gamal Abd al-Nasser delivered the following speech at Port Said, marking the fifth anniversary of the close of the Suez War. In 1956, the people sacrificed they gave their blood and there were martyrs we did not grudge this blood or these martyrs the people were not frightened by brute force, they were not frightened by the great powers; Britain, France and Israel did not frighten them…. I am confident, fellow-brethren, that it was the great struggle that you undertook in 1956 which has opened for us the way to build the new society. I am also confident that the whole of the people of the U.A.R. have taken the same stand and fought and struggled as you did for the sake of its freedom and its independence throughout all those long years which have passed. We have fought and we have struggled. We were undaunted by imperialism and all its methods, and we were not intimidated by the tyrannical powers; neither was imperialism, with its policy which is based on sowing the seeds of dissension amongst us, able to overpower us. The proof of this is that today we are living in freedom. We are neither dominated by open imperialism nor by disguised imperialism, but we are enjoying political freedom because we have struggled to gain our political freedom. We are enjoying this political freedom because we have taken it upon ourselves to put an end to political domination. The people have risen and struggled throughout all those long years during which we suffered from imperialism, foreign domination, and occupation in order that we might be liberated. We thank God, fellow-brethren, that we are able to enjoy this freedom today. Our struggle has borne its fruits. We, our fathers and our forefathers before them, have long struggled for the sake of this freedom. We have always stood face to face with the foreign exploiting domination, and we have never wavered from our stand in any way whatsoever…. Today, brethren, after this long struggle, the way has been paved for the realisation of our hopes to build the society we desire, the society in which prosperity and welfare reign supreme, the society in which class differences disappear, no masters, no slaves, but all are the sons of one nation working for the Mother-country and everyone feeling himself on an equal footing with his fellow-citizens and fellow beings…. This second revolution is the peoples revolution, a revolution for every son of this nation, a revolution for social justice, a revolution for the removal of class differences. By this I mean that we aim, while forging ahead with our revolution, that the society we desire, the society everyone of us desires for himself and for his children, the society in which prosperity and welfare shall reign supreme, shall be no capitalistic nor feudalistic dictatorship, no exploitation, no monopoly, but only social justice and equality of opportunity for every able-bodied son of the nation no exploitation in any circumstances or under any condition of man by man…. We say sufficiency and justice justice is equality of distinction and not dictatorship of capital, not dictatorship of feudalism, not political nor economical nor social exploitation. Justice is that the wealth of this country be justly and equally owned by all the sons of this country each according to his work. This is justice. As to sufficiency, it is to work, strive, sweat, and build in order that we increase our national income. In order to increase our share of the wealth of this country, we nationalized the banks, the insurance companies and a number of factories and trading companies. We also nationalized all foreign trade, fifty per cent of the Anglo-Egyptian Petroleum Company, and some other companies. We also nationalized what is over . 10,000 in some other industries. In this way, rights were restored. Means were restored to its owners, means of production in which they employed the worker. What does the worker have? He has his work. The capitalist? He has his money. The capitalist employs the workers. The wages of the workers were 25% of the profits whereas the few capitalists gained 75%. Is this justice? Is this the law of right, the law of God? Is this the law of justice, the law of God? Is this Islam? Is this religion? Is this Christianity in any way? This is exploitation and imperialism. This is the cooperation between imperialism, reactionism and exploitation. Who can accept this? All the profits went to a small group, while one million workers received the wages of five thousand persons, and five thousand persons got thrice as much as one million workers. This means that the capitalists, the five thousand capitalists, took thrice as much as the pay of one million workers, as profits. Is this the law of God? Can anyone accept this? President Gamal Abdel-Nassers Speeches and Press-Interviews, January-December 1961 (Cairo: Information Department, United Arab Republic, 1962), pp. 332-43. *Try to consider the following points: Kind of text Author/s if known Historical context (you can reflect on both the period/s the text refers to and the period/s when the text has been written and/or published/presented to the public) Critical appraisal of the periodization you find in the text (try to look at the turning points in history that the text builds up, the ways of contrasting or connecting past and present, the references to the future). Critical appraisal of the concepts you find in the text (try to look at the recurrent words in the text, then group the ones that are related and try to find the broader topics within the text).
