They told Wingate that the main goal of the Wafd was the immediate termination of the British occupation of Egypt, but not of their intention to use the Paris Peace Conference to plead their case to the world powers.

[6] These deportations caused the opposite effect to that the British had hoped, and though attempts were made to keep it quiet, word spread and eventually led to a strike of law students.

The symbol used by the protesters was a crescent placed next to a cross on a plain green flag, Indicating the sense of national unity between Muslim and Christian Egyptians in facing the British occupation.

By the 1930s, Egypt became a top destination for Christian missionary organizations, which funded and performed badly needed social services for the Egyptian middle and lower classes.

[11] Western Proselytism consortia beseeched their sponsors "to make heavy sacrifices so that Egyptian children could have a better education than their own parents could afford"; likewise, the proliferation of missionary-operated hospitals exposed the inadequacy of government-provided healthcare.

The twin occurrences of the worldwide recession prompted by the Great Depression and a regional cotton crisis slowed Egypt's GDP growth through the late 1920s and most of the following two decades.

[17] Complacent in its dominant parliamentary position, the Wafd did not pursue innovative methods of youth organization until at least the mid-1930s, leaving it hopelessly behind future competitors such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had employed a far more effective local-franchising system since its inception in 1928.

[18] After student demonstrations against the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the anti-labor policies of the government began to reveal cracks in the previously ironclad Wafd coalition, party leaders created a youth wing dubbed the "Blue Shirts.

"[19] However, rather than capitalizing on the grassroots nature of the youth movements, the party instead tried to slot the Blue Shirts onto their own rung in the top-down Wafd hierarchy, presenting members with uniforms, badges, and a standardized salute – all under the motto "Obedience & Struggle.

[22] Easily the greatest factor contributing to popular disillusionment with the Wafd was the party's failure to boycott the Farouk government after it acceded to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936.

The failure of the Wafd to more aggressively oppose the continuation of the British presence "left Egyptian politics devoid of a popularly legitimized leader or party.

"[23] The collapse of the widespread popular support once commanded by the Wafd has been historically attributed to the combined embattlements of three distinct trends in Egyptian politics of the pre-revolutionary era.