Yusuf Salman Yusuf - Building The Base For A Mass Party, 1943 - 1947

1947

In building up the party, Fahd was guided by his own class feelings and political distrust of the intelligentsia and students, as much as by Leninist principles. He concentrated on the workers in the foreign-owned industries, and was assisted primarily by his trusted supporters Ali Sakar, Zaki Bassim and Ahmad 'Abbas. While a large proportion of the industrial workforce was employed in small locally-owned workshops, the party paid less attention to this sector; in many cases they were working for members of their extended family, and in addition they did not have the strategic importance of the Kirkuk oilfield workers, the railwaymen, or the workers at Basra port, all of whom were in large measure won over to the party during Fahd's leadership.

In December 1943 to January 1944, the Syrian-Lebanese Communist Party held a congress and adopted party rules and a programme couched in moderate terms. Perhaps inspired by this example – although his relationship with Khalid Bakdash, first secretary of the Syrian party and doyen of the communist movement in the Arab east, was never an easy one - Fahd relented on the question of holding a congress for the Iraqi party. A party conference met in March 1944 in Ali Shakar's house in the al-Shaikh 'Umar quarter of Baghdad and agreed a National Charter. It also adopted the Syrian party's slogan, A free homeland and a happy people (watanun hurrun wa sha'bun sa'id). The first party congress met a year later.