At 10 Downing Street in London, Prime Minister Lloyd George was fretting over the international situation the British Empire would soon have to face. Influenced by the October Revolution, a series of countries—including Brazil, Argentina, Japan, and Mexico—had all seen proletarian revolutions erupt.
Although all these revolutions had failed, proletarian ideas continued to spread. The British Empire, affected by unemployment, had also seen workers' movements break out, while India had already produced a proletarian revolutionary party.
Left with no choice, Lloyd George could only agree to Irish self-rule. Of course, he had actually considered following Bulgaria's example and simply shipping all the Irish away. The British Empire had so many colonies—he could just give them a piece of land somewhere and let them establish an independent country.
Naturally, he could only think about such things. So long as the capitalists remained unwilling to give up this cheap labor, such a thing could never happen in the British Empire.
He had only just placated the Irish when another independence movement erupted in Egypt. Beginning with anti-British demonstrations by Cairo students in 1919, it was followed by student strikes, worker strikes, and merchants closing their businesses. Now, it had turned into an armed uprising.
Organized guerrilla units had already appeared in Egypt's countryside. They began attacking local British garrisons and sabotaging the railways the British had built there. Guerrillas even occasionally stormed into the cities and fought street battles with British troops.
The bitter fruits of certain policies the British government had pursued during World War I had now surfaced. Faced with these rebel forces, the local British garrisons simply did not put any real effort into suppression.
Clearly, the unfair treatment after the World War had drained British soldiers of any interest in giving their lives for the country. They did