Page 167 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Restructuring city and state 147

By the early 1950s the sectarian divide which had inspired Shi‘i
demands in the mid 1930s came to the fore in a spectacular fashion,
leading to the disintegration of the municipal order and to the demise of
the old merchant classes that had supported it. After 1945, the institution
of municipal representation based upon electoral districts reshaped the
secure, albeit contested, boundaries of communal politics. For the first
time in municipal history, however, the elections of May 1950 became
bitterly contested. The new electoral criteria were undoubtedly more
inclusive as women were allowed to vote, but the Shi‘i population bitterly
criticised the new electoral wards for continuing to favour the Sunni
community. Although the new council became dominated by Sunni
Arabs, it seems that their success was due as much to a higher
Sunni turnout at the ballot boxes as it was to the inequalities of the new
electoral system. By granting only three representatives out of twelve to
the predominantly Sunni districts of al-Fadhil and Kanu, the new wards
effectively favoured the Shi‘i electorate as they also grouped the large Shi‘i
popular neighbourhood of Ras Rumman with the affluent Persian Sunni
al-‘Awadiyyah. 85
After 1950, the abolition of communal representation in the municipal
council also allowed a young group of Arab nationalist activists recruited
from the middle ranks of Manama’s commercial classes to use municipal
elections as a platform for the promotion of cross-sectarian interests. With
the new instruments of nationalist propaganda, particularly loudspeakers
and leaflets, they were able to organise very effective electoral campaigns
and to rally the support of the market population in order to gain access to
the municipal council. 86 The dramatic political and social changes that
transformed Manama into a hotbed of Arab nationalist mobilisation will
be examined in more detail in the following chapter. It can simply be
noted here that the municipal council became the first institutional arena
where the divisions of Bahrain’s national movement were played out. On
the one hand, the young counsellors started to contest the monopoly of
the old notable class on the grounds that the latter embodied the con-
servative agenda of Belgrave, of the Al Khalifah and of the British imperial
electoral constituency of over 550. Political Agent Bahrain to Political Resident Bushehr,
18 January 1935, R/15/2/1921 IOR; ‘Annual Report for the Year 1353’ in The Bahrain
Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970, vol. I, pp. 545–6; Belgrave to Political Agent
Bahrain, 5 Shawwal 1348/6 March 1930, R/15/2/1252 IOR; I‘lan Hukumah al-Bahrayn,
n. 30 and 33 of 1353, R/15/2/1229 IOR.
85
Belgrave to President of Manama Municipality, n. 455 of 1365/24 February 1946 and
I‘lan Hukumah al-Bahrayn, n. 17 of 1369, R/15/2/1252 IOR; Political Residency Bahrain
to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 2 June 1951, n. 73 and enclosures, FO 371/91624
PRO.
86
‘Annual Report for the Year 1369’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970,
vol. IV, p. 31.