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‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 179

continued his activities into the new era of nationalist agitation as the
editor of Jaridah al-Bahrayn (The Bahrain Gazette), a weekly sponsored
by the British agency. Despite the censorship of the British authorities, he
skilfully used his position to raise issues of political concern. In a series
of articles published anonymously in 1941 under the title ‘The New
Democratic Order’ he discussed democracy and individual rights in
75
several Western countries. After his premature death, al-Za’id’s legacy
continued with the publication of Sawt al-Bahrayn, the first independent
monthly issued between 1950 and 1954, which served as a launching pad
for al-Ha’yah. Its editorial board included members of Nadi al-‘Urubah
and Nadi al-Bahrayn, including ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Bakir and ‘Abd
al-‘Aziz Shamlan, an employee of the British Bank of the Middle East,
who became one of the leaders of al-Ha’yah. 76
It was this journalism which promoted Arabism as a progressive ideol-
ogy. The press encouraged ideas of social justice and equality as the
historic rights of nationals deriving from their membership in the concert
of Arab nations. In championing the cause of the indigenous workforce, it
gained the support of the lower strata of both urban and rural society. By
1956 approximately 41 per cent of the manual labourers employed in the
oil industry and building firms were foreign. Further, the average wages of
oil workers and of the artisans and labourers employed by the Department
of Public Works were low even in comparison with those of their counter-
parts employed by private building firms. 77 To a large extent the efforts by
BAPCO and the government at ‘nationalising’ and ‘Arabising’ the labour
force after World War II played into the hands of the populist rhetoric of
the national movement. Immigrants from Arab countries started to be
regarded by the indigenous population as awlad al-‘amm (cousins), a term
which conveyed the emotional overtones of family life and of the blood ties
linking the nation. In his articles ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Bakir also supported
78
the nascent labour movement in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
The press also deployed a new vocabulary of militancy against the
government, depicting the nationalist struggle as one against the forces

75
Ghulum, ‘Abdallah al-Za‘id, pp. 17–18 and 42–56; Jaridah al-Bahrayn, ns. 128/129/130,
Rajab 1360/August 1941, AWDU.
76
Rumaihi, Bahrain, pp. 209–11; Sawt al-Bahrayn: Majallah ‘Adabiyyah wa Ijtima‘iyyah,
4 vols. (Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-‘Arabiyyah li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 2003); al-Bakir,
Min al-Bahrayn, pp. 36–9; Nakhleh, Bahrain, pp. 63–6.
77
W. A. Beiling, ‘Recent Developments in Labor Relations in Bahrayn’, The Middle East
Journal, 13.2 (1959), 156–69 (159–60); ‘Annual Report for the Year 1954’ in The Bahrain
Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970, vol. V, p. 67; D. Finnie, ‘Recruitment and
Training of Labor: The Middle East Oil Industry’, Middle East Journal, 12.2 (1958),
127–43 (129–30).
78
Qubain, ‘Social Classes and Tensions’, 278; al-Bakir, Min al-Bahrayn, pp. 37–8.