Page 209 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 189

strikes, demonstrations, Muharram celebrations, and membership of cul-
tural clubs, sporting and youth associations. The second was the modernist
project of popular representation and labour rights which the nationalist
class pursued as an integral part of the anti-colonial movement. The press,
radio and propaganda literature articulated a new web of public commu-
nication which connected activists, the new professional groups and the
mercantile classes to oil workers, artisans and shopkeepers.
The transition from notable to nationalist politics was relatively
smooth. After 1932, the demise of Bahrain’s pearling economy gradually
undermined the position of the old notables as popular leaders. The
appeals to national and class solidarities launched by the young nation-
alists starting with the strikes of 1938 served to alienate the notables from
their popular base in contrast with contemporary developments in the
Arab Middle East during the period of the British and French mandates.
In Damascus, for instance, the urban landowners who had risen to prom-
inence in the second half of the nineteenth century carried forward the
banner of Arab nationalism against the French occupation of Syria. 101
Partly because they became identified with the British imperial order in
Bahrain, the a‘yan of Manama were no longer in a position to act as a
cohesive political force. By the late 1930s, they were unable to form an
alliance with rising groups of middle-class professionals, intellectuals and
bureaucrats. The incongruity between accelerating socio-economic mod-
ernisation precipitated by oil revenue and the conservatism of the process
of nation building explains the peculiarity of the case of Manama. The
expectations and popular demands of the young nationalist class were not
matched by the development of representative institutions under the aegis
of the reformed administration. In other words, Bahrain did not have a
parliament sponsored by the mandatory power as in Syria or Iraq, where
urban notables could pursue their political interests and satisfy the
demands of their clientele. It is not surprising, as perceptively noted by
Fuad Khuri, that at the peak of its popularity al-Ha’yah gathered popular
consensus and pursued its political agenda largely ‘as a de-facto [inde-
pendent] government opposing the [imperial] regime’. 102
By the early 1950s, the strong populist rhetoric of the young nationalist
class had succeeded in forging new bonds among different strata of
Manama’s Arab society. Episodes of violence such as the baladiyyah epi-
sode in 1923, Fitnah al-Muharram of 1953 and the riots of November 1956
contributed to the transformation of communalism and sectarianism into

101
These developments are discussed by Philip Khoury in his Urban Notables and Arab
Nationalism and Syria and the French Mandate.
102
Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, p. 212.