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unification of Germany, security in Europe, and trade between the two Cold War

protagonists. Eisenhower also, informally, raised the topic of ‘open skies’, a matter

rejected by the Soviets. In the conference Eden invited the Soviet Union’s leaders

(Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev) to visit Britain. 348 The Middle East would

become one of the main topics for discussion between the two sides during the

Soviets’ visit in April of the following year, and will be discussed in Chapter Seven.

In Bahrain, the earliest official reaction to the Penal Code by the HEC was

published through a Party circular on 7 July. The circular heavily condemned the

proposed code, based on the premise that it contradicted Islamic teachings. It also

pointed to a law featured in the code that made unauthorized groupings illegal,

which the HEC felt it was directed straight at it. 349 Al-Watan launched a campaign

attacking the code, it proclaimed in one of its headlines printed in bold letters that

‘The Penal Code is more lethal than a bomb, so resist it!’ 350 Burrows believed that

the HEC’s opposition to the code on religious grounds was only an excuse used by

the Party ‘to inflame opinion among the unlettered in the villages as well as in

Manama’. 351 The code was originally drafted by the FO with the intention of not

only introducing it in Bahrain but throughout the Arabian Gulf. 352 The Political

348 ‘What happened at Geneva’, New York Times, 24 July 1955, E8; and The Eden-Eisenhower
Correspondence, 1955-1957, Boyle, ‘The Geneva Summit Meeting’, 91-92.
349 TNA, FO 1016/441, The Higher Executive Committee, Circular No. 23, 7 July 1955.
350 ‘Qanoon Al-Uqubat Ashad min Qunbulat (Al-Kabulat) Faqwimuh’ [The Penal Code is more lethal
than a bomb, so resist it], Al-Watan, 29 July 1955, 1.
351 TNA, FO 371/114587, Burrows to FO, 2 September 1955.
352 ‘Bernard Burrows, Residency’s Report for the Month of November 1955’, in Political Diaries of the
Persian Gulf, vol. 20 1955-1958, ed. R.L. Jarman (London: 1990), 1-7 (2).

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