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included the presentation of a decorated sword by Sheikh Salman to Lloyd. 515 As for

the Adviser, he declared in his memoir that an anteroom at the palace was used as a

place from which to communicate with the police. Belgrave continuously updated

the Ruler on the situation in Muharraq. To the Adviser it ‘was the most trying social

function that I have ever attended’. 516

During the Foreign Secretary’s stay at the palace, news arrived that the

demonstrators had regrouped and were blocking the roads, had planted devices to

puncture car tyres, and had gathered to await the return of the Minister to

Muharraq airport, according to Wight-Boycott’s account of the affair. Upon

receiving this news the Resident requested the Senior Naval Officer to keep HMS

Loch Foda on stand-by. The officer requested that the ship keep part of its

complement ready to land should orders come to do so. 517 According to Burrows’

own account the mob returned to the scene at 10.30 pm. 518

With the dinner over, Lloyd was escorted after 11.00 pm to the Residency

building in Juffair. The ship’s shore party was ready to disembark at 11.38 pm. The

Senior Naval Officer signalled for thirty men of HMS Loch Foda to land at 11.52 pm.

They landed at 12.35 am aided by BAPCO’s tugboat and were escorted by troop

carriers from Sitra to Juffair, ready for action, if needed. The party of women who

had accompanied the Minister did not attend the palace banquet and were taken to

the Residency were they remained. They returned by taxi and on schedule to the

airport. No one was injured but the mob managed to break one of the cars’

515 ‘Arrival in Bahrein’, The Times, 3 March 1956, 6.
516 Belgrave, Personal Column, 219-20.
517 TNA, FO 371/120545, V.A. Wight-Boycott: Disturbance in Bahrain, 6 March 1956.
518 ’Bernard Burrows, Residency’s Report for the Month of April 1956’, 1-10 (2).

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