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do so. On the issue of the Administration Council and the insistence of the NUC to

have public representatives on the Council, the announcement declared that the

Ruler had informed the Party that the Council had been established on his own

initiative and not via public demand as a body to assist his Administration’s work.

The announcement was concluded by the following statement: ‘The door to

discussions which the Committee has shut, is as far as the Government is concerned,

still open’. 710

One of the problems of the meetings between the two sides was that there

was no mutually-agreed agenda prior to the meetings, since both where relatively

new at holding political discussions. Thus the topics of the meetings seemed to have

arisen on the spot. Additionally the NUC displayed a poor sense of political tactics

by insisting on presenting all their reform proposals in one unified package. The

Party should have adopted a more flexible approach in its dealings with the

Administration and taking its successes step by step.

Alarmed at the growth and development of the NUC’s Scouts movement the

Resident on 19 June asked the FO for its opinion regarding the organisation. 711

Based on the request Riches forwarded to Kirkpatrick a document regarding the

Scouts in Bahrain. Riches saw the organisation to be a threat that required

immediate action before matters developed even further. He recommended that

British officials warn the NUC about their recent activities. 712 On the Scouts, the

Foreign Secretary believed ‘that a quasi-military organisation of this kind cannot be

710 TNA, FO 1016/467, Government of Bahrain: Statement of the Public by Belgrave, 17 June 1956.
711 TNA, FO 1016/467, Burrows to FO, 19 June 1956.
712 TNA, FO 371/120686, Riches’ Confidential Minute on Bahrain, 19 June 1956.

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