Page 253 - Begrave Thesis_Neat

and the general public to attend a meeting to discuss the affair. According to

Burrows only about a hundred attended of which a minority represented the Party’s

founding members. The NUC decided in the meeting to boycott all of the

Government’s Councils. 718

All members of the Health Council, including the nominated ones, failed to

attend the meeting initiated by the Administration as they were ‘intimidated from

doing so by the Committee of National Union’ as Gault concluded. Based on the

current situation the Political Agent advised the Ruler ‘to let the Health Council and

the Education Council be for the time being’. The Ruler complained to Gault that,

whenever he concluded an issue with the NUC, the Party would later go back in its

word and new challenges would arise thus affecting the Administration’s

developmental programme. Moreover the Ruler told Gault that the NUC should not

be encouraged by Britain and that ‘the door of his house was always open if they

wished to discuss things with him’. 719 To the Agent the priority for the meantime

was the protection and safety of the lives of approximately seven hundred

Europeans and five thousand Indians and Pakistanis residing on the islands should a

serious strike take place, as (in his view) it was very likely to escalate into violent

demonstrations. 720

Rumours of the NUC calling a strike as discussed in the previous chapter

materalised into actual threats by early July. Gault told the FO that the NUC on 8 July

threatened the Ruler to strike if their demands to dismiss Belgrave and participation

718 ‘Bernard Burrows, Residency’s Report for the Month of August 1956’, in Political Diaries of the
Persian Gulf, vol. 20 1955-1958, ed. R.L. Jarman (London: 1990), 1-7 (2).
719 TNA, FO 371/120547, Gault’s Minutes with the Ruler of Bahrain, 9 July 1956.
720 TNA, FO 371/120547, Despatch 614, Gault to FO, 10 July 1956.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 232