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claimed that the process of dispersing leaflets from the air was later aborted as

some failed to scatter properly and were a danger to the demonstrators. 843 These

eventful days also witnessed, as the Administration’s Annual Report for 1956

recorded, the first use by the demonstrators, of Molotov Cocktails. 844

The Manchester Guardian claimed that two people were injured on 4

November as a group of five hundred demonstrators defied the curfew. 845 Al-Ahad

(The Covenant, a Lebanese magazine) published exaggerated stories about British

troops’ intervention in Bahrain, saying inter alia that the intervention took place

when demonstrators blew up the road leading to Muharraq’s airport. During the

head-to-head clash between protestors and the British four Bahrainis and three

British military personnel were killed. British troops later occupied Gudaibiya in

Manama as its headquarters, having driven out all the Bahrainis. 846

Belgrave met with Burrows, EF Henderson, Benn who worked for the Police

Force’s intelligence unit in Bahrain, and an unidentified Cypriot. During the

meeting, which he noted in his diary, it seemed that the idea of arresting the NUC’s

frontline members was broached. The operation was codenamed Operation Pepsi

Cola, but Belgrave gave no more details in his diary. The Ruler was notified on 5

November that the NUC’s leading members were to be arrested. Belgrave described

in his diary his emotions on the night before the arrests, comparing them to ‘the

feeling of the dance before Waterloo’. 847 Details of the arrests and of the steps taken

843 Burrows, Footnotes in the Sand, 82.
844 ‘Government of Bahrain: Annual Report for Year 1956’, 1-111 (8).
845 ‘Renewed Rioting in Bahrain’, The Manchester Guardian, 5 November 1956, 7.
846 TNA, FO 371/126895, Local Press Extracts: Information Policy Department at the FO to the
Residency, 8 February 1957.
847 Sir Charles Dalrymple Belgrave’s Personal Diaries, 4-5 November 1956.

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