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the Bahrain Government Annual Reports, or British papers as to why such a

measure was taken. Al-Bakir, however, offered his own explanation as he related it

to his work at the Cooperative Compensation Fund. He claimed that he was bribed

with 50,000 Rupees by an unnamed representative from a competing foreign-

owned agency to leave his post at the Fund. 231 On the grounds of his claim, a

question arises as to why was he the only one offered a bribe to abandon his post?

Why was there not a similar approach to other senior members of the Fund? Al-

Bakir later tied the issue to his passport status as he asserted that the withdrawal

came as a result of foreign companies’ pressure on Belgrave to do so.

A series of meetings were coordinated between Sunnis and Shi’ites following

the news of Al-Bakir’s passport withdrawal but the first initial meetings did not grab

the attention of British officials in Bahrain. It was not until the third meeting

between members of the two communities that the Movement was noticed. The

first meeting was held on 6 October at the Khamis Mosque in Manama and aimed to

confront Belgrave’s ‘dictatorship’. The initial meeting agreed to organise another,

bigger, gathering at Bin Khamis Ma’tem in Sanabis, a village in Manama, on 13

October. This was the birth date of the Movement and it was decided in the meeting,

according to Al-Bakir, to establish a unified political front that consisted of one

hundred and twenty founding members. The Party’s general assembly consisted of

eight members: four Sunnis and four Shi’ites, the Sunnis being: Abdul-Aziz Al-

Shamlan, Ebrahim Ibn Musa, Ebrahim Fakhroo, and Al-Bakir. The four Shi’ites were:

Abd-Ali Al-Alaiwat, Al-Syed Ali Kamal-el-Deen, Abdulla Abu Deed, and Mohsin Al-

231 Al-Bakir, From Bahrain to Exile, 54-56.

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