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Muharraq Island with Manama crowds appeared on both sides of the road resulting

in the procession coming to a standstill. 502

In Gault’s description the car convoy had passed by a crowd at 7.15 pm

which had just gathered to watch a local football match. Upon realising that the

convoy was clearly conveying a VIP and very likely to be Britain’s much-anticipated

Foreign Secretary, the crowds gathered by the roadside and shouted in Arabic,

‘down with Belgrave’, ‘down with the imperialists’, and ‘down with the colonisers’.

Then the assembled throng got ‘completely carried away by its own hysteria’. 503

Lucas recollected in his memoir that the verbal attacks did not only target Belgrave

but Lloyd too. 504 Lloyd’s memoir suggested that he was unable to recognise what

the crowds were actually shouting at the convoy as the ‘mob’ was ‘yelling’ in Arabic.

He was later informed that demonstrators shouted ‘Go home, Belgrave’. 505 The

Resident’s memoir recalled that the demand he heard from protestors was that

‘Belgrave should go’. 506 Heikal on the other hand asserted, (although he was not an

eyewitness to the event) that demonstrators also chanted Nasser’s name. 507

The British traveller Roderic Owen provided a rare account from a neutral

point-of-view, as he did not represent his Government nor was he employed by the

Administration. He claimed to have been an eyewitness to the stoning of Lloyd’s car

as he lived in Muharraq where the incident had taken place. He claimed that crowds

of Bahrainis had gathered in close proximity to Muharraq’s police station and at a

502 TNA, FO 371/120545, V.A. Wight-Boycott: Disturbance in Bahrain, 6 March 1956.
503 TNA, FO 371/120544, Gault to Burrows, 22 March 1956.
504 I. Lucas, A Road to Damascus: Mainly Diplomatic Memoirs from the Middle East (London: 1997), 34.
505 Lloyd, Suez 1956, 49.
506 Burrows, Footnotes in the Sand, 67.
507 Heikal, Nasser: The Cairo Documents, 84-85.

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