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The Suez Oral History Project aimed to interview various personalities vis-à-

vis the Suez War whose transcripts are found at King’s College London. Historians

Anthony Gorst and WS Lucas interviewed Sir Donald Logan who had accompanied

Lloyd in Bahrain and was an eyewitness to the event, as he was then his Assistant

Private Secretary. He recalled that the incident was not for him a life-threatening

ordeal, as he was in either the second or third car of the procession when the attack

took place. In Logan’s account, Lloyd was in the first car accompanied by Caccia.

Logan mistakenly called the attacking mob supporters of the ‘Committee of

Education’ and not the HEC. The news of the HEC winning all seats up for election

earlier in February for the Education Council might have resulted in his confusion.

Logan firmly believed ‘that there was great suspicion that the Egyptians were

behind everything in the Gulf’. 525

Lucas, then the Residency’s employee, when interviewed as part of The

British Diplomatic Oral History Programme at Churchill College Cambridge,

suspected that the incident of stoning Lloyd’s car had ‘affected his judgment at the

time of Suez a few months later’. In Lucas’ opinion, Lloyd arrived in Bahrain feeling

that Nasser had personally ridiculed him over the issue of Glubb’s dismissal. Lloyd,

Lucas suggested, carried a ‘chip on his shoulder in Bahrain’ and when he was met

face-to-face with rioters he thought it to be ‘all part of this Nasser-inspired plot’. 526

Heikal also made the same point, believing that Lloyd (following the Bahraini

525 Donald Logan, interviewed by Anthony Gorst and W.S. Lucas, Suez Oral History Project, 1956,
GB0099 Suez OHP, 1-18.
526 Ivor Thomas Mark Lucas, interviewed by Malcolm McBain, The British Diplomatic Oral History
Programme, 25 January 2005, 7.
<https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Lucas.pdf> [accessed 28 November 2015].

© Hamad E. Abdulla 166