Page 47 - Begrave Thesis_Neat

Following the dismissal of Glubb Pasha in Jordan, Bahraini protestors

attacked Selwyn Lloyd’s car convoy during his short visit to Bahrain on 2 March

1956. Western historians such as Anthony Verrier, Barry Turner, DR Thorpe,

Erskine Childers, Keith Kyle, Peter Wilby, and W Scott Lucas, touched on the topic,

however, without providing much detail on the incident or the origins of the conflict

in Bahrain and instead noted the event as part of the proceedings that led Britain

towards the Suez War.
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One of the exceptions to the above amongst Western historians is Miriam

Joyce who provided in a short article further details to the stoning of the convoy and

the legal battle that ensued over the three Bahraini political exiles following the fall

of the nationalist movement. Details of what came before to the stoning incident

were not presented. Joyce claimed that it was the Ruler of Bahrain ‘Shaykh Salman

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[who] ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Committee of National Union’. That

claim by Joyce will be examined further in this thesis. Another exception is seen in

the work of Simon Smith, who brought to light the dilemma that overtook the British

Government on the topic of Belgrave, following the Lloyd incident. He believed that

Eden insisted on ‘Belgrave’s retention’, contradicting both ‘British officers in the

Gulf, and within the Foreign Office itself’. Meanwhile, the Gulf Residency had

already ‘informally’ told the Party that Belgrave’s tenure would be coming to an

86 A. Verrier, Through the Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy in Age of Illusions (London: 1983), 134;
B. Turner, Suez1956: The Inside Story of the First Oil War (London: 2006), 165; D.R. Thorpe, Eden: The
Life and Times of Anthony Eden First Earl of Avon, 1897-1977 (London: 2004), 465; D.R. Thorpe,
Selwyn Lloyd (London: 1989), 200; E.B. Childers, The Road to Suez (London: 1962), 145; K. Kyle, Suez:
Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (London: 2011), 94, P. Wilby, Eden (London: 2006), 93; and
W.S. Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London: 1991), 95.
87 M. Joyce, ‘The Bahraini Three on St Helena, 1956-1961’, The Middle East Journal, 54.4 (2000), in
<https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-63386231/the-bahraini-three-on-st-helena-1956-1961>
[accessed 19 September 2015].

© Hamad E. Abdulla 26