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A campaign against BAPCO was launched by Sawut Al-Bahrain and Al-Qafilah

through a series of articles. In the campaign the company was named as ‘Tyrannical

BAPCO’, ‘a small state’, and ‘the colonialist company’. Claims were also made of

arbitrary dismissals, locals were said to have been abused by their foreign

superiors, employees insisted that they suffered with ‘decayed brains’, others said

they had lost their legs, and some claimed to have mysteriously acquired

tuberculosis. 164

The treatment of Bahrainis by foreigners (even with non-employees) was

highlighted in Al-Qafilah which published a letter in English from a Bahraini to the

Editor regarding his experience with his BAPCO Club member friend. He claimed

that he was asked to leave the club’s dining hall by an Englishman for no reason but

mere racism. The author of the letter warned in modest English,

Those Britons who have stinking ideas about Asians do not seem to
possess enough sense to realize that by have such attitude they are
only boiling our blood, but digging their own graves. It is time WE
struggled for our rights, because now we are living in the age of
TWENTIETH CENTURY. Long Live Bahrain. 165

The letter was published in its original form of English and translated into Arabic.

The incident may have been only apocryphal, or have been an unfortunate ‘one-off’

incident and not part of the British or BAPCO’s policy at the time. However it was

used to generate further bad feeling against the company and, in particular, its

British element.

164 ‘Baynana wa bayna Bapco’ [Between us and BAPCO], Sawut Al-Bahrain, March-April 1952, 21;
‘BAPCO Al-Mustabida’ [Tyrannical BAPCO], Al-Qafilah, 19 February 1954, 2; and ‘Anba’a Al-Bahrain
wa Al-Khaleej’ [News from Bahrain and the Gulf], Sawut Al-Bahrain, January 1954, 65.
165 E. Eshaq, ‘It is High Time BAPCO Behaves Better’, Al-Qafilah, 21 August 1953, 3.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 53