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journalist and future member of the Party, advised Bahrainis to travel to Egypt as

only then would they ‘realise to what extent Egypt loves Bahrain’. He also praised

the work of Abdul-Latif Al-Baghdadi, a prominent member of the Free Officers

responsible for municipal affairs at the time, 182 whose work had successfully ‘turned

Cairo’s huts into palaces’. The journalist later compared Al-Baghdadi’s work to

housing conditions in Bahrain, in an attempt to undermine the efficacy of Belgrave’s

Administration. 183

The anniversary of the revolution also marked the introduction of a new tone

in the nationalist press aimed at justifying the Egyptian regime and Nasser’s

suppression of freedoms. Al-Qafilah criticised those who called ‘upon a fictitious

democracy’, and viewed democracy as a method to ‘exploit the labouring people’.

The newspaper also viewed democracy as ‘an elegant word that hides within it

venomous poison’. 184 It is unknown if these claims truly represented the views of

those nationalists who later became leading figures within a reformist movement

that called upon a form of democratic representation. Maybe the writers were

influenced by Egyptian propaganda. Or it could have been that the concept of

democracy seemed vague and unclear to them.

Despite attempts to reconcile Sunnis and Shi’ites in Bahrain, sectarian

tensions were running high in the summer of 1954. On 2 June an incident occurred

in Muharraq between two cattle fodder sellers, one being Sunni and the other a

182 A. Goldschmidt Jr., ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi’, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt (London:
2000), 31.
183 A. Sayyar, ‘Nughat fawgah Al-Huroof’ [Dots on top of Words], Al-Watan, 1 June 1956, 2.
184 ‘23 Yulya…’ [July 23…], Al-Qafilah, 23 July 1954, 1.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 59