Page 162 - Bahrain Gov annual reports(V)_Neat

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Throughout October there was an uneasy state of political unrest. The men who had
been behind the two earlier strikes were busy forming an organisation which was to support
them when they presented certain demands to the Government. There were meetings in some
of the villages and in mosques in Manama where they were held under the pretext of religious
occasions but they developed rapidly into political meetings organised and led by a group of
eight Sunnis and Shias who claimed to be the representatives of the people of Bahrain. Most
of them had been concerned in the past in anli-Governmcnt activities and they controlled the
two local newspapers whose publication had been stopped by the Government owing to the
scurrilous attacks which they made on the Bahrain Government and on governments of other
friendly states.
At the end of October the committee of eight, who now called themselves the High Exec-
utive Committee, presented a petition to the Ruler in which they described themselves as the
representatives of the Ruler’s subjects. In it they made a number of demands some of which
were reasonable and some which were not reasonable. Certain reforms which they demanded
were already in the process of being made. The Ruler refused to recognise the members of this
self-styled Higher Committee as representing his people and although he retained their petition
he neither then or subsequently acknowledged that they had any official status.
At the beginning of December His Highness issued a proclamation announcing that his
Government was going to take, and had taken certain measures which covered many of the
matters which were contained in the petition. In the meantime, however, a strike had been
organised and it began two days after the proclamation was issued, on December 4th. The
strike was general but all essential services were maintained and the oil refinery was not closed
down. There were no demonstrations and no disorders. Negotiations were opened between
the Government and the strikers but the Government made it a condition that the strike must
end before it took any action. The negotiations came to nothing mainly because certain
unauthorised persons attempted to represent themselves as being the spokesmen of the Govern­
ment. The strike lasted for a week, people who were absent from duty, in Government service,
received no pay for the period of absence, a policy which was followed by most of the other
employers of labour in Bahrain.
When the strike was over His Highness announced the composition of a committee of
Enquiry which he had appointed to examine popular views on Education, Public Health and
the Law Courts. The Committee was composed of both Sunnis and Shias but after one or two
meetings the two Shia members retired from it, on grounds of ill-health, which were, in fact,
genuine, but it was found to be impossible to persuade any other Shia notables to take the place
of those who had retired. When the committee began its meetings there was an attempt to
boycott it but in spite of this it had considerable success in persuading members of the public
to come before it to express their views.

JUDICIAL

(From the Report by Mr. Salem Al Araydh, Superintendent, Judicial Department)
Senior Courts. The two Senior Courts, which sit five days a week, are presided over by
Shaikh Daij bin Hamed, O.B.E., and Shaikh Ali bin Ahmed, who sit together once a week, on
Mondays, with the Adviser to the Government, for the hearing of criminal cases and certain
other cases.
The number of cases of all kinds filed during the period commencing on 11th September,
1953 and ending on the 31st December, 1954, was 1,673. In ulc previous 12 months there were
1,158 cases. The cases consisted of 693 civil matters, including estate cases, 388 land regis­
I trations which came before the courts for verification, from the Land Registration Department,
and 592 criminal cases of all types, including a large proportion of infringements of the traffic
regulations. Many of the criminal cases related to very minor offences.