Page 121 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

was an argument. A crowd collected. A fracas ensued and the crowd
groves, was constantly cut, severing communication between Manama,
joined in. The policeman and the inspector sought refuge in the Town
Hall. They got inside, the doors were shut and the Municipal staff was
besieged by an angry crowd. A small party of police arrived and managed
to get into the building, but by now the crowd had become an angry
mob, out for the blood of the policeman and the inspector. Another party
of police arrived under an Arab officer; they found the road leading to
the building blocked by a solid mass of men. For several hours the police
were assailed by abuse and stones and at intervals the crowd tried to
rush the doors. Then someone in the crowd fired a shot at which the
police on the veranda fired into the air, while the officer who was in charge
of them was inside the building, telephoning for reinforcements. The
crowd dispersed, but several people on the edge of the crowd were hit by
bullets. As it happened, most of the police were newly enlisted men from
the Gulf Coast.
For about a week there was a partial strike and The Committee made
the fullest use of it. One of their big meetings was addressed by an
Egyptian from Kuwait, who left Bahrain as soon as the meeting was
over. He made a violent speech, but when he described Bahrain as ‘a
little piece of Egypt’ even The Committee’s supporters did not approve.
At the same time Anwar Saadat sent a message saying that he was dispatch­ two demands were unacceptable but the Shaikh, as he had already
ing a special messenger, an Army officer, to Bahrain, but he got no
encouragement and the ‘messenger’ did not arrive.
The strike was accompanied by disorder and the capacity of the small
police force was strained to the utmost. With the Shaikh’s approval the
British brought in some troops, but they did not operate inside Manama,
where the trouble was. In the daytime the town was quiet and our car
patrols were able to keep order. At night there was a curfew, which was
difficult to enforce in the narrow, dark lanes of the bazaar and gangs of
youths roamed the streets, strewing nails and erecting road blocks; as
soon as the police removed one they found another somewhere else.
Transport was at a standstill and several cars, left outside Europeans’
houses, were set on fire. Most of the damage was done by hooligans who
found it an exciting and amusing occupation. When the police made a
number of arrests they found that the men at the road.blocks were armed
with daggers and revolvers.
The Shaikh was at Rafaa where the armed Bedouin had assembled.
They could easily have cleared the streets but they might very likely have
indulged in a little looting themselves so they were used in posts on the
country roads. The telephone line, which ran through miles of palm-
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Awali and Rafaa, so when I wanted to talk to the Shaikh—which was very
often—I had to drive out to Rafaa. This I did constantly, often several
times in a day, without any adventures, nor did I meet with any violence
when I went down to the bazaar and tried to persuade people to open
their shops.
By this time the Residency was involved up to the neck in the political
quagmire, and there were many rather unhappy interviews between the
Shaikh, and the British representatives, in which I took part. But it seemed
that whenever a line of policy had been discussed and agreed upon by
the Shaikh, it was almost always reversed a few hours later, presumably
as a result of instructions from London. I then had to explain to the Shaikh
that what had been agreed upon was now, for some unknown reason,
changed. It was usually assumed at the palace that the reason for these
voltes-face was that The Committee did not approve of what had been
decided. The Committee made four demands, through the Residency,
which were that I should go, that no foreign recruits should be enlisted
in the police, that The Committee should be recognized and that there
should be an enquiry about the affair at the Town Hall. The Residency, at
the Shaikh’s request, agreed to issue a firm statement saying that the first
announced, agreed to the second two demands. As usual they changed
their views and sent an entirely different, non-committal statement to be
published on the B.B.S. which satisfied nobody. A leading Arab said to
me, ‘The English are now interfering even more in Bahrain affairs than
they did thirty years ago, in Daly’s time, but they are not clever like
he was.’
When the Gulf was controlled by the India Office, when in the
Residencies and Political Agencies there were only a handful of British
officials of the Indian Political Department, and a staff of excellent hard­
working Indians, the affairs of the Gulf were better managed than they
are now, though admittedly the problems which had to be dealt with
were simpler than they are today. The British officials who were in the
Gulf in those days, and in some cases their fathers before them, had spent
all their working years in Eastern countries, in India, Persia and the Gulf.
They knew the people and understood how to deal with them, and thev
were not distracted by wondering whether after a year or two they would
be sent to Paris, Prague or Nicaragua. The opinions of the men on the
spot carried weight, and their decisions were not constantly counter­
manded from London. But this is a digression!
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