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IF YOU TAKE MY ADVICE - I'D REPRESS THEM

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Adam Curtis | 13:02 UK time, Friday, 11 May 2012

Bahrain, along with Syria, has become a symbol of the failure of the Arab Spring to deliver real democracy and freedom across the Arab world. The media in Britain portray a rigid, oppressive almost feudal elite who are stubbornly holding out against the inevitable wave of modern freedoms and political justice.

But what is hardly ever mentioned in the press and TV reports is that this very system of oppression, the rock against which the dreams of democracy are being dashed, was largely created by the British. That, throughout most of the twentieth century, British advisers to the Bahraini royal family, backed up by British military might, were central figures in the creation of a ruthless system that imprisoned and sometimes tortured any Bahraini citizen who even dared to suggest the idea of democracy.

The same British advisers also worked with the rulers of Bahrain to exercise a cynical technique of divide and rule - setting Shia against Sunni in a very successful attempt to keep Bahrain locked in an old, decaying and corrupt system of tribal and religious rivalries. The deliberate aim was to stop democracy ever emerging.

The Bahrainis know this, practically everyone else in the Arab world knows this - the only people who seem to have forgotten are the British themselves.

So I thought I would tell the story of Britain's involvement in the government and the security of Bahrain over the past 90 years. Especially as the present King of Bahrain is coming to have lunch with the Queen on May 18th.

 

It began in the summer of 1925 when a young administrative officer in the British Colonial Service called Charles Belgrave read an advertisement in the middle of the "Personal Column" in the Times. It said:

 

Belgrave answered the mysterious advertisement and was then summoned to an interview in a West End hotel. His interviewer turned out to be one of the heads of the India Office - the government department which ran that part of the British Empire.

What Belgrave was offered was the job of being the British "adviser" to the new ruler of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The precise nature of the job was a bit murky (a murkiness that was going to run through this whole story). On the surface Belgrave would be completely independent of the British government - but what was also clear was that he was being sent there to deal with growing demands for reform and modernization that might threaten Britain's interests.

Ever since 1820 the British had dominated Bahrain. The Al Khalifa family ruled, but in reality it was protectorate whose affairs were "guided" by the British. In 1923 the previous ruler had gone berserk and started terrorising his people - so the British had removed him and installed his son. It was clear to Belgrave what his job was - to create a more centralised form of control in Bahrain and to manage the instability created by the previous ruler's reign of terror.

Belgrave took the job. And here is a picture of him sitting happily in "the Adviserate drawing room"

 

Belgrave soon became very powerful - and by the 1930s he was in effect running the government of Bahrain. The thing that gave him a supreme ability to manage any dissent was the fact that he ran the courts. Bahrain had no legal code - which allowed Belgrave as judge enormous power. Belgrave described it in his autobiography:

"I found that there was no written code in Bahrain so judgements had to depend on common sense alone. It was rough and ready justice, but it had the advantage of being speedy.

I sat three days a week with a minor Shaikh who was deaf, dull and averse to making decisions. When I asked his opinion he invariably replied, 'I think the same as you Excellency; I agree with whatever you say."

Many Bahrainis soon became convinced that Belgrave was using his power to make sure that the status quo was maintained and to prevent a modern, democratic political system developing. And in the 1950s this anger with Belgrave burst out in a dramatic and violent way - a popular revolt and demands for democracy uncannily like the events unfolding in Bahrain today.

It started in 1953 when a Shia religious parade was stoned and then a Shia neighbourhood attacked by groups of Sunni fanatics. Many believed that it was a deliberate provocation - to create sectarian divisions. People noticed that among the attackers were members of the ruling family including the brother of the Sheikh.

If it was a provocation - then it succeeded. For two years Bahrain was torn by Sunni vs Shia violence. In private Belgrave sympathised with the Shias, but as the public face of the Law in Bahrain he was ruthless. He handed down sentences that were far tougher on Shia rioters than on their Sunni counterparts. And this in turn led to even more rioting.

A group of leading middle-class Bahrainis set up the Higher Executive Committee. It was composed equally of Shias and Sunnis - and it called for Belgrave to go. He was helping foment religious hatred and imprisoning innocent people, they said, in order to keep Bahrain as a tribally controlled regime. They demanded instead democracy and a code of law.

Here is a picture of the Committee.

 

Things came to a head when in 1956 the British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, flew to Bahrain for a visit. There was a large, violent demonstration with hundreds of Bahrainis trying to tell Lloyd to remove Belgrave - because he was standing in the way of making Bahrain a modern democracy.

The riots and the demonstration made the news in Britain - and Panorama came out to investigate. The report - by Woodrow Wyatt (later to become one of Rupert Murdoch's closest advisers) - is really good.

Wyatt interviews Belgrave who has a great quote about the demonstration - "it's anti-British, anti-Sheikh, and anti-me." But Wyatt also goes and talks to people on the street, almost all of who want Belgrave to go. One of them standing on the back of a truck sums it up neatly: "Belgrave is not just an adviser - he is the judge, and when he goes to the court he is also the police commandant. He is everything in Bahrain, he is not an adviser."

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Faced with this instability the British government moved troops in at the end of 1956 and crushed the revolt. Three of the leading members of the committee were put on a Royal Navy ship and taken and imprisoned on the island of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic. The same place that Napoleon had been dumped in 1815. One of them was Abdul Aziz Al Shamlan who is the committee member interviewed in the Panorama film.

This is a picture of their prison, plus a map - the purple blob shows where St Helena is.

 

But Belgrave had also outlived his usefulness - and the same year he too was dumped by the British (and by Sheikh Khalifa). He came back to Britain and wrote a self-serving autobiography which ends up suggesting that the Arabs aren't "ready" for democracy yet.

And things quietened down in Bahrain.

Until 1965 when another popular uprising began. It began in the oilfields but quickly spread to general strikes. Again the British sent in troops to crush the revolt - and many of the leaders were yet again deported.

But it didn't do much good for the British government - because both press and television in Britain began to ask what exactly was this weird feudal state that we were supporting? And why?

Across the Arab world people had been inspired by the new ideas of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, and they wanted freedom from the corrupt old Shaikhs and Kings who were propped up by the west. And in 1966 the BBC went out to Bahrain again and made a Panorama programme that tore into the hypocrisy of what Britain was doing in that country.

It didn't pull its punches - the reporter, called John Morgan, says to the camera at the end:

"If one of the tests of a society's health is a citizen's willingness to speak his mind freely in public then Bahrain belongs in the class of a Communist or a Fascist country - and we are deeply implicated in order to preserve our oil and foreign policy."


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In the face of this the British government decided the only solution was to find another "adviser". The idea was that on the surface he would appear to be a freelance mercenary who was employed by the ruling Khalifa family. But in reality he would be chosen and placed there by the British Foreign Office to manage the internal security of Bahrain. His job was to prevent the instability that political change would inevitably bring - and the consequent threat to British interests.

The man the British chose was called Colonel Ian Henderson. He had been a colonial police officer in Kenya in the 1950s and had played a major role in suppressing the Mau Mau rebellion. The Kenyans were convinced that Henderson had been involved in ordering both torture and assassination during the rebellion - and the moment the country achieved independence in 1964 its new leaders threw Henderson out.

Here is Henderson being interviewed at Heathrow the day he flew back. I think you can get a very good sense of what he is like - especially in his slightly frightening matter-of-factness. Speculating on the reasons for his expulsion he says, with a faraway look in his eyes:

"What I did many years ago as a police officer during the emergency is today not seen as something very desirable."

Well - yes.

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A little while ago a Scottish journalist called Neil Mackay uncovered secret Foreign Office documents that show that the senior British diplomat in Bahrain in 1966 - Antony Parsons - worked on the ruling Sheikh Khalifa to persuade him to appoint Henderson as head of what was called the Special Branch - and to give Henderson a free hand to reorganise it into an efficient, modern covert surveillance "anti terrorist" organisation.

To begin with Henderson presented himself a a new breed of security chief. He freed all the prisoners from the 1965 uprising and announced that the country would now be ruled by proper law, not arbitrary detention. He also persuaded the Khalifas to welcome back militants from protest movements like the Bahrain National Liberation Front and the Popular Revolutionary Movement.

It was all very nice, but many Bahrainis now believe that what Henderson was also doing was building up an intricate system of infiltrators and double agents inside the protest movement - in preparation for the day when Britain pulled out of Bahrain and gave it independence.

That came in 1971 and for a moment ordinary Bahrainis had a modern political system of democracy. In 1973 the ruling Amir - Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa - approved a constitution for the country, and the first parliamentary elections took place.

But then something very sinister happened. Within a year Colonel Ian Henderson proposed a new law he called the State Security Law. It said that any Bahraini could be held for three years without charge or trial on just the suspicion that they might be a threat to the state. It was known as 'the precautionary law'.

It caused an outrage - because it meant that anyone could be imprisoned just on the imaginative suspicions of Colonel Henderson and his State Security acolytes. Parliament rejected the bill in June 1975 and there was a standoff with the regime, and with Henderson.

The Amir solved it in the simplest way - he suspended those articles of the Constitution that guaranteed freedom to the people, and he suspended parliament.

And in August 1975 Henderson went to work. His men began to fill up Bahrain's jails with activists - and among them were members of the now deceased parliament. And for the next twenty five years Henderson ran a ruthless system of repression that kept the al Khalifa family in power and stopped any movement towards democracy.

Opposition activists and human rights groups have repeatedly alleged that this repression has involved widespread torture, the rolling imprisonment without trial of thousands of people, deaths and assassinations. Henderson denies this. In the face of the charges Ian Henderson has repeatedly said that he has never been involved in torture nor has he ever ordered his officers to torture those who have been arrested.

One of the key questions is whether this repression was still in Britain's interest? On the one hand you can argue that it protected the flow of oil, that it kept Bahrain as a bulwark first against communism and then from the 80s onwards against Shia Islamist revolution - plus that Bahrain also became the home to the American Fifth Fleet.

But you can also argue that by inserting Ian Henderson into the Bahraini system of power and security in 1966, the British created an infernal machine that just kept on running after they left in 1971. That machine had been told to prevent any political protests that might destablise the country - and that's what it proceeded to do. The Al Khalifas loved the machine because it kept them in power - and as a result hundreds and thousands of Bahrainis were left stuck with a vicious ghost from the failure of the British empire.

And true to form the British in the 1970s ignored the repression and the torture going on around them. Here are a selection of films the BBC made about Bahrain in the 1970s

First is an extract from a film made about the town of Awali - where all the British oil workers lived. It is an extraordinary place because in the middle of the desert the British have created a copy of a Surrey suburb where they live in blissful separateness from the rest of the country.

Except at the end - when a British couple being interviewed suddenly start describing how strange it is - they say it's like "living in a cotton wool world. I think it is really bad to live here in a world without responsibility. This place steals your life away"

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And here are some extracts from one of the oddest arts programmes the BBC has ever shown. It follows a musical composer called David Fanshawe (and collector of Arabian folk music) as he creates his new work called "Arabian Fantasy" in various locations around Bahrain.

He does this by banging oil pipes and machinery in the oilfields, by assembling lots of oil tankers and signalling them with flags to blow their hooters, all interspersed with helicopter shots of him playing his synthesizer in a prog-rock kind of way in all kinds of locations around the island state.

It's made even odder by the appearance of Fanshawe's sidekick who had built his own very complex synthesizer that treats and distorts all the noises. He's called Adrian Wagner - and is a descendant of the famous composer.

Fanshawe is doing all this because he grew up in Bahrain as a boy when his uncle was the naval commander of the British fleet there in the 1950s - and there are bits of him wandering nostalgically round empty expat swimming pools. He's quite annoying - and he seems to like funk music as well.

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Then in 1979 the Queen of England came to visit Bahrain - and I've stumbled on the unedited rushes of her visit. Here are some of them. I've listened through to all of her and Prince Philip's overheard conversations with the ruling Amir - and she doesn't seem to mention any of the repression, imprisonment without trial, or killings.

But she does have to suffer a rather strange dance which is apparently expressing how the rights have women have been progressing in Bahrain. At least that's the only thing she had to suffer - unlike many Bahrainis.

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And Bahrain had other uses for Britain in the 1970s. In 1979 the BBC made a very creepy documentary film about how Bahrain had become a central hub for the new supersonic jet - Concorde. The truth was that at that time practically no other country wanted Concorde because of the very loud sonic booms it made - and the Al Khalifa family stepped in to save British Airways.

 

This is a section from the documentary where the British Airways manager Tim Phillips goes to see the Amir at the regular Majlis - where people come to petition and lobby their ruler. Phillips seems to be convinced that the Majlis is almost a better form of democracy than we have in Britain. It is followed by the very creepy scene when he gets to talk one-to-one with to the Amir, and the scene sums up in a nutshell Britain's relationship with this weird state.

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Ian Henderson soon became the Dr Evil of Bahrain. He was hated because he was seen as the man whose security law had helped destroy the Constitution and democracy in the country.

In response a new protest movement began to grow which united the secular left and Islamists around the simple, dramatic demand that the constitution and parliament should be restored. It grew slowly at first - but in 1994 it emerged as The Constitutional Movement - and it set out to confront Henderson.

It was the biggest revolt yet seen in Bahrain and it had widespread popular support that crossed across the Shia - Sunni divide. Henderson and his security forces responded viciously. The opposition accused them of using the same tactics of divide and rule that had been seen in the 1950s, deliberately fomenting sectarian hatreds. Henderson's forces were also accused of imprisonment and torture on a scale not seen before.

And - just as in 1956 - at the very heart of the Constitutional Movement's demands was the removal of the British "adviser" who they said was the mastermind behind the terror that was engulfing the country. In the words of the opposition:

"Security and special branch chief General Henderson, along with a bunch of British mercenaries who are in control of the security apparatus bear full responsibility for the deterioration of relations between people and regime and for the festering political crisis - by their policy of sectarian discrimination, by waging large scale arrests and killing campaigns, and by fabricating plots designed to alienate the masses from the movement."

And finally the British noticed. Here is a really good report made for the BBC in 1996 by the brilliant reporter Sue Lloyd Roberts. She uses secret filming and blurred interviews to show what was really going on and evoke the fear that the rolling repression was creating for hundreds of thousands of Bahraini people.

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And just like in the 1950s the publicity became too much. In 1999 a new member of the Al Khalifa family took over the leadership of Bahrain - and he decided to finish with Ian Henderson's services.

Henderson returned to Britain where various human rights groups and MPs persuaded the Home Secretary to get the police to investigate whether Henderson could be prosecuted for ordering torture. But the police found that the Bahrain government refused to give them any evidence. So they gave up.

The new Amir also abolished Henderson's hated State Security Law - and announced there would be elections to parliament. At first it all seemed to be a genuine return to the democratic dreams of 1973. But it wasn't. By 2010 it had become clear that the new parliament had practically no real power.

Then came the events in Tunisia at the beginning of 2011 - and it reactivated the opposition in Bahrain. They occupied Pearl Roundabout in Manama - but on the night of the 17th of February the protestors met the full force of the Bahraini security forces.

Ian Henderson might have gone away - but the ferocious system that he helped build hasn't and it haunts the Gulf still today.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Thanks for this Adam. I've been working human rights in Bahrain for the last year and the history is very important to explain why there are still too many problems. One interesting story in connection with this that you might like to investigate: Belgrave's predecessor Maj. Daly who deposed the Sheikh in the early 20s had some members of the family exiled. The children of these exiles came back in the 60s and 70s and their decendants are the hardliners in the government today, and are called the Khawalid. The Royal Court Minister and the head of the army especially seem to hold grudges against the British and Shia and it is these people who hold the reins of government and are stifling reform. The sad thing is how the UK government continues to pretend a reform process is underway. It is entirely disingenous when you look at the history of broken promises for reform in the past.

  • Comment number 2.

    Impressively direct in its criticisms; after all, no one could defend or even equivocate about this sordid history with a straight face.

  • Comment number 3.

    A very interesting post. Especially considering former Assistant Commissioner in the London Met, John Yates has recently been "advising" the Bahraini security forces on "reforms".

    Is this a case of, if the method ain't broke, don't fix it?

  • Comment number 4.

    Fancy that, the British government employed an army colonel who'd played a part in suppressing the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya years earlier to build a police state structure in Bahrain. Bet that was done with a straight face.

    It may be coincidental or not but Julian Assange just conducted a three-hour discussion with Nabeel Rajab of the Bahraini Centre for Human Rights and Egyptian human rights activist Alaa Abdal Fattah as part of his "The World Tomorrow" series for Russia Today. It's best to read the discussion rather than watch the 28-minute video on Youtube or wherever. I have no idea if and when an hour-long version will be released. The transcript can be found here: https://worldtomorrow.wikileaks.org/episode-4.html

    Rajab asserts the revolution is still continuing and has not failed though much of the activity is on Twitter at present. It's curious that neither he nor Assange mentions Britain at all though they have plenty to say about the US.

    It's strange that Arab countries formerly ruled or influenced by Britain have this peculiar custom of "majlis" in which people have to petition rulers, rulers' relatives or governors if they have grievances rather than apply to a court and have their case heard by a magistrate or solved by mediation. Saudi Arabia has a similar system and like most people I thought it was "traditional" until I found that all Islamic countries are supposed to have proper Islamic courts with trained jurists, operating in parallel with Western legal systems. In the case of Bahrain, the use of majlis is one way of keeping the Shi'a Muslims under Sunni Muslim control.

    AC, thanks very much for this post.

  • Comment number 5.

    Isn't it funny how when a revolt is going on in your own time it seems slightly unreal, yet if you see dated footage of it it suddenly becomes an historic event. Says something about human psychology, I guess. We simply cannot confront change -- we prefer nostalgia...

  • Comment number 6.

    I was there when Morgan made his report. It attracted much comment at the time that we cannot now reproduce. The Agent, Tony Parsons, was certainly close to Sh Isa but the Ruler was his own man. At the time, Henderson's appointment was seen locally as an attempt to counter the effects of the Shia/Sunnei controversy - to formalise what had been ad hoc procedures. Even the slum clearance to get people out of their burusties was part of cooling things down. I left before the alleged change in Henderson's methods and influence but his Mau Mau experience would certainly have improved his softly softly catchee monkey skills.

  • Comment number 7.

    Thank you for this, Adam.

    I used to assume that, after 1947, with India gone, the British establishment knew the Empire game was over. It was simply a matter of bringing the remaining colonies to self-government in a reasonably orderly fashion and, as far as possible, keeping them out of the Soviet sphere. Clearly that picture isn't quite right, and there were other imperatives too.

    It's interesting to contrast the Bahrain story with Aden. In the latter case, a radical Marxist group chased the British out of Aden, took over South Yemen and made the former British port available to the navy of the USSR. Yet since North and South Yemen united, Islamism seems to have ousted Marxism as a motivator…

    Curious to know more.

  • Comment number 8.

    Bahrain is completely different than Syria. In Syria, Assad ignored the protests, and ignored the people. In Bahrain the King has engaged the people, there has been the BICI report, and it has been implemented. At least the leaders in Bahrain listen and work to meet the demands of the people.

  • Comment number 9.

    These "pro-democracy protests" and "human rights activists" that
    the media so love in fact violent partisans engaged in nothing short of
    armed revolt. They represent a tiny fraction of the Bahraini population.
    The majority of Bahrainis, from all sects and religion, oppose the acts
    violence and vandalism carried out in the name of the so-called "Arab
    Spring.

  • Comment number 10.

    Interesting. In fact the first I'd ever heard of Bahrain was as a child, when living near Heathrow, our school went to the top (3rd) floor of our building to see the first BA Concorde commercial flight take off in Jan 1976.
    21 years later, I was working in the engineering dept of BA that supported Concorde.

    Actually, by 1979, BA had the Washington and then, from November 1977, the vital New York route which sustained the aircraft and made it viable for BA, until despite the modifications after the Paris crash, it was found that the 9/11 attacks had diminished the revenue to and from New York and coupled with rising maintenance costs, effectively brought forward it's retirement by 3 or 4 years.

    But yes, in early 1976, Bahrain was the only game in town, until the Washington route started in the May of that year. But New York was the one that would pay it's way.

    But the Bahrain operation carried on until 1980, from 1979 it was really the refuelling stop for a service to Singapore, which we did jointly with Singapore Airlines.
    Unlike the US routes, loads were not great, but what really did for it was something you touched on Adam, it was made unviable after the Saudi's ended the overland supersonic flights over their deserts en route to Bahrain.

    Which brings me to my point, (sorry about the aeronautical digression, but context and all that), the reason the Saudis did this.

    You'll remember this Adam, it was part of the fallout from the diplomatic spat Saudi Arabia had with the UK over the ITV documentary 'Death Of A Princess'. Shown in 1980, about the nastier elements of life with the Saudi royals.
    How about that for a future blog? Though your always fascinating archive trawl might be limited since that documentary was not a BBC production.

    The idea that one TV program could cause such a stir, way beyond Concorde it threatened many major commercial and defence links, mainly it seems since the Saudis did not believe that the UK government had the power to stop it being shown, be it on ITV or BBC - I doubt the Saudis made any distinction anyway.
    They just found that lack of power impossible to comprehend, perhaps saw the documentary as some imagined plot?

  • Comment number 11.

    I live in the middle east, and have observed that any discussion on subjects like these invariably soon attract regime supporters, both Bahrainis and expats. They normally claim that there are no legitimate protesters, only thugs or vandals and that the regime is reforming. Reports by trusted news sources on the brutality of the regime are always 'lies', though they don't specify quite why these international and respected news organizations would all collude to misrepresent the situation in Bahrain.

    Then there is normally the accusation that Iran is behind any unrest. No mention of the guns-for-hire brought in from Pakistan and given citizenship in return for doing the regime's dirty work, or the foreign GCC (Saudi and UAE) troops that were shipped in to help put down the protests. So much for 'foreign influence'. Bahrain's rulers clearly cannot keep their hands on the power without bringing in foreigners to do the dirty work.

    These people should realise that trying to defend the indefensible might be possible within the controlled and censored media in their dictatorship, but in the free international ones of the BBC and similar, they are really wasting their time.

    If the regime is as popular as they claim, then the solution is simple. Free, democratic elections, with international observers.

    Until that happens, then it is quite clear that Bahrain is your run-of-the-mill shabby tinpot dictatorship, run by greedy people for the benefit of the few and desperate to hang on to power at any cost.

    It's also worth pointing out that while the Gulf states like to pretend that Iran is a regional threat, what they fear most is what Iran represents - a popular uprising against tyrannical dynastic monarchs. That is what they all fear most - their own people finally throwing them out of their gold-plated bunkers.

  • Comment number 12.

    This is a must read (and see) for anyone who is not an historian of Bahrain!

  • Comment number 13.

    Sorry this is off-topic, but I just want to thank you for Century of the Self. My tenth graders were enthralled. You've made a big difference to their intellectual development.

  • Comment number 14.

    @Rolin Manuddin: Its a must read, but more importantly a must watch. History repeats itself. The people interviewed and shown in the footage are saying exactly what Bahrainis today are saying and have the same diverse positions as Bahrainis today. You see there are the moderates, the more radical ones, the ones that say the british should leave completely vs. the ones that say that britain should use its leverage to pressure the Bahraini government (much like those today who say that America should use its leverage). Then you have the accusation that the protests are instigated by foreign actors (In the 1950s it was Egypt's Jamal Abdul Nasser and today its Iran) and the same defensive response that no this is a local uprising dealing with local issues. You had the Kuwaitis worrying about what is happening in Bahrain and today you have the Saudis. And of course you had Charles Belgrave and Henderson before and Timoney and Yates today

  • Comment number 15.

    11, I agree on your general points, however Iran an inspiration? Might have been 30 years ago but get on the wrong side of that regime, by wanting a non rigged election, by not conforming to the narrow standards of the Mullahs, that regime can make the Bahraini one blush when it comes to brutal repression. But two wrongs don't make a right of course.

    13, Adam's films as a teaching aid? I'm impressed!

  • Comment number 16.

    Twitter's going to totally change the game, of course... It's like how mobile phones brought Democracy to Africa except even better cos this time I can claim some of the credit from the comfort of my own home/office, yaaay!

  • Comment number 17.

    David Fanshawe's most famous composition is his African Sanctus, which was used on the soundtrack of Lindsay Anderson's movie 'If' - ironically a film about revolution.

  • Comment number 18.

    I remember the BBC report on Bahrain in 1996. At the time, I was a teenager. The BBC channel reception was jammed in Bahrain for the entire day (or part of the day) the report was aired. We saw the video later when we travelled to the UK. During the mid-1990s, the anti-riot squads surrounded our house once; they had my dad at gun point while they searched our home. We were one of the lucky ones (no one was injured or imprisoned, but you knew there was no law but what the Amir decrees). I often wonder, why do they think repression can outlast time, when history clearly identifies the erosion of dynasties and monarchs (they must not read, or have bad teachers)? Thank you for a great education on my own history.

  • Comment number 19.

    Thank you for being frank. Bahrain's dilemma is because of the ruling family and the British and Americans. What did Belgrave gain? He went to the trash of history! And the people of Bahrain will win.

  • Comment number 20.

    Thank you so much for posting the B/W BBC videos about Bahrain. Old is gold

  • Comment number 21.

    This is the first that the people of Bahrain see Charles Belgrave's video. wow! Thank you! Could you post more old videos about Bahrain?

  • Comment number 22.

    Just been reading that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are looking to form a formal Union, which is somewhat resented by Iran. I guess people in Bahrain would only have the unenviable task of choosing between the devil and the deep red sea, even if they did have the chance to do so. As the Greeks are finding out, it's one thing to vote for what you want, it's quite another to get what you vote for.

  • Comment number 23.

    Still Digesting this post. Heavy stuff for the summer.

  • Comment number 24.

    A comment from one of my Bahrainian students:
    "It is interesting. The documentaries are so weird. I could recognize places from the last one, right where I live. It's really strange to see the area in 1994 (when I was 2 years old!). I was not all that surprised because I knew about the British influence in Bahrain and how the people had multiple protests, at least I knew about the one during the early 1990s.
    Thanks for the article though, I really enjoyed it!"
    There's a good documentary on the current troubles, courtesy of Al Jazeera, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaTKDMYOBOU

  • Comment number 25.

    To commenters from Bahrain and other parts of the Middle East:

    My understanding is that monarchy is anathema to Islam because it places an intermediary between humans and God. So what do Muslims make of monarchy or its equivalent in countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia? I read a quick history of Bahrain on Wikipedia and discovered that it has been ruled by one family, Al Khalifa, since 1783. I was unaware of the extent that Al Khalifa dynasty has ruled Bahrain until I saw the lists of monarchs and current government ministers at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Khalifa_family

    Before 1783, the country had been ruled by the Safavids of Persia since 1602 which would explain why Shi'a Muslims make up the majority of the population (about 66 - 70%). Al Khalifa family though is Sunni Muslim so that must mean that there have been tensions between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims for almost 230 years. What is it about Sunni Muslim rule of Bahrain or about Sunni Islam generally that most people in Bahrain still remain Shi'ites?

  • Comment number 26.

    Monarchy (and religion) are toxic to the idea of equality and therefore equal rights, for rather obvious reasons, and so it comes as no surprise to learn how Britain continues to poison the rest of the world with its unenlightened ideas about how to rule.

    We British seem to pride ourselves in being somehow a free country that invented things like freedom or the industrial revolution, and must therefore be the most progressive and free country in the world. It is, as Adam likes to say, a fantasy.

  • Comment number 27.

    Going completely off-topic, does any resident fan here know if Adam is ever going to put up the live films shown in various art festivals for the benefit of those of us restricted by the temporal realm (ie. being stuck in Finland) from seeing them?

    On the topic I have very little to say, but I do unabashedly love all these stories. There is nothing quite like this to be read anywhere else in the interbutt.

  • Comment number 28.

    Thanks Adam for your very good article and excellent collection of historical videos about Bahrain. As well, the comment by “shoomoz” above is quite accurate. I will only add that if Obama proceeds forward with the “Arab Spring”—assuming he is reelected later this year (i.e. 2012)—then his administration as well as the current role of the USA in the Middle East will be judged particularly by what transpires in Bahrain. It is clear that the current set of aging autocrats must be replaced throughout the entire Middle East if the US wishes to maintain its hegemony for another generation, though it is unclear if the current operatives in charge at the US State Department understand this necessity for restructuring, or “perestroika” if you will. Many of them come from the same pampered and elite background which make the Khalifas indifferent to human suffering and in opposition to democracy. The long suffering—and long struggling—Bahraini people deserve, at the very least, democratic control over their country. The simple, yet important, rights folks in the UK and the USA take for granted, like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of religion and conscience, are essential for the functioning of today’s computer-driven economy, and freedom-loving people everywhere know that monarchy is a laughable and outdated form of governance and an affront to human intelligence and dignity and should be treated with contempt. Thomas Paine clearly pointed out the absurdity of monarchy in his pamphlet "Common Sense" some 235 years ago, just seven years before the Al-Khalifa conquered Bahrain in 1783. The absolute rule of the Al-Khalifas constitutes neither a constitutional monarchy, as the National Assembly has no formal power at all, nor a benevolent dictatorship; rather the Khalifas are brutal, bloody, butchers who—with no moral nor political legitimacy—maintain their continuance in power solely by force enabled by British and American puppet masters. It is the responsibility of all of us to denounce the continuance of monarchical rule in Bahrain—indeed in the entire Gulf region—and, in unison with three quarters of the Bahraini population who are opposed to the regime, shout: “Down, down Hamad.”

  • Comment number 29.

    I dare you to make a film about this! I just dare you!

    Interesting stuff...

    xx

  • Comment number 30.

    During this I can't help thinking about Noel Coward and the song "I Wonder What Happened to Him?"

    "Do you know what became of old Archie?
    I heard he departed this life
    After slaughtering 12 sacred cows in Karachi
    To welcome the governor's wife."

    Presented without comment.

  • Comment number 31.

    Follow up.
    Apologies to Noel Coward for misquoting what should read:

    "after *rounding up* twelve sacred cows in Karachi"

    The correction is needed since Mr. Coward never used violent language that I recall.

  • Comment number 32.

    Someone said Bahrain is nothing like Syria. I have absolutely no idea. But this story reminds me of the one told previously about Syria, basically about the amoral exercise of power. It's fascinating, but I wonder if this tells us anything we didn't learn previously about the nature of empire and power politics.

    Other stuff -

    On Golden Dawn in Greece - is this not the dark side of nationalism as a means of uniting people to change society? It's dangerous becuase I don't think it's always easy to tell the difference between adapting the style, or aspects of the politics, from the terrifying movements of the past. I'm wary of what seemed to be part of the argument in the Poodles of Power post. Ideas that inspire 'the mass of people' of course are needed for positive change, but the details are important. Could one not argue that neoliberalism attracted the mass of people in the West?

    Also, I don't see it, but are we misunderstanding Golden Dawn? Basically everything you hear about them seems to be that they are 'neo-nazis' - is this true?

  • Comment number 33.

    One thing I'd like to learn more about, and I've (perhaps at my own fault) found it hard to really get good info, is something briefly mentioned in Pandora's Box.

    In terms of UK in the 60's you had these cycles of boom and bust, and this pathway to ruin the 70's. I'm summarising massively, but the general orthodoxy is that the crisis that prefigured and allowed neoliberalism to reign was caused by a combination of the Oil Crisis, maybe Vietnam and US spending.... what I'm interested in is the liberalisation of markets, particularly with regard to currency, what forces led to the end of Bretton Woods, and a good analysis of why the British economy went into turmoil with the IMF getting involved etc. I'm basically how true it is that the post-war consensus and the kind of fairly social democratic politics and economics up to then was to blame for the crises (as is basically stated by the right, and that clown who did the BBC series about the 70's) and a deeper understanding of that part of UK economic history covered in The League of Gentleman.

  • Comment number 34.

    The Al Khalifa didn't conquer Bahrain. They (along with the Al Sabah in Kuwait, the Al Thani in Qatar, et. al down the coast line) just happened to be the ones in power when the British came through at the end of the 18th and throughout the 19th centuries and "offered" (with gun boats off shore) treaties and protection (ending up in formal protectorates in many cases) so that Indian goods could move through the Indian Ocean and Persian/Arabian Gulf unmolested. When the British Empire ended in the Gulf in the 1960s and 70s, the United States picked up where the British left off, especially as they had already attached themselves to the Al Sa'ud next door in the 1940s. While it's always difficult to answer "what ifs" in history, one might argue that had the British and Americans not insisted that maintaining stability by propping up these families was vital to their national/commercial securities, the Gulf would look very different today. And, who knows? Perhaps Bahrain might have had a working parliament.

  • Comment number 35.

    You are quite wrong about Belgrave's role but I appreciate you are looking for a story. Belgrave worked for the Emir and NOT for the British. the Bahrainis are embarrassed because they like to claim all the glory for building the country. In fact belgrave build the health service, education system and negotiated the oil contracts. In the 50's, Nasser was trying to bring down the monarchies in the Gulf and the Egyptians were very active in this, especially in the Committee in Bahrain.

  • Comment number 36.

    @33 - theartteacher. Was that 70's program so bad? You describe the presenter (Dominic Sandbrook) as a clown. I've not yet seen the series - but am reading the associated book - 'state of emergency' - about the Heath government 70-74. I think it is actually quite a good read.

  • Comment number 37.

    I think in the interview Belgrave is like the character of Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964). Kind of abstract psycopath. Could Sterling Hayden use him as a model for this representation?

  • Comment number 38.

    @ theartteacher: Golden Dawn holds 21 seats out of 300 in the Greek Parliament or 7%. It is National Socialist in orientation though there have been some minor ideological changes to accommodate Greek Orthodox believers. The Greek Communist Party holds 26 seats or 8.67%. As a group, left-wing parties including the Greek Communist Party just mentioned hold about 138 seats in the Greek Parliament or 46%.

    There are at least four other parties in Greece with "Communist" or "Marxist-Leninist" in their name and there's also the Trotskyite Workers Revolutionary Party so I don't think we need to worry that much about Nazis in Greece. The Greek Diaspora traditionally leans strongly towards socialism and social democracy. Most Greek Australians are descended from people who supported or fought for the republican side in the civil war in 1946/7 and who fled the country when the monarchists, backed by the British and Americans, won and began rounding up and imprisoning the republican supporters.

    The memory of the Nazi-induced famine during the Second World War may still be strong among the older generations of Greeks. The Nazis forced Greece to lend money and supply food and other provisions to German troops on the eastern front against the Soviets and as a result about 300,000 people starved to death with the highest death rate occurring during the winter of 1941/2. Fascist Italy also occupied parts of western Greece during the war.

    The popularity of Golden Dawn is likely to be due more to people's dissatisfaction with the major political parties in dealing with the country's problems including immigration (Greece is the front-line for illegal immigrants from Afghanistan and the Middle East) and EU policies including the austerity package imposed on the country.

  • Comment number 39.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 40.

    All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

 

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