IOR/R/15/2/752

The file comprises correspondence and other papers relating to the rescission of Defence Regulation No. 2 of 1942, made under the Persian Gulf States (Emergency) Order in Council (1939), which prohibited employees of the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) and Petroleum Concessions Limited (PCL) from quitting their employment without the prior consent of the British political authorities. The principal correspondents in the file are: the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf (Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Geoffrey Prior); the Political Agent at Bahrain (Major Tom Hickinbotham; also T E Rogers, officiating in Hickinbotham’s absence); the India Office (Roland Tennyson Peel).

The file includes:

• correspondence discussing difficulties raised by the Regulation (employees either having difficulties returning home for their leave, or not returning after their leave has completed), and the possibility of rescinding the Regulation in August 1944, rejected on the grounds that important expansion work on the refinery at Bahrain was ongoing, and that the Regulation was working effectively for all but one or two ‘ill-disposed employees’ (ff 3-4, ff 8-10, f 13, ff 21-22);
• correspondence dated from July 1945, concerning the suspension, and then the rescission of the Regulation, including copies of Regulation No. 1 of 1946, which officially repealed Regulation No. 2 of 1942 (ff 23-36);
• copies of correspondence sent by His Majesty’s Consul at Khorramshahr (Andrew Charles Stewart) to His Majesty’s Ambassador at Tehran (Sir Reader William Bullard), concerning difficulties encountered in enforcing a similar Regulation at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), where many employees were reported to be deliberately reducing their output in order to force managers to dismiss them (ff 6-7, ff 11-12);
• correspondence between the Political Agent at Bahrain and the Chief Local Representative at BAPCO (Ward P Anderson) over the Regulation and its enforcement in relation to Indian employees taking leave (ff 16-19).