Despatch No. 54. ✓ (14313/1/54) CONFIDENTIAL British Residency, Bahrain, May 11, 1954. A1432|| The affairs of Cable and Wireless Ltd. in the Persian Gull are in an unsatisfactory state. The most acute difficulty is in Kuwait, where in May, 1952, Cable and Wireless, having unsuccessfully applied for permission to increase their rentals, submitted to the Ruler, along with details of their plans for the badly-needed modernisation and extension of the telephone system, alternative proposals (a) for a State subsidy and (b) for the purchase of the system by the State and its management by themselves on an agency basis. Negotiations progressed satisfactorily on alternative (b), until Shaikh Fahad demanded that Cable and Wireless's telegraph service should also be "nationalised.” On this occasion we were asked, in General Department's letter EA 1431/6 of March 9, 1953. To try to persuade the Ruler to scotch the Kuwait Government's ill-considered ideas for nationalising the Cable and Wireless undertakings." There the matter still rests /(Foreign The Right Honourable Anthony Eden M.C., M.P., Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Office,
