Leading to Freedom Day

‘Il-}elsien Il-Mixja lejn il-31 ta’ Marzu tal-1979’

Noel Grima Just like religious books published by a religious publishing house, so too a book on history published by an avowedly partisan publishing house. The question is: how reliable and objective can such books be?

The author of this book is a professional historian, with a Masters in History who, though young, has played a major role in the battle against censorship. He is also the executive chairman of the National Book Council and who has these days come out with a book on Maltese history, A Materialist Revision of Maltese History – 870-1919, which, as its title implies tries to give a revisionist outlook to Maltese history.

In this book being reviewed, the author looks at Maltese history and telescopes it to lead to the end of the British military presence on 31 March 1979. To me, this sounds very much like a one-sided view of history, though I would be the first to admit that other views of Dom Mintoff need to be tempered with a more balanced view.

On the other hand, though, the book sounds very much in line with the MLP spin both pre-1979 as being the Year of Destiny and also afterwards. A balanced and rounded view of those years would have also included, I be- lieve, the savage treatment of the free unions post 1976 and also the birth of the European idea in the party then in Opposition, the Nationalist Party which was to lead to accession to the EU and later to the euro.

Many complain that we still do not have a full history of the Mintoff era. There are so many gaps in our knowledge. This book adds another dimension.

In his addendum, the author says that it was only recently that the OPM files were transferred from Castille to the National Archives. But when he went to search, he found that many files were missing. The same happened when he went to look at the Cabinet papers for the 1970s: most were missing.

The author claims, though he does not prove it, that before they were transferred (that would mean in PN time) these archives, which were kept at Castille, had been heavily tampered with.

Joe Camilleri, who had been Mintoff’s secretary, claimed that all the documentation he had had been destroyed when someone bombed his house.

Other than that, the Foreign Ministry archive is still kept in a warehouse and has not yet been transferred to the National Archives.

There remains the archives of the two political parties but while that of the Labour Party was accessible to the author, that of PN was not.

Even so, the minutes of the Labour Party executive committee were very bland. Until the author found out that the British had their own spy inside the executive and Mintoff created a National Bureau inside the party which was more restricted and where matters could be discussed in freedom.

I still think, rather, I know, that other documents pertaining to Mintoff and his administration are in private hands. Maybe some day they will find themselves in the National Archives.

Deprived of so many sources, the author bases his research on what some people have told him and on the many British Government archives such as the British Cabinet, the Colonial Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the like. With all the above as a premise, the story is an oft-told one, well in line with the spin generated for decades by the Labour Party – the poverty of the working class, the harbinger of freedom in the 7 June 1919 riots, the war followed by a re-awakening of the worker class and then the appearance of Dom Mintoff, the real hero of the book. Although the book repeats history as seen from Labour perspective, one will find some new angles or new information. It comes as a surprise, for instance, to learn that the organizer of the resistance by the Gozitan people against a proposed mass meeting by Dom Mintoff in Rabat on 21 May 1961, the mass meeting that was never held because of bells and whistles by the hostile crowd, that the organizer of the resistance was a then young priest, Dun Tumas Curmi, later on to distinguish himself by so many works of charity. Tongue-in-cheek, the author also tells us that on that day, Dom Mintoff, who usually rode in the front seat next to the driver, sat in the back seat protected by two bodyguards. Thanks to the correspondence in British archives, we learn much of the internal communications between the British senior officers and the Commonwealth Office, especially those quite sensitive between Police Commissioner De Gray and the imperial government.

The bell ringing tactic was used again, even in Malta but in Luqa on 7 January 1962, a group of Labour supporters tried to break down the church’s doors when the ringing began. That and maybe pressures by the British powers made Gonzi promise no more bell ringing to take place, a promise that was kept.

Obviously, this book, does not give a rounded view of the events of the Mintoff years, but its declared intention to lead events to 31 May 1979 give a certain twist to a balanced appreciation of the 1950s to the late 1970s.

The author somehow gives more information to the foreign trips by Labour delegations and links with like-minded parties around Europe and the Mediterranean than it gives to events in Malta. While the negotiations with Britain are given full exposure, less light is shed on events inside Malta, like the banks’ issue, the negotiations leading to the declaration of the Republic, the post-1976 industrial troubles, etc.

Just two final small notes, in view of a possible reprint: Boffa is spelt Borra in the caption on pg 59 and the bishop sitting next to Abp Gonzi on pg 73 is not Bishop Gerada but Bishop Emmanuel Galea.