Remembering Malta Drydocks (1)
Who remembers Malta Drydocks (MDD) and its final iteration Malta Shipyards (MS) now?
Fourteen years after closing on March 30, 2010, our largest industrial enterprise has been consigned to history, as if 47 years of operation never existed. Maltese heavy industry is now much leaner; a shadow of the past when MDD, Bailey (Malta) Ltd and the Admiralty Dockyard were the mainstays of the economy.
Well after Admiralty days, MDD remained a microcosm of Malta, larger than some towns and villages, and with a layout that town planners Harrison and Hubbard described (in 1945) “palaeolithic”. They suggested laying “the Dockyard anew, in accordance with the principles which everywhere govern the planning of a modern industrial plant”.
The Dockyard had expanded concurrently with warship development. Dock No. 1 at Cospicua was built over an ancient, silted valley. The dry docks in French Creek were ‘won’, literally, by demolishing fortifications and excavating. It was a trade-off: employment and new skills against loss of heritage, noise, pollution, and destruction of habitat.
My interest in MDD stemmed from years of ship spotting and photography in Grand Harbour. There was Il-Qawmien. Roughly translated as ‘the awakening’, this was the organ of the Social Action Movement – Moviment Azzjoni Soċjali of Fr Fortunato Mizzi (son of Enrico). On Fridays, we sold (or tried to) the journal to the men at Għajn Dwieli or the South Gate. I recall being ribbed: “What Qawmien? We have just finished the shift and are on our way to bed!”
After five years at St Joseph Secondary Technical School, I tried but failed to enter MDD. St Joseph’s was an informal finishing school for MDD, heir to the former De La Salle Brothers School and the Dockyard School. Hundreds of young men applied each year, hoping to follow in the footsteps of parents and relatives.
Higher education (the sixth forms and Polytechnic) was in its infancy, access to university limited, and MDD was one of a handful of career openings, along with the civil service and a fledgling tourism and manufacturing industry. MDD paid better, there were opportunities for overtime and career advancement, even outside the docks. MDD was a certificate of competence.
Apprenticeship was based on Admiralty and Bailey practice and was second to none. Apprentices made toolboxes in which they stored tools they had made, besides clothes and lunch. All the boxes were kept in the infamous ‘box racks’ (no lockers initially – or proper ablution facilities).
“MDD was a certificate of competence
They were first inducted in several trades and mentored by seniors. It was a self-renewing system that guaranteed continuity, a generational mix that ensured high levels of competency and ability to cope with a largely stressful job that required fit and healthy men. The subsequent decline of MDD was partly owing to a much-reduced apprentice intake and the dearth of applicants.
To remember Malta Drydocks is to recall the protagonists: the men themselves, six prime ministers, the Malta Labour Party (MLP), the Nationalist Party (PN), the General Workers’ Union (GWU), Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Bailey (Malta) Ltd, and the citizenry.
MDD was the offspring of the convoluted story of the final years of the empire whose decline started well before the Suez Canal debacle of 1956 – its last hurrah. The commanderin-chief praised Dockyard men
for rising to the occasion, working round the clock to restore obsolescent landing craft for the invasion.
That commendation did not alter the course of events: Britain split the Dockyard, the Admiralty retaining half and the remainder leased to an exclusive British ship repair firm. A foreign company, working cheek by jowl with the Royal Navy, was unconscionable. The largest firms shied away. C. H. Bailey, a minor Welsh ship repair firm, took over after financial incentives, promise of naval work and a revamp of the yard.
Despite teething troubles and local opposition, the ‘swords to ploughshares’ change got under way. It was a learning curve for the men: naval repair work was different. They learnt that timber shoring was unnecessary – most merchant ships had flat keels that rested squarely on bilge blocks.
Four years later, London pulled the plug over the company’s dubious financial management. The legal wrangle dragged on for years. Bailey protested that they had risked their capital only to be nationalised: this was the gratitude they got for taking on 5,591 men, of whom 2,000 were surplus. British government funds had not been ordinary loans by a commercial lender to a commercial firm but a political instrument for the welfare of Malta.
The yard was still owned by the British government but prime minister George Borg Olivier, who had won an acrimonious general election the previous year, opted for continuity at a time when he was negotiating independence from Britain.
Malta Drydocks was set up, a Council of Administration appointed, and Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson became managing agents. The system worked, all things considered, until yet another ‘wind of change’ blew from abroad. The Suez Canal, a vital lifeline for MDD, was shut after the Six-Day War of June 1967. It would not reopen until 1975. Work dried up, Swan Hunter reduced their fee and even considered closure.
In 1968, Malta took over its assets and Malta Drydocks became Malta Drydocks Corporation (MDC). It diversified work and ventured into ship, tug- and barge-building. In 1970, negotiations between the GWU and Swan Hunter over a new wage structure stalled.
On November 24, 72 men, comprising the docking party, dockside crane operators and the workers at the oxygen plant, were called out on strike, paralysing the entire operation. Neither side flinched; Swan Hunter represented a government on the eve of an election it was hoping to win. Fifteen ships (the ‘White Fleet’) were trapped in the Great Bitter Lakes in the Suez Canal, seven at MDC (three in dry docks, four afloat). ‘Our’ ships left eventually – an interesting tale there.
The MLP was returned to government on June 17, 1971, and the GWU lifted the strike for negotiations to resume. Swan Hunter were not re-engaged when their contract expired in August. A retired West German admiral was engaged as chairperson of a new board, with John M. Calleja as general manager, a first for the yard.
Prime minister Dom Mintoff had the yard at heart. He had opposed Bailey, had called the transfer a sham, and was not above venting his frustration, as he did in 1973 when he faced the men during a meeting at Cospicua. He was heavily involved in direct marketing, and ships from ‘friendly’ countries were regularly stemmed.
Mintoff initiated what would be the jewel in the crown and MDD’s most valuable asset – the construction of a 300,000-ton capacity dry dock between 1972 and 1981. The China-Malta Friendship Dock, No. 6, is one of the largest in the Mediterranean. Like the other dry docks in French Creek, it was largely excavated by blasting the rock at Corradino.
On October 17, 1996, on the 15th anniversary of the dock, Mintoff praised China for its assistance, and reiterated his support for MDD: “Without the Drydocks, Malta would have a cup and saucer instead of the George Cross on its national flag, because we would have been waiters, good only for tourism… the Drydocks with its trades kept the country civilised. If it were not for the docks, all trades would have disappeared.” (The Times, October 17, 1996).
Mintoff ’s other foray into heavy industry was Malta Shipbuilding Company (MSC). A new yard was built at Marsa, propped by an eight-ship order for the USSR. Malta Drydocks had built medium-sized ships before, but sophisticated Ice-Class vessels for the Arctic were challenging. MDD was called to assist, albeit ship repair and shipbuilding requiring different skills.
Another ‘wind of change’ – the end of the USSR in 1991, left MSC with six undelivered vessels. Both facilities merged in 2004 as Malta Shipyards – the year of Malta’s EU accession. The shipyards’ products endure: three Gozo Channel Line ferries, the semi-submersibles Fjord and Fjell still trading worldwide, and the floating power barge Lady of Victory in Kazakhstan.
In 1975, Mintoff introduced worker participation and eventual full self-management based on the Yugoslav model. Further top-down initiatives led to Works Committees – Kumitati tax-Xogħol. The new council replaced its newsletter Dockyard News with Tarzna Tagħna.
MDD made a profit for the first time ever. After a downturn in ship repair that was not reversed, the pros and cons of the unorthodox down-top-down system came to the fore, and the role of the commercial and ship repair managers (the men in between)q uestioned.
The men firmly resisted changes to the system by PN governments until 1997 when
Alfred Sant, barely three months in as prime minister, enacted 35 measures that effectively ended 22 years of self-management that “had developed to the detriment of professional management, and that instead of worker-participation, the workers and their representatives had taken over control of all decision-making” (The Times, Tuesday, January 28, 1997).
To be concluded