It has been barely a month since I addressed Labour’s event as the party marked Joseph Muscat’s decade at its helm. The response from members of the public, colleagues at university and friends alike has been a heartening one, to say the least. This included a number of people whom I would never in a million years have thought would utter anything remotely sympathetic of Labour. They accosted me and expressed similar sentiments to those I had outlined in my speech — words to the effect that, in pectore, at least, they admire the policy lines Labour has taken on various social fronts. It was for me a bracing indicator of how far the partisan landscape has changed in this country over the past few years.

At Rahal Gdid, I pointed out that Muscat’s Labour has opened up possibilities of social mobility and opportunity for an entire class of people who did not, hitherto, have the occasion to succeed and reap the fruits of their efforts in life. This, Labour is doing without denting the prospects of those who have prospered and achieved many of their goals in the past decades. My feedback is that many in this cohort continue to prosper and do well today thanks to the current government’s policies. The formula here is simple but crucial: enough injection of wealth into the country for new stakeholders to improve their prospects in life – irrespective of social background or economic means – without the need to imperil at all the chances of economically stronger actors to continue to succeed.

I also pointed out some of the goals that an overall wealthier Malta must aim to achieve in the near future: better and more equitable salaries, thinking through environmental policy as an essential aspect of our urban and social development, improving the quality of the air we breathe and that of the food we consume. While the empowerment of sectors and individuals in society to speak up is a hallmark of the Labour movement so far, I also said there are more silences to which we must strive to give voice.

The political actualities and needs of today’s Malta have changed irrevocably. The fact that the Labour movement has redrawn party lines by attracting a significant chunk of traditionally conservative, lower-income earning classes goes to show how dire this country’s needs were on a main front: the opening up of core wealth and life opportunities across the social gamut. Many today are looking beyond entrenched partisan lines, since this now means enjoying prospects that were withheld from them or their offspring, sometimes for generations on end.

It is in such a changed political landscape that our political parties are making their platforms ever more available to scholars and academics. It is encouraging to see more academics take to the Labour, Nationalist and other party lecterns as we have seen in recent years. In a context in which political parties continue to retain ubiquitous public attention, party platforms today offer an effective means of public outreach, engagement and social impact. They are ways of getting our thoughts and beliefs across – a means of drawing response, wisdom and impetus beyond the lecturing hall and the broader social and public sphere we serve every day as educators and researchers.

Some weeks ago, I lectured at various Palestinian universities as part of a Cultural Diplomacy lecturing tour co-ordinated by the Representative Office of Malta to Palestine in Malta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In particular, my seminar at Birzeit University – a historic Palestinian educational outfit— gave me an insight into the realities of an institution that draws its character from the everyday social reality of the Israeli Occupation. At Birzeit, humanistic learning is filtered through the daily ordeal of the military occupation in the most ingenious and inventive of ways. It is such a great university, I think, because in it, book-based learning lives side by side with a social university, with a scholarship of the streets.

I had learnt this lesson back in my years at the University of Warwick – and especially from Benita Parry, whose eminent scholarship leaps from the page straight into the social world. She has schooled many of us to stand up to oppression, tyranny and systemic violence, and has opened our eyes to the need to educate socially on our way to overcoming the inequalities that surround us.

A few, caring friends have walked up to me and said but hey, x’fettillek? Are you not bothered that taking to the party platform may not be the brightest idea you have had so far? The short answer is that I am not. Labour’s economic and social behaviour in reaching out to everyone has put paid to that question once and for all. Tribal reprisals based on political creed have become a thing of the past.

My longer answer would be that in the past weeks, the Labour movement’s platform has put me in touch with a number of young people already pursuing, or determined to pursue their tertiary education, succeed in life and achieve their goals. This has only strengthened my resolve — to continue to offer my best in teaching and research to the university which I cherish, and to deliver the best possible legacy in writing to the country that I love.

Dr Bugeja is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies at the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta. Among his forthcoming publications are a book chapter celebrating Benita Parry’s scholarship, various peer-reviewed articles, new poetry, and a novel.