Things have changed drastically since 1988. And how.

That is a long time ago, but the transformation is far larger and weightier than the time is long.

In those days Eddie Fenech Adami was still settling into his prime minister’s job, though he had been in office for about a year. His government could not take any initiative, no matter how small, at the then debt-ridden Malta Drydocks, without the consent of the General Workers’ Union.

There must have been some 3,000 or so workers then at the shiprepair yard. With the “militant” tag hanging justifiably heavily round their neck.

They were militant, indeed. Unconscionably so, though they had driven their industry into a debt running into tens and tens of millions of liri, in unsustainable subventions which the government paid from our taxes to keep them in work.

Today the workforce has been whittled down to 1,700, is facing the government’s wrath, and can hardly do anything about it. It is payday for them. It is the day of reckoning. The government will be shedding workers, to make the industry attractive to privatise.

The irony is, of course, that there cannot be so many of today’s 1,700 breadwinners at the now re-named Malta Shipyards, who were among the militants in the 3,000 or so who worked at Malta Drydocks in 1988. And who were then such a thorn in the government’s side. If the government is paying back in kind, it is paying back the wrong people.

It has cast the die. The way forward, for the government, is privatisation. No more, no less. If there is to be any discussion, it is not about how to proceed, but on the decision the government took by itself, unilaterally, to privatise the shipyard. Not on how to try to make the shipyard viable, but on how to slim down the workforce to make the industry attractive to private interests. Can’t the government make it attractive for itself, instead of for others?

It is like the wife who falls pregnant without having planned it. How are they to adjust to having a new mouth to feed? Less eating out, perhaps? State, instead of private education? Sell one of the two cars as an economy? The wife takes up a job, maybe? No. The husband (or wife) decides for him(her)self. It will be abortion. There will be no child. The couple can discuss whether to abort in Italy, Bulgaria or the UK, and whether to take a holiday afterwards. But the way forward is that. Abortion. There is nothing else to discuss. Not whether, with economy, they can still manage on their income, with the addition of another mouth.

Can a decision like that, taken on one’s sole responsibility, be considered genuine consultation?

At Malta Shipyards, jobs are to be shed at a time when, according to Lawrence Gonzi himself, the demand for the service the shipyard offers is at a high. Instead of trying to make the industry viable, seeing there is such a strong demand for its services, breadwinners are to volunteer for redundancy.

Surely that is admitting defeat! Surely this is laying the blame on the workers for the state of their industry. Though today the workers are not the militant force they used to be. How can it be impossible, with such a slimmed down workforce, to not make the industry profitable when its services are sought after so strongly, as Lawrence Gonzi has said? Surely the first step to be taken is to determine why, with workers who are so highly skilled, the shipyard is not making ends meet, though its services are in such demand?

The government won’t even be holding a public inquiry into affairs at the shipyard, as asked by the General Workers’ Union, which says that it is the shipyard executive which is to blame for the situation, not the workforce. Since an inquiry will not be held, we will not know how right, or wrong, the GWU is in that.

And the government hopes that the Labour opposition will work with it and with “all persons of good will” to make privatisation of the industry a success. At least, in its DOI statement, the government is not claiming to be showing “good will”. Only a fist of steel. In a glove.

I started by referring to 1988, and did so for a particular reason. That was the year Dr Fenech Adami went on an official visit to London, to promote his government’s policies, aiming to attract investments. He met Margaret Thatcher during that visit.

I was in London with the group of journalists from Malta reporting the visit.

In one afternoon event during the stay in London, the Prime Minister addressed a group of industrialists, to tell them what Malta offered and how his government would be improving that package to make it more attractive to investors.

It was hardly the stuff to make headlines, and left me with little of substance to report. Except for one small detail that I picked out when it was laid out.

His government intended to reduce the workforce at Malta Drydocks, Dr Fenech Adami said, whetting my appetite. His government had hardly cut its teeth. Could it really be taking on the General Workers’ Union in all its might? I wondered.

But though the point had been made, the Prime Minister, rather unfairly, and strangely, did not want it repeated outside that room. His personal assistant, Richard Cachia Caruana – he had almost already cut his teeth then – came up to me and told me to withhold the drydocks bit. Told me, mind you. Though he did it politely, there was no asking. The incipient arrogance made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight.

“I cannot,” I replied. Mr Cachia Caruana grimaced and moved off, only to approach me again within minutes.

“Do you mind,” he asked, in a much more acceptable tone, “if the Prime Minister explains his thinking about the drydocks?” No, I did not mind at all. Nothing wrong in that. Dr Fenech Adami was already in his car and when I went up to him, he pointed out that what the government had in mind was that the workforce would be whittled down through natural wastage. Those who retired, or left to take a job elsewhere, would not be replaced. No jobs were immediately threatened.

Unlike today. Today the government is in a strong position and can dictate matters. It will be forcing voluntary redundancies. How things have changed! To whose gain?

I had another brush eventually about the drydocks with the government. Years later. It was a Monday, when I always stood in for the editor at The Times. An enterprising reporter submitted an article for publication about the agreement due to be signed by the government and the GWU the following day.

In that agreement the drydocks’ huge debts (I think about Lm200 million) would be written off in return for I don’t know what. I don’t remember the details and it is not important to go into that. What I do know is that between the time I left the office, about 8.30pm I think it was, and getting home some 30 minutes later, the night editor had had a call from Lawrence Gonzi, not yet Prime Minister then.

Dr Gonzi had asked to speak to the editor, the night editor told me. I don’t remember if I contacted Dr Gonzi, or whether it was Dr Gonzi who contacted me at home. But we discussed the story. I do not know how Dr Gonzi had come to know I had the article, but I imagine that the people the reporter had contacted for details of the agreement had told Dr Gonzi that they had been contacted by The Times.

Dr Gonzi asked me, without beating about the bush, to withhold the article. If you carry it, he told me, the GWU will not sign the agreement. He was insistent on that point. There were a few minor details still to settle in the agreement, he said. If I carried the article, he repeated, I would be responsible for spoiling an agreement under which the country would once and for all be rid of this festering sore of these huge debts.

It was a frightening responsibility that was laid on me. I did not think the article was some earth shaker, though it made a good read. Was Dr Gonzi exaggerating? Should I publish or should I withhold the article? My journalistic instincts went numb. Here I was, making a living that saw me through life hardly comfortably, dealing with a Lm200 million decision, when all I had ever decided on for myself was the ultimate luxury (to me) of spending Lm3,400 on a motorbike.

Holy Smoke! Bill Gates or George Soros might snap a finger at that huge figure and donate it to charity without thinking twice. To me it was a nightmare.

I withheld the article. Maybe I should have called Dr Gonzi’s bluff, to see if he would take it further, to my management. And to see what the management would do.

I will never know now. Though I have come to know well how pliable managements can be, under pressure, from within or without.

Dr Gonzi has a decision to make. He is still in time to genuinely consult the country on the shipyard’s future. The livelihood of breadwinners is involved. The industry is a valuable asset. And Dr Gonzi can also go to the EU – which we were told ad nauseam would always be there to help when help was needed (judge that for yourselves about the illegal immigrants) – to see if we can get some breathing room for the shipyards. Not to have the rules bent, mind you, only to be given a bit more room to breathe, just for a short time.

We are a supplicant country. Have we exhausted all the diplomatic good will we can fall back on? Or is it that, for some unfathomable reason, the decision to privatise is irrevocable?