Enzo Cachia

The advent of World War II established certain procedures that somehow limited the liberty of British subjects in the Empire.

Various measures had been taken to eliminate any form of treason. One of these measures was internment. Suspected citizens were locked up indefinitely without being accused of having broken any law.

In Malta, a number of British subjects were locked up during the war, 43 of them were sent to Uganda and they had to cross the Mediterranean Sea on a warship called Breconshire, during one of the most fiercely fought battles against the Axis.

Malta, a small island under British rule, only 58 miles south of Sicily, was politically divided between those who had Italian sympathies and those who were pro-Empire. The major argument was the Language Question.

In 1933 the local British Authorities suspended the Self-Government Constitution because the Education Minister had approved the sum of £5,000 for the teaching of the Italian language. This meant that the Governor dismissed the ruling Nationalist Party ministers.

Since war was already looming, the British Imperial authorities thought the best way to get rid of the pro Italian Nationalist government was by suspending the Constitution. It also meant that Malta then was governed directly by the local British authorities.

In Malta there were no Fifth Columnists. One could only find people who had long standing grievances against the British government. For decades the Maltese had struggled to obtain their national rights. Those who could not understand the aspirations of the Maltese thought they wanted a change of flag, which was not the case. In the 1930s, after the Constitution was suspended, various suspect people were followed by detectives and noted by the British authorities.

In 1939 Malta was granted a new Constitution but the executive rights of the Maltese government had been drastically reduced. The elected members were in a minority. Six of the members were elected on the pro Empire Constitutional Party ticket; three were Nationalists and one Labour. This meant that the pro British were in a majority. The Governor also nominated the non-elected members.

In the 1930s, the British government had asked the House of Commons for special emergency powers to suspend the individual human right of freedom as a precautionary measure against any form of treason. This meant that the individual’s fundamental rights were no longer protected. The British government had the power to detain people without any formal judicial proceedings.

However, although the British Parliament approved the Secretary of State for Colonies’ right to detain any individual suspected of being a Fifth Columnist, the British Parliament did not approve the right to remove any suspect subject from his homeland. This was only done in Malta.

As we shall see later, it was the Council of Government that approved such measures. In fact, Mosley, a British Fascist, although interned in Britain for security reasons, was never removed from his homeland.

Although such measures seem to be justified in times of war, one doubts how genuine most of these cases were. Those considered to be loyal were very close to the pro Empire Constitutional Party. Many believe that the fear of being a danger to society was a good opportunity for people in the Constitutional Party to get rid of their political opponents.

On 9 May 1940, Colonel Roger Strickland, a Constitutional Party member of the Council of Government said that steps had been taken in a number of neutral European countries against a class of people who were known as quislings (traitors).

Colonel Strickland said that such measures had been taken in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Romania and Yugoslavia. He argued that since Malta, a fortress of the British Empire, was at war and a number of quislings were employed in the most sensitive departments of the government, such as the Law Courts and the Air Ministry, the strongest measures had to be taken against all quislings in Malta.

In his reply, Dr Enrico Mizzi a co leader of the Nationalist pro Italian party said he respected the British as a nation, however he argued that being in favour of Italian culture conservation did not mean being disloyal to the British Empire. What mattered, for Dr Mizzi, was that the principles of liberty and justice would triumph and be extended to Malta.

In the following days a number of articles were published in the Times of Malta where all the correspondents seemed to be echoing Strickland`s call to adopt drastic measures against those who were suspected of being disloyal.

The daily Times of Malta reported Colonel Strickland’s speech in the Council of Government on 10 May 1940 under the following heading; Death Penalty in Britain – What about Malta? This was a reference to part of his speech where he had been reported as mentioning that in “England legislation was being enacted inflicting the death penalty on quislings of the worse type, and seven years penal servitude to others”.

During that period a number of people were detained. The list of those interned included Dr Enrico Mizzi, a member of the Council of Government, Dr Herbert Ganado, a former editor of a Maltese Catholic newspaper, the Curator of the Museum who was well versed in the history of Italian Fine Arts, and a number of dockyard workers.

Dr Enrico Mizzi was not allowed to attend council sittings. The President of the Law Courts was later asked to resign and placed under house arrest together with his family.

No internee was ever found guilty of any crime. In fact no formal charge was ever brought against them. The internees had to do all the necessary chores related to the upkeep of the internment camp. One has to bear in mind that most of them, if not all, were not used to do such menial tasks because they were either professional people or skilled tradesmen.

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Some of the Maltese camp guards, who did not share the same political beliefs, used to humiliate the internees when they ordered them to carry out such chores.

Moreover, correspondents in the Times of Malta asked for public collaboration, since police efforts would not be enough. Therefore the public was asked to report any suspects to the police so that they would be interned.

This was a good opportunity for some dockyard workers to report their fellow colleagues of being suspects. There were cases following the internment of dockyard workers, when those who made the reports were given positions previously held by their interned colleagues.

The dockyard workers were picked up during their lunch break at their place of work, in front of everyone. They were not even given the chance to change their clothing and inform their families. To add insult to injury, the policemen who interned them were equipped with helmets and revolvers as if arresting criminals. Most probably the local British authorities wanted to send a message that they meant business against any form of conspiracy.

Some time later Chief Justice Sir Arturo Mercieca was also interned because of his alleged Italian sympathies. The Governor, Sir William Dobbie, in the presence of Lieutenant Governor Sir Edward Jackson summoned him to The Palace in Valletta.

He arrived an hour late for his appointment as he had to stop twice to take shelter because of air raids.

Sir Arturo Mercieca was asked to resign. If he did not the Governor had been ordered by the Secretary of the State for Colonies to use Order-in-Council to remove him. He was placed under house arrest together with his wife, daughter and son.

It is also worth mentioning that in October, when the Council of Government was discussing the budget, a Constitutional member, Sir George Borg, who later succeeded Sir Arturo, protested because the former Chief Justice and another two former Civil Servants who had been interned were being given their due pension.

But the Lieutenant Governor Sir Edward Jackson said that no charge had been brought against them, and the government had accepted their service to the very end. One doubts why such measures were adopted for the sake of the country’s security or for some other hidden motive of the political adversaries.

The internees were detained in Fort Salvatore, within walking distance from the dockyard, which was considered a target for the enemy since various warships used to dock there, especially in times of war. A year later they were transferred to a section of Corradino Civil Prisons and later were moved to a convent of a religious order in Rabat distant from the dockyard.

After Italy’s declaration of war, the local British authorities expressed their intention of removing the internees from Malta as originally stated in Roger Strickland’s speech in the Council of Government. The Governor guaranteed the internees, through local Bishop Mauro Caruana, that this was not the case. But some time later, this guarantee was revoked because the Bishop had been informed by the Governor that the circumstances of war had changed.

On 31 January 1942, the Commanding Officer of the camp called the internees for an unusual second roll call and informed them that some of them had to leave the island. The internees quickly signed a protest to the Governor where they informed him that such a decision was illegal. The Governor did not accept their protest and the internees took legal action against the government – the Maltese Law Courts decided that the deportation order was illegal.

The local authorities were not happy with the outcome. They decided to change the law without delay. On 9 February 1942, the Council of Government met to amend the law. The Lieutenant Governor argued that since the Defence Regulations did not grant him any powers to transfer people from one country to another within the Empire, the law had to be changed.

During the debate, Nationalist co leader Sir Ugo Mifsud, while speaking against the proposal had a heart attack and died two days later. The amendment was approved with only one vote against.

The internees went to court once more to prove that the government had no power to deport British subjects to another part of the Empire. They lost the case.

However, they won the appeal in May 1942, but it was too late because they had been deported three months before.

The wife of an internee, who was a lawyer, presented a petition where she asked the government for financial assistance. The reply was that since her father-in-law received a pension she could rely on him. The families of the other internees, who had nobody to help them financially, received two shillings for the spouse and six pence for every child daily.

When the internees boarded the warship Breconshire, which took them to Alexandria, they had to stay in the hold of the ship. The First Officer of the vessel told them that they had no sympathy for them. He even warned them that if anything happened to the ship and the internees tried to get to the lifeboats they would be shot.

During the three-day voyage to Alexandria the Breconshire was nearly hit by an aerial torpedo. During attacks the deportees only could hear the bombardments that were going on. They had to go through one of the most fiercely fought battles between the Allies and the Axis. At one time, in the middle of an attack, the Breconshire swerved just in time to miss an aerial torpedo. The Maltese internees were very lucky to reach Alexandria safe and sound.

When the internees reached land they were transported to the Cairo Citadel. They were not treated badly there although at one point, before they entered the Citadel, they were made to stand in a row with Maoris pointing rifles at them.

In Khartoum, Sudan, the internees had to march for about an hour in scorching heat. When they arrived at the internment camp it did not have the necessary equipment. It did not even have a water supply system and provisions consisted of tinned food and bread. Although they had better food provisions in the following days, the internees had to cook their own food themselves.

Some time later they boarded a riverboat, Sir Lee Stack, to take them to Uganda. Most of the internees had to stay on a barge, which was being towed by the ferryboat. Their only protection was a cage made of mosquito netting.

After about three weeks, the internees arrived at Mongalla and were taken on trucks to Nimule. They boarded another riverboat which took them to Bombo, Uganda. Although in Bombo the internees were not treated badly and had some limited liberty, they were only allowed to write two letters a week of not more than 12 lines each.

Some time later the Maltese internees were transferred to Soroti, which was considered unhealthy for Europeans. Even the Bombo Camp Commander remarked that Soroti was going to be hell.

In the Soroti Internment Camp, there were other European internees who were brought there from the Middle East. During their stay, most of the internees suffered various tropical illnesses especially malaria. This must have been the worst period of their exile. When some of the internees visited a cemetery in Soroti, the ages of the deceased did not exceed the age of 35.

A petition reached the Governor who visited the camp. Some internees from the Middle East Compound prepared a streamer which referred to the internment camp Soroti Cemetery. The Governor was furious.

Some time later he decided to transfer the internees to Entebbe and the Soroti internment camp was closed.

During their stay in Uganda, some of the Maltese internees had been admitted to hospital ill with malaria. Unfortunately the hospitals did not have adequate equipment or qualified staff. At one time a Vet ran a hospital for internees and a medical student was the doctor.

The Maltese internees were not called back home as a whole group. The first group returned to Malta in 1944. A second list was issued towards the end of the year. The list did not include all the remaining party.

Dr Enrico Mizzi and Sir Arturo Mercieca and others were not part of the group. Possibly this was done to keep Mizzi away from the island so that he would not participate in the National Assembly which met in 1945.

Things started to move after Maitland Woolf, an internee who left Uganda with the first group, met a group of Quakers in Britain. One of them, Edmund Harvey, then a member of the House of Commons submitted a Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Colonel Stanley, and on 13 December 1944, he replied that the Maltese British subjects who were still detained in Uganda should be released. He also said that arrangements were being made for their repatriation.

The rest of Maltese internees returned to Malta in March 1945. It is also worth mentioning that none of the internees were ever charged.

One of them, Dr Enrico Mizzi, became the second post war Prime Minister of Malta, and another two were elected to Parliament in 1962.

And yet they were interned and deported for “security” reasons.

Reference:

National Library, Valletta, Malta

House of Lords Record Office, London UK

Rajt Malta Tinbidel – Herbert Ganado Volumes II & III

The King’s Guests in Uganda – Edgar Soler