This weekend’s conference of the Malta Labour Party is expected to seal the party’s coming to terms with Malta’s place in the EU. The conference is expected to vote, with a substantial majority, to endorse the parliamentary group’s decision to vote in parliament in favour of the ratification of the EU constitutional treaty.

Neither the positive vote expected out of Labour’s general conference nor the eventual parliamentary endorsement by both sides of the House will help to revive the fate of the Constitution, which seems dead in the water following its rejection by the French and the Dutch in their respective referenda.

But the significance of Labour’s decision, against the vehement objections of the old guard, is a demonstration that finally, 21 years after Mintoff’s Prime Ministership and party leadership and 18 years after being ousted from government (excluding the 1996-1998 interlude which seems a government that never was except for MPs' pension rights), Labour is finally embracing its role to participate fully in the creation of an economically viable but socially responsible EU.

Comparisons can be made between this weekend’s conference to the conference of the British Labour Party in April 1995, when it finally ditched Clause IV of its Constitution that till then still committed the party policies to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. It was Tony Blair’s baptism of fire as a new Labour Leader in removing such extreme left wing credos in order to make the party electable again, following four consecutive defeats at the hands of the Conservatives.

It took 16 years, four electoral defeats (1979, 1983, 1987, 1992), four leadership changes (Foot, Kinnock, Smith, Blair) and a lot of incremental progress before British Labour could finally present itself as a credible alternative acceptable to the British electorate. Incremental progress, that changed a party that in 1979 was anti-Europe, in favour of unilaterism and complete nuclear disarmament, in favour of nationalisation and central control, internally undemocratic in the way the unions held block votes over its policies and choice of leadership, into a party that in 1995 had embraced its EU vocation, cooperated with the government for more democratisation at the work place by removal of the closed shop, diluted the unions’ stranglehold on Labour’s financing and policies by the wider adoption of the OMOV (one man one vote) and finally by ditching the infamous clause IV in Labour’s Constitution.

All this helped Blair to give credibility to the New Labour project which has since made the Conservatives unelectable, in spite of three leadership changes since 1997.

The contrast, however, between Malta’s Labour conference and the experience of the British Labour Party is that the local conference is only being asked to approve the change of policies which, unlike what happened in UK, are here being promoted and pedalled by the same people who used to vehemently oppose them less than 30 months ago.

So, contrary to what Labour delegates are being made to believe, Labour’s problem is not its policy change, which is understandable and necessary following its consistent lack of success at the polls. Indeed it would be suicidal for Labour’s electoral prospects to reject adopting the policies that the leadership and administration are now espousing. One can understand the rigid attitude of the old guard in objecting to seeing “their” policies being abandoned. This is quite normal and understandable and eventually the old guard will have to accept that the majority needs to adopt policies that can help the party fulfil its vocation from government, as no political party can survive if it remains an eternal opposition.

Unfortunately, however, the Labour delegates are being negated the opportunity of having these policies presented to the Maltese electorate, who ultimately will decide the fortunes of the party, by people who can make them look credible not simply opportunistic.

Splinter groups are wasting energies in fighting the adaptation of new policies rather than in addressing the need for new policies to be presented for the endorsement of the wider electorate by faces that can attract respect rather than scorn at such intellectual summersaults.

If I were a Labour delegate I would most definitely vote in favour of the administration’s motion and privately counsel Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and his team to imitate James Callaghan and Michael Foot and let the party move on from their fossilised way of thinking.

But I would concurrently ask the present leader and the former two deputy leaders why they behaved the way they did in January 2003 and in the run-up to the lost election of April 2003.

In brief, why their behaviour deprived Labour of a deserved election win and handed it over to a fatigued Nationalist government that knows not whether it is coming or going.

In January 2003, then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami wrote an open letter to the Opposition Leader asking him to agree on a binding referendum on the EU issue and offering concessions regarding the holding of the general election. When the MLP leader consulted the MLP executive, by a very wide majority, the counsel given was that Labour should accept the offer for a binding referendum provided this was held seriously after a general election.

Dr Sant, Dr Vella and Dr Brincat, when addressing the delegates and urging them to endorse what they themselves were so much against, should explain from where they got the idea to condition the binding referendum to a 60 per cent vote.

More than anything else this gave the PN the moral right to call the referendum on their own terms before the election, which condemned Labour to an undeserved further term in opposition and the country to a further term of sterile leadership.

Labour’s problem is people not policies.

www.alfredmifsud.com