The very recent riots in the suburbs of Paris may have led to increasing police and anti-riot enforcement by the French forces of law and order, and may also have had racist and xenophobic roots. But in the end it all boils down to one single root cause: the impact of globalisation on a society that, as in the case of France, does not accept change and face up to the challenge.

You get industry marching out, jobs lost, high unemployment, people in more and more precarious employment, and the social consequences of many people especially the young, having nothing to do, getting into trouble, turning against society and so much human potential lost and squandered.

The same can be said of other countries, especially inner-city areas, although those countries that have reformed their labour laws and economic structures, such as Britain, and, conversely, such as Germany is not, have suffered less. Having said that, anyone from Malta who finds himself in an inner city derelict core would suffer a huge culture shock.

Yet this is the direction in which we are inevitably heading. Even had Malta not joined the EU, the forces of globalisation are such that they would have bowled over the puny and ineffective protective walls Malta would have raised. Factories, which depend mostly on unskilled labour, will inevitably continue to move in the direction of locations where people have one tenth of Maltese wages. The Maltese economy is remarkably resilient yet, inevitably, unemployment will rise. The numbers of Maltese in precarious employment such as definite contracts or part-time workers are already rising. People in the over-40 bracket who lose their job find it increasingly difficult to get another job.

There is simply no way the government, any government, can cushion the Maltese people from oil price shocks, and globalisation itself. Not only has the government found to its cost that protectionism just does not work, it also damages the country as a whole; it is now becoming daily more evident that protecting the people from such outside tsunamis turns the Maltese into a nation of hoboes who expect the government to protect them, house them, feed them and take care of them regardless of their own neglect.

For many, too many of our people, it has become a very steep uphill struggle, because what used to be a normal spending pattern and lifestyle has now become unattainable and a small mishap or additional expense becomes a trauma. And this is those people who still have their jobs. Many are now angry, disillusioned that instead of moving forward, they find themselves on a moving carpet going backwards. Most others are not even angry – they have no time for that – but simply, awesomely, worried.

The problem right now, whatever many may say, is not whether there is a risk of riots, mayhem and industrial action, or whatever is going on within the GWU. The problem is finding the right way forward and moving in that direction.

This means, in other words, that it is the government which faces the hardest task. For all that many might think the way ahead is clear and linear, it is not. True, we are moving from a low tax country mentality to a higher tax one, but it is the government’s pressing duty to ensure that at the least it transforms into a zero rate expenditure increase, and possibly even cut it. The government must also make sure that none of the decisions it takes impinge negatively on business and that it cuts, curbs and slashes government-induced costs. Not only is this not being done but it seems that the government is heading in the completely opposite direction.

Even more fundamentally, the government must be sensitive to the difficulties that are being faced by so many people. Malta has never known this increasing darkness, or, at any rate, it has been so many years since we last lived through a similar time we have all forgotten about it. The government is not being sensitive at all, it is arrogant, overbearing and loudly partisan when it should be calm, reasonable and, above all, sensitive.

In the end, what will matter is not whether the union gets its people out on strike, (they will, anyway) but rather whether the government succeeds in keeping as many industries as possible despite the added costs of operating from Malta, whether the government succeeds in attracting more investment to Malta and whether the government succeeds in truly cutting the government induced costs and, worse, the unexpected bumps and shocks to business.

The union’s newly-found militancy is the best possible news to have hit the present government, well beyond its merits, but rather than allowing the union to put Malta on a wartime basis, the government must be statesmanlike enough to provide the country with a dose of real optimism and trust which the country so badly needs, as long as this optimism and trust is not once again the old, hackneyed and trite blend which has now worn thin.