The ring of a bell might have made a Pavlovian dog’s mouth water. In contrast, recall of the turbulent Mintoff years leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

Undoubtedly the passage of years helps one be in a better position to assess the kind of leadership and governance imposed on the people of Malta throughout the fateful years 1971 to 1987. It is therefore quite right that this historic period be exhumed for deeper study, based partly on official documents now made accessible by the Freedom of Information Act, and also on the experience of a senior journalist who was in the thick of it and also suffered from it.

I refer to John Manduca’s latest publication The Flavour of the Mintoffian Era.

It was no surprise that Mr Manduca, as a favoured son of the British establishment in Malta at the time, would not have been to Mr Mintoff’s liking and Dominic Mintoff was not slow in showing his antipathy. He hounded Mr Manduca and the bodies he served, destroying or maiming in the process the Rediffusion, the Broadcasting Services and the Progress Press. And this he did mainly by foul means, trampling brutishly on the law. One can therefore understand that Mr Manduca could find it difficult to be wholly objective.

As Mr Manduca reveals in his book, he was not the only one to suffer. The doctors too came in for a mauling at Dom’s hands, and suffered as a result. The doctors’ strike, which resulted from the confrontation engineered by the Mintoff administration, led to the longest doctor’s strike in history. After 10 long years the strike came to an end, when there was a change of government. Mr Manduca states that among the negative consequences of the strike was a division in the ranks of the Maltese medical profession. He does not elaborate but tactfully refers to the account given by the secretary of MAM, the doctors’ union that declared the strike.

In fact, the strike was unduly prolonged as a result of the political machinations of a number of senior doctors, prominent figures in the PN, bent on doing maximal political damage to the Mintoff government. The strike became a political issue and every attempt at mediation and resolution was spiked at the last moment by one or other of our senior political doctors.

The 10-year doctors’ strike, which Prof. Guido de Marco has described as “a relatively minor issue”, proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for MAM and of great harm to the people of Malta. Instead of two fine private nursing homes run by religious orders, the Dominican Sisters and the Blue Sisters, we now have two major private hospitals run on commercial lines.

At the same time, the required period of pre-registration internship in our public hospitals is today accepted without question, while foreign doctors are recruited whenever the Health Department feels they are necessary without excessive regard to the Medical Council. Such were the two issues over which the Maltese doctors union went on strike for 10 years.

There are matters of some moment that deserve record and, as medical history, are of special interest to all.

J. A. Muscat

TA’ XBIEX