Over the past week, this country has had massive doses of nostalgia spread around in order to celebrate 30 years that have passed since 31 March 1979.

That, in itself, is not a bad thing for we all need to keep our memories alive and fresh, especially since many of the younger generation were not born then and do not remember those rather long-ago events.

But the re-creation of the 31 March 1979 events was imbued with a very partisan spirit that was quite selective in what it chose to remember and commemorate. Now that the past week is over, we can all see that the main intention of this ratcheting up of historical memories was intended to set the scene for Dom Mintoff’s return to the Labour fold and to his beloved Gholja tal-Helsien where, in 1998, he had been so reviled by his successor.

But the 1979 nostalgia supercharge, the Gensna revival, the repeated scenes of Dom Mintoff and George Agius lighting the brazier on top of the Freedom Mound, somehow managed to remove all traces of President Gaddafi’s presence on that night.

But history tells us, and there is an edition of the Daily Telegraph to confirm it, that Gaddafi’s overwhelming presence with his many bodyguards, turned the whole ceremony into a shambles leaving many of those most keen to attend and celebrate the end of the British military presence dismayed by the turn of events.

In the event, those who looked at the future with dismal eyes, seeing no hope for the survival of Malta without the money coming from Britain, were reinforced in their pessimism.

It was this sense of foreboding, meanwhile, that had already led to another very important development in Maltese political history, which we ought to celebrate its 30th anniversary as well, but which seems to have slipped us by.

For a few months before 31 March 1979, the new leader of the Nationalist Party, sensing the grim foreboding that many people had as the day approached, came up with the idea that Malta must, at all costs, join the EEC.

True, joining the EEC had been George Borg Olivier’s aim some years after Independence in 1964, but Dom Mintoff had put such an intention on the deepest of backburners.

It was the EU dream that ruled Maltese political life after 1979, leading to one electoral victory after another until Malta did in fact join the EU and is now well positioned inside the EU, in euro land.

So as well as celebrate the 30th anniversary of the end of the British military presence, which is a good thing in itself, we can also celebrate the 30th anniversary of a dream we are all living now. You cannot celebrate one without the other. To split them denotes a partisan intention to rewrite the pages of history, which is particularly dangerous in the battle for minds.

This, we feel, is the most important contribution of the man who stepped down into private life yesterday after almost 50 years in public life – Eddie Fenech Adami, back to Eddie now and not Edward, back to his home and his family, with no State obligations to curb his instincts and his life.

For it was Dr Fenech Adami’s intuition (which he at one point even expressed) that proved to be the proper antidote to the risks entailed in being freed of British military presence, and which gave Malta a sense of hope in the future. This is his most important and strategic contribution to Maltese political history, a contribution that cannot be wiped away.

It is true that a similar sense of foreboding had been prevalent among many Maltese before the 1964 Independence, when parties and politicians asked with what Malta could hope to survive. The newfound sovereignty brought about by Dr Borg Olivier did for a time give intense hope and Malta did not, as many doomsayers in 1964 feared, suffer poverty and hardship.

But as 1979 loomed and the shadow of our Libyan neighbour grew and grew, it was the EEC dream, which provided people with a sense of hope that through so many difficulties proved to be successful, due not to any foreign money but to the ability of the Maltese to emerge successful in what they intended to do.

To celebrate the past whenever a decade (or a quarter century) elapses is right, of course, but there are more lessons to draw from than just nostalgia. This is a time of stress and crisis, and hope must be brought again to so many who look at the future with foreboding. The example of the EU dream during the dark nights of 1979 is a beacon that must be passed on.