Joseph Muscat’s half-hearted apology for the events of Black Monday rekindled many memories of the horrendous times through which we all lived between 1979 and 1987, and the topic has been mentioned over and over again during the last few weeks.

So many years later, with a new leader who claims to be progressive, I would have thought that the Labour Party would have had the courage to come clean and admit its responsibility in not managing to control a handful of thugs who were disseminating fear and violence.

But this is, perhaps, too much to expect. Worse, some Labour elements still believe – and say it publicly – that it was the Nationalists who were provoking everything. Oh, yes, it was Eddie Fenech Adami himself who opened the door to his residence in Birkirkara to allow people to ransack his home and terrify his family on 15 October 1979. Maybe he even offered them a glass of wine, too.

It is clear that Labour are in denial. The fact that they cannot accept what took place and say it was wrong means that they have no regret for the fact that, under their administration, Malta lived through its worst period in recent history. And that is putting it mildly.

The 1979 Black Monday events were just the start of a period of uncertainty and violence that became even worse when Labour did not accept defeat in the 1981 election, despite receiving fewer votes, and went on to govern for what were five-and-a-half-years of infernal instability.

The collective memories of what happened at Tal-Barrani Road in the outskirts of Zejtun, as well as the murder of Raymond Caruana in late 1986, are still clear in the minds of those who want to remember. These two events are probably the ones that come to mind first when the subject of political violence comes up, but there were many more instances that should not be forgotten.

I will mention just three others in which I had first-hand experience because I had a connection with them when they took place – and all happened in the last four months of 1984.

It was 28 September, and I was a student worker at the law courts. It was a normal day of work – if those days can really be described as normal. Suddenly there was a commotion, some raised voices from the next room – loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to understand the words.

Seconds later, someone told me to just leave the building because “they will be attacking the law courts”. “They” turned out to be the drydocks workers. Somehow, word had spread that the law courts were the target of that mass of people in boiler suits marching up to Valletta. Somehow, we had been given advance warning. I obeyed, leaving from the main door with a few minutes to spare before the law courts were attacked.

By the way, it was the same day that the Curia was also attacked.

Then came October, when the second year of my Sixth Form was to start. It was the time when the Malta Union of Teachers had ordered a strike, which lasted nine weeks. It was also the time when Church schools remained closed and students were rushed from one home to another to continue with their lessons, and were sometimes pelted with stones.

They were tense weeks. We had to go to school – at Msida – although only the teachers of Maltese had not obeyed the strike directive. So we used to have just one lesson a day. The teachers were on edge, too, and there were frequent altercations with students about politics.

Needless to say, we learned little in those weeks. There were days when we had a busload of policemen parked outside the school building. Other workers in the school – who were not teachers, but who were Labour sympathisers (and we knew this because they used to come to school with their torca flag wrapped around their neck and proudly carried l-orizzont around with them) – did their best to provoke us students into a fight. I still vividly remember a girl friend of mine being pushed in the chest by a man twice her size, and I interfered to help. Luckily, the incident ended there.

The third event happened on my 18th birthday, 26 December 1984. I had a party at home, inviting some friends from Sixth Form for what were to be two or three hours of fun. We enjoyed ourselves, but the day was to end with an unexpected and violent twist.

My friends had all gone home when we received a call that a bomb had been placed just inside the St Julian’s Nationalist Party Club, where many people I knew – I was brought up and still live in St Julian’s – were having their Christmas party. Luckily, someone saw it in time to pick it up, run across the road and throw it on the rocks below, where it exploded. God knows what would have happened if it had been left inside the building.

I will never forget that on the day I came of age some people I grew up with could have died. The last hour of my 18th birthday was passed with me trying to calm down agitated people who knew they had just had a brush with death.

This is what my youth was like.

I would have never written all this – and it’s just a fraction of what took place in those years – if I had not been annoyed by declarations made recently by Labour exponents that the Nationalists provoked the violent incidents in those years.

As long as Labour remain in denial, try to put the blame on others and attempt to re-write history, it cannot be believed that they have really changed.

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