Pawlu Boffa is a new volume featuring new historical information and documentation on Sir Paul Boffa, one of Malta’s most respected politicians. The book contains 48 pictures, most of them were kept in private collections over the years and which are being published for the first time.

Paul Boffa was one of the pioneers who had set up the Labour Party in October 1920 and eventually became Leader of the Party in 1928 leading it through difficult turbulent times in the late 1920s and 1930s till the winds of war and the Second World War itself overshadowed all political activity in Malta. Paul Boffa was then enthrusted with important medical duties during World War II. Following the Allied victory, political activity resumed once again and Paul Boffa led the Labour Party to its first political victory in 1947 and became Malta’s first Labour Prime Minister.

The book, researched and written by Desmond Zammit Marmara, traces Boffa’s medical and political career and touches on various interesting periods in Malta’s contemporary history. The author delves into Boffa’s and other Labour intellectuals’ efforts to organise the Labour Party in different towns and villages in Malta, mainly in the Cottonera area and his efforts to introduce new social legislation in Malta and Gozo.

The book focuses on Boffa’s 21 years as Leader of the Labour Party between 1928 and 1949 and the time when he became Malta’s first Labour Prime Minister in 1947.

A substantial part of the book discusses the split within the Labour Party in 1949. The author analyses the divergent stances taken by Boffa and Dom Mintoff, then one of his leading ministers, on the future relationship with the British Empire who had been occupying Malta since Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Malta.

The volume continues to follow Boffa’s political career when he then founded The Malta Workers’ Party and even allied himself with the Nationalist Party then led by George Borg Olivier.

The author analyses Boffa’s actions and bases his conclusions on new documentation he managed to unfold and also with fresh evidence provided directly by Boffa’s contemporaries who are still alive and who have chosen to give their own version on the most controversial events in Malta’s political history.

Pawlu Boffa is published by SKS and is available at leading booksellers in Malta and Gozo for €10.