Reading Alfred P. Zarb’s “Gadfly journey: From Dear Dom to Mintoff’s place in Maltese history” (TMIS, 22 April) made me reconsider withdrawing the following article from another section of the press, having lost it after waiting for its publication for nine days. I was pleased to see that Mr Zarb is still active with his pen. What he rightly says would involve a mammoth task, what with so many other pressing commitments; nor am I am sure if a biography or a general history would serve it best. However, clearly, the subject will have to be tackled more empirically and comprehensively one way or another, even if in some respects this may be nauseating for those who have lived through it. Although Mintoff’s career mainly spans the post-war period, he was actually a child of the 1930s, which is the main focus of my forthcoming volume Europe and Empire being launched on 2 May, one that Mr Zarb might care to review somewhere in Australia.
In “Memories are made of this” (10 April), Kenneth Zammit Tabona wrote thus in another section of the press: “We live in a country where most of us are either related to everyone else or have known one another for generations. Therefore, reviving old memories and reopening old wounds does nothing to instil a sense of fairness and equitability in our democratic system.”
This reminded me of some reactions to my first published writings about Manwel Dimech in 1970-1972. One old-time Nationalist, Notary Rosario Frendo Randon, had written in this newspaper chiding me for it because, he said, “sorrowful facts should always remain buried”.
Was it not George Santayana who famously said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (The Life of Reason, 1905, vol. 1).
Mr Zammit Tabona, whose column I usually read with respect, praised four Heads of State, all former politicians, for their efforts to bury hatchets and extend olive branches. All of them however had spoken their minds when they had to. Obviously, the role of a head of state is a national and reconciliatory one, steering away from partisanship; which ought not to presume an indifference to fundamental human rights, nor be mixed up with a fear to reclaim history.
To advocate pasting over the past, pretending that sad events did not happen, is obscurantist, anti-historical, dangerous and frightening.
It took German and Italian historians, such as Nolte and De Felice, decades before they could ‘safely’ bring themselves to attempt empirical explanations of the more hideous experiences that had shaken and disturbed their respective peoples. Should they have refrained from doing so? On this island we have barely come to terms with the 1930s and 1940s, let alone the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Should nobody try and find out why Lino Cauchi, Il-Fusellu’s accountant, was found cut into pieces dumped in a well? Should the sergeant who fired live ammunition into youngsters on a Rabat street (causing one of them to commit suicide and the other to be traumatized for life) never be charged? Is it normal that party supporters throw the Commander of a state’s armed forces into the sea at Birgu? Or that the Police Commissioner burst into a parliamentary sitting insulting the Leader of the Opposition, perhaps fancying himself as a Colonel Tejero in Madrid’s cortes? Should posterity remain oblivious to the gangsterism associated with Lorry Sant or to his eventual pardoning, or to promotions given to alleged torturers?
The Mintoff-Gonzi clash may be said to have ended in a peace deal in 1969. Before the 1970s and 1980s are carefully looked into, there will be no catharsis and no closure. Not easy. However, sweeping all that under the carpet in favour of ‘healing potions’ is not in the interest of democracy, of reconciliation or of peace of mind. Pandering to ir-rispett uman and omerta’, which admittedly are rampant in a small society, ultimately solves nothing. It is make-believe, living a lie, an act of cowardice. Healing normally presumes diagnosis and treatment. Who wants to be living dead?
Dear Dom is a balancing act in a first-ever cinematic attempt at portraying the protagonist, one who led his party for 35 years. It is interesting and intriguing but by no means comprehensive. No hint of the Brigata children’s marching and singing, for instance! Nor, however, do I go along readily with the conclusion that Mintoff fought against change. Generally speaking, and Sant’s harbour project apart, Mintoff fought for change until the end. That includes his role in changing the Constitution to avoid an electoral repeat of 1981 in 1987. “Fil-ħajja,” he once told me, “xejn ma’ jibqa’ l-istess: jew timxi lura jew timxi ‘l quddiem.” (In life nothing stays put: you either move backwards or forwards). To his mind, on the whole, change was a constant; just recall the shift from integration to self-determination in 1958; or extending the defence treaty, which was due to expire on 21 September 1974, at a hefty, riskily negotiated price; or pushing by all means for a secular republic in 1974, and then civil marriage.
The question is to what extent his centralized, protectionist, patronizing, aggressive, supposedly neutral leadership moved our country forwards or backwards. Alfred Sant tried hard, understandably, to de-Mintoffise that MLP; but Mintoff had the better of him.
If one of Mr Mintoff’s daughters has retired to sunny Malta, riding into politics under his name, and if her Maltese is good enough, she might indeed try her hand at some serious research about those times, with which she seems to be altogether unfamiliar. She might turn out to be a more insightful and forthright analyst than most, given her onetime support for Bobby Sands and the Irish cause. For starters, she could read an émigré’s anguished article, “Messages from Mintoff’s Malta”, in Australia’s leading intellectual monthly Quadrant (December 1986), which even earned him a death threat. Contrary to what the Melbourne police held, it was not the Libyans. It was almost certainly a dyed-in-the-wool ‘Mintoffian’ from Sydney, who once signed a letter in a Maltese newspaper there condoning torture ‘back home’ – one to which another settler (and former Times columnist Bertie Agius) had justly retorted in kind.
Happily those times are gone, hopefully never to return. That does not mean they should be forgotten, unknown to posterity forever.