In the hullabaloo of eulogy, castigation and political correctness following the passing away of Mr Dominic Mintoff last week, few people noticed that he died on the 50th anniversary of Malta’s demand for Independence, writes PROFESSOR HENRY FRENDO. Just as not many people realised that the greatest legislative reforms of a social nature with which the late Mr Mintoff was repeatedly and uncritically credited by supporters, the local press and media in the wake of his death – compulsory education, votes for women, old age pensions, income tax – actually took place before he even became the MLP leader at a time, that is, when the party leader was Dr Paul Boffa, whom Mr Mintoff had then expelled, humiliated and replaced to do a better “negotiating” and “reforming” job himself.
Here is another side to the story
On 20 August 1962, 50 years ago, Malta’s Prime Minister Gorg Borg Olivier demanded Independence from Britain as a matter of urgency. Somewhat startled by this firm and formal request, the Colonial Minister Duncan Sandys had little option but to agree to the start of negotiations.
It was as historic a moment as it was an equivocal one for both countries. Given that the Cold War was at its height and the Mediterranean scenario very fragile, Britain wished to be assured of some continuing presence and say in its onetime “fortress colony”. Not only did thousands of Maltese still work for the British Services, three parties (Pellegrini’s, Ganado’s and Mabel Strickland’s) were opposed to Borg Olivier’s proposal, backed in principle by Mintoff.
Mintoff’s Labour Party, however, insisted on its own version of a neutrality-driven and more secularist Independence. Archbishop Gonzi was vehemently opposed to recognition in the Independence Constitution of Labour’s proposed “six points” (a clear separation between church and state in civil society, with the last point justifying the recourse to violence in certain circumstances).
Dr Borg Olivier thus had to steer between opposing factions.
The Nationalist leader opted for as smooth a transition as feasible and possible, with defence and finance treaties for 10 years, that is up to 21 September 1974. These treaties had to facilitate economic diversification from an economy dependent on British spending to one that would gradually be more self-reliant on tourism (including British tourists and settlers), industry and agriculture. When, in 1967, Britain unilaterally sought to hasten the run-down, in a first litmus test of sovereignty vis-a-vis the former colonial power, Borg Olivier was fully ready to stand his ground unless and until a compromise arrangement was reached, as it eventually was.
Due to their young age, all pervasive partisan propaganda, and the hugely prevalent ignorance of our own history, people today may not realise what Independence meant to a small strategically-located country like Malta, which had been dominated by one foreign ruler after another for centuries.
It is so unhistoric to continue to see certain misreadings of this prime event, such as mistaken beliefs that freedom came to Malta in 1979 (one of its worst ever years for false news-mongering and political violence); or that it was Mr Mintoff’s latter-day “republicanism” that had actually turned Malta around, in 1974. Freedom is an individual and juridical application, not primarily a nationalistic-statist pursuit.
In spite of its deficiencies and teething troubles, and a Borg Olivier leadership demagogically portrayed (by a better organised, more militant party and rival leadership) as weak and incompetent, in fact it still was the advent of Independence that was the turning-point.
More importantly, unlike most other ex-colonies, Maltese society – Malta as a nation – experienced freedom after Independence. This is not an achievement to be sneezed at. Unlike what the anti-Independence parties had feared, Independence did not lead to starvation or chaos; on the contrary there was trust, investment, development and a marked rise in prosperity. Emigration had practically ground to a halt by 1969. (The efforts to suppress its publication having failed, Professor M.M. Metwally documented this much in his famous book Structure and Performance of the Maltese Economy covering the Borg Olivier-Mintoff transition).
Malta found an international identity through its pro-active membership of the United Nations and the Council of Europe, which were rather more befitting partners to her than the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation might have been. And it managed to take off economically through infrastructural breaks such as the Malta Development Corporation and the Central Bank of Malta, with new hotels and industries establishing themselves, partly financed by Maltese banking capital. The market economy flourished, in some respects to a fault (as shown by the “Djar ghall-Maltin” campaign I led in 1969).
Parliamentary democracy and regularly-held elections, or indeed trade union rights, even an excess of them, were not in doubt.
By 1966 the Mintoff-Gonzi “mortal sin” confrontation had subsided, and by 1969 it was officially over. In 1966 (for the first and last time) in the Valletta district Borg Olivier polled more first count votes than Mintoff.
Foreign affairs and defence effectively ceased to be reserved matters in 1964, as proven by the radical departures in both spheres undertaken by a successive administration.
The Independence Constitution was a democratic one, so much so that it could be modified, as it was, by a two-thirds majority in 1974, although without a referendum as in May 1964.
Without being in any way disrespectful to the historic shifts from a constitutional monarchy to a republic in 1974, or to the termination, finally, of an extended defence agreement in 1979, neither one nor the other would have been imaginable, let alone possible, had Malta not become an independent and sovereign state in 1964.
So seminal had Dr Borg Olivier’s stroke of 50 years ago been.
In other words, Mr Mintoff, however significant, has not been and is not, as recently portrayed by some, just about the be-all and the end-all of our nation’s modern history.
Professor Frendo’s many books in Maltese, English and Italian include Europe and Empire: Culture, Politics and Identity in Malta and the Mediterranean (2012), The Origins of Maltese Statehood: A Case Study of Decolonization in the Mediterranean (1999, 2nd ed. 2000), Maltese Political Development: A Documentary History 1798-1964 (1993), Party Politics in a Fortress Colony: The Maltese Experience (1979, 2nd ed. 1991) and Birth Pangs of a Nation: Manwel Dimech’s Malta 1860-1921 (1972).