After a gap of 32 years abroad, my first experience of politics in Malta was in October 1996.
Having voted, I left immediately for Brussels to attend a Nato Council meeting in my capacity as Malta’s Ambassador to Nato. I was not therefore present in Malta as the results were coming in.
But my wife was. She attended a private party in Sliema, the Nationalist Party heartland. As the outcome of the election became clearer, a feeling of doom and gloom descended over the party-goers. My wife was warned by a friend of mine that possessions we had kept in my safe at Castille would never be seen again as my access to the Office of the Prime Minister would immediately be blocked when the new Labour government moved in.
My wife, who had come to Sliema in her car, was told not to fetch it, as it was likely to be torched by celebrating Labour Party supporters. At another party in Sliema, those present threw themselves on their knees and began to pray as the results came in. These reactions from relatively educated and cultured people to a mere democratic change of government were astonishing. I was aghast that a large proportion of citizens of the country, which I had presented to my wife as civilised and stable, had reacted in this way.
The reality could not have been more different as Alfred Sant moved into Castille and, urging his supporters to remain calm, set about the business of governing the country without rancour or recrimination.
The reason I recount all this is to make two points. The first is to show my lack of strong Maltese politics. I am critical of both parties and as an independent commentator have absolutely no political axe to grind. The second point is to underline my concern at the reactions that have again rent Malta apart in the last ugly fortnight. The death of Dom Mintoff, one of the most controversial and towering figures in Maltese politics since Lord Strickland in the 1930s, appears to have reopened wounds from 30 or 40 years ago – for some, even from over 50 years ago.
What has happened in the last fortnight says a lot about us as a nation. And most of it is unsavoury and makes for uncomfortable reflection. How can otherwise educated and reasonable people − on both sides of the political divide − react in the way they did, express thoughts of such intolerance, resurrect such historical and often uninformed prejudices, and expose so many imagined wrongs three or four decades after the event? How can normally rational individuals fail to see that every leading political figure has both good and bad points?
Yet, after reading some of the comments in articles and on the blogs one almost invariably gets such an unbalanced and partial picture of the man as to make those judgements worthless. Dom Mintoff was not the paragon, the saviour that some have made him out to be. But nor was he the devil incarnate that others have painted. He was, like many great figures, neither all black, nor all white. As Eddie Fenech Adami, his nemesis for some 30 years, said, generously and in a statesman-like manner, a balanced assessment was that he did more good than harm. As another avid Nationalist, Austin Bencini, put it, he was an outstanding parliamentarian. Other notably balanced assessments came from Lino Spiteri and Father Joe Borg.
On the other hand, those who argued, in that petulant, spoilt kind of way that he “ruined the best years of our lives” and therefore felt justified in dancing on his grave when the news of his death was announced, really need to take a hard look at themselves. They should honestly ask themselves whether the long overdue re-balancing of Maltese society 40 years ago, the huge alleviation of poverty, the long-awaited development of the welfare state, the re-housing of families, the increase in national pride and self-confidence which Dom Mintoff introduced and engendered were, on a national scale, not worth the personal sacrifices in life-style which many pampered and privileged individuals of my background had to endure.
And before somebody accuses me of not having been here throughout the period of the 1970s and 1980s and therefore have no idea what it was actually like, let me say that I was fortunate while I was in the Ministry of Defence to read many of the intelligence reports and despatches about Malta during that period. And I have heard at first hand, sometimes in glorious technicolour, from my friends over the last 20 years what things were like.
Yes, I do know about the lack of chocolate and toothpaste, about the impact on the (Royal) Malta University and the civil service, the lack of infrastructure investment, the international opprobrium as Malta flirted with some very unsavoury regimes, the red-in-tooth-and-claw socialism, the overbearing police force, the lack of control over Labour thugs, the class warfare (though it takes two to tango) and the tensions with the Church.
But even given all of that, history will judge Dom Mintoff, on balance, to have been a force for good in Maltese society when this fledgling country first found its wings and when a deeply socially divided country began to even out some of the privileges which people like me and my friends had hitherto enjoyed.
In life as in death, Dom Mintoff will remain a deeply controversial and divisive figure. Margaret Thatcher was (is) an equally divisive figure in Britain. She is still loved and hated in equal measure. But when she dies even those – the miners and the steel-workers who lost their sources of employment, the unions who lost their power, the Scots who rejected her policy on the poll tax and the majority of those living north of the Watford Gap – who excoriated her in her lifetime will have the maturity to recognise that she transformed the country through sheer force of leadership and, on balance, made the country a much better place.
This last ugly fortnight has shown that many are still incapable of rising above the political polarisation that characterises this country and that hot-heads on both sides of the political divide will still come out of the woodwork to stoke the fires of hatred 30 or 40 years later. I had mistakenly thought that the accumulated stresses and strains of the 1970s and 1980s were behind us. Blind political allegiance should not be all. Politics is the art of mobilising prejudice, but reason should be the enemy of prejudice.
The lack of tolerance, which has been shown by both sides, the inability to weigh the evidence of the last few decades and to reach an impartial and balanced judgement has been deeply worrying. Talk of “the spectre of Dom Mintoff” to score cheap political points is unworthy and undermines all the good work that the Fenech Adami, Sant and Gonzi governments have done in the last 25 years. It is something that both political leaders need to address forcefully if we are not to regress.