The Calm before the Storm is the title of an interesting photographic exhibition opened last Friday in the Foyer of the Headquarters of APS Bank at Swatar. The exhibition brings together a collection of photographs taken in 1935 to mark King George V’s SilverJubilee. The British colonial authorities were not only interested in recording these events on Black and White sepia but they also wanted to use these same photographs as ameans for political propaganda.  Taken by some of the best photographers of the time, the exhibition brought together photographs currently preserved at the National State Archives at Rabat and in Giovanni Bonello’s Private Collection.

The Exhibition is a political and social testimony of a bygone age and comes with a catalogue of the exhibited photographs and an extensive historical write-up about Maltese politics in the 1930s and the social situation at the time together with all the bureaucratic mechanisms and anecdotes of the exhibition penned by Leonard Callus.

The British authorities were all out to hold spectacular events. They were not only interested to celebrate the glory of an Empire but also wanted to make the local population forget their social predicament due to colonial policies. Poverty was on the increase. Despite the advance in science, child mortality was still very high, reaching 25% of all the live births. We learn, that the British wanted the Maltese to pay for all the expenses related to the 1935 events. They realized that this would backfire on British politics in Malta and changed their tactics and decided to have it paid by Britain.

The British considered the cause for such social ailments due to the large population in Malta, forgetting that you need people to advance economically. The road towards Independence proved how wrong the colonial administration was, for once Malta engaged on the road towards Independence, she succeeded to perform an economic miracle despite the fact that the local population continued to increase.

Clearly, the British wanted to use the juvenile’s dictum of “pane etcircenses” or “bread and play” as the main reason for this whole spectacle.

The 1935 events unfolded with the Abyssinian crisis in the background. The British started to consider deporting Maltese and using them as an example to inflict fear on the opposition. Callus refers to aMajor Bertram Ede and Colonel Roger Strickland, two personalities whose curriculum vitae, full of references to their indefatigable search for treacherous citizens, would have fitted any Arian recruit wishing to join the SS. Despite that the operations of these two gentlemen left much to be desired in terms of Human Rights, they were fortunate to have been on the side of the victors, as their actions constitute today crimes against humanity.

This photographic exhibition celebrates the collective memory. Very few of the participants of those events are with us. Those who are still alive were young and I am sure their memories are probably vague and relate to the public encounters held in schools and to the distribution of sweets during gatherings to make them proud of being part of the British Empire. 

Five years later, these same young children were to witnessthe start of a war that dragged for four years. They became eye-witnesses to a crumbling British Empire and protagonists of the quest for Malta’s Independence. The dream of a British Empire on which “the sun never set” came to an end.

Aptly called The Calm Before the Storm, while Britain started seeing spies and enemies all around her, the Jubilee celebrations did not augur well for the monarchy.  George Vwould die within a year.He was succeeded by his son Edward VIII who was eventually forced to abdicate. It is said that the father did not have a high opinion of Edward and did not see him fit to be the ruling monarch of Great Britain. The official reason for his forced abdication was his relationship with Mrs Simpson, an American divorcee. Underneath all this, there was the British Parliament and the Prime Minister Baldwin. The latter was determined to have the upper hand over the Windsor monarchy. He was reluctant and extremely suspicious of Edward, whom he considered as an admirer of Hitler. Despite the fact thatthe Saxe-Coburgs had changed their surname to Windsor in the First World War, they were still considered German by a large section of the British population. This Jubilee was also part of a need to celebrate the Windsor’s “Britishness”.

This exhibition is the result of a collective work, which all should visit. The exhibition catalogue is a small archive of old photographs featuring the main events that took place in Malta as part of these celebrations. Each and every photograph is a historical document. Moreover, this photographic exhibition is also an occasion to promote awareness of the old photographic technique. Photographers in the past worked with fewer tools but performed miracles. The historical value of this exhibition and catalogue is enhanced by the fact that the published photographs have not been manipulated.