Fewer surprises awaited me when I returned to Malta this time than just under a year before. Glad as I was to be back, it still did feel strange. Was I making a mistake in wanting to go on living here? ...
Compared to the pleasant spring weather of Cambridge in early June (1977), the summer that had already taken over Malta was scorching. On a Friday, two days after arrival, I called at Castille... The secretariat at the Prime Minister's office knew about me and directed me to the Ministry of Parastatal and Peoples' Industries (MPPI), located at the Auberge d'Italie, which also housed the Post Office, top of Merchants' Street, just round the corner from Castille.
A start at MPPI
After a short wait, I entered a big office, part of the original chambers of the Auberge that opened on Merchants' Street, occupied by the permanent secretary (the top civil servant) at the Ministry, George Borg Cardona - middle-aged and trim, soft spoken and with a slow smile.
He was courteous and cautious, as well as curious, perhaps puzzled about what I really intended to do at the Ministry. I launched into an account of how I had left government service to study in Boston, dropping the names of civil servants I had known or worked with during my years of service, then going through the well trodden spiel about the role of state enterprises in developing countries and how I had arranged, with the approval of the Prime Minister, to use the island as a model for study. He listened non-commitally. In Malta too, I reckoned I needed a narrative - not too long, not too short - to describe what I was proposing to do, one I could repeat from conversation to conversation. Even if people did not really understand my explanation, at least there would be through repetition, one common version, mine, to describe what I had in mind...
A new life at Sliema
Besides getting used to the heat, I needed to conclude some personal arrangements. My mother was upset that I decided to rent an apartment somewhere else from her home. I had been away so long, living on my own for a decade, that was no longer feasible, even if the family had shrunk with the marriage of my brother Michael in 1971 and the departure of my other brother Lino, to study maths at Hull University. Walking down Strait Street in Valletta, close to what then were called the Vincenti Buildings, I discovered a real estate agency and went in to see what offers they had. The owner took me to view apartments, mainly in Sliema. He had one at Norfolk Street, with a price I could afford. I took a one year lease...
... At that time Sliema was fast developing into a holiday resort, upmarket by Maltese standards, with a pleasant mix of entertainment and residential areas, surrounded by the sea and with the best coastal promenade on the island at its border. Since when I last lived in Sliema over twenty years before, the town had shed especially on the Ferries side, its reputation as a good life resort for British sailors stationed in Malta. Where we used to live when I was a kid, at Tigne, there had been a busy barracks. Soldiers used to live and carry out their daily military exercises close by. Not any more. The barracks were now empty, waiting to be allocated for some alternative use.
I still had a soft spot for Sliema even if somehow, I felt I would not want to live there for long. To be sure, during the year I spent at Norfolk Street, the Sliema environment helped me come to terms with the new way of living and doing things that would follow from my homecoming. There was the fact that one lived in relative anonymity, as well as the point that connections with the rest of the island were easy. The pleasantness of the surroundings made for many distractions not available in Boston. One could take long walks... or indulge in sunbathing sessions on the Exiles rocky beach while reading "Newsweek". (I started buying the latter on top of "The Economist" to keep in touch, I thought, with US events; the major US story headlined that summer was the death of Elvis Presley.)
As I finalised my living arrangements, it became clear I would need time to arrive at a stable view regarding where I stood and where I was heading for. My aim had been to now live and work in Malta after having spent the last decade abroad. Undercurrents of thought and calculation still prompted other options that should be considered.
It was always on the cards that I would be feeling somewhat disoriented back in Malta. When I left in 1968, most of my friends were at University or active in drama. When coming back for holidays of a month or so (as in 1971), I tried to carry over my theatrical commitment by setting up some drama event. Then I realised that such initiatives could be felt as condescending by people committed to theatre all the year round. So during further stays on the island (including that of the previous year) I concentrated on being with family and taking things easy. I was now quite cut off from people I had known, many of whom had meanwhile set up families, moved on in their careers, or emigrated.
Still, there were pleasurable occasions. I attended the MADC performance of "Romeo and Juliet" at San Anton gardens, renewing with an old "tradition" and enjoyed it enormously, including afterwards, late at night in very warm weather, a long walk back to Sliema from Attard.
Lino Spiteri invited me again to lunch and we discussed what was going on in Malta. He was as usual very trenchant and very entertaining, though I sensed that there was something wrong in his relationship with the PM (which would explain why he had not been too responsive to my letters from Boston in the past year). Eventually, I would realize that his standing with the PM was on-off, shifting between productive, well synchronised collaboration, and suspicious, even hostile antipathy.
An interesting moment was my first meeting since many years with Joe Friggieri when he visited me at Sliema. I believed (still do) that I was indebted to him. The play I had written the previous summer at Cambridge "Fid-Dell tal-Katidral" and submitted to the Manoel Theatre's play writing competition came close second to Francis Ebejer's "Karnival". Joe had written and offered to put it on. From the US I had sent him over the months, some articles on current affairs for the paper he was then editing "illum".
That was the first time somebody asked to present a play of mine, and he had directed two performances the previous March at the University theatre in Tal-Qroqq. Obviously I was curious to learn from him how matters had gone and we ended up discussing a huge variety of subjects from the existence of God to the state of Maltese culture. Joe actually was the first to suggest during our meeting that I publish the drama pieces written up to then.
Routines
While adapting to my new life in Malta, I attempted to carry forward some at least of my routines at Boston/Cambridge. The study of Arabic language I had abandoned during the last stages of my stay there when I realised I would have little chance of reading the Egyptian daily "Al Aħram" and understanding anything of what it said, since contemporary printed texts in Arabic do not show vowels. That lost me. But Russian I still held to. When at last, my boxes with books and papers arrived by mail from Boston, I returned to the chore - but that is not the right word - of regularly devoting time to read a classical novel. So, I "did" Pisemsky's "One Thousand Souls", which I found moving. Later I took on Tolstoy's "War and Peace". However, though I persisted till the end with this door stopper, something warned me my grip on Russian was flagging. I could not avoid the suspicion that I was following the plot because of having read the text in translation some years back.
An enhanced pleasure was that having retreived them from my parents' house where I had sent them from Brussels, I could listen again to the LPs I had had there. Moreover, I discovered Valletta's record shops - Brizzi's at Republic Street (long since defunct) which had Mendellsohn's string octet that I had gotten to know through WGBH plus sundry other acquisitions that were almost perfect - as well as the HMV shop on St John's Street, where I splurged on Mozart's "The Magic Flute".
Soon, I decided to buy a car. Public transport was less under strain and more effective than in later years when traffic congestion was to become the order of the day. Still, even then, having a car made life easier. On my budget, I could afford it. I had brought over in a cheque a fund of dollars cleaned out of my bank account in Boston, liquidated prior to departure. By the end of summer hopefully, the funds from my Harvard fellowship would start to arrive...
Here my uncle Victor (Mizzi), my mother's elder brother, was a godsend. He had become a frequent visitor at my parents' house since his retirement from government service in the public works department (where he built up a reputation as a gruff, competent foreman, Nationalist in politics, honest to the core). We found a lot to discuss. He offered to help me find a suitable second hand car.
I had not driven one since leaving Brussels in January 1975. Before that, when in Malta, I had only driven cars on hire, not without mishaps. Thanks to the secretariat at the Ministry, my Malta driving licence was renewed in a flash. With Victor I visited a car "mechanic" in a Hamrun garage. The man brokered second hand car deals and explained he had a Triumph Herald (coffee coloured) available for immediate purchase at the price of Lm300 (roughly €700). We drove it for a short while and it seemed shipshape. I agreed to take it, which shocked my uncle no end. Though he thought it a good buy, he would have preferred to spend time on other offers first and on more haggling. Perhaps he was right. The mechanic did carry out his side of the bargain and quickly organized the transfer formalities. But the morning after I got possession of the Triumph as I was driving it down Valley Road, half way between B'kara and Msida, it stalled and went dead.
Luckily it was a Sunday, traffic was sparse. In quick time, my uncle came over to help. We brought over the Hamrun mechanic and he took the car to his garage... Two days later, I got back my Triumph. For the next few years, it was my constant companion in my travels (not without minor tragedies and betrayals, all on its part).
The Maltese reality, 1977
Overall, I needed time to become well acquainted with the Maltese reality that had changed so much since I last lived here, especially since the 1971 elections. This would help to get my thesis into focus and to determine my future choice of "career", within inverts for the reason that I'm not sure what career I looked forward to.
At first, it was not so easy to understand what was going on in Malta. Take the media for example. In 1977, the array of newspapers was almost as wide as in the 2020's. The two political parties had their own stable, the ruling Labour Party through the GWU press with "L-orizzont" and "It-Torċa", as well as the "Malta News" in English, the Opposition Nationalists with "In-Nazzjon Tagħna", plus the weeklies "Il-Mument" and "The Democrat". The "Times of Malta" and its Sunday version were ever present and while proclaiming their independence always backing a right-wing line. I bought and assiduously read all these papers. By way of radio and television, the situation had changed radically from when I lived on the island ten years before. Then, the national television and cable radio systems were run by the British company Rediffusion. The latter had since been nationalised by Labour (in 1975), and before that, a separate radio station Radio Malta had been set up. Mostly I followed the radio news, almost never TV.
There were two surprises. One was the very parochial level of the items that made headlines, quite frequently in a repetitive manner. Now clearly, media in cities where I had lived were also very much centred on national, actually regional or local affairs, almost to the exclusion of all else. In New York, the news that made it to the TV bulletins only dealt with happenings in the city. National Public Radio on Boston's WGBH mainly covered US news. The same in Brussels or wherever. Yet their parochialism covered communities of millions of people and territory that spanned hundreds, indeed thousands of square kilometres. In Malta it seemed as if even the donation of a car to some parish or the vacuous repetitive statement of a minister were fit to be highlighted. Over the weeks, I gradually became accustomed to this state of affairs. It came to seem like normality.
The second surprise came from the highly political content that news and other media messages were charged with on radio and TV. In Rediffusion days during the 1960's, day to day information was dished out differently. I had then spent a summer (1967) in the Rediffusion press room as an intern to learn how programmes were prepared. The news service was run as a tight ship under the leadership of journalists Harold Scorey and J G Vassallo, both considered veteran pressmen at the time. The British directors of Rediffusion based in Malta took great pains to keep abreast of how the heads of the news office were coping. The slant was consistently pro-government (then led by Dr George Borg Olivier at the head of the Nationalist Party) but the approach was unobtrusive.
The political dingdong was now in your face. I remember being surprised at how news items would cover the statement of some Opposition spokesperson that had been released on a given topic, followed or even preceded by the quick reply of some Labour Party organization or other. Among the newsroom staff there would be a member of that Labour organization who also doubled as a journalist. He would issue a reply on behalf of his people just as soon as the PN declaration reached his desk. Both statements would be broadcast no matter how anodyne the subject was.
The years between 1971 and 1977 saw Maltese society undergo huge transformations. The basis on which they were pushed through was the agreement, already described, between the Labour government and the UK for the latter to completely wind down by 1979 its military base which it had run on the island since 1815.
Politically it began to push for an international recognition of Malta as a neutral state. Economically, part of the agreement reached with Britain and some other members of NATO, especially Italy, premised that funds would be allocated to attract new industries to the island. In parallel with this, apart from the agreement reached with Mao's China in 1972, an attempt was made to expand the trade agreement which already existed for an association with the European Economic Community to one that also covered the granting of development funds to Malta.
Naturally, the funds from the agreement with the British that came on tap provided great leeway for increased government spending. A substantial part went on infrastructural works that complemented efforts to promote newly productive activities. Such was the project to build at Luqa airport a huge runway on which jumbo jets could land - seen as an essential measure to bolster the island's tourism. Once the controversies triggered by the acrimonious negotiations with the British in 1971-1972 died down (Malta was then being featured in the Western press as the Cuba of the Mediterranean), new private investment in tourism and industrial ventures began to trickle in, mostly in hotels and clothing firms. A situation similar to the one I had read about in Ghana was developing. However, it was made easier for Malta to attract foreign direct investment in labour intensive ventures when the social democratic government in Germany legislated for the introduction of workers' participation in industrial enterprises of a certain size. This led German smes to invest in greenfield projects abroad, in order to limit the size of their operation in Germany. Malta benefitted from this outflow.
Drama and uncertainties
Most initiatives had been on line before the 1976 elections arrived and were reckoned by the Labour Party in government to more than justify their reelection with an increased majority. True, the years since Labour's 1971 victory were flecked with drama and uncertainties, and not just during the roller coaster negotiations of 1971/72 about the British military base. On the whole though, the Labour record could not be faulted from an economic and social welfare perspective.
Between 1971 and 1977, gross national product vaulted from LM105.3 million (€245.3 million) to LM257.1 million (€599 million), an increase of some 144 per cent. Even taking inflation into account, it was an impressive rise. That held too for other indicators covering the same time span. Gross investment grew from an annual LM28.4 million (€66.2 million) to LM62.7 million (€146.1million), a rise of 121 per cent. Manufacturing exports rose from LM14.2 million (€33.1 million) to LM101.8 million (€237.2 million), or an increase of over 120 per cent. Gross income from tourism had been LM10.6 million (€24.7 million) in 1971, it stood at LM34.4 million (€80.2 million) in 1977 (a rise of 225 per cent), with tourist arrivals topping 361,000 in 1977 when they had been 178,704 in 1971. Manufacturing employment rose from 20,662 in 1971 to 31,346 in 1977. Meanwhile, as was to be expected, employment in the British military base had shrunk: from 6,040 in 1971 - to 2,597 by 1977. Net outward emigration had become a thing of the past.
And yet, as one could sense even when coming newly from outside, like I had some nine months after Labour won the 1976 elections, the mood had gone sour on some fronts. Confrontation was emerging about how the government dealt with its employees. Yet, the conflict seemed to go deeper. A critical dispute arose when the Labour government passed a law stipulating that graduating medical doctors would, after graduation, have henceforth to serve for two years in the public health service. The doctors' union MAM contested this measure and as of 1 June 1977 (a few days before I arrived in Malta) launched an all out strike. The government responded by applying the law, locking out and firing doctors who continued to obey their union's directive. It went all out to find replacements for those government doctors who stuck to their guns. In other areas of government service, similar conflicts were brewing.
The truth also was that all this reflected a change in the nature of the political game from what it was prior to the elections or in the 1960's, even though that decade had been politically very confrontational. However then, political disputes were still dealt with in a "traditional" way: they were kept within well defined frontiers of social action and mobilisation, probably because for most of the time, when the British colonial power was in charge and later, hidden mechanisms to limit confrontation remained in place.
With the PN in government under Borg Olivier, such mechanisms worked. When the PN went into opposition after 1971, and also because of the traumas resulting from the 1971-1972 "rent" negotiations on the British military base, the basis for such social restraint (or caution) was being eroded - reflecting too the fact that the government was no longer one that had roots in the traditional elites which formally or informally decided in the past how matters should be laid out. The social transformations effected by the socialist government contributed a lot to this development. People had new aspirations, different world views to those living in the "closed society" around which the old order had been built.
Changes in the Nationalist Party (PN)
Following the 1976 electoral defeat and by the time I arrived in Malta, Borg Olivier had been replaced in January 1977 by Dr Eddie Fenech Adami as PN leader, with Dr Guido de Marco as his deputy. Formerly, Fenech Adami had been the PN's President and an MP since the 1966-1971 legislature, when he had been coopted to Parliament following the death of a PN MP, who had won his seat in a bye-election. Under Fenech Adami's leadership the PN remodelled its style and policies. It would resist across the board, so it claimed, what it considered to be the strong arm tactics of government supporters against the meetings and other public occasions organised by the PN. It shifted the party's image from one based on a coalition of local notables, to one that would mobilise grass roots support, even among blue collar workers, around christian democratic ideas. From the Borg Olivier style of running an opposition, which some called "too gentlemanly" but which played on letting the other side make mistakes and suffer from them, the PN became a proactive set-up. It began stridently contesting government policies, proposing its own alternatives and strengthening its administrative structures.
Labour was very slow to realize the significance of the changes inside the PN. The new leadership recognised that Maltese society had become different from what it was in the 1960's and had adjusted their message accordingly, while politically remaining close to their traditional heartland.
At first, Labour people thought it was going to be a man to man no-contest between Dom Mintoff a tried and tested leader, and Fenech Adami, a "new" and inexperienced hand. That was the line touted by word of mouth and in Labour newspapers, riding on the funny if deceptive catchphrase of Fenech Adami being "il-vavu bil-ħarqa" ("that baby still in diapers") - was it Mintoff himself who coined it?
A give away bonus for a new leader of the Opposition is to be underestimated by adversaries. Labour critics seemed to overlook that Fenech Adami was not alone. The PN's top leadership had overcome any negative fallout from the post-Borg Olivier succession process. Around Fenech Adami there had emerged a very talented team with good expressive, organizational and tactical skills. Some I remembered from the past or had come into contact with over the years: Guido de Marco I had met during a students' debate at the University theatre in Valletta in 1966, as well as when he visited the Maltese embassy in Brussels in the early 1970's; Louis Galea again from the 1960's, where I knew him as a student activist, a good organizer, Labour leaning I then guessed but from the "Catholic" side, and also interested in drama. Others I only knew from from their writings in the PN press - Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, whose articles I found interesting, Michael Falzon as editor of "The Democrat", terribly formatted but quite sharp in its content, and Michael Refalo.
Reading the PN press during that first summer in Malta, while trying to get the hang of events at the Ministry of Parastatal and People's Industries, it was not difficult to conclude that things were changing beyond what Labour stalwarts (as at the Minister's secretariat in MPPI) wanted to believe. To be sure, at this stage, I too still thought there could be no comparison between the two leaders, and that Labour's greatest asset was Mintoff's sense of purpose and grit, which Fenech Adami could not match. Over the years, I was to be proved wrong.
Obviously, I did not become familiar with the political background overnight. The picture developed slowly. What was soon clear however was that the political temperature was rising. Changes that the socialist government was trying to push through in public health, in civil service management, and in higher education among others, were being contested. Resistance to them was much stronger, much better coordinated and organised than had been the case in previous years.
Meanwhile, the date at which all British military forces would leave Malta... with the ending of British and other grants as "rent" for the military base... was fast approaching. Would it happen smoothly? successfully? And what would follow - disaster as some predicted or business as usual?
I had no brief to provide a reply. During those early months at MPPI, I concentrated on understanding what was going on at that Ministry.
This instalment was slightly shortened.