"Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them."

George W. Bush

Robert Abela, actual prime minister and leader of the Labour Party continues in the conceited attempt of rewriting Maltese history. In Parliament last Monday he solemnly declared that he voted in favour of a European Union’s increase in the defence budget after he ensured that Malta’s neutrality was ensured. This was his lame excuse for signing the agreement he had for the past month opposed and criticised vehemntly.

On 19 March in Bormla Robert Abela hit out harshly against the EU defence budget asserting that while the Labour Party “wants peace, others want war.” He personally attacked Roberta Metsola who stated that the EU should upgrade its defence budget. “While others want EU countries to spend more on weapons, we want to invest in people,” he claimed. “We do not believe in more investment in weapons but in investment in peace and in people. Ħalluna, tridux!”

But, as the Opposition explained in Parliament, what he ‘obtained’ in Brusells was already secured during the accession talks that Malta had with the EU way back in 2004 and is enshrined in the Constitution.  So much for “the PN wants to send your children to fight other nations’ wars.”

The Labour Party uses Manwel Dinech as a beacon in the party’s history. They portray him as one of the founders of the party and even erected a statue of him in front of Castille. Gibberish. Manwel Dimech was never a labourite. The Labour Party did not even exist during his life. The Chamber of Labour was founded on 19 March 1921 by a group of trade unionists and adopted a democratic socialism and other left wing leanings until it shifted to a centrist position and followed Britain’s ‘New Labour’ and other western social-democratic parties. A previously Euroseptic party it claims it embraces pro-European views and is a member of the Party of European Socialists.

Manwel Dimech was born in Valletta in 1860 and died in Egypt on the 17th April 1921 a month after the Malta Labour Party was officially established. Brought up in poverty Dimech spent most of his early life in prison mainly on charges of theft. When seventeen he was arrested for involuntary murder and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison, where he started to educate himself. After his release from prison Dimech became a teacher and a publisher. Because of his leftist ideas and teachings Dimech was exiled to Italy and he later moved to Egypt, which was still controlled by the British.

“Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That’s not history, that’s psychiatry

Ed Koch – American politician

Another big fictitious fib is that the Labour Party gave women the right to vote. Dom Mintoff had the cheek to say in Parliament that it was the Labour Government who gave women the right to vote. In truth women were given the right to vote in 1947 under the MacMichael Constitution, a constitution granted by the British government and it was that constitution that gave women the right to vote for the first time. That same year, in October, the electorate, including women was called to vote. Labour won that election with 60% of the popular vote. Pawlu Boffa became prime minister and Agatha Barbara was the first woman to be elected to Parliament.

It was Eva Hubback, a British feminist, who in 1921 started a movement to give women the right to vote. Based on Hubback’s ideas. Mabel Strickland, daughter of Lord Strickland, fought to make Maltese women’s rights equal to those in the British Commonwealth. Despite opposition from the Church, she managed to gather enough women to suppot her and led a petition to the Royal Commission to support women’s right to vote . However the Commission ignored the petition and declared that it shouldn’t impose its ideas from outside the country.

Another fairytale is that free schooling was introduced by the Labour Party. Nothing can be farther than truth. Each time Labour was in government it never placed education as a priority. Many time it undid most of what was built previously. State schools between the 1970s and the late 1980s were a sham. Examinations were removed plummeting standards and creating an illiterate generation. Many parents started sending their children to Church schools. Seeing this, Labour embarked on a ferocious battle against them.

The Labour government thought it had the right to impose the number of students going to University which at the time had less than 1,000 students. The available courses were limited to a handful, with courses not opening every year.

It was in 1847 that elementary schooling was changed to the British model and schools were opened in every village and education was made free for everyone. In 1946 the Compulsary Attendance Ordinance was enacted. It stated that ‘in no case should a child be allowed to leave school before the age of 14 years.’

It is said that if you repeat your own lies you would start believing them. It is astonishing how the Labour Party alters and falsifies words and numbers to sound credible. Robert Abela continues where other Labour leaders left off. And the misfortune is that many believe them.