'Marching On: Captain Frederick Oloff Samut & The Union of Maltese Fascists'
Author: Gabriel Micallef
Publisher: Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna / 2024
Pages: 274
Seen from beyond him, one man's history may be perceived as a series of zigzags, ricocheting from side to side as buffeted by life's twists and turns.
In many cases, not just this one, the person involved would probably see his life's story as one continuum and not contradictory at all.
This very informative book begins by describing Captain Frederick Oloff Samut's immediate family.
It shows how this family was based on loyalty to the British crown. His father, Professor Carmelo Samut joined the British army when World War I was declared and served in Brighton Hospital.
Carmelo's brother, Achille, served on the Royal Malta Fencible Artillery and later in the South African War and in Northampton, UK.
Back in Malta he served in Lord Gerald Strickland's Cabinet, thus providing a crossover to Maltese politics.
Carmelo's two other brothers also served King and country - Richard in the Royal Malta Regiment of Militia and saw service in South Africa while Robert also enlisted in the KOMR and composed the music for L-Innu Malti.
Frederick's mother, Sophy, came from an equally distinguished family - her father, Olof Frederick Gollcher, from Sweden, founded the Gollcher & Sons company. Her grandfather's cousin, Fra Gaetano Bruno, saved the Order's archive during the French occupation.
Her nephew, Captain Olof Frederik Gollcher, together with his mother, Elisa Balbi, acquired Palazzo Falson in Mdina.
Frederick's older sister, Nella, married an Englishman, Captain Philip Austin Leicester and the two became great friends. Philip's staunch Catholicism and his unwavering opposition to Socialism left an indelible mark on Frederick throughout his life.
Now to the subject of the book. Frederick was born in 1893. He was educated by the Jesuits at the very English St Ignatius College in Balluta Sliema. Then, when the College was closed (the book does not tell us why this very successful college was closed) he continued his education at Beaumont College in Windsor, UK. It prided itself on preparing its students to serve King and country. From there to another conservative school also run by the Jesuits, Wimbledon College, which prepared its students for the army.
Frederick joined the Special Reserve of the Worcestershire Regiment, then, with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, joined the Regular Forces. Soon the Second Battalion was sent to the front line at that time in the worst of the Ypres offensive. He saw service in the cold, wet trenches, with unburied dead and mud everywhere and in May 1915 was severely injured and evacuated to Brighton.
After the war, he served in South Africa and in Ireland at the time of the Troubles, then in India. It was in India that he married Muriel Pasley Long, the daughter of a prominent engineer. Then the regiment was ordered back to Britain.
He was not happy, neither with life in the army not in his marriage. The two families had deeply different religious ties and the marriage had to be dissolved.
Seeking an annulment, Frederick went to Rome and there he met Louisa Calcich, the eldest daughter of a distinguished Viennese naval officer and already a widow. She was the governess in the household of Prince Mario Colonna, one of Italy's most distinguished families.
Frederick and Louisa fell in love and she moved to Malta with her daughter Elisa. She enrolled her at the Umberto Primo school at Palazzo Carafa in Valletta.
Surprisingly, when he returned to Malta and chivvy street, Frederick joined the Nationalist Party. Henry Frendo said Frederick was "a disgruntled anti-Britisher and (Nerik) Mizzi sympathiser" but the author disagrees. Samut was never an "anti-Britisher". Not after fighting in World War I and all his training.
It is more the case that he followed the example of his uncle, Colonel Achille Samut, who fled from the Strickland party for religious reasons. Frederick became a PN candidate in the 1932 election and contested the fourth district, mainly Cottonera.
He was very popular, given his past as a soldier, but he had health issues which might have caused him to come last in the election when heavyweights like Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici (il-Gross) were on the ticket - (il-Gross was to have his own conflicts with PN later on, but the book does not mention this.)
Although the PN was more aligned with the Church, Frederick became more attracted by the Fascist Party.
This, and his non-success, opened yet another phase of his life. He became disenchanted with the direction of the Nationalist Party and began to explore alternative avenues to voice his political beliefs, seeking out opportunities to make a meaningful impact.
Fascism, then on an upward trend especially in Italy, represented for him strong leadership, nationalist fervour and the promise of order and stability with its emphasis on national unity, discipline and the subordination of individual interests to the collective good.
Even then, however, the seeds of what was going to happen were already there - il delitto Matteotti, the march on Rome, the beating up of opponents, the swaggering poise ... Other people were impressed by the fact that trains ran on time.
Then came the Abyssinian experiment and the adoption of the German racial laws followed by the deportations to the concentration camps. By then, Italy was yoked to Germany, which turned up to be the loser of the world war.
Following his defeat in the election, Frederick became more and more attracted by the English fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosley, ironically founded by a woman, Rotha Lintorn Orman, and even more ironically the granddaughter of the Governor of Malta Field Marshal Sir John Lintorn Arabin Simmons.
As early as 1933 we read of a new political group in Malta, the Malta branch of the BUF, the British Union of Fascists. Mosley was interned during World War II, but not all Maltese Fascists were interned. Frederick was among those who were not sent to Uganda because by that time he had died.
This group, once called in a vitriolic attack, "skart tan-Nazzjonalisti" because it included some former Nationalist supporters, followed the BUF line on most issues but found itself involved in the language war between Italian and English and, even more, relations with the Catholic hierarchy.
At the end, probably fed up because of the incessant internal battles, BUF closed down the Malta branch.
Then Frederick played his last card - he set up the Union of Maltese Fascists with its headquarters in Strada Federico in Valletta.
In this phase, he mostly wrote about the Fascist ideals. He even wrote a book, or rather booklet about the Fascist ideals - The Corporate State and the Union of Maltese Fascists.
The UMF even had its own Disciplinary Board. In one notable case, the wife of Dr Niccolo Delia, who was the secretary of the Nationalist Party, enraged by the criticism of her husband on the newspaper Malta, confronted Mizzi at a cafe in Valletta, angrily slapping him with her shoe.
Those were difficult and controversial times for the people of Malta. As already stated, the Language Question (although the UMF tried very much to stay out of it) became a deeply complicated issue. The concept of racial inferiority, pushed by Strickland and his party, said the people were being treated by the British as "the savages of Zululand".
Lord Strickland advanced a theory that the Maltese shared a Phoenician ancestry together with a substantial segment of the British population.
The 1930s saw Fr Geraldu Paris, who created the Xirka ta' l-Isem t'Alla, on 14 February 1932, try to disrupt a meeting organised by the Constitutional Party in Rabat.
Some weeks later, the Nationalist Party organised a mass meeting at Porte des Bombes, attended by over 30,000 supporters, the largest turnout at a political activity till then.
Hundreds of Labour and Constitutionalists came too and a battle of stones ensued.
The battle moved to Valletta and a fire-engine was brought to defend the Constitutional Party club. Nationalist Party members' cars had their windscreens smashed - it would happen again years later.
The Constitutionalists blamed the Sette Giugno riots on incitement by the Nationalists.
Another mass meeting by the Nationalists at Paola on 10 April 1932 also turned violent - a Mounted Police horse was stabbed and Party leader Ugo Mifsud was hit by a stone.
The UMF issued frequent statements praising and condemning as need be. Then they became engrossed by the fight against Communism and, through this the Spanish civil war which brought it closer to the religious fringe, while a Te Deum was sung at St Catherine church to celebrate the Fascist victory in Ethiopia.
Despite the Press Law of 1933, which restricted press freedom (it's amazing how the same things keep recurring), UMF came out with a new publication, Marching On, which it published between November 1936 and March 1937. This is also the title of this book. Frederick had a share in its publication.
Frederick Oloff Samut passed away on 19 March 1937 at the Blue Sisters Hospital in Sliema at the young age of 44. For such a young age he packed a riveting history.
After Frederick's death, leadership of the UMF passed through various hands until it petered out.
As Herbert Ganado noted, not all UMF members were arrested and exiled to Uganda during the war. Frederick was not arrested nor exiled. He had already died and he was too much of a pro-Britisher.