O zmien helu
Karmenu Vella in his usual position directly behind Dom Mintoff, with Guze Cassar and Joe Debono Grech, at one of the socialist party's class hatred meetings
Facebook chat between Lorry Sant henchman Ronnie Pellegrini and KMB and Mintoff minister Karmenu Vella – two elderly gentlemen reminiscing on their ‘walls’ about O Zmien Helu – brought back some memories of my own, even though, despite being well into middle age, I am a good generation younger than those two blasts from the past who see themselves (and are seen by ‘Joseph’) as the future of the Labour Party for 2013.
The reality is that while people like Karmenu Vella lived the life of Riley and went on yachting jaunts with Dom MIntoff and assorted beach boys, footballers and – in Mintoff’s case at least – partially naked ladies, people lived on a knife-edge of despair. The sort of despair you feel when you have come to believe that a bad situation will never end.
When we look back at those days, we think of corruption, material deprivation, violence, human rights violations and assaults on democracy, free speech and the integrity of the individual. We tend to forget that underpinning all this was a major economic disaster that led to widespread unemployment, miserable wages and an abominably low standard of living.
People left school with absolutely no prospects, not even the prospect of higher education. One of my friends celebrated when she found a job as a part-time counter-clerk in a shop selling spectacles, for Lm80 A MONTH. Another friend managed through a network of her father’s contacts to get a job typing invoices in a factory. At the age of 16, she woke up at 5am every day to catch two buses to the factory – a 90-minute commute – and be there by 7am for nine hours of banging away at a manual typewriter, for Lm30 A WEEK.
The private sector had been castrated by North African-type corruption which dictated that if you weren’t in league with a member of the regime, you couldn’t get anywhere, and by disastrous policies like import substitution and a make-do-and-mend approach to the infrastructure. So private sector jobs were in very short supply while demand was huge, causing wages to plateau at a miserable level for years.
Real estate was cheap precisely because people were so poor that there was no demand, and also because the government was busy requisitioning other people’s land to parcel it out for free or almost nothing to a queue of bazuzli.
The government’s solution to the massive unemployment problem was to put as many people as it could on the public sector payroll – false jobs for which money from taxes had to be found, except that there wasn’t that much money from taxes because people weren’t earning anything and those who were, like government ministers and the businessmen involved in those import substitution rackets, were squirreling it away in bank accounts in Jersey and Zurich.
If you ever wondered where most of the gadzillions came from that were repatriated in later years under the Nationalist government’s amnesties, that’s where.
When I saw what was happening in Tunis, it brought back so many memories. There are so many similarities. I can hardly believe now that this was how we lived then.
Just as I can’t believe that one of the people responsible for the way we lived then, Karmenu Vella, is writing the electoral programme for the Labour government of 2013 to 2018. A man who was a cabinet minister in 1981 is going to plan out our lives for 2018.
In the very next post after this, I’m going to give you an example of the Labour government’s approach to solving the unemployment problem – when Karmenu Vella was a cabinet minister, in 1986.
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Given that Malta is now in the EU and is using the Euro, what scope is there for a ‘ rogue ‘ Govt to significantly send the country in the wong direction? Interest rates are decided by the ECB and money supply is decided by the ECB.
After the recent Eurozone debt crisis it appears that there will be much tighter control over public spending and government deficits incurred by member states. Human rights are covered under EU law. I know that these safeguards don’t cover the general tone of government policy but don’t you think that they, at least, limit the damage that can be caused?
[Daphne – What I fear is crass ineptitude, and there are no EU safeguards against that.]
I suppose there are few safeguards that could protect us if, instead of attracting foreign investment, the government started enacting policies that drove it away.
John, tipprovax tikkonsla. Dawn tal MLP – issa PL – qatt ma halqu xejn hlief dizastru u qtuh ta’ qalb. Dan gara fil hamsinijiet, fis-sebghejnijiet, tmeninijiet u anke f’nofs id-disghinijiet.
Li kien ghal-Joseph Muscat u ta’ madwaru, kienu anke – billi jzommu lil-Malta barra mil-EU – jeqirdu lil-Malta u lilina l-koll ghat-tul tas-seklu li issa qeghdin fieh.
Dawn hlief li jiehdu l-poter biex jiddettaw qatt ma raw, halli li jekk u meta jaslu hemm lanqas ma biss jkunu jafu minn fejn ser jibdew jaraw x’ser jaghmlu.
I take it that you like to live dangerously, don’t you ‘John’?
Watching SkyNews, seeing Mubarak’s supporters – aided and abetted by police in civvilain clothes – attacking peaceful demonstrators brings to mind many memories of Malta in the 1980s. I’d say ours were worse since no one from the outside world seem to have given a hoot of what was going on here.
Taf x’naf inghid ukoll illi lill-dawk li sawtuna bil-lembubi, gibdulna r-ritratti waqt glied fid-dimostrazzjonijiet u ppubblikawhom front page fil-gazzetti tal-Labour, dawk li hallew it-Times taqbad qabel ma taparsi dahlu jitfuha, dawk li dahlulna go darna, arrestawna, tefghulna l-gass tad-dmugh, hallew lis-supporters tal-Labour isawtuna, ikissrulna l-kazini u jaghtuhom in-nar u mbaghad wara arrestaw lilna, ressquna l-qorti ghax iddefendejna ruhna u bqajna nzommu l-bandiera tal-partit tperper ghal dawk li gew wara u llum qieghdin ipappuha tajjeb …. lill dawk taghhom promotion. Grazzi Eddie u l-iehor …
Ezatt. Il-PN minghalih li gab ir-rikonciljazzjoni, imma nesa li ma tezistix rikonciljazzjoni minghajr gustizzja. U gustizzja qatt ma saret. U llum, jekk xejn, ninsabu iktar mifruda minn qatt qabel.
Malta never had a Truth and Reconcilation Commission. I suspect it’s a bit too late now. Thanks, Eddie, Guido, et al!
Eddie prova jibda pagna gdida, pero l-ewwel riedet issir gustizja ma’ min sofra taht ir-regim Laburista.
Wara kul gwerra tigi l-paci pero mhux qabel issir gustizja ma’ dawk li nhaqru w ma dawk li haqruhom.
In 1979 I was in the first-ever “pupil worker” scheme for 6th formers. The two-year A level preparation was extended to 3 years, half of which we were meant to spend working for our sponsor who was to pay us Lm40 a month.
All of us had to find a sponsor and most of us ended up working as waiters, pool boys, shop assistants or in some obscure government department.
After the first 6 months the course was cut back to two years and we had to buy new books as the syllabus was different.
After pasing my A levels, I tried getting into university but I did not succeed because of the infamous numerus clausus which limited the number of entrants. At the time colour television was a great luxury, chocolate and toothpaste were locally produced rubbish, as were most clothes and footwear – either made here shoddily or produced in the Soviet bloc.
You could not buy Japanese goods and if you were lucky enough and prepared to spend a fortune to go abroad you had to hide cash about your person as there was a limit to how much you were allowed to take with you. Credit cards? What were they?
We had water shortages every week, power cuts were common and phoning someone was an adventure as crossed lines happened all the time.
That is my recollection of daily life during the golden days of Labour.
Lm40 a month? Then you were a lucky one. As a pupil-worker in 6th form between 1984 and 1986, my gross salary was Lm28 (roughly 65.00 Euros) a month for the first year and Lm33 a month for the second year.
And we were so desperate for decent chocolate, that link to normality, that I used to buy black market Snickers, Mars and the like at Lm1 a bar from the corner coffee shop next to the office.
“Lira kulljum”
I recall a song starting with the words.
“jien pupil worker
naqla lira kulljum
lira kulljum”
A Grech, you and I must be two of a small number of Maltese who were around in the 70s/80s and who subsequently did not develop amnesia or die.
Well done.
Not enough people have balls.
Daphne, what I remember most and what haunts me to this day is the sadness you felt all around you.
People never seemed at ease. Everyone was anxious, stressed or miserable. Even life’s little pleasures were denied us, and it was just so difficult to cope. And then on top of everything you had to see how you were going to manage without water and electricity, sometimes for days.
We really don’t need to see the same people who were responsible for that.
I wouldn’t call it a sense of sadness only. It was much worse because insecurity was all around. I remember quite clearly that we used to voice our thoughts and ask each other “Let’s see what’s going to happen today”. There was a strange foreboding which kept us anxious. This is something which only those who experienced it can understand.
And, come each December, I clearly remember the older generation stating “Ha naraw x’ha jaqla Mintoff dan il-Milied.”
While your article is both accurate and correct of course, I do not think that a mention of wages (by comparison, I assume?) is contextual without a mention of the cost of living and actual family expenditure back then.
Though Lm80 a month seems now like a considerably low wage, people would somehow (don’t ask me how) manage to save. Citizens are not managing to do that today, and that, as any economist can tell you, is a major problem. The whole landscape was so diffeent from what it is today that I don’t think it is even possible to make a just comparison.
If I were to mention the price of utilities, someone might pipe up and say but do you remember the state of the infrastructure? Did we have internet ? Can you put a price on freedom of expression ?
The only thing that seems to have remained unchanged, and may very well be an immutable part of Maltese identity, is the state of our roads.
Utility prices: we’re paying above the odds for our utility prices because EneMalta was subsidising the running of your A/Cs in your office and your home, while it was increasing its debts for which now, me and you have to pay through our noses.
“The only thing that seems to have remained unchanged, and may very well be an immutable part of Maltese identity, is the state of our roads.”
You’re wrong also on this one; up to a year ago the state of the roads from Zurrieq to Rabat were terrible. Nowadays one can travel from Zurrieq to Qrendi to Mqabba and to Rabat via Siggiewi on reasonably smooth-surfaced roads. From Rabat’s Saqqaja Hill one can go up to Cirkewwa on really good roads.
Does anybody think that the PN is failing its duties by not doing what this blog does in reminding all of what the risk of a Labour victory is?
NET TV should dedicate some time, and it has to be prime time, to make people aware of what is at stake. Remember those wise words “Ma jinbidlux”. We don’t need further proof.
Ma nafx kif wara dik il-hsara kollha li ghamlu lil huthom il-Maltin meta kienu ministri kif ma jisthux jidhru quddiem il-poplu.
Trid vera jkollok wiccek infurrat jew ma nafx x’naqbaghd nghid.
Insomma jien nahseb Joseph kien ghadu baby meta ahna sofrejna dak kollu. Fuq kollox dak mhux li tghidlu in-nanna jaf dwar il-politika tal-Labour.
Jekk kienet tghidlu li Mintoff kien jaghmel kollox sew u ghamel hafna gid lill-pajjiz vera ghandu kollox poggut car go mohhu kif fuq kollox jixraq lil kull politiku modern.
A quote in The New York Times today that directly applies to Muscat’s ‘new’ shadow cabinet. ‘You can”t carve in rotten wood’.
Nice to see a whole thread, so far, in English, Daphne.
“footballers and – in Mintoff’s case at least – partially naked ladies,”
You presume too much about his sexual preferences… people who were close to him might have a different story to tell.
[Daphne – I don’t need to be told it. The O Zmien Helu Speedo trunks photograph says it all, at least to women who, like me, weren’t born yesterday. But some of my readers are a bit touchy about that sort of thing, and would interpret any such suggestion as ‘homophobia’ rather than legitimate debate, given who these people are and what they appear to be up to. I’ve long thought it’s one of the reasons people see Vella as so ‘nice’, when really he’s just effeminate and people tend to confuse the two.]
At this point, I would rather have a Labour Party without an electoral manifesto – and a single promise that everything will be subject to a free vote in Parliament, like Joseph’s proposal about divorce – than have Karmenu Vella’s electoral programme.
Does anyone out there still remember running around to find a decent spot where we could tune in (against all the jamming) to hear Richard Muscat from Sicily? And then years later after the 1987 victory people forgot all about it and returned the MLP to power and PN in opposition had another ‘problem’ at the Gharghur transmitter? History repeats itself. And if the same people are around it will repeat itself even more.
I think one of the most efficient remedies to brush off the fear of Labour being voted into government, is for us ALL – repeat ALL – to ask everybody to tune into Daphne’s blog.
It is true to the word and an eye opener for those who perhaps are still hoping for a change – FOR THE BETTER.