Mintoff sold his colossal failure, and his humiliation at the hands of the British, as a spectacular success.
The dawn of a new Malta
This comment was posted under the name ‘fred’, this morning. It’s a must-read.
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Mintoff did something which no colonial power ever succeeded in doing in Malta. He managed to divide Malta to rule it completely.
He incited hatred towards priests, nuns and the Catholic Church in many of his followers. Today, much of what he did would rank as a hate crime.
He encouraged his supporters in hatred, envy, hdura and lanzit for anyone who wasn’t a ‘tifel ta’ haddiem’, and if there were ‘tfal ta’ haddiema’ who objected to his methods, then he instigated hatred against them too.
Eddie Fenech Adami and those who supported him – or perhaps I should say those who saw in him salvation from the blight that was Mintoff – were the spawn of Satan. Mintoff brought Malta to the brink of civil war.
Il-Helsien? He wanted Britain to pay more rent for its military base here when the contract came up for renewal on 1 April 1979. Instead they told him he could keep his military base, they were winding down in the Mediterranean anyway, they didn’t want to spend that kind of money, it wasn’t worth it, and pulled out when the contract expired on 31 March.
So Mintoff went begging to Gaddafi to save his sorry arse with handouts, to rescue him from the wrath of the marmalja when they found out that his deal-making attempts to extract more money from the British had blown up in his face, and that now he had no money to pay the dockyard workers and the thousands in his many korpi tal-pijunieri and korpi ta’ bahhar u sewwi, who had no work either because the Royal Navy had pulled its ships out and the military base had been dismantled.
In a massive PR exercise that was possible only because most of his supporters were completely illiterate and he controlled radio and television broadcasting, Mintoff carried out a masterclass in false propaganda and public relations. He sold his colossal failure, and his humiliation at the hands of the British, as a spectacular success.
He had chased the British out. He had succeeded because they were afraid of him. Gaddafi was the new hero, come to save us. All hail Gaddafi, the man who really gave the marmalja their children’s allowance.
Mintoff made Malta a living hell for everyone here. The point is that only half the population – the sentient, literate part – knew it for the hell it was. The other half were in hell too, but mistook it for paradise.
Such a great man, truly.
Daphne, please reserve a glass of champagne for me to celebrate – but I think you’ll have to bring in thousands of gallons of the stuff because he did so much damage and hurt so many thousands of people who are willing to join you in celebrating his demise.
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He replaced the Catholic church.
The divorce controversy was at one point revolving around the right to remarry in church after a civil divorce.
The underlying notion wasn’t about the separation of church and state, but whether the church should subscribe it’s doctrine to the state. It’s no different to China’s insistence that the catholic church cut all ties to the vatican.
Imagine what the attitude reserved for other members of civil society is.
I am currently looking at the Mintoff period as part of my studies: all the above is true.
If the Mintoffjani had any interest in knowing the truth, I could point out to them hundreds (literally) of US and British declassified documents which unmask Mintoff for the scum he truly is.
[Daphne – I don’t know who you are, but can I recruit you as a very part-time research assistant? This is a serious question.]
Mintoff almost begged foreign leaders to come to Malta and offer him a photo op. He badgered the US Secretary of State for a quick meeting (“even if it would be for a few hours”) despite constantly undermining US interests.
He went on expensive tours to all the Eastern/Arab bloc countries for token aid (can you imagine Dr Gonzi going all the way to Pyongyang for a consignment of sardines?). He held up international security conferences for days – to the point where diplomats were considering dropping Malta from the proceedings.
Mintoff was not a statesman; he was an embarrassment.
The British had actually made it clear to him that they do not want Malta after 1979. Unfortunately, he succeeded in blackmailing the Italians with Gaddafi. Such was the “great” man – a blackmailer with no scruple nor principle.
Andre is surely not Dominic Fenech.
Andre, will the fruits of your studies be published in some form anytime in the future?
May I suggest publishing it online on Amazon as a Kindle book, or on the iBook store for Apple products?
Both would bypass the “stigma” of being propaganda material should it be published by PIN, and I believe that independent publishers would steer clear of publishing such material for fear of getting that stigma themselves.
Unless the study produced would become property of the University of Malta, since you mentioned that this forms part of your ongoing studies.
Thank you for your encouraging comments.
At the moment I’m undertaking the research as part of a post-graduate degree. However, once I complete my studies, I am thinking about working on something along the lines of a biography.
I’d like to know more about these documents. Are they available online?
The British documents can be purchased online from the website of the National Archives. However, John Manduca’s book “Flavour from the Mintoff Era” quotes extensively from such documents.
Some US Cables may be viewed online from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration website.
Maltese researchers will always be at a disadvantage because national records from that period have either been destroyed or are nonexistent.
I will certainly dig up some stuff and send it your way.
“Such was the “great” man – a blackmailer with no scruple nor principle.”
For a fleeting moment, I thought you were talking about Franco Debono.
Some time ago the newspaper il-MUMENT reproduced part of the ‘wikileaks’ about the infamous Mintoff era.
Andre’
May I suggest Paolo Guzzanti?
You can contact him on his website http://www.paologuzzanti.it
Andre, you’re right on every point. Even the Italians had, and still have today, a very low opinion of Mintoff.
Many of my Italian ex-PSI (the Italian Socialist Party) friends still question how the Maltese took in all that nonsense without moving enough resistance and throw an illegal government out of office in 1981.
Civil disobedience should have started earlier.
Because what they don’t realise, is that even though he set up relations with Craxi, the main ideological difference remained.
Craxi never considered his socialism outside the western hemisphere, if anything he pushed for a European model independent of American influence. That was the time when Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had embarked on their pact.
Mintoff never mentioned the repression in Prague and Budapest. On the other hand these proved crucial to Nenni’s Socialists and Berlinguer’s Communists in denouncing Soviet realsocialism and NorthAfrican non alignment.
There may the possibility Mintoff was being funded with soviet money to remove Boffa and his british derived labour in 1949. He redesigned the party around the delegati concept, for that read political marshals, rendering party MP’s plain followers. The hold on the grassroots was, and could still be, against the spirit of the constitution.
Mintoff was nothing more then a glorified pimp who spent years trying to prostitute Malta off to the highest bidder.
Now that Joseph Muscat has associated himself with Mintoff so dearly, will Joseph be orchestrating public scenes of mass hysteria when Mintoff dies?
While the others celebrate, I mean.
Count me and all my family in. I can’t celebrate enough that he’s dead but I gloat now to see him a nobody.
Let’s turn the event into an international celebration. I will certainly join in and pop a bottle of fine Scotch.
Instead of a book of condolences, let’s have a virtual Celebration Book which can be signed from all corners of the earth.
One wonders whether his ‘brother’ Gaddafi will spare a few virgins for old Dom?
It’s about time recent history, backed up by the result of research into those times, is written and taught in our schools.
As you say half of the population of the 70s-80s era believed they were in heaven the other half believed the opposite.
The later generations know very little of what happened – some times when I watched Storia ta’ Poplu, I found myself watching in disbelief. Did we really go through all that?
The comments written by the young Mintoffjani of today show how warped their thinking is about those times.
This in itself is very unhealthy.
The Labour Party needs to come to terms with its recent past and admit that grave mistakes were made. Then it needs to make amends.
When and only when the PL owns up to its democratic deficit can we as a nation live at peace with each other knowing that those times will never come back.
Thank you Andre. We need people like you and Daphne (of course).
I wholly agree. I was born after the Mintoff-KMB era and unfortunately this period is still shrouded in half-truths and downright lies.
However, I live in hope that this will change very soon.
It certainly will change, if not soon at some point in time, because: ‘Is-sewwa jirbah zgur’.
Toni Abela will have to put up a whole new exhibition for the Storja tal-Partit and re-write some more history. Good luck, Andre.
Thank your lucky stars that you were born after the dirty Mintoff-KMB era!! What injustices and fear and other atrocities we did really suffer. However, if you are a Christian, I can only say that we should pray for these people.
We should pray to God for them to at least repent before they depart this life. I cannot agree with the champagne celebrations.
Daph,
Please check if it is true that Mintoff borrowed from the Chinese and Malta had to repay such borrowings in GOLD.
also
Is it true that a little before 1987 he was instrumental in making the Central Bank lose money when we had the famous basket of currencies. Apparently at one time he was told to switch from Dollars or Sterling and he refused with the consequent result that The Central Bank lost a lot of money.
Re the Chinese-Mintoff link: we can never know for sure because of the secretive nature of the Chinese regime.
What is certain is that China used Malta to get at the USSR at the height of the Sino-Soviet split. Some would argue that Mintoff was acting on behalf of the Chinese when he held up the CSCE conference in Europe. During that period, Malta’s voting record at the UN was totally in line with the dictats of Beijing.
I wouldn’t be able to answer the 1987 query. Most apologists would argue that Mintoff left huge amounts of reserves. In my book, this is a sign of economic ineptitude. With the unemployment rate reaching 8,000, rising inflation, no foreign investment and a limited market, Malta’s high reserves were not something to be proud of.
I fully agree with Jo that ‘It’s about time recent history, backed up by the result of research into those times, is written and taught in our schools.’
The major problem lies with the young generation who were born post-1987 and who know practically nothing of what we went through in those dark and horrible 16 years. Instead, they see in Joseph a new, modern and progressive leader who could be trusted, according to them. Little do they know that the comfortable life they are leading now is thanks to the Nationalist governments who changed Malta from a Third World Country into a modern and European member state.
When Sant was elected to government in 1996 for only 22 months, confusion again prevailed. The Nationalists are far from being perfect – after all, human beings are bound to make mistakes but on the other hand, we know where we stand. This is proven even by Brussels and our economy is stable compared to other European Union member states.
If the Labour party will be elected the next time round, uncertainty and vindications will once again be the order of the day.
The amount of people who still believe Mintoff kicked out the British is incredible.
Glass of champagne? Fred deserves a whole crate.
This’ll be one hell of an expensive party, but well worth it.
I have mentioned this here before.
One of Italy’s top, post war politicians was in the habit of referring to Mintoff in private conversation as “quel venditore di tappeti”.
In Italian this is a very disparaging remark.
It shows what an accurate assessment the guy had made of Mintoff.
It goes to prove, if any proof is required, what a prat we had running this country for twenty years.
Well done Andre and also Daphne of course. This should have been taken up by the (hibernating) PN media a while ago – when the PL started to bring back into their fold the scum from the past.
When P.N got in power ,the bombings stopped. What a coincidence!