How Mintoff went riding – and how Lorry Sant rode him for years
Mintoff on one of his horses which were kept at the expense of the taxpayer, at the police stables.
Posted by Antoine Vella, in response to somebody who commented about Mintoff’s notorious ‘fall from a horse’ (which we all suspected back then was actually the result of a good beating) when he appeared in public looking…a little roughed up.
I was a student in the 1970s and one of my summer jobs was as a stable groom at Marsa (or the Marsa as Britons called it).
It was impossible for Mintoff to fall from his horse – whenever he went riding he would have a mounted policeman on each side plus two in front and two at the back. He used to be completely surrounded and they never went faster than a slow canter.
Another thing about Mintoff’s stinginess: he owned several horses which were all kept for free at the police stables.
The picture I have used here was first published by Lorry Sant in his commemorative booklet Hajr lil Mintoff f’Eghluq Sninu , to mark Mintoff’s 60th birthday on 6 August 1976. Fifteen years later, the very same Lorry Sant stood up in parliament to threaten MP Wenzu Mintoff (Dom Mintoff’s nephew), who had been elected on the Labour ticket but switched to AD while holding his seat. Dom Mintoff was also an MP then but I can’t recall whether he was actually in parliament during that particular sitting.
Lorry Sant waved around a brown envelope which he said contained photographs that would, to paraphrase in my own words, focus Wenzu Mintoff’s mind. He then placed the photographs on the table of the House, which would ordinarily have made them accessible to all other MPs and to journalists on request.
The Speaker of the House looked at the contents of the envelope and ordered that they be locked up and rendered inaccessible. There was a bit of a scandal as everyone speculated about the nature of those photographs. Because that information was never made public, people did not know that Lorry Sant had actually threatened not just Wenzu Mintoff but his uncle Dom Mintoff too, and that those photographs were almost certainly the source of Lorry’s power over Dom throughout those horrible years when Mintoff was prime minister and Sant was the most powerful minister, a robber baron who did as he pleased and was absolutely untouchable.
For years, people had wondered why Mintoff let Lorry Sant behave as he did, the only person he couldn’t or wouldn’t bully into submission, even when his thuggery and thievery rocketed out of control. There was even speculation that Sant might have been his natural son.
Even if Mintoff didn’t object to the violence and human rights abuses, because he himself was no slouch in that department, surely the sight of somebody else grabbing at money would have flipped his switch?
That natural son business was rubbish, as it turned out (they said the same of John Bondin, Il-Fusellu, incidentally). The answer was in that brown envelope, a brown envelope which contained a major news story that was never broken because the Speaker, the Nationalist Party and the press in general made the mistake of thinking that the story was a private one – that Mintoff had cuckolded his own brother. The photographs showed Wenzu Mintoff’s mother naked at Dom Mintoff’s Delimara house, L-Gharix.
What a stupid mistake that was. Because the real story wasn’t that bit of titillation, was it, or the non-news that a man who was horrible to everyone was also horrible to his own brother (surprise).
No, the real news was that for years Lorry Sant had been in possession of a set of photographs with which he had been blackmailing and threatening Dom Mintoff, who allowed him to get away with, well, murder.
Instead of kvetching that the film Dear Dom does not glorify her father sufficiently, Joan Mintoff should be grateful that it doesn’t even touch on matters such as this.
As for the rest of us, we should have been told at the time. Well, I was, and I didn’t do anything about it. Sorry about that. It was misplaced sympathy for Wenzu Mintoff. Boy, what a mistake that was.
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Enough about dear Dom. Who cares?
[Daphne – Lots of people, Mark. Including the Labour Party.]
I do Mark, and many other people my age who hear great stories about Mintoff “is-salvatur,” then “it-traditur” and then back to “il-kbir.”
Mintoff is evil and the more time our historians take to document it the more people will feel sorry for the senile old bastard.
Mark, I just look at the current higher echelons of the PL and I CARE A LOT, even more than ever.
Why is it impossible to fall off a horse if you’re surrounded by mounted policmen? It’s not as though they’ve got extraordinarily long arms, like Mr Tickle, is it?
[Daphne – Sigh, Reuben. You can’t fall off a horse which is moving at a slow canter. Not unless you have a sudden seizure. Would you fall off a motorbike which is moving slowly down the road? It’s practically impossible to fall off a horse in any situation anyway, unless you’re, say, hit by a low-hanging branch or come off during a particularly difficult jump. You’re generally thrown.]
Well … someone could have sabotaged the saddle’s buckle or whatever it is with which they fasten saddles, for instance :)
[Daphne – Then the poor groom would have been shot. We’re talking about a man who, as prime minister, took his own lunchbox to the office and drank only out of bottles that had been opened and poured while he watched. This in the absence of an official food taster to the king, you see.]
Don’t you know what happened to two young British sailors, somewhat the worse for drink, who tried to thumb a lift from a passing car that happened to be Mintoff’s and hit the car’s aerial instead?
Since they were helplessly incapacitated by drink and since the unofficial escort of brutish MLP thugs safely outnumbered the two young sailors, they were beaten to within an inch of their lives in the presence of the official police escort.
The mounted policemen were quite close to Mintoff, practically shielding him from any would-be sniper (he was also a bit paranoid). They would certainly have broken his fall had Mintoff lost his balance.
He still the holds the record for fastest man up the steps of Castille.
Any sniper would confirm that it is that much harder to aim a sniper rifle through its use a telescopic gunsight on a figure running up the Castille stairs.
Speculation is what ties up a story’s loose ends, Reuben. Don’t you think it sounds better to twist a fall into a hit and spin some depth into those pictures? Who needs facts when Vella’s gut knows better!
Good work, Vella. You should deal with the sequel. Just be easy on our throats, round up the rough edges.
[Daphne – Tell me something, Kevin: were you already a Mintoffjan when you married into the horrid Ellul family, or did they turn you?]
Let me see, that was nearly two decades ago. I guess you could have called me a Mintoffjan, yes, since I had just voted AD.
What about you, Deffney? Where you also a Mintoffjana back in 92?
[Daphne – Hmmm. Is that your wife I see coming up right behind him? I’m sure it’s not because she’s a gerontophiliac, Kevin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEvOLb8VE_g ]
So you were indeed a Mintoffjana in 92. I could have sworn you voted PN.
[Daphne – I come from one of the leading Mintoff-despising families in the island, Kevin. It would be indeed difficult to consider me a Mintoffjana. One of Mintoff’s earliest and most tragic confrontations was with my grandfather in 1973. He was president of the National Bank of Malta at the time. I don’t suppose Mintoff ever imagined then that he was about to create the ‘monster’ that would, as a direct result, grow up to become one of the biggest thorns in the Labour Party’s side. Mintoff knew it, which is why I pissed him off so much before he went senile. And now I’m the one who’s pissed off because he’s senile and can’t read all this. It’s infuriating. Well, at least I get to see him off. I hope.]
That’s all irrelevant. Let me spoonfeed you:
Did you vote PN or AD in 1992? If you voted AD you voted for Wenzu Mintoff’s party. Which made you a fleeting Mintoffjana.
Now who was it? Pappi Azzopardi? Or was it Salvu Balzam? Surely not Arnie.
[Daphne – It’s amazing how you always change the subject when you have to deal with questions about your marriage to a rancid Mintoffjana, Kevin. And no, I don’t mean that Sharon is rancid, but her politics certainly are. You have this air about you of being so cool and liberal, and then look at your real choices.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120403/opinion/Dear-Dom-banal-and-insolent.413978
[Daphne – This by someone who was in my class at St Aloysius College during those dreadful days. You’d think he’d been kidnapped by Jason Micallef and brainwashed in some secret room at Mile End.]
Mark Montebello, as usual, puts his foot in it. He declares that a fifty year career cannot be summarised in one word, that the man’s complexity goes beyond the attempt made by the film maker.
In those fifty years there were also Paul Boffa, George Borg Olivier, Eddie Fenech Adami and Alfred Sant.
A simple comparative analysis of their style and confrontations with the man in question could help.
Not to mention John Attard Kingswell, both archbishops Gonzi and Mercieca, the MUT, the business community and self-respecting civil society.
The film is insolent in so much as it doesn’t acknowledge society as a continuous struggle, ALL MEANS JUSTIFIED, for an abstract ideal of social justice.
Looks like your former classmate graduated with top honours for his mastery of gobbledygook and his ability to express it all in such a delightfully stilted form of pidgin English. He really made an opera. Keep it up, Mark!
Was he always a left-wing revolutionary nutter? And how exactly did he gravitate towards holy orders with that sort of attitude?
[Daphne – I wouldn’t know. He kept himself to himself, so much so that I didn’t even know he was studying to become a monk. He was perfectly civil, but I don’t recall him ever joining in for parties or the like. Politics didn’t really make a difference to our interaction back then. Daniel Micallef’s son was another classmate and he was one of my best friends at school. We’d go to mass meetings on Sunday then carry on as normal on Monday.]
Mark, you can organize some kind of protest against the screening of DEAR DOM, similar to those held at the site of the ‘Smellimara’ power station, when you used to block bulldozers with your body.
One can barely expect better from a priest who – during the 50th anniversary “dnub mejjet” commemoration – quoted the Bible to eulogise Mintoff.
Over the years, that would have amounted to thousands of pounds. Meanwhile, I was paying a hefty 60% tax levy on my overtime – there was a price you had to pay for continuing to work after you got married. Even with very moderate earnings you’d soon find yourself forking out the highest rates.
My blood really boils when I hear people accuse this government of unfair taxation. Where were these people back then? I’m sure a lot of them were in the labour market at the time. But perhaps they managed to evade most of it and got away with it.
[Daphne – Most of us were on the minimum wage at the time, that’s why. I certainly was. And so were my friends, one of whom rose at 5am to take two buses from Sliema to Tal-Handaq, where she started work in a factory office at 7am, typed until 5pm, then took another two buses home, getting back at 7pm – all for the princely sum of Lm28 a week. Another of my friends worked behind a shop counter, for just below the full-time hours requirements, so that her employers did not have to pay her the full wage. She earned Lm80 a month. Fabulous times.]
I was one of the “lucky” few who – as a pupil-worker – worked regular office hours for the princely sum of Lm28 (65 Euros and 21 cents) PER MONTH.
Who was the speaker at the time? He holds a story many would love to know.
[Daphne – The present prime minister. So no joy there, as you would imagine.]
You’d think that sort of privileged access to the photograph of the century would put some sap in his pizzle, but no.
So we will have to wait for PBS’s (and Peppi’s) “Biografiji – Il-hajja kollha ta’ Lawrence Gonzi” to get the details.
Sob.
It will go with him to the grave. But if they weren’t destroyed, there’s hope yet.
Maybe Saviour Balzan will come to the rescue and fill us all in –
“Saviour Balzan was the third party and go-between who in the midst of the Lorry Sant/Mintoff photos saga rang me and said he was going to bring Wenzu Mintoff over to speak to me about what was in that envelope, and why I should, pretty please, collude in keeping it under wraps to save Wenzu Mintoff’s dignity and protect his privacy. He was the third party who sat in my kitchen and went through the details. He knows every last detail of that sorry tale, but his trail-blazing newspaper has never so much as alluded to it.
So there you have it. Saviour Balzan has known all along that Dom Mintoff cavorted with his brother’s wife, Wenzu’s mother, and that Lorry Sant was using naked photographs of the woman taken at L-Gharix to threaten Wenzu in parliament and possibly, Dom Mintoff in private. But did he say anything about it? Did he publish a block-busting epic series in soap opera style? No, he did not – because Wenzu is his mate. He can argue that it is not topical, but that just shows what a lousy editor he is: it is highly newsworthy because only a small number of people knew about it, which is why it was the most active post on my blog this past week. And then Balzan has the gall to talk about friends of friends. While he was persecuting the then police commissioner for extra-marital sex and ‘hypocrisy’, he was keeping this little story under wraps. And he’s still keeping it under wraps today.”
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2008/11/fine-upstanding-handsome-and-intelligent-thats-right-were-not-talking-about-saviour-balzan/
I thought it was Miriam Spiteri Debono or was she speaker when they went missing?
[Daphne – Oh, so they did go missing. No, definitely not Spiteri Debono. This was just before the 1992 election – Wenzu Mintoff still held his seat for AD which he then lost in 1992. And it can’t have been earlier than October 1991 because when Wenzu Mintoff came over to speak to me about it (which is how I know what the photographs were and what the story behind them was/is), accompanied by Saviour Balzan, we were living in Bidnija already and we had moved in that summer (when there are no parliamentary sittings). So this episode had to have taken place sometime between October 1991 and the dissolution of parliament just after the Christmas recess – the election was held on 22 February. Lawrence Gonzi was Speaker between 1988 and 1996. Spiteri Debono succeeded him, 1996 to 1998.]
For all it’s worth, Lorry Sant produced the envelope containing the photos on Wednesday, 18 December, 1991, the last day of the 1992 budget debates.
[Daphne – Hi Mark, thanks for that. I knew it was late 1991 because we had moved house that summer and I have this mental image of Saviour Balzan and Wenzu Mintoff sitting in my kitchen talking about it when it had just happened. And I knew it had to be before the 1992 elections because Wenzu Mintoff wasn’t in parliament after that, and I don’t think Sant was either. So it’s good to have the exact date.]
The goings-on with Wenzu Mintoff’s mother were not a “one off”. She would be at l-Gharix in Delimara every Wednesday. Mintoff never worked on Wednesdays.
“No, the real news was that for years Lorry Sant had been in possession of a set of photographs with which he had been blackmailing and threatening Dom Mintoff, who allowed him to get away with, well, murder.” Can you please explain more the murder part daphne.
And what happened today to the brown envelope? Still in the private and confidential drawer of the parliament minutes.
[Daphne – One hopes and trusts. But being realistic, one imagines that it was spirited away by somebody with a vecsted interest in collusion with somebody with moral scruples.]
The only link I never ever figured was how Lorry Sant managed to get hold of such photos. And another point to be seen was by whom were they taken? If both Dom and his related partner were in such photos they were taken by a third person.
[Daphne – Who said that both Dom and his sister-in-law were in the pictures? Don’t jump to conclusions. He wasn’t in the pictures; he’s the one who must have taken them. He doesn’t have to be in the pictures for a reasonable assessment to be made as to what his sister-in-law was doing being photographed naked in his private country retreat.]
How did Lorry Sant manage to get hold of the photos? One must bear in mind that they would have been taken at the time when photos were generally taken on film which, in turn, had to be developed and printed and negatives left about.
We have no information that Mintoff knew how to develop photographs or had a darkroom. So somebody else would have had to do it. And if they had any sense (and few scruples), they would have made a couple of extra copies for themselves.
I read Montebello’s piece in today’s The Times. One question comes to mind: can anyone tell me Montebello’s age?
[Daphne – I just did, elephant. I said he was in my class at St Aloysius. I’m 47.]
I never thought I would be here sticking up for Mintoff, as you probably know through past posts on this blog, I’m no fan of Mintoff and socialism in general, but I think Mintoff’s actions have to be viewed in the context of the political situation at the time.
I believe that the ‘fatwa’ issued by Archbishop Gonzi against voting Labour surely charged the political situation no end and from then on the situation spiraled out of control leading Mintoff to adopt a siege mentality.
[Daphne – He had a siege mentality to start with. Study his behaviour and his psychology and you’ll see that. Archbishop Gonzi just played into his hands. The real essence of the matter is that those two both had remarkably similar personalities in many ways and that was the root cause of the clash, though it appeared to be about religion and politics. It was simply two difficult people who recognised themselves in each other and didn’t really like what they saw.]
Ronnie, putting Mintoff’s words in context actually makes them sound even more chilling.
At the time he was screaming; “Your head will explode”, for example, bombs were actually exploding and Fenech Adami’s house and family were really attacked.
Who’s to say that those words were not taken literally by some of his more intellectually-challenged followers?
Mintoff was known to be a bl**dy f**king so-and-so, long before the politico-religious crisis of the 1960s.
All you have to remember is how, years before that, he slandered Paul Boffa and his daughter by spreading rumours of incest on the grounds that they had shared a hotel room (to save money) while on a brief visit to London. This to ruin his reputation by causing a scandal, with a view to ousting Boffa as leader and replacing him.
What I don’t get with Labour is when the likes of Joe Grima and Karmenu Vella relate how Mintoff’s character was as difficult as it could get and then put in the ‘violent element within the party’ story to keep us entertained.
If he was such a charismatic leader, how does this tally? He was either in control or he wasn’t. And if he wasn’t, as this incident may show, the whole country was at the mercy of their whims and pique. Paci u progress indeed.
It becomes easy to imagine where Fenech Adami got the determination to do away with them, witnessing first hand the mess they were capable of.
In 2012 Labour, all this Mintoff spiel could have restarted the ideological censure and internal discussion. Are they aware of the consequences?
I suppose I’m trying to see logic where there isn’t.
killed internal discussion…
Lorry Sant was NOT the only person Mintoff “couldn’t or wouldn’t bully into submission”. There was also a certain Police Inspector Paul Mamo, who meritoriously made it to very near the top of the Mintoffian Police Force and who spent most of the time attached to Castille as some sort of liaison officer between Mintoff and the Commissioner of Police.
In spite of his munificence, Mintoff was never able to “bully (him) into submission” either.
Maybe we can now have a ‘Dear Mark’ movie, to better understand this rebellious man of the cloth.
The truth about Mintoff reveals that he was far from saviour or a saint.
I have the impression that the famous brown envelope somehow disappeared from the office of the speaker during Labour’s 22 months in government (1996-1998). Can anybody confirm this?
It would be more effective if comments on Mark Montebello’s article are sent directly to him here:
http://markmontebello.blogspot.com/2012/04/dear-dom-superficial-banal-and-insolent.html#comment-form
T0 Not Tonight
I think that the Speaker was then DR. Jimmy Farrugia and he locked the envelope in his desk’s drawer. I believe he left it there when he left office. I still remember Dr, J Farrugia afraid even to speak about it let alone let one see it.
[Daphne – Jimmy Farrugia was Speaker of the House between July 1987 and October 1988, so unless he was acting speaker on that day in late 1991, then no, he definitely wasn’t the actual Speaker.]
The Speaker was most definitely Dr Gonzi. I remember the incident well – we heard about it first-hand because a relative of mine was one of Dr Gonzi’s assistants at the time.
My uncle, now deceased, used to recount a story about Mintoff which I never heard anywhere else and always doubted. I wonder if anyone has heard it as well and perhaps knows more about it.
The story goes that Israeli commandos in the 1970s raided Mintoff’s house one night to get hold of some documents. What these documents were supposed to have been I have no idea. As I said, I seriously doubt the veracity of it all as there were plenty of stories like this at the time.
[Daphne – This might well be a Chinese whispers extension of the real story, which is Israeli gunboats having put into harbour in Malta suddenly and without prior clearance, as an unspoken threat to Dom Mintoff in the 1970s. Does anyone else out there remember the 1970s ban on imports from Israel, and how for what seemed like ages there were no oranges on the market because until then, we had bought mainly Jaffa oranges? I even recall Jaffa cakes disappearing off the shop-shelves.]
Another story which I heard more recently and which I believe to be true is about how this person asked for Mintoff’s support to start a fish-farming project (which would have been groundbreaking at that time). He took a detailed plan with him but was laughed at and ridiculed. Mintoff didn’t bother listening to his explanations and kicked him out of his office at the House of Four Winds.
I remember both the ban and the alleged raid events quite clearly. Perhaps it was in the early or mid 1970s close or prior to the Entebbe incident … (?)
I recall my mum complaining that the Jaffa cakes disappeared (she was extremely fond of them) …
… anyway, “mhux fl-interess tal-poplu”.
[Daphne – So the Jaffa cakes were not just my imagination. I actually remember – I can’t have been more than nine or 10 at the time – going to Cholot (the shop opposite Ferro Bay in Sliema) to buy a packet and finding none, then hearing this ‘whatever next’ discussion among the grown-ups about how they had been banned because of the word ‘Jaffa’ in the name, even though they weren’t actually made in Israel or with Jaffa oranges. Now that I look back on it, it really is like something out of a comedy sketch about a cracked dictator. He goes to war with Israel and bans Jaffa cakes made by McVities in England.]
Then it must have been some time around 1974 because I remember going with my mum to Simler next to the Sacra Coeur (I believe there was a market nearby too) hunting for the blessed things.
[Daphne – Yes, there was: in Annunciation Square, once a week. Simler was part of our routine too.]
Poor mum was having Jaffa withdrawals. And I can recall someone saying prophetically ‘Diga! U ghaddew sentejn biss. Ahseb u ara” Mintoff was elected in 1972, no? I am not sure whether that was the time when St Michael’s Supermarket (Marks and Spencer) on the Strand closed down too.
[Daphne – I don’t remember St Michael’s being closed. Mintoff was elected in 1971. Yes, I would say it was around 1973 really, because I have more of an impression that I was nine rather than 10 for some reason. Also, the memory is linked to an awareness that this was one of the early shocks: that I remember the ban on Jaffa cakes precisely because it was one of the first things to disappear from shop shelves and the idea that something could be banned and not allowed into the country was new to me. I’d taken it for granted that shops could sell whatever they wanted. This was about the time my sense of life first began to ‘split’ into ‘before’ and ‘after’. People forget that Malta in the 1960s was a normal European society with a thriving economy, everything in the shops and a sense of freedom. So lots of people think that the Mintoff years were a natural or mandatory progression on the road to normality. They weren’t. They were a gross and terrible interruption and derailment.]
Bourbons and custard creams were also banned eventually and I believe only Morning Coffees were allowed.
[Daphne – Oh dear God, yes. How we had to learn to like them, dipping them in hot sweet tea, turning them into gateau Marie. Then a biscuit factory set up shop and we had an amazing and exciting choice of two different kinds of cookies (plus the Morning Coffee or Marie biscuits actually, hence the gateau Marie): chocolate chip (with fake chocolate) and hazelnut and something disgusting that I have blanked out. Bourbon biscuits were banned in 1976, when the ban on chocolate came into force. I was 12 years old, helping out at some bazaar at St Dorothy’s in Mdina on a Saturday morning, and I nipped across the street to that grocer which is now a coffee shop and bought a Mars bar, thinking to myself as I ate it: this is the last Mars bar I will ever eat. And in fact, I was 23 when Mars bars were again allowed into Malta. Imagine that. So ridiculous.]
Yes, it was a farce, one I wouldn’t want to relive. To be honest, I think people nowadays are entirely detached from those times. It seems that we are all suffering from collective denial.
Do you remember l-istorja tal-Pike u l-linfa in Parliament?
[Daphne – Not the details, no.]
Bourbons were banned because that was about the time that Mintoff ‘abolished’ the local nobility. Like Jaffa cakes and Israel.
St Michael’s occupied the same premises Marks and Spencer’s does today. We used to go to shop there. I remember the supermarket being closed down but I am not clear when that was – could have been 1971ish.
[Daphne – It’s the same company. Marks and Spencer (the original owners) used the brand name St MIchael’s. But Marks & Spencer dropped it for the M & S brand instead. At the Ferries they had a supermarket downstairs and the clothes were sold on the first floor. It was Malta’s first and only supermarket at the time, and in fact ended up known as ‘Supermarket’ (without the definite article). A typical exchange between two Sliema children/teens: “Where did you buy that top?” “From Supermarket.” Or my mother: “Xtrajta minghand is-Supermarket.”. The operating company’s name is actually Supermarkets (1960) Ltd. When the various bans, import substitution hassles and bulk-buying problems began, the food supermarket side of the business was shut down and that floor was given over to clothes as well. The clothes came in on a quota (and you have to see the quota descriptions issued by the government to believe them: “Men’s short-sleeved shirts in polyster”; “Women’s knitted tops”, that kind of thing – and so the stock changed rarely and was very limited.]
What I do remember is that during the same time or earlier there was some land reclamation project going on at the Ferries. I don’t know which government was running the country then.
I distinctly remember mum at the shops with her ration cards for sugar, oil and a few other things. Her regular grocer had a tap and my brother and I used to watch the oil ooze out of the tap into bottles. To us, it was a game; however, I cannot shake that feeling of impending doom I felt those days.
[Daphne – Yes, I know. I used to have to go and pick up ‘the ration’ from Muse Falzon the grocer on the corner of Howard and Amery Streets. That’s how I know Michael Falzon the Labour MP. He and his younger brother Silvio are my contemporaries and they grew up in the shop where they did their homework under their mother’s watchful eye. I always got an earful about this because I never did mine if I could help it.]
The factory you are talking about eventually became Consolidated Biscuits and, in the mid/late 80s, was taken over by some corporation from Barbados. Prior to that I think it was where Catch was manufactured. In our state of deprivation, Catch was actually good chocolate.
I remember my father returning from overseas trips with toys (Legos), chocolate, toothpaste and the like. He used to place all his dirty underwear on top of all his clothes to make sure that no one rummaged through his goodies.
[Daphne – Oh yes, I remember that dirty socks and underpants game. I still think of it with as much humour as I can muster each time I pack my bags for the trip back home.]
Gross by today’s standards but those were the times and I rub my eyes in disbelief when I hear phrases like il PN kissru pajjiz and we were better off then. Agreed that there are serious problems today and there are severe inflationary burdens on each one of us; yet, aren’t we all unrestrained amidst choice?
After all these years of reflection, I still can’t understand why some Labour supporters still regard Mintoff highly.
His personality was evil and dreadful and Malta suffered.
I saw Everist Bartolo on Xarabank in 2008 where he, in one sentence, inadvertently captured the antidemocratic legacy of Mintoff’s years- “Children of Labour supporters are now drifting away and voting for the PN”.
He should know, because as a teacher he spends a lot of time with the young generation.
I wonder who gave Mintoff the beating? How these mounted police and the CID personnel kept their mouth shut is another mystery indeed.
You have it here, Matt – put two and two together. I recall my father, who at the time worked at the same place as Mintoff’s brother, being consistent on the source of the beating without (understandably) going into the reasons.
I must confess that the more I read about this man, the more I can’t seem to decide whether Mintoff was somebody who always had his way, come what may, or whether he was somebody being blackmailed, by Lorry Sant or Paul Mamo.
If this man was as ruthless as many seem to imply, wouldn’t he have found ways of ridding himself of all those people?
Some also try to connect him with “bombs”. Don’t we all know who was actually connected with the “bombs”?
I fully agree with what “Ronnie” said. Yes he was compelled to do most of the things that happened then.
The facts are that he was intentionally prompted to act the way he did because it was the only way of showing him as a dictator.
I think it is unwise to try and judge Mintoff without also judging Bishop Gonzi, who I consider to have been a much more evil man than Mintoff. At least Mintoff, in his ways, was striving for his country, but who was Sir Michael serving?
[Daphne – Sir Michael Gonzi was not a legislator, Silvio. That is the difference.]
Does it ocur to you that Mintoff could have been both someone who, as a rule, had his way but who, exceptionally, was himself subject to blackmail by others?
I know definitely who masterminded the particular bomb that was planted on my doorstep and the henchmen who actually detonated that bomb.
The former was an MLP cabinet minister and the latter were recruited from the Marsa MLP club.
I identified the MLP minister by name to the court-appointed expert in the presence of members of the DIK (CID to you) who immediately left the room to inform their superior and who instructed me to hold myself ready to be interrogated by their inspector.
The identity of the culprits was later confirmed to me in confidence by a serving policeman who supplied me with more details.
I am still waiting to be interrogated by some CID inspector many, many years after that minister went to meet his creator.
Hitler and His Henchmen
Only recently, Albert Mizzi, in an interview, recalled that at a meeting with Mintoff someone mentioned corruption that was rife at the time and Mintoff’s response was ” ‘What can I do if that person has helped me to build up the party? Can I take action against him?’ ” We all know, now, the real reason. Still it’s a clear admission of rotten governance to protect his skin.
Fr. Montebello does not remember those days when the majority of Maltese suffered atrocities, violence, political murders and frame-ups.
[Daphne – Of course he does. He’s the same age I am. If I remember (only too well) then he does too. We were in the same sixth-form class between 1980 and 1982, a period that included the catastrophic 1981 general election and its aftermath. He wasn’t eulogising Mintoff then, I can tell you, unless he was doing it in some secret corner with the token Laburista Consuelo Herrera, who also thought it best not to champion Labour as we rushed from one weekend mass meeting and protest demonstration to another (without her, of course). He’s somebody who needs ‘an angry cause’ and can’t find one, that’s all.]
Fr. Montebello and his friends should produce a film about Borg Olivier, Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi so that the young generation will be in a position to realise and see the difference between the poltical characters and behaviours i.e. (M)LP and PN leaders.
Fr Montabello is from a very, very staunch Nationalist family. They lived in the same neighbourhood we did.
Unfortunately, some mothers do have them.
Dear H.B. Baxxter, who do you think you are, some kind of an Oracle, you seem to know everything about everybody, when are you going to shut up and let the discussion be open to all, I mean civilised discussion.
Not quite civilised yourself, are you, sir?
Lovely “open” discussion you want, one that openly converges with your own point of view and includes the necessary “shut ups” for bits that don’t?
If I seem to know everything about everybody it’s because I come very close. You could reach my level of intelligence, analytical skills and knowledge yourself. It’s easy. You just have to be the grey man and go through life with your eyes open.
Very well said. Prosit.
Actually Mintoff’s entourage never made it beyond a fast ‘trott’ at “the Marsa”. He used to do three laps – weekdays at 5:00pm and Sundays at 11:00am.
Actually you’re not correct there. I distinctly remember Mintoff, Lorry and a couple of other hangers on trotting by every Sunday at the Marsascala promenade. My grandmother lived there and we used to visit on Sundays, sit in her balcony and watch Malta’s king trot by..
I was also a pupil worker at the time and worked for a pittance in a government department. I was 16 years old and one day this man walks in, stands at the counter and gets out a hand gun.
He brought out a small piece of cloth and started cleaning his gun. He explained that he had come for service at this department. I practically pissed in my pants and everyone laughed at me because I did not know who Fusellu was.
I could tell you a lot more about those times.
You forgot Tiger, Muse’s dog.
Maybe the real blackmail of Dom Mintoff was on a very similar subject to how the Mafia blackmailed J Edgar Hoover.