Why the Labour Party’ s landmarks of 1979 are not the ones you’d expect
In response to the Nationalist Party’s billboard ‘Labour won’t work’, a remake of the British Conservative Party’s iconic billboard from 1979, the Partit Bla Isem issued a press statement this morning.
I use the term ‘press statement’ quite loosely – it’s actually the sort of thing that should have been issued between quote-marks in Joseph Muscat’s name.
33 years ago
—————
33 years ago:
– Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran
– Saddam becomes President of Iraq
– The Walkman is the latest gadget
– Village People come up with a new song: YMCA
– Trivial Pursuit hits the stands
– Superman is the latest special effects movie
– Little House on the Prairie was a hit show
– GonziPN’s copycat billboard is created
GonziPN is stuck in the past.
—————
I read it with interest, because of course, I remember 33 years ago very well. I was 14, and quite up to speed on the music and other things. Little House on the Prairie? Hardly. I used to watch that when I was nine or 10, certainly not 14.
In 1979, the hit show was Dallas, not – for heaven’s sake – Little House on the Prairie.
It’s quite obvious that the Labour Party’s communications coordinators – they have two, a pigeon pair of gay and straight: Randolph Debattista who’s dating Cyrus Engerer, and the Coconut, who’s married (to a woman) – don’t remember 1979 at all.
If they did, their choices of milestones and event landmarks would have been very different. The Village People and YMCA – seriously? This was the year that Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose a few months after stabbing Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, the year punk died.
The Labour Party’s press statement read to me like it had been picked in bits off the internet by people who hadn’t a clue what 1979 was all about, so I had a look. And sure enough.
Of course, the Labour Party couldn’t put some of the REAL landmarks and milestones of 1979 into its list, because it would be too embarrassing.
So they left out Margaret Thatcher, even though the lists they looked at all include her.
Including her themselves would be an admission that the billboard in question worked against Labour.
So instead they select Saddam Hussein becoming president of Iraq, as though we gave a damn about him in 1979 or even knew or cared who he was. We were all talking about Thatcher and this amazing new fact of life: a woman prime minister in Britain. Yes, Kurt and Randolph, I’m actually old enough to remember, but if you don’t believe me, ask some of the dinosaurs in your Jurassic Park.
THE WALKMAN IS THE LATEST GADGET/TRIVIAL PURSUIT HITS THE STANDS. My, they really touched a sore point with me here. That’s how bloody stupid and uninformed Labour’s communications coordinators are. They don’t realise that this statement REALLY embarrasses their party, because their mummies and daddies told them that life in Malta in 1979 was a paradise where Dom Mintoff provided everything, including Sony Walkmans and Trivial Pursuit.
That statement should have read:
THE WALKMAN IS THE LATEST GADGET, BUT PEOPLE IN MALTA, LIKE PEOPLE IN THE SOVIET BLOC, LIBYA, ALBANIA, CHINA AND CUBA, KNOW WHAT IT IS ONLY BECAUSE THEY SEE TOURISTS USING THEM. OCCASIONALLY, SOMEBODY’S PARENT OR UNCLE WILL TRAVEL ABROAD ON BUSINESS AND WILL SMUGGLE ONE BACK, RISKING ITS CONFISCATION IF CUSTOMS OFFICERS ARE NOT BRIBED WITH BAGS OF MARS BARS OR A TENNER. THE IMPORTATION OF SONY WALKMANS TO MALTA IS NOT ALLOWED BECAUSE MINTOFF IS AT WAR WITH JAPAN AND HAS BANNED ALL JAPANESE PRODUCTS.
And then this:
TRIVIAL PURSUIT HITS THE STANDS EVERYWHERE BUT MALTA, THE SOVIET BLOC, LIBYA, CHINA AND CUBA. PEOPLE IN MALTA DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT TRIVIAL PURSUIT IS. THERE ARE NO IMPORT LICENCES FOR TRIVIAL PURSUIT, SO IT IS NOT IMPORTED. THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT HAS DECREED THAT TRIVIAL PURSUIT IS AN UNNECESSARY ITEM AND SO IT WILL NOT ALLOW MONEY TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY FOR ITS PURCHASE. IN 1984, FIVE YEARS AFTER TRIVIAL PURSUIT IS LAUNCHED (BUT NOT IN MALTA – SEE ABOVE), DAPHNE’S MOTHER GOES TO LONDON WITH DAPHNE’S SISTER AND BRINGS ONE BACK FOR DAPHNE. DAPHNE’S TRIVIAL PURSUIT SUDDENLY BECOMES MORE POPULAR THAN DAPHNE. DAPHNE’S BOX OF CARD-QUESTIONS TAKES ON THE ASPECT OF A PAIR OF LEVI’S JEANS IN MOSCOW ROUND ABOUT THE SAME TIME, AND BECOMES QUASI LEGENDARY. PEOPLE WHO DAPHNE BARELY KNOWS BEGIN RINGING UP (IF THEY HAVE A PHONE, THAT IS) TO BORROW IT. DAPHNE’S TRIVIAL PURSUIT SITS IN DAPHNE’S CUPBOARDS FOR THE NEXT TWO DECADES, NO LONGER PLAYED BUT ALWAYS SERVING AS A REMINDER OF HOW BAD LIFE WAS UNDER FRIGGING, BASTARD LABOUR.
I’m sorry I’m writing in upper case, using bold and even bad words, but the Labour Party drives me nuts. Who are these people?
Here’s another milestone from the real 1979. Randolph and the Coconut should have a chat with AST and Il-Guy about it.
March 1979: The Royal Navy’s LEASE on Malta as a naval base expires and the last of Her Majesty’s ships sails out of Grand Harbour. People line the Upper and Lower Barrakka, sobbing and waving. Muammar Gaddafi flies in and makes Malta a vassal state of Libya. The civilised part of Malta, always a minority, is paralysed with fear at the thought of what lies ahead. And boy, were we ever right.
Funny how the Labour Party didn’t include that milestone from 1979 in its press release, when it makes such a damned fuss about it every year. I’m guessing Randolph and the Coconut didn’t find it on any internet list.
Effing idiots. Too much.
Oh, and I almost forgot: there’s another 1979 landmark in those lists they found on the internet:
Lord Mountbatten and guests blown up and killed by the IRA.
But they’re not going to include that, are they? Their freakish star candidate, Yana Mintoff Bland, was living with an IRA man at the time – the one with whom she was arrested for throwing manure about inside the House of Commons – and rooting for that bunch of terrorists. Better not remind us of that then, eh.
And my, oh my, I almost left out these landmark events of 1979.
LABOUR MOB RANSACKS THE TIMES and sets fire to the building with employees still trapped inside. The fire engine fails to arrive until it is far too late. The police do nothing. The employees, trapped and screaming on balconies, are rescued by people from Dar L-Emigrant close by, after Monsignor Philip Calleja, at Dar L-Emigrant, spots them from his window and rushes a ladder over.
LABOUR MOB RANSACKS LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION’S HOME, ATTACKS LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION’S WIFE, WHILE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION’S CHILDREN ARE RESCUED BY NEIGHBOURS. The police, at the station down the street, do nothing.
So you see, Kurt and Randolph, the Village People are NOT the first thing any Maltese survivor of 1979, who wasn’t brought up by a bunch of Laburisti, is going to think of in terms of landmark events of that year.
41 Comments Comment
Reply to Leli Click here to cancel reply
I remember something else about 1979.
I was doing homework and dad rushed back home instead of going to evening Mass.
He was worried because my elder brother was out with his soon-to-be bride and we lived round the corner from Eddie Fenech Adami. It was Monday, 15th October, and my dad was fretting that my brother would be recognized by the roaming Labour hordes. He was a member of MZPN and a lawyer.
So that night I did not do my homework and instead listened to the scum of the earth redecorating Eddie Fenech Adami’s house. The following Sunday I attended my first mass meeting. Oh we remember 1979. I also remember Leo Brincat, AST, our local hero Debono Grech etc as being in the MLP. Just like they are today. Some things never change it seems.
Brilliant, Daphne. For those of us who actually knew what we were missing, life under Labour was unbearable. How is it that young Labour supporters do not question their party’s past?
When I tell my son of those years he questions me in disbelief and later comes back and tells me he’s read about it and found out I was right.
I would never get away with feeding him lies or projecting my biased opinions on him.
I have made sure he knows who the Labour Party is but also that he makes his own educated decisions and forms his own opinions.
Daphne mentioned Trivial Pursuit and Walkmans. What I remember clearly is not being able to pretty basics. Coloured socks were not available anywhere, unless one considers white, beige, grey or navy as “colours”.
When I was young, my grandparents always used to ask us what we wanted whenever they went abroad. I remember once asking for “coloured socks” and, sure enough, they got us some. I never had the heart to throw one particular pair away, and only did so recently, almost 35 years later (after they had been relegated to being used as bedsocks and had ended up threadbare), because I still remember my delight on receiving them.
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.” – Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
These Labour people enjoy freedom of speech under PN governments but they clearly do not exercise their freedom of thought.
If they had any self-respect at all they would find out if the other side is telling the truth and then ask themselves whether they are still comfortable rooting for their party.
Well, you are the ‘lucky’ ones who did have relatives travelling or who went abroad themselves.
There were countless others who couldn’t afford the expense of going overseas and had to make do with the poverty of choice offered by Labour (non) economists. I shudder when I remember the extent of deprivation. Wage freezes, bulk buying and all that.
Trivial Pursuit and Walkman? Those were luxury items. What about necessities?
For example, the process of getting hold of a pair of specs lasted six weeks. Tua or Optika would have to order the specs from overseas – made to order. It was as if no one wore specs on this blessed island!
To me, 1979 marks the year we got a phone after waiting 5 years since the date of original application. Two years to get the appliance and an additional three years to get the line. We’d go to my grandmother’s if we needed the phone. And, she had a phone only because my grandfather worked for the British.
In 1985 the University car parks were empty with the exception of a few odd cars owned by lecturers themselves or borrowed from parents. There were perhaps three or four serious bookstores and none ever had books on inventory.
This whole progressive Labour thing and GonziPN bull-sh@t mantra they have been reciting is one enormous rouse that people are falling for because they have forgotten what it really meant living in a third world country. It is blanket trickery.
People who have crossed over to Labour have done so because of personal agendas – I haven’t seen anyone of them warrant their claims with true change in credo.
The three renegade MPs are disgusting. I would come to appreciate their arguments if they were backed by solid concerns about our nation and general state of affairs. Mugliett and Pullicino should know better for they are plus 40s. Debono should thank is lucky stars for the Nationalist Party. In 1981 or thereabouts, Mintoff decided to limit the number of students to law school.
Young people have never had it better. Internet book and music stores, new cars (an average of 10 cars hitting the road every day according to NSO), clubs and bars, clothing, travel, cheap flights. The list is endless.
The anger vented by the Labour youth is not only shameful but completely unwarranted. It is a ‘copy and paste’ of their parents’ and grandparents’ brainwashing stories of their plight in the 1950s.
None of them question. None of them read.
These people do not love anyone else except themselves and never stop to consider that their actions can plunge Malta into another era of hate, poverty and scarcity.
I hate cliches however “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” (JFK) It’s not about tax breaks or allowances or what have you; it’s about working together to make our country better.
Beware of the “Labour Delusion.”
Daphne, please use this as one of your columns in The Malta Independent.
As for Randolph and the Coconut: meta tinqeda bic-cwiec…..
You are a God! This is Great!
Jesus what a brutal execution. The Mujahideen in Iraq would be proud.
And by 1979, after eight years of Mintoff’s socialism, Barclays Bank had pulled out of Malta, as did the Sheraton hotel and Club Med. Cable and Wireless Malta was nationalized.
What were the job opportunities back then? Pijunieri, Dirghajn il-Maltin, Izra w Rabbi, Bahhar u Sewwi. This is NO JOKE for those not around 33 years ago.
Education: Skola tas- Snajja; water rationing ; Deserta chocolates , only one brand of toothpaste pepsodent – the golden years of il- guy .
This was the vision of the Malta Labour Party , and Joseph’s nanna brainwashed him to parade in Valletta with the Brigata Laburista , not dissimilar to the Hitler youth .
Mur arak Cyrus fil- Pijunieri .
The worst thing was the fact that of all people Anglu Farrugia the ‘mhinix tekniku fl-ekonomija’ held a press conference after the PN attacked them on economic issues… Weep!
A few more to the list , Mosta spinning and weaving , Malta Decorative glass , il Fabrika tal-kappar , Kalaxlokk , the latter employed some 1800 persons .
By 1987 , 45 % of Malta’s workforce was in government employment , either in government departments or parastatal companies or unemployed .
And how Labour won’t work .
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091011/local/unfaded-memories-of-black-monday.277047
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090404/local/fenech-adami-bows-out.251611
Vote Labour? Inzabbab.
1979: was it not the year when Eddie Fenech Adami’s home and family were attacked?
And was it not the year when The Times premises were set on fire and ransacked?
And now let’s be fair: was it not the year when Malta, finally, won her freedom?
[Daphne – Freedom from what? The contract on the naval base ran out and the tenants left, having refused to renew. Meanwhile, Gaddafi flew in and began bankrolling Mintoff to make up for the shortfall in revenue caused by Britain’s REFUSAL to renew the contract, turning us into a Libyan vassal state. And you call that freedom.]
Let’s get it straight once and for all, morons. INDEPENDENCE is what sets you free – punto e basta.
Go back to your history books and dictionaries please. Whereas the termination of a lease contract is just that – the termination of a lease. And you get your property back, period. And that was 31st March 1979. Got it now? Not likely.
Anyway, even if MLP supporters still want to believe that hoary old tale, by no stretch of the immagination can one say that it was ‘won’, which implies at the very least a contest, although Labour would have us believe that it was some kind of titanic struggle.
Simply put, the British pulled out at the end of the lease, not a day before, and not a day later.
Little House on the Prairie was first aired in 1974, and ended on May 10th 1982 so yes it was a popular show in 1979, 33 years ago.
Dallas only started in mid 1978 and took a while to catch on so it wasn’t as popular in 1979 as Little House on the Prairie was. And you say you were 14 back in 1979. Really? You must have had a hard life!
[Daphne – Yes, Mr Attard, I was 14 in 1979. That’s why my ID card number ends in 64. Look it up. I was born towards the end of the year, which is why I wasn’t, say, 15. And precisely because of that, I am more likely than you to know which show was popular in 1979. It certainly wasn’t Little House on the Praire, which peaked around 1975. It was Dallas. Nobody talked about Little House on the Prairie. Everyone was glued to Dallas – the world over. We were fortunate in Malta in that Mintoff allowed this show because, like the Soviets, he saw it as a way of showing how evil and corrupt western capitalism was.]
Late ’79 we walked into that (corner?) shop in Milner street looking for something for my wife to wear at a wedding.
It was all wide-brimmed hats and heavily padded jackets. Not her style.
On our way out, empty handed, the woman remonstrated with us.
‘Latest fashion – you know – like in Dullus – everyone wearing like this’.
[Daphne – Touch of Class. I lived bang opposite. Tell me about it….]
The Malta Labour Party did create jobs – in a fashion.
On the eve of losing the general election KMB employed thousands to receive salaries for jobs they did not do because they were not needed. They sucked the nation’s blood for ever after because, unlike Mintoff in his days ofd glory, they were not given the Order of the Boot.
I remember the incident of the unlocking of a door in Sir Paul Boffa Hospital that was ominously always kept locked. Surprise! Surprise!
The room hid some of the newly recruited workers, officially painters, but without paint or brushes – they only had playing cards and lunch boxes.
Who said that the MLP does not create jobs?
Excellent! This is the type of information PN strategists should focus on more.
It should be addressed towards those PN voters who insist they will not be casting their vote, in protest, this coming election. If these votes are recovered in time, then Labour will be in for the eighth defeat in 30 years.
Thirty-three years ago, 15th October 1979, a Labour supporter, (who still believed in Mintoff) from Mosta wanted to speak to Mintoff at Castille about Lorry Sant’s involvement in corruption on a plot of land.
He was shot at by Mintoff’s bodyguards and then sent to Mount Carmel Hospital, where he died.
Earlier that year (September?) Mintoff’s blood brother Gaddafi and Labour’s Great Protector sent a gun boat to remove our oil drilling contractor Saipem Due which was searching for oil on the Medina Bank.
This was described as “att ta’ l-akbar ghadu” by Mintoff at the mass meeeting at Il-Bavjiera (VALLETTA).
At that meeting, as I recall, Mintoff complained about unauthorised war planes flying (jitkesshu) over our heads. So much for our “rajna f’idejna” and “helsien” – we had no one to protect us.
After that meeting, The Times building in St Paul’s Street was burnt down by Labour supporters, and Eddie Fenech Adami’s house was ransacked and his wife assaulted. On Xandir Malta – the state television station and the only one – it was falsely reported that Nationalist supporters were attacking the Labour Party club in Birkirkara. There were no reports about the real attacks.
In 1979, road blocks by armed soldiers and Special Assignment Group policeman were the order of the day. They would check identity cards while carrying loaded guns, pointing at the head of the car driver.
WORK? Oh yes, of coarse there was work: mal-Gvern, tar-rattan , tat-tapiti, Dirghajn il-Maltin, Dejma, Bahhar Sewwi, Izra’ u Rabbi, and other parastatal companies trained by Communist China with antediluvian technology.
Phoenix Textiles and Shirasuna which employed hundreds on productive work were about to close, because of Mintoff’s hardheadedness.
We had work because we had no computers. Those were prohibited by Labour. Just to cite one example: ALL pay cheques and NI benefits were hand written, where everywhere else in the civilised world computers were doing the task effortlessly.
Exceptionally brillant!!!
As always. She is the best. She even gets better when she goes nuts.
Life in 1979
1. politics – show your opposition to Labour at your own risk
2. music scene – Warda Kanta
3. services – very little light at night and a bucket always at hand running after a water bowser
4. weekend outings – forget it
5. TV entertainment – Dardir Malta
There’s lots more, but I don’t feel like depressing myself.
In 1979 we got our first telephone. It took almost 10 years for the application to be “processed”.
Previously, we, like several other households, had to go to the only house in the area which did actually have a phone – one which needed to be wound up using a handle before dialling.
This was in Swieqi.
In 1979 no one from the current PN Parliamentary Group was in Parliament.
On the other hand il-Moviment ta’ Joseph has three illustrious members who were MPs then: Karmenu Vella, now crafting and drafting MLP’s next electoral programme, George Vella, busy presenting and defending shameful motions in Parliament and Joe Debono Grech, rallying the troops for the fight.
Joe Grima, currently “jehles mill-imbarazz” on One TV was also an MP in 1979.
But have you noticed?
They are trying very hard to forget and they are trying very very hard not to let the present generation know of their FILTHY past.
In fact, if proof is needed, they even changed their colour – trying to deceive! They are even trying to change the “Labour” ticket – but will the Jurassic people like AST, Joe Grima, Debono Grech, Karmenu Vella and the rest of the scum, be able to deceive some of the people for some of the time?
Actually the lease expired at midnight of the 31st March so “Freedom Day” is in actual fact 1st April, so very appropriate.
This is not only brilliant and great. It’s a MASTERPIECE, prosit.
Brilliant piece.
Jum il-Helsien – just another twisted lie that Labour has written into Malta’s history turning what was a rejection by the British to renew their contract into Mintoff freeing us from them. Repeating a lie often enough doesn’t make it truth.
Unfortunately, and this is where I blame the PN, it is still officially taught in primary and secondary schools as Freedom Day.
I could not stomach my children reciting it by heart for some exam and I could not tell them the truth otherwise that item would have been marked as wrong.
At least, now that they are older, I can explain fully and in detail.
Labour employed 8000 persons (unemployment was some 15000), mostly unskilled, on the eve of 1987 election only to deploy most of them as messengers in government departments, banks and parastatal companies. How is that for the power of incumbency.
The result was that these places of work had rampant overcapacity with workers lying idle doing practically nothing. Each manager in these units would have two or three messengers deployed in unproductive work or idle. How is that for the competitivity of Malta and the GDP?
Typically labour inept, incapable and awkward policies.
I wish I was a writer – I would write a book (only truth) about the Golden Years. I am sure it would sell well – if not I would have it distributed free to whoever wants a copy.
That book has already been written, at least three times and I have them all.
They are: The Untruth Game by Dr. Francis Zammit Dimech, Imhatra li Diga Nsejt by Peter Darmanin and Liberta Mhedda by Dione Bortg.
33 years ago:
Karmenu Vella was sailing into Mellieha bay instead of customs.
[Daphne – Actually, that was 1983, though he was probably doing it in 1979 as well.]
Alex Sceberras Trigona was signing secret treaties with N. Korea.
Joe Debono Grech was preparing to form yet another MLP government which would be deemed “morally and politically incorrect” by Joseph Muscat 33 years later
Leo Brincat was er…doing nothing and has kept up this enviable work.
1979 – In an effort to save money the Labour government turned off every other street light; water shortages were dealt with by limiting supply for days on end and when it was turned on it ran brown for a few hours.
1979 – The year we often had to resort to washing with well-water in the garden, so that, when the metal water-pipes creaked to life for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, the mere trickle would be used to fill whatever utensil was available.
In 1979, I was still a sparkle reflected in a disco ball on a Saturday night. But by god I know my history. Which is why I find it ridiculous and pathetic when the under-25s flippantly dismiss anything from before 2004 as “irrelevant”.
Like hell it is. Today’s world is the result of yesterday’s choices.
Much of the hamallagni, fossilised thinking, freebooting, indulgence in exceptionalism and glorification of stupidity that characterises Malta was brought about by Labour.
Mintoff decided to turn his back on the Western world, and boy, did he succeed.
Now we’re stuck with two parties.
One wanted to keep me in the Third World as per their anti-imperialist tripe. They then proceeded to do everything possible to keep me out of Europe.
And they are ignorant, stupid and corrupt, with a lust for power that is unmatched anywhere.
Labour’s economic policies will be Gonzi’s, plus more handouts to the undeserving, more public debt, and more money wasted on measures which generate no wealth.
The other party is also corrupt, with stagnant ideas, and boring, socialist, stupid and ignorant leaders who also lust for power. But it got me a European passport, and has finally decided to connect this island to the European energy grid.
And it is home to people like Simon Busuttil.
Since my more than two brain cells are capable of logical choices, I know which one I’d vote for.
1979 kienet is-sena li suppost telghet ix-xemx u harqet il-“gratuity” (jigifieri is-somma flus) li kien jiehu haddiem meta jirtira bil-pensjoni.
Kull min beda jahdem wara 1979 mhux eligibli izjed ghal din is-somma u dam ghax Mintoff kien ihobb il-haddiem (biex jirkeb fuqu imma.
In 1979 there was also the decimation of university, the 20 points bonus if you went to the ‘New Lyceum’, student worker and many more.
I never got the start in life or the degree I could have had, and that was because of Labour. The list is longer but it pains me to write it.
I read, this morning that the Old Man is back home – good for him – to celebrate his birthday. I hope that the people who are invited to join in this celebration, will remember to take clothes pegs with them for their noses
And in 1979 you couldn’t even dream of importing a computer or a colour TV.
Computers were considered as the enemy of the worker because in the old mintoffian mentality Labour used to preach that computers would reduce jobs.
Colour TVs were introduced in Malta in 1981, after Labour decided to open a factory for German Brand to produce them in Malta.
And then you had to pay a commission of Lm50 to some labour canvasser to buy one.
I remember the first time we saw a remote control changing stations on a TV in a shop in 1981, it was like Vanni Pule doing magic. This is the way Labour treated the Maltese in those years “qisna xebgha mgewhin tal-gungla qatt ma rajna xejn”.