Spare us the tripe, please: normal people in civilised democracies don’t LOVE national holidays
The Malta Independent reports:
(The prime minister) expressed his wish for Labourites to love Independence Day as much as they loved Freedom Day, and for Nationalists to love Freedom Day as much as they did Independence Day.
Let’s put it plainly. Normal, evolved Europeans don’t LOVE any national holiday. The sentiment is totalitarian, either to the far left or the far right, communist or fascist.
Sane, stable, liberal Europeans are left cold by those who come over all emotional and passionate about a historic day commemorated by a national holiday. We live the consequences of that day, celebrate the freedoms daily, and that is enough. That is how it is supposed to be.
Of course, there is the standard polite commemoration on the day, the excuse for a holiday and perhaps a bit of a picnic, but that’s about it.
Anything else – all talk of love and emotion – is just so North Korean. So let’s give it a rest.
Malta will move on – the favourite phrase of the moment – not when Laburisti love Indipendenza and Nazzjonalisti love Il-Helsien (how farcical – it even sounds primitive) but when nobody loves any of these and we all grow up.
One of the first demands in this growing-up process is acknowledging the truth, the facts, about each of those days and what they represent.
Independence was terrific, but let’s face it, it would have come anyway, because the 1950s and the 1960s were the era of systematic decolonisation. Historically, it has nowhere near the implications of the United States of America’s Independence Day.
Republic Day? Let’s be realistic about this too. Australia and Canada never became republics, but the suggestion that they are under the hakma of the British monarch is risible. It is a safe bet that most people in Malta don’t even know that Australians and Canadians still have a monarch.
Freedom Day – a total joke. Britain’s lease on its military base in Malta is due to end contractually on 31 March 1979. Prime Minister Mintoff thinks this is a great opportunity to put up the price when negotiating for renewal. He has taken it for granted that Britain wishes to renew because he has failed to take note of the fact that Britain is scaling down its operations and he has also ignored the importance of Britain’s other Mediterranean military base, in Cyprus (Malta ic-centru tad-dinja), and its actual sovereign territory in Gibraltar. With both ends of the Mediterranean covered, Britain did not need Malta because the Americans had a base in Sicily, at Sigonella.
So Mintoff stupidly goes to the negotiating table with a much higher price for the rent. Mintoff is touted in Maltese myth as an intelligent man. The reality is that he was not at all clever which is why he was constrained to get his way through threats, restrictions on basic freedoms, and violence.
The British tell him, “Noted. But no thanks. We were already in two minds about renewing at the old rent anyway, because we don’t really need Malta anymore.” Mintoff panics. He is now left with an entire dockyard geared towards servicing the British navy, which has become redundant overnight. Mass unemployment looms, not just at the dockyard but there are all those personnel directly and indirectly kept employed through the British military presence. Britain’s rent money has vanished too. DISASTER. His people see him as a saviour and hero and now look what he’s gone and done. A lightbulb goes off in his head. His people are largely illiterate and poorly educated.
Mass communication is controlled by the state. The one free and independent newspaper, The Times of Malta, doesn’t deal in analysis. He’ll go to his people and tell them that he kicked the British out, and they’ll believe him. They still believe it today. But how is he going to replace Britain’s money? GADDAFI! Mintoff prostrates himself before the murderous dictator next door and the murderous dictator delivers the cash. In return, Malta is made a satellite of Tripoli. Gaddafi is the only foreign ‘dignitary’ to turn up to the ‘Helsien’ ceremony. Documents released under Britain’s freedom of information laws show that Mintoff begged and pleaded with British PM James Callahan to fly to Malta for the proceedings, but Callahan told him, “Noted. But no thanks.”
In sum, so-called Freedom Day is the polar opposite of that because it spelled the moment of our subjection to Gaddafi’s boot. He paid the piper and henceforth, he called the tune.
The day Malta joined the European Union? This was definitely a destiny-shaper through choice and not inevitability, and in a profoundly positive way. Up until that point, whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not (and most don’t), the jury was always out on whether a couple of tiny islands positioned between Tunis (and even further south of that city) and Tripoli could be considered geographically part of Europe. We took our self-declared European identity so much for granted that we never really bothered to examine the map and think, “Hmmmm.” Membership of the European Union also set us free, made us part of something much bigger than ourselves, and gave us liberties and space that earlier generations thought inconceivable. This was the day that spelled a much realer form of independence: not independence for the state, but independence for the people, for the individual.
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Bongu Daphne,
Qrajtu dan l-artiklu? Nissugerillek tarah
http://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2014/2/11/rapport-jallega-li-kumpanija-fil-konsorzju-ghall-energija-f-malta-mhix-trasparenti.14742
The problem is that this island is so parochial and paternalistic that we even have to label holidays as red, blue or green. Can you imagine the Americans doing this to the Independence Day or the Brits politicizing Their bank holidays? Yes we do need to grow up and Europe has been and should continue to show us how to do this…growing pains and all, for sure.
[Daphne – That is not the point of what I wrote. On the contrary, it reflects Muscat’s attitude.]
Hear, hear. I can’t help but cringe whenever someone proposes that we limit ourselves to two national days, one for each political party. It should be one, and neither Independence Day nor Republic Day suffice, for pretty much the reasons pointed out above.
At last, telling it as it really was.
During negotiations in 1971/72, the RAF had moved its two squadrons (Canberras and Shackeltons) to Sigonella, the USAF airbase in nearby Sicily, and to Akrotiri, the sovereign airbase in Cyprus.
Military wives and children, and non-essential personnel, were also evacuated. Instead of transporting non-essential material back to UK, the Royal Marines had the job to render it unusable with sledgehammers and dumping it over Dingli Cliffs.
If need be, no usable material, except scrap, was to be left behind.
If push came to shove, all military personnel would be concentrated at RAF Luqa for evacuation by air – closing the airport for days if need be.
Instead the UK government gave Mintoff a breathing space of seven years up to 1979 in order to set up plans for alternative employment for those Maltese employed with the UK forces.
But Mintoff blew it by setting up the Chinese factories which produced goods which nobody either here or abroad wanted or which were too expensive (like those Chinese carpets, which few could afford even if they wanted one in the first place), and import substitution factories which were no long-term or even medium-term solution.
After Suez in 1956, the British had no further appetite for foreign adventures and, as you said, began decolonisation in earnest. After the Six Day War in 1966, they were more convinced that the only bases they needed in the Med were Gibraltar and Cyprus (to keep a eye on the Middle East and the fledgling Russian blue-water fleet).
The centre of the Med would be under the control of the Americans in Sigonella. To be fair, Gaddafi in 1971 was still seen as a tin-pot colonel who would be easily replaced.
And the rest, as they say, is history,
It always amazes me how the Maltese, that stupid nation, include the Mediterranean and themselves in the paradigm of the Cold War.
If push came to shove, the Mediterranean wouldn’t even have been a side theatre in the Third World War. It wouldn’t even have figured. Sigonella and Akrotiri were just sops thrown to the respective national governments – the US and UK paid millions in renting out those bases, and they still do.
As for that little kerfuffle in Israel, where was the naval action off Malta’s shores, pray?
Mintoff has shaped Maltese historiography in a such disgustingly perverse way that even those who argue against him start off from the wrong premiss. We have two generations of students brainwashed into that. Who can forget Ernle Bradford’s ‘Mediterranean’? Utter wordy stupidity in textbook form.
The centre of the Med became irrelevant after 1945. Malta is an irrelevant speck of rock in an irrelevant region on the edge of everything.
You forgot to mention that our first day of ‘Freedom’ was in fact April 1st, 1979, just as Malta’s first day as an independent nation was September 21st. March 31st 1979 was the last day of ‘il-hakma barranija’.
The only possible solution to having a truly national day is inventing a new one and calling it simply ‘Malta’s National Day’, the day when we celebrate (?) being Maltese, when we take pride in our achievements, our culture, even our landscape, what little there is. Well, those that can be fagged to do it, that is. The rest will just enjoy the day off.
You wouldn’t expect Dom to exalt his ‘freedom day’ on April Fool’s Day would you?
He was a miser, yes, and dreamed of riches beyond wildest dreams,but certainly never dreamed of making such a public fool of himself.
But there you have it. Malta’s first day of what he called ‘freedom’ was in fact April 1st, 1979.
Remember that his buddy Professor Balogh (if I remember correctly, or wasn’t it he) wrote in his famous predictions that ‘beyond 1979 beckons the future’. Never anything so inane and ridiculous has been uttered, and believed, since.
I did not forget anything as Daphne has explained the perceived and real significance of – is it one, two, three, or four (including Sette Giugno ) – our “national days”. I just gave some historical background when, even after being elected in June 1971, Mintoff managed to ruin our celebration of Christmas and New Year, big time, first time.
Why not make it five with the “Otto Settembre” or “Victory Day (by whom over whom ? ).
The problem I see in all this is that as a nation, for wont of a better word, we never collectively struggled for our identity or for our nationhood.
Even the much touted Sette Giugno uprisings are nothing more than riots by a few hamalli who couldn’t grasp the concept of imported inflation and international price fluctuations.
Victory Day, too, marks two events when our rulers defeated their respective enemies. The direct involvement and contribution of the Maltese was relatively marginal.
And in 2014, the year we celebrate anniversaries of all the major milestones in the building of our nation, we devalue the very identity we supposedly fought for by selling it.
Kalma. Imported inflation and international price fluctuations subdued to military considerations which could have wisely been overruled.
Let’s not treat a few hamalli as somewhat dispensable to the inexperience of a commanding officer.
So that justifies turning it into a national day?
Not even the superpatriotic Indians were foolish enough to turn the Amritsar massacre into a national holiday.
As long as the 7th June (sod “sett Giugno”. What are we, bloody Italians?) remains a national holiday, it will give comfort to and provide grist to the mill for those hundreds of Fascist sympathisers who call themselves ‘Maltese nationalists’.
What’s your interest in the matter anyway? I think it’s time you came clean. Was your grandfather a close friend of Enrico Mizzi or what?
My people were working class labourers and peasants back then, and those Italianate lawyers with their espressos at the Casino Maltese gave not a single fuck about the betterment of their condition. All they wanted was a comfortable berth for themselves as princelings in a future Italian colony, perhaps with a few jackboots thrown in for extra pleasure.
I read a string of English words but cannot make out what you mean.
The concepts of imported inflation and international price fluctuations are still not grasped by vast swathes of the population to this day. Look at the way the electorate blamed the previous government for the utility tariffs.
Very well said!
Excellently put. It’s a pity though that more than half the population fail to see it this way.
It’s not for the prime minister to enter into that discourse, if anything that’s the president’s remit.
Muscat’s role is to uphold his electoral promises and see to the country’s progress. Anything else just a distraction.
Why do I get the feeling he’s already rather bored of being prime minister? Next.
That’s not what Muscat himself thinks. He told us that it’s Louis Grech duty to deliver, didn’t he?
I agree: it is not for the Prime Minister to enter that discourse.
Daphne says: “Let’s put it plainly. Normal, evolved Europeans don’t LOVE any national holiday. The sentiment is totalitarian, either to the far left or the far right, communist or fascist. ”
I suggest also the following version: “Let’s put it plainly. In normal, evolved European countries, the prime minister doesn’t tell the public what to do and what not. The sentiment is totalitarian, either to the far left or the far right, communist or fascist. “
I will let those nationalities with massive chips on their shoulders such as the Croats and Serbs enjoy the chest beating that they normally enjoy on days like this.
I have my own ‘national days’ I enjoy in silence that no one is aware of. Admittedly very sad, but having said that there are so many other events worth celebrating that have no following because they can’t stir up emotions in idiots with a need to belong to one camp or another.
Most Maltese people wouldn’t know the first thing about their own history bar some ‘facts’ they were taught by idiotic history teachers expounding the nonsense that the Maltese are somehow Phoenician. People would believe anything.
Articles such as the one about the Jewish presence in Malta published in The Malta Independent yesterday are never read by the masses. No one cares. They get by on a diet of jingoism and fictitious historic narratives.
International news is equally unread. In fact I would suggest that newspapers take a leaf out of the book of an Italian newspaper which has decided to call the section: ‘Esteri – le notizie che gli italiani non leggono mai’.
That article bore a stupid title. If it reflected the main thrust of Charles Dalli’s lecture, then that was stupid too. There are plenty of traces of Jewish presence in Malta, from our surnames, to our genetics, to documentary evidence. If he couldn’t see all this, then that’s his problem.
I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with national unity per se. However, humble little me can only do so much.
Would our PM not have been a tad more believable had he appointed a heck of a lot more valid neutral or – why not – PN oriented people (apart from that Gozitan, Italian-supporter)?
As we say in the vernacular “il-kelma tqanqal, imma l-ezempju jkaxkar”. Over to you PM!