Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the day Labour Party supporters burnt down The Times of Malta
The newspaper itself didn’t bother to acknowledge that fact, so I thought that perhaps I should.
A mob of Labour supporters incited by Prime Minister Mintoff, who would almost certainly have included the fathers, grandfathers and uncles of some of the pretentious Taghna Lkoll set who would like us to believe that they’re really something, set fire to The Times of Malta building in Valletta with the night shift staff still trapped inside.
Meanwhile, police officers near Mintoff’s office across the street just stood by and watched. They did not call for reinforcements and they did not even ring for a fire engine and ambulance.
The workers were rescued by people from Dar L-Emigrant, after Monsignor Philip Calleja saw them shouting for help at the upstairs windows, and sent for help and ladders.
The man in charge of the printing press was seized, beaten about the head and forced to show the Taghna Lkoll mob where the press was located. He took them to a room housing a disused press.
Those Taghna Lkollers, most of whom are still alive and voting for Muscat unless they smoked and ate themselves to death (how nice for people like Martin Scicluna and Peter Apap Bologna to know that they have at least one thing in common with that rabble) doused that printing-press with flammable liquid and set it alight.
They ran through the ground floor doing the same, and the entire building went up in flames…with the night shift staff still trapped upstairs.
The police did not intervene.
The mob then went to Birkirkara, where they broke into the home of the leader of the Opposition, Eddie Fenech Adami, who wasn’t there.
They assaulted his wife, even ripping her ears to steal her earrings, then ransacked the house, breaking everything they could and stealing the rest. Mrs Fenech Adami and her children escaped over the rooftop to a neighbour’s house.
The officers at the police station in the very same street did nothing.
Mrs Michelle Muscat might wish to offer up a word of thanks that the worst she can expect is jokes about her pushy and acquisitive behaviour, her money-hungry and increasingly creepy husband, and her sartorial choices.
We’re so much more civilised – and yes, that we is deliberate and is not a reference to evolution of the Maltese population in general over time.
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It seems that the people working at The Times today are too busy being positive to bother with important historical facts that literally changed the face of Malta.
The people working at The Times today are far too busy positively doing nothing that might necessitate that they be rescued again by ladders from their burning offices as happened 35 years ago.
I was there with my wife at seven in the evening.
We stayed on till past midnight.
There was a huge crowd of people in a show of solidarity.
People were trembling in disbelief.
An attempt at murdering Maltese workers by fellow Maltese.
Since then nothing coming from the MLP ever surprised us again and nothing will.
Zibel.
A sign of The Times. Democracy is more likely to be suffocated with money than with fire.
Allied Newspapers has lost its soul years ago. The company is hijacked by one family and its stooges.
I was at a nearby restaurant that night when it all started. I watched this shocking scene from the beginning to the end. The fire engines took over half an hour to get from Floriana to Valletta.
When they got there it took another 20 minutes to get the water going while the flames coming out of the balcony of The Times building were almost reaching the Auberge de Castille on the other side of the street.
The number of policemen outnumbered the gangsters three to one but did not lift a finger. They just watched.
It was a night of horror and yet the present management does not write a sentence to remind their readers of when their building was gutted by Labour supporters.
It must be another pre-electoral deal not to write about that particular anniversary ever again.
Yesterday there was Times Talk on TVM. They had ample time to make a mention.
Lest we forget what the Labour Party desperately would like everyone to forget after running out of lies and excuses to falsify that execrable day in our history under Labour.
If the flames from the building of The Times fed by fire accelerants almost reached the Auberge de Castille Mintoff offices that was the only reason why the Malta police fire engines ever made that belated appearance at all.
I will never forget that night, nor all those men and women who went to help clear and clean the havoc at The Times and the Fenech Adami home.
The Allied Newspapers should have shown some respect at least to those victims who worked there.
The 35th Anniversary. Shouldn’t the Fondazzjoni tac-Cerimonji Nazzjonali have organised a special commemorative event, projecting images of fire flames on the building of Allied Newspapers, while they play recordings of peaceful messages by Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Lou Bondi plays Tema 79 on his latest guitar?
Tal-biza kien dak iz-zmien u wisq iktar bhalissa. Il-mara tieghi, ghaxar snin izghar minni, l-bierah qaltli, ghax kont qed nara feature fuq dan il-kaz, li n-Nazzjonalisti (jien inkluz) jassegerrawhom. Ghidli x’jibqa go fik?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091011/local/unfaded-memories-of-black-monday.277047
One can forgive BUT never forget.
Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami showed true leadership. Instead of rallying the PN supporters to retaliate, he called for calm. Notwithstanding that his family was beaten up and threatened, notwithstanding that his family home was ransacked.
If I were in his position, I very much doubt that I would have had his wisdom. I would have probably retaliated with all the means at my disposal.
That is why I was never and will never be a true leader. The PN with all their faults, nobody is perfect always had strong leaders which brought peace and prosperity. That is why I am a convinced PN supporter.
I never asked or even dreamt of wanting any favours from any Party. I never paid any bribes to get any favours from any Party. The little I achieved in life, was through study and hard work.
The moral of the story. Let us not fall into the same trap that the PL set. We should back the Party our choice for ONE simple reason, to want that our Country progresses not only financially, but morally too.
The PN was the Party with a vision, a party that worked to achieve it’s objectives. Could it have done more? Certainly. Did it make mistakes? Yes. But we must always look at the whole picture, it is WE not I that bring about prosperity.
So we must encourage our Party the PN to have a vision to move the Country forward. We must encourage our Party to have a strong social and moral structure, to ensure that nobody is left aside. Politics must evolve, it can unite not divide our small but beautiful island.
This is my philosophy of life. The only three words that the PL came up with but never believed, hence never implemented were – Malta Taghna Lkoll; Meritocrazija; Transparenza. These should not only be slogans but an integral part of any government’s policy.
Thank you.
Prosit. You could not have been more precise.
Times of Malta doesn’t want Joseph and Keith to pull the plug on its blockbusting TVM show Times Talk.
Obviously Eddie Privitera and such like will probably say that it was not Labourites who did this, it was all the fault of a massive indoors outdoors bbq organised at the Times which went slightly wrong.
But then so will Herman Grech, and Martin Scicluna, and Ariadne Massa, and all the hacks and columnists except Ivan Fenech.
This is not just past history. Joseph Muscat openly embraced MLP old-timers and invited them to be active again ion the party, and even gave them official positions once he became prime minister. The past still lives with us.
That’s why The Times is going so easy on the government. They are scared to death of being roasted alive by a mob of Taghna Lkollers.