My hood – when traffic really was just a perception
The other day I was driving along Sliema’s Tower Road and wondering whether it was all my imagination that every day when we lived there I used to park exactly at our front door and haul the babies out straight onto the doorstep. That was in 1989.
No, I thought – memory plays tricks.
Then by sheer coincidence somebody sent me a link to this FB video from 1989, below, and there it was: the empty parking space behind our front door, barely any cars on the roads and almost no people out and about either.
And that brought to mind something else: that on the pram-walk along the Sliema front between our home a block away from Peppi’s Kiosk and my parents’ home near the Preluna Hotel I would often not encounter a single soul. Then I’d walk down past Fond Ghadir and to Qui-Si-Sana – all scenes shown here – and there wouldn’t be anyone out there either. I had thought memory was playing tricks there too, but looking at this video, it clearly is not.
When I tell people now that the Sliema in which I lived for 26 years was just another seaside village with absolutely no outsiders and no visitors either except the tourists who came in summer, they don’t believe me. But you can tell from the voices in this video that these two Maltese men are visiting Sliema as tourists themselves.
What this video shows, most of all, is the standard of living in 1989, when Labour had been in power continuously between 1971 and 1987. It looks like Albania.
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Some of these cars are still on the road.
Ah, the Skodas driving along, a stark reminder of Labour’s legacy. Now THAT was a story.
Skodas have a lot of defects but are good work horses.
If a Skoda stops one can open the engine compartment and stand a good chance of fixing the “simple” engine, at no charge.
One can’t do that with a modern car. Repairing them will syphon all the money saved from fuel consumption. And don’t tell me they never stop.
Moreover if you want to double the price of your Skoda all you have to do is fill the tank.
Meantime, after 25 years of nasty Nationalist rule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lUP2SJyUwM
Chetcuti included.
Strictly the open versions, it’s all about posing with these people. Naff number plates a must.
What’s also particularly interesting in Malta is the total absence of pre-87 models, the 308, still in production.
What’s the story of the thousands of Skodas and Ladas in Malta?
[Daphne – People couldn’t afford anything better, and products imported from the Labour government’s communist bloc friends were not subject to prohibitive import taxes and quotas. Skodas and Ladas were made behind the Iron Curtain, so Labour liked them.]
To think Skoda was one of the most exclusive coachbuilders turned automakers before communism took hold.
The only company in fact, which was given the licence to build Hispano Suiza designs.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/HS_1924_Tulipwood_sx.jpg
We’re talking land yachts here.
Excuse the anorak.
The Dubonnet bodied Hispano Suiza coupe, perhaps the definition of late streamlined Art Deco.
http://images.conceptcarz.com/imgxra/Hispano%20Suiza/38-Hispano-Suiza-Xenia-DV-12-PBC_06.jpg
As against the earlier Voisin, still French deconstruction.
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/images/car/3122/24077/Voisin-C27-Aerosport-Coupe.jpg
Note the aeronautic industry’s roots in both.
Or you could get a BMW if you could afford to buy one in those days, because Karistu was the agent for them at that time, and he was a Labour lackey too and friend of Adolf Mintoff.
Karistu was handed the agency after it was taken from the original agents – Cassar Automobiles, I believe. Mintoff promised BMW that all the ministers’ cars would be ordered from Karistu as soon as he gets the agency.
If I am not mistaken Cassar was also agent for Rover. The showroom and office block is still there along the Pieta seafront opposite the public garden. (Ex. Torpedo Depot)
Karistu was handed the BMW agency in appreciation for having relinquished his Malta – Gozo ferry contract.
Wonderfully dated music and every other car a Skoda or Lada.
Barrels & Surfside… those were the days. I remember my mother grumbling when someone took ‘our’ parking space outside our door in High Street.
This is January 1989, exactly 20 months after Malta got rid of the Mintoffian/KMB/Labour regime.
The best evidence of living standards was the cars on the roads: Skoda, Lada and Yugo from the communist bloc, and the Hillman Hunters assembled in Malta to bypass the import quotas.
And those houses would have all contained the very same television set, “assembled” in Malta under licence to Grundig, under the auspices of Jokate and Joe Camilleri, private secretary to Dom Mintoff (distributor for government: Leo Brincat).
Malta was still trying to solve the acute water shortage problem. Due to the persistent water cuts, all the copper pipes feeding EVERY SINGLE household had to be dug up, because they corroded due to the very hard or no water in the pipes.
These works were carried out manually. I recall Public Works Department men digging up trenches with pickaxes, much to the amusement of tourists (not very amusing if they themselves were unable to shower in their hotels).
I recall Michael Falzon, Minister of Works, subcontracting the work to the private sector with specifications for mechanical trenching to perform this mammoth task in EVERY street in Malta. Perhaps people don’t realise that this was one of the reasons for the very bad state of our roads.
Those were the times when to kill time, we just used to pick up the phone and listen to other people’s conversations on the line. The telephone system was “acquired” second hand by Dom Mintoff.
In 1987 there were 500 students at the university and MCAST had been shut down in the Seventies. Due to the big impetus PN gave to education, students had to make do with mobile homes as lecture rooms on the campus.
The power station in Marsa was coal-fired, having been converted from fuel oil by Mintoff to save money.
The airport did not even have a luggage carousel and the tractors you see on the apron entered the arrivals hall, with fumes spewing out, and people collected their luggage straight off the cart – or it was all tipped into a heap and you scrambled to dig around for yours.
The Freeport did not exist. The ship registry did not exist, but 8,000 people “worked” at the shipyards, and a further 2,400 worked at Kalaxlokk – a parastatal company set up to build the wharves at Marsaxlokk. Those wharves had to be rebuilt because they could only stack containers two high. Incidentally the large petrol-powered Fiat trucks which were “acquired” second hand were imported by Mr Preca, today’s First Whatever.
State schools were a shambles. Likewise church schools, as they were not allowed to charge fees.
Five-star hotels were barely there. The Phoenicia shut down due to industrial dispute with the General Workers Union round about then. The Hilton – see in this video – was shut as Tumas was still deciding what to do with that “free gift” he acquired.
The only hotel operating was the Holiday Inn – yes you guessed, owned by the government and Air Malta.
The National Bank of Malta had been stolen from its shareholders 15 years earlier. Barclays Bank had been forcibly nationalised and was now Mid Med Bank. Shell, BP, Cable and Wireless, Rediffusion had been thrown out.
This is the legacy of the golden years, to which Karmenu Vella and Leo Brincat contributed fully, and for which abuse they are now being rewarded by the very electorate they kicked about back then.
This here in the video is the Malta on its knees which so many people don’t know about, either because they never experienced it directly or because they refuse to believe those who try to explain it to them.
And it’s not, of course, becasue a country moves forward over the years. Malta was far more backward in 1987 than it was in 1970. This is what lots of people fail to understand: Malta did not simply fail to progress over those 16 years of Labour government, but it actually regressed to a post-war situation except with less individual liberty, less press freedom and fewer things in the shops than in 1950s Malta.
In the coming weeks we will honour the man responsible for this wanton destruction, DOM MINTOFF, with a statue in Castille Square. Shameful.
In 1987, Malta was even more backwards than post war let alone 1970.
I remember my anger and disgust at the news that during its first year of trading the company that assembled those Grundig colour TVs made more than 90% profit.
It was rumoured that Mintoff had a major chunk of the shareholding in the company which explains why Joe Camilleri, his private secretary, was a director.
No wonder the company made such huge profits because these TVs were always in short supply.
They were the only ones on the market – any others were illegally imported, perhaps through the Tunny Net.
You had to book a TV with selected dealers against a Lm50- deposit paid at the bank.
The state-controlled banks were made to issue an unsecured TV loan to every Tom, Dick and Harry who applied. A substantial number of these loans were still not fully paid after 1987 when the market was liberalised.
Mintoff’s Ministers Philip Muscat (late uncle to Malta Today columnist Josanne ‘I’m Independent’ Cassar), Leo Brincat (now Muscat’s Environment Minister) and Censu Moran (now dead) were notoriously active in issuing direct orders for delivery of those TVs to their chosen constituents.
Those who did not seek political patronage could wait for over a year until their order was met. I myself withdrew my deposit and waited until I found one on the second-hand market (actually someone who was emigrating).
My family refused to buy a television until after 1988. Mela inpaxxhuhom.
[Daphne – My family had a hyper-cool white one given to us by the departing German diplomats next door, and we lived in anticipation of yet another police raid like the one we had when my father was seen speaking into a Dictaphone while driving and it was mistaken for a highly subversive ‘walkie-talkie’ (remember them?). The police arrived at night and took the house apart. Oh happy days.]
One can only imagine what progress and modernization we missed if the dictators did not run (ruin) Malta between 1971 and 1987?
We will be saying the same things ten years from now, once he ex-Communist countries in Europe will become our benchmark and envy.
Every damn social climber on the island wants to live in Sliema. And every else wants to move out to get away from them.
The problem is that no matter where you go, you don’t get away from them. They are everywhere.
So true. I still remember our gang gawking at my friend’s dad’s ancient clapped out BMW. Or at any relatively new car that happened to pass. A “big” (over 100cc) bike was the bees knees.
It looks like these guys thought Malta was the bee’s knees at the time.
My goodness, how I hated living here – how can it be possible that many thought Malta was or had anything to be proud of?
I have lots of friends from England and north America who come back to visit and think Malta has not changed much. I think this might refresh their memory and make them realise that yes, memory does indeed play tricks on us.
The video shows how, contrary to popular myth, the rape of Sliema was perpetrated by Labour’s ‘golden years’ governments.
Il-guy should know a thing or two.
The systematic rape of Sliema.
How ugly Malta had become by then.
Speaking of cars on the road in those days reminds me of when an official delegation from Gibraltar, that included Adolfo Canepa, then Minister for Labour, and now Speaker of Parliament and Mayor of Gibraltar (his wife happens to be my wife’s niece) visited Malta in 1975.
We went sight-seeing. What struck him most were the vintage cars – cars in Gibraltar were much newer, even though the Rock had been besieged for years by Franco’s border closure.
In his view we had enough fine specimens to open a first-class museum of vintage cars.
Scicluna missed out on the debate at university today.
http://maltarightnow.com/news/2014/11/28/edward-scicluna-ma-jattendix-dibattitu-fl-universita-dwar-il-bagit/
Surely he would have been cheered.
Graffiti (Qui Si Sana)
Caravel
Tigullio
Styx
FU’s jeans
Catch
Desserta
Ford Escort Mk 1
X’nostalgija – konna nifirhu bix-xejn jahsra, x’qamel.
[Daphne – Graffiti had gone by then, I think. I practically lived there when I was 16, which means 1980/81.]
Ghandek ragun, ghax jien ftit ilhaqtu Graffiti. Sa l-early 80s kien diga ghalaq.
Nahseb anke Fortizza kien spicca dak iz-zmien?
Thank you for this video.
What a jolt to my memory. Just reminded me that it was during the early 80s and not later that Malta’s quaint seaside villages such as Marsaskala, St Paul’s Bay, Sliema and St Julian’s were raped of their colonial architecture.
I was raised at Marsaskala, during the early 80s till mid 90s, and remember it being transformed from a quaint seaside village surrounded by green fields, limestone rocks and azure seas into the jungle of unplanned horrible buildings and silver aluminium we see today.
The aftermath of the glory years. People need to remember that we started from scratch from 1987.
Have a look at two (open) Facebook pages: Malta Once Upon a Time and another called Bay Retro.
Sometimes I wish that I could send the switchers for a fortnight holiday back to the early eighties.
People have such a short memory.