Some of my readers have asked about the 1958 riots

Following a post on this website highlighting the news that Labour’s ‘soldiers of steel’ have put up a monument to those who were arrested for violent acts in the 1958 mob riots, several of my readers wanted to know what the 1958 riots were and asked for more information.

Anything I say by way of explanation will be considered tainted by my ‘Nationalist heritage’ (this when every single member of my father’s and mother’s families were supporters of the Strickland party in 1958 and my mother’s brother was even a candidate for that party), so instead I’ve called up the original, contemporary international wire report.

Incidentally, the violence wasn’t concentrated on Valletta and the Cottonera area, as most seem to think. The Labour Party had begun targeting Sliema already back then. There was a lot of violence in Qui Si Sana, petrol was spread over the main road so that cars would skid, stones were thrown, and down at the xattthe road was blocked so that cars couldn’t get through to and from Valletta.

I grew up with an eyewitness account of an ambulance containing a woman in the last stages of labour being prevented by the rioters from passing through, even as the ambulance driver pleaded and explained that the woman was in need of urgent care.

Here’s the wire report from 1958.