Triq Xintill
Tarxien
Malta
14thJune 2007
His Excellency Mr Jose’ Manuel Durao Barroso
President of the European Commission
Dr Mr President,
1 Malta has been famous for her hospitality and kindness to all foreigners, regardless of colour of skin or religious belief. Therefore a handwritten note jotted down in a big hurry just as you were arriving this evening is not a warm greeting to welcome someone with whom I want to establish a friendship for the mutual benefit of my country and with whatever is left of the former European Union.
2. Of my academic distinctions, I treasure most the awards of a doctorate from the University of Athens for my small country’s great contribution to the Mother of Western Democracies to regain her freedom from a dictatorship of colonialists, sponsored and financed by the C.I.A. of the U.S.A. While doing this on my watch we helped also to give a fair beginning to a rapprochement with the Moslems in Turkey by making use of our friendship with Kemal Ataturk’s Army successors. I am sorry to point out that the European Union has failed to carry out a similar operation today, when circumstances are more favourable.
3. Another failure to which Malta and the E.U. now jointly have to make amends is the survival of our shipyards. These yards survived a similar threat in 1958 when Britain’s Minister of Defence, Churchill’s protégé Duncan Sandys, in order to conform with the quality of weapons of destruction by his allies France and Israel, shut down some British yards and included the Malta Dockyard.
When one considers how the entire livelihood of our people had been subordinated to Britain’s need of a fortress. When one remembers that the Island’s Christian faith, totally dominated by a Catholic establishment relying entirely on the Vatican for its survival in protestant fortress, one realises how high were these objectives – our opponents in Britain called us the brave children of a “convent fortress”. Yet our earnestness and the credibility of our record were such that the years 1955-1958 will be long remembered as the most heroic of our Island’s history.
4. Towards the end of 1942, the Second World War conflict was reaching the peak of its fury and the workers of Malta, encouraged by trade union chiefs holding posts in Britain’s civil service attached to war departments, woke up to the necessity to discard the protection of the Catholic Establishment by adopting statutes of lay religious confraternities and set up real trade unions as we know them today. Because the number of such trade unions was small, the General Workers Union was born and only two other trade unions – Draughtsmen and Writes – carried on their independent course. And the leader of the new General Workers’ Union came from the Writers’ Union that had already gained some solid benefits to its members in Malta’s shipyards.
It was in this background that the surviving activists in the pre-war Labour Party of Malta and new members recruited mostly from the trade unions that Malta’s LABOUR was resurrected in 1943. Fresh from my experience in Britain and encouraged by comrades in Britain, it was easy for me to give a major contribution for turning Malta’s old LABOUR into a democratic socialist movement with the most liberal outlook and yet with the real interest of Maltese workers at heart. In the new setup, in which delegates from members in districts sent delegates to a national convention, I was democratically elected Deputy Leader and the pre-war Leader – Doctor Boffa – reconfirmed as Leader.
5. I did not have the time to survive economically (I had embarked on a private practice as an architect rebuilding the damaged dwellings of workers where these had not been literally razed to the ground), nor the cash and wish to satisfy the ambition to sit in a Parliament with a so-called “Self-Government Constitution” imposed by the British Emperor from Whitehall in which any mention of foreign affairs was banned in the Maltese side of the Dyarchy and the Monarch’s side of the Dyarchy had sway on every law enacted by the representatives of the Maltese people. It was a Constitution that had elevated the privileges of the Catholic Establishment to the status of those of the Fortress: the security of the British Imperial Forces needed the reinforcement of the privileges of the local Catholic Clergy that followed the tide of progress lifting Britain’s Labour to supremacy in Britain but still entirely locked in its reliance of the economic sinews on its exploited colonies.
community.
6. Despite this great handicap, this National Assembly succeeded in :
a) abolishing the institutions of a Senate which would have been given a right of veto of all laws enacted by the House of Representatives; and
b) giving the voting rights to women who apart from a few individuals which one could count on one’s fingers (amongst these to her credit Lord Strickland’s daughter), had not yet articulated their human rights and Malta’s nascent social democracy had scored a success not yet legislated in Italy, Germany, Austria and the other parts of Europe still suffering from their defeat and unconditional surrender in the Second World War.
7. What was still one of the greatest handicaps was the disproportion in the representation of the numbers of voters from national elections to the House of Representatives, the lack of responsible local councils, the lack of freedom of speech which made criticism of the Church or Empire a criminal offence and worst of all freedom of thought and information that made liable to prosecution, even those citizens who dared to have in their possession the works of George Bernard Shaw. The Sedition Act was interpreted at will by the Imperialist Power to suffocate all divergence from Britain’s political will.
8. I hasten to emphasize this last point because the lack of freedom of thought is exactly what President George W. Bush has stealthily managed to impose on Malta in these turbulent times. He was able to do so because his interest coincided with those influential conservative members of the European Community who took the Island by storm, stomped her conservative elements into and enthusiastic and prompt support of a European Union that for economic reasons subordinated her political rights to those of her American conquerors and hastened to set up a top-heavy Establishment before the new social forces in Russia, India, Asia and Africa had their say.
9. Mainly because I little dreamt that suppression of information and freedom of thought would land me for the past three years into a prison on parole in my own house that had endangered my life several times and made it impossible for me to reach the ears of the Maltese people, it seems now that I have reached the ears of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and my last hope is that the European Commission, in the interest of Malta and their survival, would now stop putting spokes in the wheels and allow Strasbourg (to which both the United States and Russia are committed to abide) to give an independent judgement.
10. Even George W. Bush, whose sincerity and intelligence I respect, will soon realise that my stand to get the American people change their course from the prevailing mode of crass old imperialism (which, with the awakening of new global forces clamouring for peace and social justice is now no longer realistic) to one of enlightened leadership that would still give the United States of America a prevailing role in the world’s destiny for many future generations.
11. Unlike me – he is about two decades younger that me – he has still a potential longevity in which he can fulfil his mission as an American adherent of the newly-born Christian faith. There is nothing to stop him from choosing ex-President Carter as a Christian ally. There is nothing to stop me and Malta to join them provided that global peace coupled with a modicum of social society becomes their political objective.
12. I hasten to conclude by declaring that provided I am allowed freedom of thought and action there is nothing to stop me from contributing to the wisdom that comes through experience to the global prosperity in pursuit of happiness.
13. There is everything to gain by the European Union also changing course.
Let us please do it together.
Yours sincerely,
Dom Mintoff
Emeritus Prime Minister of Malta
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