Once, long ago, I found myself seated at a table with a few friends discussing life, the universe, and the effects of ice-cold pilsner on the functions of the urethra.
The date was 7th June, and the reason I remember this particular detail (but not, for instance, how many ice-cold pilsners I had consumed that day) is because one of the friends in question suddenly turned to me and asked me to explain what the public holiday we were all celebrating was actually about.
I remember innocently giving this friend of mine the story as I knew it, or thought I knew it, back then. I described how the price of bread had trebled in less than a year before June 1919; how a protest in Valletta quickly got out of hand, and the angry crowd attacked and ransacked the homes of the unscrupulous millers responsible for the price hike. British troops were called into Valletta to bring the situation under control... which they did by opening fire on the crowd, killing four Maltese patriots (who, if the monument on Palace Square is to be believed, gathered around a flag and stuck out their chests in defiance at the blazing guns)... and the British soldiers very thoughtfully committed this outrage in the first week of June, thus giving us all a day off work precisely at the onset of summer.
It sounded like a good explanation at the time, and certainly seemed to satisfy everyone’s sudden thirst for history instead of lager. But alas! I now understand that it bears about as much resemblance to the true happenings of 1919 as the Sette Giugno monument on Palace Square resembles the true proportions of the human body. (That is to say, its pectoral muscles protrude almost four feet beyond the extremity of its chin, and each hand is roughly twice the size of its head.)
For one thing I had omitted a number of important details: such as, that the Dockyard workers had also descended upon Valletta en masse; that university students were protesting because they were unhappy with their grades (evidently, they didn’t have stipends to protest about in 1919); and also that there was a second meeting of the National Assembly, during which it was decided to formally petition the British Crown for self rule.
It was arguably this latter detail which robbed the true story of all sense of perspective. For when, many decades later, a newly Independent state decided to help itself to a history of its own making, it revisited the sequence of events and placed the political context first, relegating the economic context to almost an afterthought.
Asked about Sette Giugno today, I would no doubt supply a different story altogether. For instance, it is now apparent that, far from artificially jacking up the price of bread for personal gain, at least one of the millers whose home was attacked had practically begged the Governor to introduce a subsidy on bread (something we all take for granted today, despite the overwhelming differences in standard of living between now and then). We know also that the reason for the astronomical price hike, just like today’s food and fuel crisis, was dictated entirely by force majeur: namely, the concurrent developments in Russia, and the fact that mines left in the wake of World War I made shipping a dangerous business, with the result that insurance premiums for freight had shot up by as much as 60%.
From this perspective, it is hard not to sympathise with the real victims of the shambles that was 7 June 1919. Not the looters who were summarily shot - somewhat excessively, perhaps, but the same would have happened in an analogous situation anywhere in Europe - but rather the entrepreneurs who actually tried to do something about the crisis, and had their possessions scattered about the Valletta streets for their pains.

***
Sadly, it must also be said that the reason we continue to celebrate “Sette Giugno” to this day has little to do with what really happened 89 years ago, but much to do with historical revisionism. In truth, Sette Giugno was resuscitated in the 1970s by the Labour government of the time, then dolled up to look like a grand act of spontaneous sedition against the forces of colonialism, and let loose upon the national consciousness in order to counterbalance Independence as an alternative “National Day”.
Hardly a unique case, either. We have seen the same sort of Maltese historical revisionism over and over again. Manwel Dimech, for instance, is either the world’s most misunderstood left-wing political philosopher, or a murderous psychopath with delusions of grandeur... depending on whose grossly mutilated version you choose to believe. (Mind you, some people who live in Sliema even think he was Prince of Wales... no idea why, honest.)
And you don’t have to go back 30 years, either. Some time in the mid-1990s – around the time of the attempt on Richard Cachia Caruana’s life, and the subsequent “police” investigation – I happened to watch a television discussion programme which purported to discuss “Malta’s first ever political assassination attempt”.
This sparked off a live debate concerning an incident which took place in 1979, when someone allegedly burst into Castile Palace and threatened the Prime Minister (a certain Mintoff, at the time) with a revolver. As it happens no shots were fired, and it is debatable whether Mintoff and his would-be assassin were even in the same room. So did this count as an “assassination attempt”? The (Nationalist) presenter thought not, but someone on the panel, no doubt a Labourite, argued that it did.
Needless to add, the main motivation in both cases was to make this non-event fit nicely into one of two diametrically opposed “official” versions of history. Which is why I tend to agree with whoever once said: “History is bunk”.

***
Anyhow. I remember sitting there watching all this in rising disbelief, thinking: is it possible that no one on the panel had bothered to read up on any of Malta’s 20th century history before accepting to go on the show? Had they done so, they would surely have come across a rather dramatic assassination attempt on an incumbent Maltese Prime Minister (please note: Prime Minister, not personal assistant) which occurred around 1930.
The Prime Minister was Lord Gerald Strickland, and the assassination attempt took place while he was testifying in court... when a Nationalist hothead irrupted into the courtroom brandishing a shotgun, and fired two shots in his direction at virtually point blank range.
Incredibly, he missed. More incredibly still, Maltese history seems to have missed the entire incident, too... despite an impressive eyewitness account in Herbert Ganado’s Rajt Malta Tinbidel.
And of course there is a very valid reason for this lapsus. Actually, there are two.

***
The first is that people my age (can’t really comment on kids nowadays) were never taught recent Maltese history at school. I remember our history lessons clearly: the text-book was “Outlines of Maltese History” – emphasis on the word “Outlines” – and seemed to finish the moment the British suddenly materialised in 1800.
The second reason is that teaching history is a perilous thing in a Hilly-Billy kind of place like Malta. You never know. Armed with true facts, people might draw their own conclusions, and suddenly realise that the political parties they were brought up to eulogise might not be all they’re cracked up to be. They might start racking their brains a little, and realise that... Hey! If these people have lied to us about stuff that happened 90 years ago, or 60 years ago, or even 15 years ago... how can we believe them when they talk to us about things that happened last month? This week? Today? Or which we have been assured will happen by 2013?
How much safer, then, to simply reinvent history whichever way makes you happy...