It all started with a Thornycraft 17-seat single-decker, imported to the island in 1905, which ran between Valletta and St Andrews. Subsequently several Maltese acquired lorry chassis and converted them into buses. In a short time, different types of buses started providing an unregulated service from the various towns and villages to Valletta.
By 1931 the train – which had provided a reliable service since 1883 – had to close down, as buses had rendered it uncompetitive.
In 1921, the Cottonera Motor Bus Company was granted a licence to operate from Cottonera to Valletta. Several carpenters were encouraged by this company to build bus bodies for the company’s fleet.
By the end of the decade, 385 route buses belonging to individuals or rival companies had been licensed to operate. This led to fierce competition between drivers. Bus drivers were notorious for overspeeding in their bid to make as many journeys as possible. Buses were also notoriously overcrowded, as drivers packed passengers to maximise profits. Every route had a different colour, and each bus was named for the village patron saint, or for queens, operas or battleships.
In 1931, the Traffic Control Board was formed with the aim of increasing discipline and enforcing schedules. Buses were kept very clean from the outside and even from the inside. One of the board’s first decisions was to increase the number of route buses to 500, which were to work in organized groups of bus owners.
At this time the BMC – a British-owned company – threatened that unless they were given a monopoly of the Sliema route, they would quit Malta and take their buses to Cairo. Upon failing in its bid to create the first bus monopoly, the British company sold its bus fleet to entrepreneur Joseph Gasan.
One by one, Gasan managed to buy all the other buses of the Sliema Motor Bus Co., thus obtaining a monopoly on the Sliema route. After World War II, Gasan bought Ford V8 chassis from the military and transformed them into buses, becoming in the process the principle operator in the sector.
But in 1955, Gasan started selling his buses to individuals for the sum of Lm3,500 to Lm4,000 per bus. This resulted in the re-fragmentation of the transport system, which reverted back to its previous anarchy.
The reorganisation of public transport was one of the priorities set in the MLP’s 1971 manifesto, which committed the new government to “bring together all interested parties, bus owners, workers and representatives of the public so that this service is reorganised in the interests of everybody.”
Upon being elected Prime Minister, Dom Mintoff formed a board which promptly recommended the amalgamation of all route buses in one group to ensure that every owner should get the same income from his bus.
Bus drivers who operated the most profitable routes objected to this proposal, and rowdy protests and strikes were organised. A compromise was found through which, for a period of one year, all the route buses were to amalgamate in three groups, following which they were to amalgamate in a single confederation. The bus owners saw this as a delaying tactic, hoping that the government would not persist in its bid to create one group of buses. But they were mistaken.
The government retaliated by forcing every owner to work on his own initiative, under the control of this board and the police, according to a fixed schedule. This situation led to fierce competition between bus drivers, as everyone struggled to pick up more passengers.
There were even instances where a 40-seater bus was loaded with 70 passengers or more. After three years the owners themselves were fed up with this situation and on 17 November 1977 all the route buses started operating in one group: the Public Transport Association run by a committee elected every two years by bus owners from a general meeting of the association.
Yet this was not the end of the troubles. Organised in one group the bus owners discovered a new sense of power: that of holding the entire country to ransom with their periodic strikes.
During a six-week strike by bus owners in 1979, all 502-bus drivers were arraigned in court in the space of 72 hours, in order to have their licences revoked. John Zammit, who served as a police inspector at the time, recalls how on that occasion, the Police Force also ran an emergency service in conjunction the Armed Forces.
On one occasion, Zammit remembers how stones were thrown from the direction of the bridge in 13th December Road, Marsa, onto a vehicle that was being used in the emergency service. The culprits were arrested and arraigned in Court within a few hours.
Three decades after bowing to government pressure to amalgamate, the same bus owners are now fighting their last stand against the removal of a private monopoly they had once resisted themselves.
Curiously EU membership allows both nationalisation and liberalisation. The only thing which is not allowed by the EU is a private monopoly like that created in 1977.