Letters | Wednesday, 08 April 2009

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In your front-page lead news item ‘Malta narrowly misses two extra national days’ (1 April), you allege that I had come close to suggesting two other important dates in Malta’s history as possible national days: the Break with Britain resolution passed on 30 December 1957 by the Labour government after the unclear referendum result on Integration; and also the departure of the French forces, who surrendered to the British on 4 September 1800.
The ‘Break with Britain’ resolution I mentioned en passant during Savior Balzan’s interview with me for Reporter, screened on 31 March, to show that in principle both the main political parties thenceforth agreed on independence from Britain as a common vision. Borg Olivier had eloquently enough seconded Mintoff’s angry motion thereby embarking the parties on the same path, set towards the same goal, which was essentially realised seven years later.
Never in my life, however, had I intended or considered proposing the 4 September 1800 as a possible date to celebrate. That date marks a British betrayal of the Maltese insurgents after a hard-won victory over the French at the cost of thousands of lives over a two-year struggle. The Maltese were excluded from the capitulation and subjected to a new domination, British instead of French. I would much rather celebrate the 31st March than the 4th September any time!
What I mentioned informally in the studio after the programme, as one date I had left out because I felt there were already too many possible options, was the 2 September 1798. That marks the start of the first and last Maltese armed popular uprising against a foreign domination. For those who wish to learn some more, the 30th anniversary edition of the Maltese history journal Storja, which is being launched at Il-Veduta, Rabat, on 16 April, will contain an article of mine about some aspects of that Insurrection.
Finally, may I remind younger readers that my 1987 report from Melbourne was a time of intense polarization and uncertainty in Malta, when a Lorry Sant led mob attacked the law court archives, snatching and smashing the police camera; a bus load of tourists was fired upon in the vicinity of the airport; the army’s commander-in-chief was constrained to jump into the sea at Vittoriosa…
My reading of the new administration’s wish concerning a possible reconciliation through a representative spectrum of national days was that thereby it would help calm the waters and give time for such wounds and sores as then existed to heal, before finally determining on a restoration of Independence Day or possibly concoct some other honourable compromise. Hence, I presume, the Cabinet’s decision inclusively, if surprisingly, to adopt all five possibilities indicated, with pros and cons for each, comprising for the first time ever the Sette Giugno. That was a day which a staunch pro-British old guard still passionately objected to, seventy years after the event, as may be seen from the spate of derogatory letters and articles especially in The Sunday Times throughout June and July 1989 and later still.
Here we are 30 years later still unable, it seems, to call a space a spade.

Henry Frendo
Attard

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