Letters | Sunday, 26 July 2009

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Dahrendorf’s resignation revisited

The contributions on MaltaToday on Dahrendorf keep depicting our then Prime Minister as the villain and all others as heroes.
The correspondent writing last week was another such example. The difference between the government of Malta of the 1970s and others, many times, was not one of principle but on method. The government of the day was too impatient to see reforms happening and in so doing, many things which on principle were commendable did not always achieve long term results, although in many cases we still benefit from the reforms to this day.
Calling Mr Mintoff as lacking liberal credentials is a little bit rich. For the privileged classes of which the country had many at the time, Mintoff was a despot, and not a benevolent one at that. But for the struggling masses who had no options he was a politician with very liberal ideas comparable to those of his contemporaries. For the masses who longed for a better future, he was a liberal politician and a liberator.
I have no doubt in my mind that Prof. Dahrendorf wanted to see more young people taking up university courses. It would be a distortion of the truth to say that this was not what Mintoff wanted to see at University more the students form the working class, since these were scientifically proven to be socially disadvantaged. To reach this aim he practised the controversial policy of “positive discrimination” and introduced what we today politely call the “stipend” system.
I was one who in the early seventies entered Kingsway to protest against the absence of what we then called “the grant system”. After my time, the Mintoff government gave money to the students to learn, but typically Mintoff did so his way. Whether he had done that correctly or not will be judged by the individual persons who benefited from the system and by others who were discriminated against, the latter mainly coming from sectors some of which were financially and socially too strong to win over. He also wanted to see the University closer to the reality of industry. You can disagree with the method but not with the idea.
We can go on like this till eternity. The point is this: if a typical civil servant of the time, just by way of one example, enjoyed something like 40 days’ vacation leave entitlement per year, easy promotion if he was in the right circle, salary increases based on percentages, and overnight these privileges were taken away from him, will he see his Prime Minister as a hero or as a villain? On the other side of the coin, if a young starter was contemplating emigration because he saw no future in Malta, did the government of the day provide him with a solution?
Would we be slightly better if, today, we had politicians who followed less of a liberal policy with Banks for example? Did we turn these into modern day Gods? Maybe your correspondent has an answer to this to explain better what he means by having liberal credentials in this day and age. At the end of the day, our concern is of today and tomorrow, yesterday is gone forever.

John Camilleri
Mellieha

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