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14 THE imposition of moral sanction against Labour ac- tivists in 1961 was one of the last attempts by the Maltese Catholic hierarchy to impose its political power directly without relying on political intermediaries, as it did under Nationalist administrations between 1962 and 1971 and between 1987 and 2013. The notorious interdiction (interdett) may have been spurred by Archbishop Mi- chael Gonzi's unfounded fear of Labour's leader Dom Mint- off as a communist in disguise, but ultimately it was designed to cripple the emerging anti- colonialist movement that could steer Malta into moder- nity. It was a war against change: Gonzi did not just want to cripple Labour's chances in the 1962 election, to the Nationalists' advantage. He propped up the smaller 'um- brella' parties such as Toni Pellegrini's Christian Work- ers Party, opposed to full in- dependence from the United Kingdom, in a bid at chipping away from Labour's votes. The reason was simple. The British saw the Church as an ally best left undisturbed, and nurtured it in keeping order in the for- tress colony. That's why Gonzi feared Mintoff's integration proposal even more than in- dependence, probably as it would have brought Malta even closer to the European mainstream than independ- ence itself. Taming Labour Since the 1920s, Gonzi – who actually had represented the nascent Labour Party in the Senate – toyed with the idea of reining in the workers' move- ment and immunising it from European socialism and its French revolutionary roots. A reactionary, Gonzi made little distinction between Mintoff's Fabian socialism and anti-co- lonialism, and Soviet commu- nism. To him Protestantism, democratic socialism and an- ti-colonialism were threats to the status quo. Labour's iden- tification with the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisa- tion, a Third World solidarity movement that included com- munist sympathisers, was the pretext for the 1961 edict. Gonzi was not even enthu- siastic for the transformation of the Nationalist Party into a mass party on the model of European Christian-democ- racy. He simply preferred to divide and rule and prevent a strong government, in a bid to freeze time while condi- tioning Malta's quest for in- dependence. He failed in his first objective but succeeded in the second. It came by way of a 'condemnation' from the Diocesan Commission, that branded the reading of Labour Party literature a mortal sin. With it came the interdiction of the Labour Party's execu- tive committee. Sure enough it was Labour stalwarts and their families who experienced the humili- ation and pain of being de- prived of the final rites of passage in what was still a so- ciety defined by Catholicism. To live meant being at peace with the Church, to die was to pass into the hands of God. To be denied that, was to be de- nied that peace and salvation. Labour deputy leader Guze Ellul Mercer died in 1962, and was igno- miniously buried in an unconsecrated area of the Addolarata cemetery deri- sively known as the 'mizbla' or 'rubbish tip'. Humiliation kept family members away from his own funeral, blessed by his own brother, a Franciscan monk. Other Labour voters were buried in the same part where Archbishop Charles Scicluna delivered his symbol- ic gesture of forgiveness on All Saints Day. The interdiction, however, also slowed the PN's own evo- lution into a mass party capa- ble of winning power on the basis of a social programme, rather than relying exclusively on the Church's power. And that also meant slowing down Malta's passage into European democracy. The PN's leader and prime minister Gorg Borg Olivier himself had to stand his ground against Gonzi's de- mand for a "morality police" tasked with enforcing decency laws amidst Malta's first tour- ism boom. maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 NOVEMBER 2019 ANALYSIS Flashback 1961 Charles Scicluna, the most 'political' leader the Maltese Church has had since the 1960s, has taken the bold step of blessing the unconsecrated graves of such Labour stalwarts as Guze Ellul Mercer on All Souls Day. Has Scicluna realised that Gonzi's legacy is the greatest obstacle to the Church's attempt to regain political relevance? Below: Guze Ellul Mercer (left) died in 1962 and was buried in unconsecrated ground. The Labour executive of 1961 was firmly under a state of condemnation by the Catholic hierarchy Meet the new boss: newly-elected PM Joseph Muscat in 2013 discusses his agenda with Charles Scicluna (left) and Paul Cremona EXORCISING GONZI'S LEGACY EXORCISING GONZI'S LEGACY JAMES DEBONO DEBONO Sins of the father: the chipped gravestone of Gorg Gravina, who died at 39, having told the priest who denied him the last rites that he was a reader of the newspaper Il-Helsien. He was denied burial in the Zejtun cemetery; Bormla man Toni Zahra, a known activist and follower of Mintoff; and Amleto Spiteri, uncle of the late Labour minister Lino Spiteri, denied burial in the family grave