Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1484063
EVEN at the height of Labour's political might after the de- parture of the British forces in 1979, it seemed Dom Mintoff had reached his apex: a dec- ade of breakneck reforms, for- eign policy swashbuckling, and new experiments in education standardisation and national economic policies. The 1980s saw a Labour Party organisation whose ministers had absorbed the party's activists into the gov- ernment machine. "Manoeuverings were appar- ently rife to position for replac- ing him," former Labour PM Alfred Sant writes in his mem- oirs of those years, as a young management consultant work- ing for the Ministry of Parastatal and People's Industries. Public works minister Lorry Sant was a frontrunner, widely suspected of corrupt practices, and openly backed by Labour's youth league under Ronnie Pellegrini, who never shied from street violence; Joe Brincat, was the deputy lead- er for party affairs, who had won the post from Sant. But it was to be the GWU lawyer, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, whom Dom Mintoff had handpicked to in- stall as his deputy leader for par- ty affairs while Brincat was given a ministry. Over the next four years, KMB – who died on 5 November at 89 – would be gently pushed to the top of Mintoff's pyramid of pow- er, to finally preside over three tumultuous years of political vi- olence and socail tension. It is a memory that instantly emotive for a particular generation that remembers those times vividly. Confrontations about Labour's 1980s legacy and that of KMB become purgative and excori- ating, the result of its singular impact on a generation of young adults and parents at the time. Violence of the time was not simply hallmarked by the bomb attacks, arguably perpetrated by both sides of the political di- vide, or the harrowing murder of Raymond Caruana during an evening social at the Gudja PN club. The bitter, tribal hatred perspired from the pores of dai- ly life, such that even smoking a red or blue-coloured brand of cigarettes was well-known code for political allegiance. Explaining this visceral fanati- cism, in 2016 the anthropologist Mark Anthony Falzon eloquent- ly recalled in his column how the Du Maurier brand – red or blue for the light cigarettes – repre- sented this protocol of Labour vs Nationalist voters. "Our par- ents' smoking palettes aside, col- our was one of the key ways by which we experienced and lived the constant partisan posturing. We would get seriously upset if our teachers asked us to use red covers for copybooks (not that many of them would have fa- voured that colour anyway, cer- tainly not at a Church school)..." For a portion of the Maltese, life under the Mintoffian ad- ministration bequeathed to Kar- menu Mifsud Bonnici in 1984 was illustrated by this partisan livery: Castille had its window fittings painted red, the PN's or- gan was naturally blue in colour, as was its unofficial 'Ġakketta Blu' bodyguards uniform. But for former Nationalist MEP Therese Comodini Cachia, echoing a familiar complaint of those whose youth was forged in these years, it was a childhood lost "to the experience of po- litical violence and for political profiling that led to violence." In a Twitter thread on KMB's passing, she recounted how the partisanship of the time broke friendships and brought hatred amongst neighbours. "His is the face I still see when I drive past my school today as I can never forget seeing my school surrounded by police while I secretly attended lessons in a garage," she said, referring to the Church schools crisis of the time. "His is the face that I see when I drive through a sec- ondary road to get to Zejtun, the same road my family used to escape the tear-gas and beatings from thugs at Tal-Barrani. His and that of others are the faces that marred my childhood and of others with political violence merely because we wanted a bet- ter country... it is only honour- able to appreciate the suffering and sacrifice of those who faced these turbulent times – teach- ers, priests, parents, workers, professionals, statesmen..." It is this generational wound from the 1980s that has affected so many, even influenced the ac- tivism and aspirations of people like Comodini Cachia, a human rights lawyer, that crystallised a particular type of Nationalist voter that to this day, views with suspicion if not outright dis- gust, anything that is Labour. It is another historical pain passed down the generations, like the 1960s Interdett of Labour vot- ers, that marks political identi- ties in Malta. Mintoffian disciple But as she concedes upon hav- ing met Mifsud Bonnici the law- yer in a courtroom, Comodini Cachia says she could not rec- ognise the violent force that his face – with its milky pallor and his austere shock of white hair – meant to her. How could the re- viled face of Labour's nadir have been, in his own right a respect- ed courtroom colleague, known for his unwavering Catholic faith and gentle sense of humour? He was on the sum of all things, a most unlikely successor to the caudillismo of Dom Mintoff – a union lawyer once allied to the Catholic junta that openly de- spised Mintoff, with none of the machismo of his predecessor. But he was a convinced Labour- ite despite the Nationalist pedi- gree (his uncle was Carmelo 'Il- Gross', his cousins and his own brother future members of PN Cabinets). In this, his service to the party was in fierce devotion to Mintoff, who in 1981 now faced an unprecedented con- stitutional crisis when Labour was returned to power on the strength of a majority of seats rather than votes – provoking the PN's boycott of the House. Mintoff planned an exit that had to scotch the leadership ambi- tions of corrupt Lorry Sant or Wistin Abela, who attracted vi- olent and criminal elements to the party hardcore. First he ap- pointed KMB as designate-lead- er, then senior deputy prime minister, and finally PM in 1984. But Mintoff still ran his own show as a string-pulling 'back- bencher'. And KMB turned out to be no match for the machina- tions of the rest of the Cabinet. Nor had he read the aspirations of the new middle class, in part built up by Labour's economic policies, that resented the gov- ernment's restrictions on spend- ing, pricing and import controls, the inferior goods produced by parastatal industries (meant to offset Malta's expensive depend- ance on foreign goods), Labour's war on Church school fees, on university graduates denied the liberal arts degrees, and on small businesses fearing merciless tax assessments. This, it seems, is the KMB legacy – political vio- lence, shuttered schools, black- and-white TVs and a few colour boxes for a select few, and only locally-produced, immensely disliked, chocolate (a Mintoff relic to be correct...) One of KMB's strongest sup- porters, his successor Alfred Sant, will disagree with the ma- licious characterisations that the unsympathetically-labelled 'Dr Zero' was submitted to. His memoirs, Confessions of a Euro- pean Maltese: The Middle Years, carry the most detailed recollec- 14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 NOVEMBER 2022 NEWS The worst of times KMB and Malta's 'years of lead' Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was an unlikely heir to Dom Mintoff, but his wholesale inheritance and inability to defuse the social tensions and street violence provoked by his predecessor's policies marked his political legacy for life MATTHEW VELLA "He had that opportunity and obligation not to the let the country go the brink. I think Karmenu did not do that." Dione Borg