All in a lifetime

So now we are members of the European Union, doubly confirmed after a referendum and a general election which seem to have brought an end (hopefully) to a slanging match between parties and partisan politicians as well as the ordinary man in the street. Not only the man in the street in Malta but also from other countries, mainly Britain.

Personally, I seem to have got myself involved in an exchange of letters with a certain Derek Bennett from Walsall in the Midlands of England who is a member of some independent political party in the UK against EU membership. For over a year he had the cheek to patronisingly tell us, through his letters to The Times and The Sunday Times, that there was doom and gloom ahead of us as members of the European Union. His last effort appeared on the eve of the election telling us that if we joined we would cease to be an independent nation: "This is now a fact", he says.

He next says: "However those nervous souls such as Major SJA Clews, Tony Formosa and Joseph Pace, who lives in the UK, still try to deny this certainty" (of losing our independence, I presume). Just what Mr Bennett means by using the words "nervous" I do not understand. I do not know Messrs Formosa and Pace and can only speak for myself and can say that I am not the nervous type.

However, for Mr Bennett's information I can tell him that looking back over my 80 years on this planet I was nervous as a 19-year old officer in the British Army with some 60 men to look after defending his - and at that time my - country Britain both in UK and later in Malta and North Africa during the last war.

Many years later, during the 25 years I spent at Malta Drydocks, I was nervous when the honest, hardworking tradesmen who wanted to work, were influenced by politicians who wanted industrial action to cause the 'yard to be brought to a standstill. I was nervous, too, when for six months I and other members of the senior and executive staff had to take over the emergency duties of striking workers - and our thanks afterwards was to have our salaries reduced and to have our manhood questioned by the then prime minister.

I was nervous when we had only 900 students at our university and their future looked bleak, when the rule of law was in the hands of people who knew the law of the jungle, when power was in the hands of the politicians and their lackeys. Does Mr Bennett know these facts of life in Malta?

Mr Bennett, can we say we were really independent as individuals if demonstrating students were beaten up, if The Times building was burned down, if the home of the then leader of the opposition was ransacked and members of his family beaten up without the perpetrators being taken to task?

Can we Maltese say we were neutral and independent when our "friends" came from behind the Berlin Wall, from Ceaucescu's Romania and from North Korea?

Thank God those days are behind us and the last of our old leaders of those difficult times have now disappeared into oblivion after a last gasp failed revival in recent months.

I have also been through those salad days of Independence in 1964 when I decided that my home was Malta and I became a Maltese national with a young family. My children have their own families now and, like me, they are all proud to be Maltese and proud to have a father (and, of course, grandfather) who became Maltese during his lifetime.

From becoming a Republic within the Commonwealth in 1974 we saw Malta no longer being used as a military base with the departure of the British Services from Malta five years later. But we see many of these former servicemen and women happily coming back as civilians. Incidentally, Mr Bennett have you ever come to Malta to see exactly what it is like here?

Mr Bennett come to Malta now, now that we are in the European Union and see the happiness among us. To their credit the opposition party in the newly elected parliament has accepted the decision of the majority.

Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, with his signature and that of Foreign Minister Joe Borg in Athens, have taken us whole-heartedly into the EU and I do hope, Mr Bennet, that you and your independent party will no longer interfere in big little Malta's future prosperity in Europe.

Yes, Mr Bennett, I was nervous when the result of the referendum was disputed, I was nervous on Sunday morning before the election result came out loud and clear. As I write this on Easter Sunday morning, I can say that April 2003 has turned out to be a happy one for Malta and for me with our entry into the EU.

And just to cap it all, Sliema Wanderers have won our football league championship and my former home-town team in England, Portsmouth, have obtained promotion to the Premier League beating, among others, Mr Bennett's Walsall team twice on the way!