In Playing With History, José Herrera (March 18) mixes the question as to when Maltese political parties originated with some of the main issues about which these disagreed. He mistakes some names, dates and reports, which I shall pass by, because the gist of his argument is worth commenting about.
Dr Herrera accepts that the 1880s did see the birth of the first political parties in Malta - my thesis in Party Politics In A Fortress Colony: The Maltese Experience (1979). Surely, however, he adds, these were not the direct forerunners of our present political parties. (By this he really means the Nationalist Party which, he says, "has been celebrating with considerable pomp its 125th anniversary".) Further down, he felt inclined to regard those parties (Riformisti and Anti-Riformisti, as they were originally known) as the precursors of the PN and the MLP; but this line of thought, he adds again, is "a long shot".
That is so indeed, because much water has passed under the bridge since that time. Parties are never static: they evolve and change, sometimes almost beyond recognition, even their names can mislead. There is no precise historical linearity in any continuum that can be drawn of them over the generations but one need not exclude the other. As a lawyer, Dr Herrera takes an interesting but rather legalistic view of what may be said to constitute a political party. Historically, nowhere is it given that for a political party to come into being, or for it to be seen to exist, this has to be a statutory political organisation (sic), or to have had its birthday signed and sealed by notarial deed.
Leading authorities on political parties - Ostrogorski, Duverger, Pelling and others - have long held a political party to come into being once this constitutes a recognisable political grouping with a leader, a programme and manifesto, a newspaper and an organisation, presenting candidates in its name and vying for public office through elections, identifying itself and identified by others, including a competing party or parties, as such an electoral entity. It is not at all clear that such a personality need be juridical or statutory in any more elaborate sense, such as when one registers a company or suchlike.
To a greater or lesser extent, many parties in democratic countries trace their origins back in time to more seminal, formative periods. In Britain, for instance, what you might call the "modern" versions of party would date back to Gladstone and Disraeli, one Whig or Liberal, the other Tory or Conservative, although their ancestry could be traced further back, even to George III's time, or earlier still. In Malta too we had movements, factions and alignments, which could be traced further back than Mizzi and Savona in the 1880s, even to the late 18th century.
It is true that, as Dr Herrera puts it, the original two parties "eventually lead to a plurality of centre right parties" (although Dandria, not Dandrea, never had a party of his own; nor would I regard sui generis party-like organisations, such as Dimech's later Xirka ta' l-Imdawlin, as centre-right). He also holds that the Savonian party, and its Stricklandian follow-up, "would eventually die out only to re-emerge giving rise to the Constitutional and Labour parties". (Actually Savona, like Dimech, could not stand Strickland, whereas Mizzi at one point had him as an ally.)
Party Politics In A Fortress Colony includes in an appendix, for the first time and from original sources, a "historical chart indicating the evolution of parties, alignments and factions in the Maltese Islands" from 1880 to 1926. This bears Dr Herrera out in so far as, first, a third party and, subsequently, a "common front" party (first the Partito Unionista and then the Partito Popolare) come about, albeit temporarily. Still, however, the Mizzian and Savonian strains are more ingrained politically and indeed socially than meets the eye, so much so that we find them re-remerging identifiably as such in 1893 and again in 1897, until the revocation of the 1887 representative government Constitution in 1903, when electoral contests are interrupted or disrupted for years.
In the face of such adversity, a broader more "national" and "patriotic" movement of sorts emerges, sometimes harbouring within it dissenting factions and diverging tactics. Mizzi dies in 1905 and Savona in 1908 (the latter foresaw in 1906 that a Labour Party in Malta could emerge soon, as in Britain).
No sooner is the war over and self-government granted by 1921 than we find as many as five parties contesting this time, none of which are altogether new. That includes the newest one, the Labour Party, now a party in its own right, with a distinct programme of its own. But even here some lineage already could be traced to Savonian-Stricklandian traits and personalities. One of its first leaders is no other than Sigismondo Savona's son, while its stand on, for example, the Maltese language, could similarly be traced back to the 19th century. Even so, this party initially and understandably feels closer to the "moderate" Panzavecchian Nationalist wing (the newly-named Unione Politica Maltese) than to the Mizzian or Stricklandian parties.
A social Christian, union-linked body, moulded in the teachings of the encyclical Rerum Novarum (neither capitalism nor socialism), this party was born (as Dom Mintoff once put it to me inelegantly but not inaccurately) "singing the Tantum Ergo". By which he meant it was not an ideologically socialist or even social-democratic grouping but rather a socially conscious, near-charitable Christian formation, first called in fact La Camera del Lavoro, one step further from a societá di mutuo soccorso, to help improve the working man's lot. It was more or less a rib taken out from the Panzavecchian pre-war Partito Popolare, to which initially it remained close but slowly forged ahead more independently with difficulty, and increasingly under Strickland's more forceful sway, until the 1940s.
When it comes to protagonists, as opposed to party names, the lineage in Malta's case becomes even more telling, especially within Nationalist ranks. The PN founding-father's son, Enrico, assumes a leadership role in the re-aligned party by 1926, when the two factions of what had remained essentially the same movement of disposition, sentiment and inspiration fuse, reverting back to the original name of Partito Nazionale, later Partit Nazzjonalista (PN). Generally speaking, this mainly bourgeois-led formation retained its propensity to see Maltese national identity in a Latin-Mediterranean context (hence italianitá and latinitá) rather than in an Anglo-Saxon/Imperial one.
In spite of the intervening hiccups and swings, which are normal to any party's history, it is easier to link-up the "new'" PN to the "old" PN, than the MLP to the RP. Its religio et patria motif as well as the newspaper Malta were other bonds.
As for Lord Strickland, he was the same person in the 1920s that he had been in the 1890s, while other relatives, Roger and Mabel, later carried the "pro-British" posture forward in a similar vein.
To see how far back one could trace our Labour Party would be an interesting exercise, if only as a serious research endeavour. Malta's Labour Party did not, one fine day, fall out of the sky, landing in Notary Carbonaro's office. The pot had been simmering awhile: just look at the personal histories of its founders, such as the Bencinis.
So far as I can deduce, even from an executive committee minute I had access to, today's PN decided definitively to accept 1880 rather than 1926 as its foundation date, shortly after the publication of my Party Politics In A Fortress Colony in 1979. And just in time, as it happened, for a centennial celebration (1880-1980), coincidentally on the eve of a general election. I was living in Switzerland but the then Leader of the Opposition, Eddie Fenech Adami, told me he had read the book thoroughly and found its documented exposition fully convincing.
Thus, while it is well known that all parties play games, I really cannot say that such a decision, taking the PN back to its Pater Patriae (at about the same time that India's Congress and Egypt's Wafd parties started) was a historical invention at all, or "playing with history", in Dr Herrera's words.
Institutions, like persons, find solace and meaning in tracing their "genealogical" roots as far back in time as they can - witness the onetime polemic as to whether the local university was founded in 1769 or rather in 1592. It has even commemorated both dates officially, under different rectorships, in 1969 and in 1992, with 1592 now the preferred anchor-point.