British apology in order

The meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government and the related visit of Queen Elizabeth II are momentous occasions for Malta. Such moments provide wonderful opportunities for meaningful actions, one of which should be the long overdue acknowledgement of, and apology for a great wrong done to the Maltese people by the British authorities in Malta. I refer to the internment and deportation of Maltese Nationalists during World War II, the facts of which I shall hereby summarise for those of you unfamiliar with these events.

Sixty-five years ago, in 1940, shortly after the outbreak of the war, about a 100 Maltese people were arrested and interned on mere suspicion and whispered accusation. They were never accused publicly of any wrongdoing and never knew what it was that they were supposed to have done. Forty-three of these people were subsequently deported to Uganda in February of 1942, to a camp close to a malaria-infested swamp. This was done notwithstanding them having taken the colonial government to court and winning their case, and while another case on the basis of hastily drawn-up new legislation was still pending for decision. Again, it is to be stressed that these people had broken no law, and done nothing to warrant this treatment.

The group ranged from a Chief Justice to a dockyard worker, with their only common factor being that they were Maltese Nationalists suspected of having pro-Italian tendencies. I quote the title of a recent film about the infamous blacklisting of the McCarthy era in the United States of the 1950s - Guilty by Suspicion.

The lives of these people and their families were seriously impacted upon by these actions, and further details of this travesty of justice, and inhumane treatment, can be obtained by reading Herbert Ganado's memories in Rajt Malta Tinbidel, Carmel Farrugia's succinct academic treatise in Polluted Politics, or Ray Bondin's Deportations '42. We cannot be allowed to forget that these events had led to the impassioned speech in Parliament by the then leader of the Nationalist Party Sir Ugo Mifsud ending thus: "I pray God that recriminations like these which leave an indelible mark in our history will not happen in Malta. I am feeling ill...". Sir Ugo there fainted and died soon after.

This flagrant disregard for the law courts and the established Maltese system of government was a breach of the trust that the Maltese had placed in the British when they had been, in the words of the immortal Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "a very small people asking to form part, of their own free will, of the British Commonwealth of Nations".

Therefore, the arrival among us of Queen Elizabeth II, in her role as Head of the Commonwealth, is the ideal occasion for the "indelible mark" referred to by Sir Ugo Mifsud to be, if not erased, at least salved. May I hereby simply say to Her Majesty, who in her younger days has had occasion, like Coleridge, to enjoy our hospitality first hand, that an apology would be very much in order.