Requisitioned houses

Eddy Privitera completely misunderstood the gist of my letter (February 28) and insinuated that I would rather see concrete buildings instead of gardens around Spinola Palace. While obviously agreeing to having a garden instead of buildings, I objected to the way the property was taken from private owners.

May I remind readers that in the 1970s and 1980s people who owned a vacant property lived in constant fear of their property being requisitioned.

For the young readers and not so young but who tend to forget, requisition meant that if a Labour supporter fancied a vacant property, all he had to do was ask the minister responsible for housing to transfer the property to his name and, hey presto, this is what happened. Incredible but very true. One might think that this was an isolated case but, on the contrary, there were hundreds of houses and flats that were requisitioned in this way. Mr Privitera would not deny this.

One would have thought that a former president of a Labour Party club and an unofficial spokesman would have repented for these barbaric acts. On the contrary, in his reply to my letter he wrote that owners of private property do not have a God-given right to do whatever they please with their own property! So now we have another confirmation that new Labour is not so new after all and that having private property is not for you to decide what to do with it, but it's up to the Labour minister responsible for housing. I can now understand why Lino Spiteri, in his latest book, said, and I quote, "I do not want to have anything to do with a party in which there was so much filth and prejudice".