Those of you who bothered to read this column last Saturday will have noticed that I didn't refer to the change of the guard at the Palace. This was not deliberate - I write this thing quite early in the week and it slipped my mind that I should, probably, have marked the event.

Had I done so, paeans of praise would have fallen from my keys, as both the gentlemen concerned are sufficient unto the prospect. Eddie Fenech Adami, while being human and therefore not perfect, deserves the nation's thanks for ridding us of the scourge of his predecessors, while George Abela, who is also human, is a good bloke, the carping of some infantile types notwithstanding.

Actually, to be honest, not much praise would have been forthcoming because decent people don't need puffery.

On the other hand, though, if you want to cast your eyes over a bitter and sorry piece of revisionism, you should surf over to l-orizzont and take a look at Joseph Sammut's piece about Dr Fenech Adami. That's if the paper's management haven't come over all embarrassed and removed it, that is.

I, and people like me, keep getting dumped on by certain other columnists, generally of a younger and less retentive disposition, for continually revisiting the past.

Leaving aside the maxim that if you ignore the past you are doomed to relive it, often with more dire twists to the tale, when you come across pieces of ill-disguised venom such as the one carried by l-orizzont, you have to stand up and be counted, whatever the smug and comfy ones say.

I'll take just one of the various items of evidence against Dr Fenech Adami that Mr Sammut used to attack him. According to this student of our history, the industrial unrest that racked the country in the 1970s was the result of Nationalist machinations, timed to coincide with Dr Fenech Adami's election to the leadership of the party.

Recall, if you will, a number of salient facts.

Fact the first: the Labour Party, the workers' party was in government. Fact the second: the General Workers' Union, that prides, and prided itself on being a valiant defender of the worker, was joined at the hip with the Labour Party. Fact the third: workers in the telecommunications sector were left in limbo, without pay, for a period of not less than seven months for daring to raise their heads above the parapet and be less than adulatory of Dom Mintoff's regime. Fact the fourth: these workers, who could have starved for all the regime cared, were represented by a union that was not the GWU and the latter did not feel that it should raise the merest of peeps in their defence.

This, according to Mr Sammut, whose grasp of history is such that he should be awarded - at least - a double doctorate in the subject, was all orchestrated by the Nationalist Party, led by Dr Fenech Adami.

If you want more about the industrial relations scene at the time, recall the reaction of the regime against the partial industrial action called by the doctors. They were immediately locked out, with violent Labourites in close attendance, and to hell with the health service - the population could suffer all it liked.

This was also, of course, a dastardly plan by the Nationalists, if you believe people like our hero, Mr Sammut, and his revisionist view of what this country went through.

Ask the teachers, the bankers, the transport workers, the bakers, the architects, the University students and the housewives protesting because there was no water in their taps, ask anyone who was not part of the regime's power structure about how Malta was run in those halcyon (halcyon for people like Mr Sammut, of course). Ask all these people what it was like to experience the tender mercies of the regime's henchmen, the nobility of the workers, mobilised to ensure that the mediocre, the corrupt, the bitter and those whose only merit was that they supported the regime, kept their wrongful place in society.

And then revisit Mr Sammut's article and see whether you should analyse a bit more deeply the extent to which he revises - disfigures, more like - the country's past.

All the lil'elves can now enjoy themselves, grinding familial or partisan axes.

The fact remains, however, that for all their revisionism and dismemberment of the national memory, Mr Mintoff's regime was nothing more than a dark period through which we had to pass in order to emerge as a European democracy.

In conclusion, please remember that it's that time of year, the time when BJ's, that excellent establishment in Paceville, where music is live and living, holds its fund-raiser for causes great and good. Go there and have a listen, and a beer or six and, more importantly, when you pay for your beer, pay over some more. Not for Philip Fenech, who organises the thing, but for the causes he helps. You have your instructions, now obey.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.