Whose independence?

A s part of the Independence Day festivities there will be a laying of floral wreaths at monuments or graves of departed prime ministers. These are: Giorgio Borg Olivier, Sir Paul Boffa, Lord Strickland, Nerik Mizzi, Sir Ugo Mifsud, Joseph Howard and Francesco Buhagiar.

With all due respect to the National Festivities Committee's effort to commemorate our country's transition from colonialism to statehood, that is independence, honouring all prime ministers qua individual holders of political office by no means sheds a truthful light on Malta's long and difficult road to independence.

Some other deserving options would comprise the following. The monument to the Maltese Insurrection of September 2, 1798, which continued to resonate at least until June 15, 1802 through the Maltese Declaration of Rights (in Piazza Indipendenza); the marble plaque in honour of Fortunato Mizzi (1844-1905), who mobilised a nationalist movement for representative government and became known as pater patriae (in Strada Zecca, later re-named Old Mint Street); that to the Sette Giugno 1919 at the Addolorata Cemetery, inaugurated emotionally some years later; those to Manwel Dimech (1860-1921) and to Dr Borg Olivier (1911-1980) both in Castille Place; that to Sir Ugo Mifsud and to Independence itself at The Mall, Floriana; and possibly that in memory of M.A. Vassalli, at the entrance to Żebbuġ.

Nerik Mizzi's monument qualifies too because he was undoubtedly a great patriot of exemplary courage, honesty and integrity even though there may still be some debatable ambivalence as to his version of "italianità" vis-à-vis independence; he accompanied Mifsud to London demanding Dominion Status in 1932 and suffered more for his "patria" than any other Maltese politician. The same would apply to Dominic Mintoff who had initially sought to integrate Malta with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although to exclude him and his party from the attainment of independence especially between 1958 and 1964 would be a gross historical nonsense. This problem does not arise anyway because there is no physical monument to him: many still recoil at the fact that he effectively brought down two Labour administrations (Pawlu Boffa's and Alfred Sant's), and at the generally disturbing 1970s and 1980s which witnessed political violence on an unprecedented scale, luckily not witnessed ever again since.

The easiest decision would have been to exclude Lord Strickland's monument at the Upper Barrakka. While this Anglo-Maltese politician certainly may be credited with an injection of progress and of modernisation as he saw them (after 1927 partly at the prompting of the nascent Labour Party without whose support he would never have governed) the thought of independence for Malta would have been repulsive to him, a committed Imperialist. He is on record to have stated publicly that he wanted the Maltese to be English in thought, in deed and in fact. My article about him in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, published in London last week, shows that as governor of New South Wales until 1917 he was at odds with "his" state Premier and Parliament, a situation effectively leading to his recall; to say nothing of his (so far largely unknown) skirmishes with leading Catholic episcopal authorities even there, especially in Melbourne. He was jealous of the powers of the governor vis-à-vis the state Parliament and of those of the state vis-à-vis the federal government, let alone the British Empire vis-à-vis a fortress colony. He was at times alert to a degree of constitutional entitlement, in the 1880s and again in the 1930s, but nothing which would as much as hint even at Dominion Status. His daughter Mabel continued to be wary of the very thought of an independent Malta, as did some other political leaders, soon afterwards eclipsed. To go for independence was a bold decision.

Sir Paul Boffa was a much loved, socially conscious leader whose memory has continued sometimes to be recorded in letters to The Times up to now. However, from the standpoint of independence, he had for example voted with the governor and Lord Strickland's Constitutional Party members in the Council of Government illegally and unconstitutionally to deport scores of Maltese, including many workers, without charge or trial, admittedly in wartime. Dr Borg Olivier alone opposed that, as I make clear in my biography of him (2005, 600 pp). An idiotic interruption by a Stricklandian councillor, one Bartoli, very probably led to Sir Ugo Mifsud's heart attack in 1942 while he was delivering one of the grandest speeches about human rights in constitutional law ever delivered in a colonial Parliament, leading to his death two days later.

Such is the stuff of which independence is made, or at any rate was made.

In the firmament of Maltese political development - as opposed to the mere honouring of titles, positions, plaques and monuments - Joseph Howard and Francesco Buhagiar of the Panzavecchian Unione Politica Maltese were minor lights; they served inconspicuously for a short time.

What is more significant than independence is the freedom in its wake. If freedom without independence is impossible, independence without freedom is a mockery. The word in Maltese is libertà or ħelsien. Unlike Nkrumah's Ghana or Le Kuan Yew's Singapore, Dr Borg Olivier's Malta saw a peaceful transfer of power in 1971, as well as the ushering in of a diversified infrastructural socio-economic development. Nobody on the lawn in Harare in May 1980 at the opening of Parliament could have imagined what Zimbabwe would come to, but Robert Mugabe still celebrates his Independence Day annually with much pomp and fanfare.

Prof. Frendo is the author of Party Politics in a Fortress Colony (1979, 2nd ed. 1991), The Origins of Maltese Statehood (1999, 2nd ed. 2000) and of Malta's Quest for Independence (1989).