Game over for a political ball

Is the closure of the Malta Drydocks the end of an era as many have proclaimed? Not really: hidden agendas and political footballs are here to stay with us forever.

The Maltese dockyard has been perceived differently by the various protagonists in our history. To the Knights of Malta and the British it signified the zenith of their naval might. To its thousands of workers it was their daily bread but to the Labour Party it was its infamous 'eighth army'; to the General Workers' Union it was its reason for being; to the Nationalist Party, it was its Achilles heel. To some it was also a source of terror during the occasional orchestrated outbreaks of a militant nucleus of its workers.

No amount of veiled accusations made by the Labour Party and/or the GWU to the effect that the Drydocks was deliberately undermined can ever make us forget the decades of abuse of their loyal dockyard workers. One needs not go too far back in history to recall the seven-month-long industrial action prior to the 1971 election.

And when convenient, the 'eighth army' could be relied upon to wreck the Curia or the law courts. People my age will not easily forget the threatening line of dockyard trucks with workers on their way to Valletta.

On many an instance, the issue at stake had nothing to do with the dockyard. Even after 1987, the 'eighth army' was used to block the Grand Harbour to stop the Ark Royal from visiting us. As it happened, it berthed in St Paul's Bay. But the message was clear: Labour could strangle Malta, even from the opposition.

For the Nationalist administration it was one humiliation after another; the few PN supporters among dockyard employees were pilloried, harassed and denied overtime while the administration could do nothing except 'transfer' them to safer government posts.

When in power, of course, Labour's attitude dramatically shifted. Then Labour demanded efficiency and sacrifices and Dom Mintoff once denigrated them by asking whether they had any 'marbles' like workers in foreign shipyards had.

Alfred Sant blatantly reneged on his electoral promise and castrated the workers' council by substituting it with one where the elected members were in a minority.

The attitude of the PN in power was to grin and bear it while the workers' council and the GWU stuck on to economically unsustainable working practices. Eventually, former council chairman Sammy Meilaq himself confessed that the worker's council was in a permanent 'cold war' with the PN administration.

The massive losses made by the dockyard were the annual 'protection money' the PN government had to pay to avoid unrest and run the rest of the country peacefully. These accumulated losses are now the major part of our national debt, but I guess Eddie Fenech Adami reasoned it was well worth it.

The PN had no choice but to buy industrial peace in the days when the GWU controlled the port, the airport and wherever mattered.

This charade would have probably gone on forever were it not for Malta's EU membership that forced Malta to justify state aid. The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was the famous, or rather infamous, Fairmount contract.

I am unaware of the details but I understand it was based on an assumed high level of productivity and included an open-ended commitment in favour of the owners. The yard lost millions.

I find it hard to believe that the management under Austin Gatt's sharp-eyed tutelage could have got it that wrong. Was there a deliberate 'suicidal' decision to bankrupt the dockyard for good, as the GWU is trying to imply with its repeated calls for an inquiry? I do not know, but it certainly led to the last of the long list of nails in the GWU's coffin.

Was this the 'final solution', the political reply to the persistent abuse of the loyalty of the dockyard workers by their beloved Labour Party? As the bard would have put it, they "loved not wisely but too well"!

The closure of the Malta Dockyard is not the end of Malta's centuries' old maritime industry. The shipyard will rise again from its ashes in new enterprises that are likely to flourish in future: super yachts and whatnot.

But to do this it had to die, for this was the only way it got out of the clutches of both political parties.

I hope some of the dockyard workers will find their fulfilment in the new enterprises that will replace the dockyard. Malta needs their skills.

This is the message the current administration should give to them: it is worth more than a golden handshake because it gives them their pride back. But they should be careful should they fall in love again: political parties will always have their hidden agendas.

Now it is game over for a political ball that has been kicked around too many times. The PN has had the last laugh - at the taxpayers' expense, of course.

micfal@maltanet.net