A good documentary (2)

It has been said that the history that happens underneath our nose is the most deliquescent.

This may explain the false allegation made by a colleague interviewed in the film Dear Dom on the subject of the 10-year doctors’ strike .

The doctor in question, an ex Nationalist minister, stated blandly that one of the issues that provoked the strike in 1977 was the insistence of the Mintoff government at the time on newly qualified doctors giving two years’ service in public hospitals without pay.

This is plainly untrue. What was insisted on in 1977 was accepted in 1987 when the government changed hands, and is now unquestioned current practice: namely a period of two years’ paid pre-registration service.