The Mintoff that I hugged
I was already 34 when I met Dom Mintoff. He was 71, no longer leader of the Malta Labour Party or Prime Minister. In a single week in 1987, a friendship was sealed.
It was after the general election, which Labour lost. I had managed to be elected but my spirits were low.
Our leader, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, was struck by serious illness and out of action. At the then party headquarters in Cospicua, Mintoff met the parliamentarians, greeting each one individually.
He told me, “I wouldn’t have bet five liri on your being elected!” I replied with a smile that could mean many things. His nickname for me – he never called me John – became “Smiles” but that came later.
A short while later he addressed a mass meeting in Fgura. The unparalleled orator, who was able to make his listeners laugh and cry. I was there. Driving home, on a whim I made a detour to Tarxien and rang his doorbell.
A growling voice asked who it was. “Montalto!” In very colourful language he asked me what I wanted. Then I heard the door open. On the threshold, a backlit silhouette, Mintoff stood in his bathing trunks, arms akimbo. “This had better be urgent!”
My words tumbled out. I just wanted to thank him. We were broken and he was making us whole again. He was pleased. He called his wife (“Babs!”) and demanded I repeat what I had just said in English. After which, he invited me in for supper.
He asked me if I liked to swim and walk. The next day we went on our first swimming trip. On that occasion, he warned me that I had to be careful. If I were to become his friend, I would become a political target. “I’ve always wanted to be your friend,” I said. “I choose friendship.”
From that point, and for the next 16 years or so, I met him at least once a week (except during my 22-month stint as minister). We had a special rapport that, perhaps, can only exist when two men are almost 40 years apart in age and complete opposites in several respects.
He would often ask me to accompany him on trips abroad. I made him laugh, lent a non-judgmental ear to some of his confidential reminiscences, and he enjoyed grumbling that he had to take care of me when it should have been the opposite.
I became his lawyer. When several senior lawyers, sympathetic to his cause, advised that his Delimara case against the government was unwinnable, I disagreed and told him that I had found a legal precedent in Belgium. And we did win.
Somehow, I also became an emissary for his “missions impossible”. Some were tense but others, like the time he sent me to Archbishop Joseph Mercieca with an offer to buy the Curia building in Floriana (the plan was to convert it into a new Labour headquarters and, yes, he did gather the funds), make me chuckle helplessly till today.
In 1996, when I was facing a difficult re-election campaign, he imposed himself as my canvasser. He came down to my district and over two days conducted a surgical campaign on my behalf. It did wonders.
Mintoff has often been described as tight-fisted but my own experience was the opposite. For my 35th birthday, he invited me to Delimara, secretly invited my parents, wore a bright checked shirt I had given him, sang “Happy Birthday” and gave me a valuable set of etchings which Aldo Moro had given him. I had to be careful in saying that I liked something he had, since more often than not he would insist on giving it to me.
Our relationship had special rules. Mintoff didn’t like being touched but he let me hug and kiss him on both cheeks each time we met. He almost expected it. Once, when he bit my head off for a careless remark I made, he noticed I had lost my appetite. He gave me a squeeze, saying, “If I can’t get angry with those I love, who can I get angry with?”
I hesitate to describe our relationship as that between an uncle and nephew. It may be taken to be presumptuous. I would be happy to describe our odd couple as something only Walt Disney could invent: the unlikely, mutually protective friendship between two very different animals, an old lion king called “Perit” and an oversize cub called “Smiles”.
That’s the kind of figure we must have cut on a Parisian trip. Despite having been there several times, he had never managed to visit the major sights. I was happy to show him around and joke that he was getting glances from Parisian women. He told me what I could do with my jokes but he also came to my room in the mornings, when my head was still heavy with sleep, to share his special honeyed, milky tea from his thermos (where he recounted that the famous thermos dated back to the 1950s, when a serious attempt to poison him was made).
My enduring memory is from a Tunisia trip. He had insisted I learn how to windsurf. I was hopeless and drifted around a mile out and couldn’t get back. A strong swimmer even in his 70s, he dived into the sea, caught up and hauled me in. Growling, of course, because he loved me.
Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.
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Brian Farrugia
Sep 6th 2012, 00:23
Mintoff the great negotiator, do you know why?
because in his own rude, rough, and tumble way he was not fighting for himself but for his people and his beloved Malta, for him Malta came first and foremost, not his career or power, not even his own Party, not religion, not a class, just Malta, the whole of it, and how can you not love, or at least admire, a man, a true patriot like that?
stephen mifsud
Aug 26th 2012, 01:22
its in in my opinion Mintoff was the best and greatest negotiator for the less fortunate and he got Malta going as country .. its shameful for the more forunate at the time to not support him as what he did was make the poorer much richer and the richer so much more RICHER and that is a fact for,all u ignorant people who dont even know where ur money came from ... Mintoff created a richer middle and lower class so the richest of the time got so much more in return need i say more ???
Mr Clayton Mangion
Aug 25th 2012, 19:39
As From My GrandParents Experience Mintoff Was A Politician At Heart , Be He Also Was A True Friend
Thanks Dr.Montalto For Sharing This Nice Experience With Us !
May The Great Man R.I.P!
G A Bonello
Aug 25th 2012, 12:24
"For my 35th birthday, he invited me to Delimara, secretly invited my parents, wore a bright checked shirt I had given him, sang “Happy Birthday” and gave me a valuable set of etchings which Aldo Moro had given him"
According to international State protocol, any gift given by one Head of State to another is a gift from one Nation to another, Therefore these etchings should have been displayed in a museum and not kept by one person to pass on as a whim.
Mr Attard Montalto should do the right thing and donate these etchings to the Museum of Fine Arts.
A. Schembri
Aug 25th 2012, 15:56
exactly ...EXCEPT that the prime minister of Malta is NOT the head of the state. the president is the head of state. Mintoff was a prIme minister and Head of Government but not Head of State ;)
steve fenech
Aug 25th 2012, 11:19
mintoff could have been all of this to those close to him, but to the rest of us who were not mintoffjani, life in his time, was not short of hell !
although we should not speak badly about the dead, since they cannot defend themselves, we should not forget what it was like to live under mintoff either.
mintoff was not a democrat , and violence was part of his strategy to cower his opponents. proof of this, if any is needed, is the fact that not a single perpetrator of all those innumerable violent acts was ever brought to justice. and it is not as if these violent acts happened in remote place. the sacking of the curia, infront of the police headquaters. the sacking of eddie fenech adami's house, a few paces down from the local police station. the sacking and burning of the times newspaper building, next to mintoff's office. and list goes on
so lets say a prayer, for those who believe, for his soul, but lets not offend the living by giving the impression that living under mintoff was bed of roses. for his oppoents life was though, and his bullying tactics, showed him up for what he truly is. a bully living in a time warp.
Lesley Darmanin
Aug 25th 2012, 10:34
Well good for you, Dr Attard Montalto. As for the rest of us, our experience of Mintoff was one of an arrogant despostism. His handling of the Mnarja strike after the perverse 1981 result readily comes to mind. Did he ever tell you how he felt about those dockyard workers (they were workers too you know) who were beaten up for striking for a day, the bank workers who were suspended, the shops closed down around the island because they dared to say he had rigged the election? It's all nice to speak of holidays together with the great Dom, but when we went on strike for a one-day holiday he unleashed his wrath. I think that the true Dom, and not as you portray him. And one last parting shot, Dr Attard Montalto. It does make a nice read, admittedly, but the fact that you say that you stood for election on the Labour ticket in 1987 - with KMB as leader, does not do you much credit.
Henry Mifsud
Aug 25th 2012, 11:34
slight correction Lesley Darmanin. You are speaking for yourself and definitely Not for the rest of us. I for one do not concur with what you state. Not even our PM nowadays can speak for the rest of us. Understood?
Lesley Darmanin
Aug 25th 2012, 11:58
@ Henry Mifsud
Ha nghidlek Sur Mifsud, la ma tridtx tifhem. Meta tkun sid ta' hanut u jigghu l-pulizija u jghidulek biex taghlaq ghax ma ftathx f'jum l-Imnarja, dak xi jkun jemm mhus despotizmu Mintuffjan? Meta tmur ghax xoghol u tissawwat minn corma Laburisti Mintuffjani, dak xi jkun jekk mhux despotizmu Mintuffjan? Mintoff kien Prim Minister dak iz-zmien u ahna li ghexna dawk is-snin koroh ma ninsew QATT! I could not care less whether you concur or not with what I write Mr Mifsud. And I do not understand when you say that not even the PM can speak for the rest of us? What does that have to do with Mintoff's arrogant despotism after the 1981 election? And please do not bother to explain, I really could not care less what a Labour apologist like you has to say.
David Bezzina
Aug 25th 2012, 14:48
If you call that despotism that you do not know what 'despotism' means.
Charles Attard
Aug 26th 2012, 01:04
U meta jissawtu minn Corma, Nazzjonalisti, dak xi tghijdlu?? Jien ma kontx nghid li baghathom Borg Olivier ..u Mintoff zgur li ma baghathomx hu!! Dawn nghidilhom nies rashom Shuna!!! bhal ma dizgrazzjatament ghad baqa il-lum. Jien kont inmur ma shabi kemm gol kazin Nazzjonalista tal Belt u kemm tal Labour hadd ma qatt qalli xejn!! U Hatt ma sawwatni, pero fil Belt dawn l-affarijiet rajthom b'ghajnejja Xiha ta 77 sena igarawla lGebel u kissrula il gallerija. Kullhadd ghandu xi jxomm meta jerfgha dirghajh!! Make no waves.
thomas hedley
Aug 25th 2012, 09:00
I had been seeing Mintoff very often during the 'Front Maltin inqumu' meetings back in 2002,but had only managed to go to Mintoff's residence to meet him alone a couple of years ago..
After he was admitted to hospital for the first time,I decided to buy a '100 year' birthday card,and send it to him through my friend who was by his side everyday...The card was intended to give courage to the man,and I also wrote on it that I had bet he would surpass 100 (which,unfortunately I lost)
A couple of days later my friend came and told me 'Ix xih irid jarak'..I went immediately.It was a nice meeting.Between eating mackerel and potatoes and drinking fresh orange juice from his garden,he was recounting his experience with my grandpa,Tom Hedley,who was the editor of the Times of Malta in the 60's,but above all,a man of principle..We also talked about the situation regarding illegal emigrants crossing over to Libya,and he was concerned about it..
He wanted me to return,but me being light-hearted and not emotionally accepting that Mintoff had grown so feeble,and also thinking he needed much rest,never did.I wanted that to remain a nice memory of 'the man'..Now,my only regret is to never have gone to meet him when he was younger and stronger...An hour with 'il perit' is like a year of history lessons...RIP great man.
Adriano Spiteri
Aug 25th 2012, 08:58
Self-promotion
Tony Borg
Aug 25th 2012, 08:18
Someone has to list these insights of Dom and publish them. He always shunned publicity although he used the Media of those days to the fullest.
Dear John, we need more of your Private experiences with Dom.............maybe you can start by putting up a coloumn on an English speaking Paper?!!
Thank you "Smiles"
george camilleri
Aug 25th 2012, 07:53
My memories are not as happy.
mary borg
Aug 25th 2012, 07:33
I am not a Mintoff fan, but this article made me smile in a positive way. Dr Montalto showed us a clear picture of a friend, not a politician. It's more like a part of his diary. Thanks for sharing.
Vince Piscopo
Aug 25th 2012, 06:45
Very interesting Dr Montaldo. Thank you for sharing this with us.
JOHN ATTARD
Aug 25th 2012, 03:16
I read your column Mr Montalto Nd I too had a memorable experience with "IL PERIT "( MAY HE REST IN PEACE ) IN 1966 when I was an apprentice at REME , myself and a friend ( FREDDIE CARUANA ) decided to go to London to Watch some football. One of our supervisors ( Mr. Xerri ) asked us to visit his brother Arthor who used to write occasionly in the Labour party newspaper of that period.When we visited Arthur and told him who we were, we were asked to stay for dinner which we gladly accepted. Our talking soon turned to polics and our party.We discussed the situation at our workplace , as we were ready to leave Arthur pulled me aside and asked if I can HAND DELIVER A LETTER to Mr. Mintoff ny jaw dropped as I never even knew were he lived. But I was happt to do it .
As soon as we arrived in Malta i told my family what I was asked to do, my brother who used to work at the dockyard siad no problem we will go tomorroe evening at Mr. Mintoff office which we did. At his office were quit a number of people but my brother informed the person in charge what was the purpose of our visit, we wre shown to his office at once, I told Mr.Mintoff who send me he smiled ,I gave him the letter he glanced at it and asked if he can do anything for me I said No thank you but I wouldn't mind an authograph picture which he did . ISTill HAVE THAT picture and chreish NOW MORe THAN EVER . That is what Mr Mintoff is a geniune giant of a man who Changed Malta for everyone Too bad I had to come to Canada.
Thank you for the opportunity nad again Mr Montalto great read.
JOHN ATTARD
Joseph Grech
Aug 24th 2012, 23:18
I think this is priceless! We know so litttle about Dom the person! I hope we will get more of these insights as time goes on. Thank you for sharing, John.
Lynn Zahra
Aug 24th 2012, 16:41
Well, John, he may not have seen the sights whilst in Paris, but he had important things to do there. he was at the Élysées Palace for talks with Mitterand in 1979. I still have the photo of Joe Grima and Mintoff together, taken as they were leaving the Élysées, with the guards saluting them.
Robert Henry Bugeja
Aug 24th 2012, 12:54
very nice read, John.
Please choose the reason of your report below: