When Labour MEP Edward Scicluna recently wrote in glowing terms in The Times about the way Dom Mintoff handled the island’s economy, he must have expected a strong reaction from quarters that had been strongly against Mintoff’s policies.

As expected, one of the first to come out against Prof. Scicluna’s eulogy was Finance Minister Tonio Fenech. But his rebuttal was somewhat weak, which is why perhaps the Prime Minister felt the need to step in and remind one and all of what Mr Mintoff’s economics really meant.

Unfortunately, however, Lawrence Gonzi was also somewhat skeletal in his criticism, preferring to stick to the worn-out gripe that, in the time of Mintoff’s administration, people had to go to Sicily to buy chocolate and toothpaste.

However true this may have been, the unavailability of these and other products was the least of the problems the country had to go through at the time. What is most ironic, though, is that when, just before Mintoff’s death, Nationalists were being strongly criticised by Labour for bringing up past misdeeds, rather than coming out with new ideas for the country to move ahead, Labour itself has now done the job for them by indulging in a past in a way that made it sound rosy.

Of course, not all that Mintoff has done is wrong; indeed, his work to expand the welfare state, both in the time he worked under his predecessor Paul Boffa and later, when he headed the re-founded Malta Labour Party, can hardly be ignored. That is part of contemporary history.

But to go on from there to extol his economic policies is a different matter. The country may have had a budget surplus and the national debt may have been kept at 10 per cent at the time, but there is another indicator that Prof. Scicluna hardly touched upon: unemployment.

In just five years, it shot up from 4,000 to a staggering 10,000. Import substitution did not work miracles, certainly not in stemming unemployment. It did untold harm to the psyche of the people in general and, worse, to business enterprise.

Mr Mintoff created a command economy and the failure of his policies is perhaps best measured in the sharp rise in unemployment, which is why his administration had to resort to the setting up of military labour corps.

The situation had become so tense at the time and so hostile to private enterprise that the business and industrial constituted bodies had to join forces in an organisation (Confederation of Private Enterprise) to see how it could help take the island back to economic sanity.

In one document it had produced at the time, entitled ‘The way to economic recovery’, it said that, although statistics published by the government registered a national unemployment rate of about eight per cent, a study published by the private sector institutions estimated that the number of job-seekers was between 17,000 and 22,000. The unemployment rate was estimated at between 14 per cent and 17 per cent.

The socialist government’s policies had multiplied, not eased, the impact of the recession felt at the time. It is foolish to write off all that Mr Mintoff has done, but it is incorrect to give the impression that the Mintoff years were the best of times. They were not. Far from it.