It is an afternoon Cabinet meeting at Auberge de Castille, in Valletta, when Health Minister Vincent Moran informs colleagues of impending industrial action by doctors.

The year is 1977 and Parliament has just approved a law that requires doctors who have graduated to serve two years in the public health service before receiving their warrant.

The Medical Association of Malta is up in arms and Dr Moran tells the Labour government Cabinet he has just received notice that doctors were planning action.

This rare insight into what was happening behind the scenes of the doctors’ dispute is documented in undated Cabinet minutes from 1977, made available for the first time yesterday at the National Archives in Rabat.

The minutes document Cabinet’s decision to have a hospital emergency service run by the chief government medical officer (CGMO), who had to identify doctors and specialists for the purpose.

Ministers decreed that doctors and specialists forming part of the service had to sign a declaration that they would continue serving on the day of the industrial action. The doctors had to report directly to the CGMO.

Cabinet also agreed to give MAM a same-day 9pm deadline to respond on the emergency service and, if no reply was forthcoming, the CGMO had to go on television that same evening and explain what was happening.

But the ministers also agreed what he had to tell the nation in his broadcast. “The CGMO will advise the government to take charge of the emergency service and run it directly, if need be with the help of foreign doctors.”

What followed is not documented but this Cabinet decision may have very well set the scene for the escalation that occurred after doctors resorted to industrial action on June 1 that year.

The murder of Karin Grech does not seem to have been discussed at Cabinet meetings held after the letter bomb explosion

The dispute lasted 10 years, with the government locking out doctors who went on strike and replacing them with foreign doctors.

An ugly facet of the dispute was the letter bomb sent to Edwin Grech, a doctor who had been accused of being a strike breaker. The bomb was posted to Prof. Grech’s residence in December 1977 and exploded in the hands of his daughter, Karin. She died and her brother was badly injured.

Yet, despite the furore it caused, the murder does not seem to have been discussed at Cabinet meetings that followed the incident.

At least, minutes of the meetings held in the immediate aftermath do not document any discussion related to Prof. Grech’s ordeal.

However, this may not come as a surprise because a cursory look at the minutes of Mintoff’s administration shows very few Cabinet meetings were held at irregular intervals and with little detail recorded.

Another example is the Cabinet meeting held at the end of October 1979, in the aftermath of Black Monday, when socialist thugs ransacked Eddie Fenech Adami’s house in Birkirkara and burnt the premises of Times of Malta in Valletta.

At a Cabinet meeting held at Auberge de Castille at 8.30pm on October 26, ministers decided on the action needed to respond to criticism in newspapers, the Council of Europe and Parliament over what the Opposition claimed was “the socialist government’s encouragement of violence”.

But the minutes, in one paragraph, only record the final decision without stating what the course of action was.

The Cabinet documents were released by the government last month and cover the Borg Olivier and Mintoff administrations of the 1960s and 1970s until 1981.

Minutes covering Mr Mintoff’s first legislature, between 1971 and 1976, were not found.

A characteristic that emerges is that minutes in George Borg Olivier’s Cabinet were recorded in English while those in Mr Mintoff’s time were taken in Maltese.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com

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