Thirty-five years ago, I married 'Er Indoors, there was a bad storm and assorted thugs burnt down the Times' offices and attacked and destroyed Dr Eddie Fenech Adami's home, terrorising his family in the process.

The first two of these significant events were unrelated to each other and to the other two, while the latter two were part of the same systemic failure on the part of the Mintoffian Establishment, including Malta's Finest, who let themselves down horribly, to rein in its violent elements.  

It is useless, even at this distance in history, for Labour's apologists to try to dispel the stark, unequivocal, fact that the thugs who carried out the attacks, both on their physical targets and on democracy itself, were Labour supporters.  

Those animals did not form the bulk of Labour voters, obviously, who must have been as horrified as the rest of us, but they militated very close to the core, the storm-troopers, if you like, of an ugly movement which hid in plain sight

For a similar, though nowhere near as violent, phenomenon, students of social conflict might want to compare the way thugs who kill birds have been given space to expand their scope of "activities".  Happily, it seems, at least for now, that history's lesson might, actually, have been taken on board this time around.

I was not in Malta (except for the first of the events I listed) at the time but I was in Malta for others, such as the October 5th Students' Protest and the 1977 Graduation, to mention but two when the Police, to their shame, allowed criminals to run riot and averted their eyes, if not worse in some cases.

This particular 35th Anniversary, the torching of the Times and the ransacking of the Fenech Adami home, did not form part of the panem et circenses social whirl patronised by Dr Joseph and Mrs Michelle Muscat, Malta's own JFK and Jackie.  

No mediocre "Gensna" knock-off was put up by the so-called rock elite (an elite, incidentally, that seems to think playing cover versions with a symphony orchestra is the non plus ultra of the rock life) and the bastions of Isla and Birgu were not lit up with images of the Times' employees escaping for their lives out of upstairs windows.

It is convenient for Labour to forget history, leaving the slate blank for it to re-written for the greater glorification of the movement, which will soon be tellng us that it was Mintoff who acieved Independence, Sant who took us into Europe and Muscat who commissioned the Piano masterpiece.

With delicious irony, another of Mintoff's chickens came home to roost just last Wednesday, when the Court of Appeal dismissed the Government's appeal against the Civil Court's judgement on the National Bank theft perpetrated by Mintoff's Government.  

Again, no concerts or other fluffy diversions were put up to commemorate that democratic achievement, because that's what veils are for, to cover embarrassing pustules.