The people of Malta started to have a say in their life and country in the late twenties and early thirties.

At the beginning of the existence of the islands the inhabitants were just a few hundred and by the time the British left numbers had risen to approximately 300,500.

The islands were always dominated by occupiers who used them for their own benefit using the inhabitants as slaves or poorly paid labour.

Only under the British did the people start to have a real say in what went on in the islands when a legislative assembly was installed.

All the occupiers left structures and famous relics, the finest examples being Ġgantija built by the Chalcolithic people, which is still the oldest megalithic construction in existence in the world.

The first time that all the people of the Maltese islands comprising of farmers, dockyard workers, domestic servants etc, began to benefit was in the late twenties and early thirties when the legislative assembly started passing laws for the people.

One fine law was to replace the Italian language in the courts and civil service by Maltese and English.

Before that only 4,000 or so had the vote and were conversant in Italian.

The general population was therefore dependant on those few people.

In 1937, 20 distinguished Maltese authors under the leadership of Dum Karm Psaila, including my father John F. Marks and great uncle, Toni Said got together to promote the use of the Maltese language and effect the change that we have today.

Although the British had used the islands the same as all other occupiers, they left us with organised self-government even though sometimes it is abused by those few in power.

I hope that the present government and future ones will wake up and start teaching our young ones the truth about the nation.