Mark Montebello’s piece ‘Another lost opportunity’ (September 2) was courageous and to the point.

“By trying to make him bigger and bigger,” he wrote, Dominic Mintoff “is only made smaller and smaller”. For indeed it is proportion, or even a sense of it, that ails most accounts which have been hitherto proffered with regard to Mintoff, he added, emphasizing context and hence critical of one-stop-shop “grand narratives”.

He understood “why this is done by academically incompetent people” but was irked by the fact that “such unprofessionalism may be observed right across the board”. He wondered if that was not a product of insularity: “…cut off from the world, as if our little world has a dynamism of its own, more or less unrelated to context and largely unaffected by it.”

Fr Montebello may have been provoked into these worthwhile reflections by an unadulterated double-page eulogy of Mintoff in The Sunday Times of Malta (August 7). In this, the author said that Mintoff’s name “was destined to be engraved on the list of famous politicians of all time in the history of humankind”. That included “the roll of honour of the world-famous Oxford University”.

If this last throw-away is a reference to my commissioned, extended biography of Mintoff for the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, I am afraid that was no eulogy, although it certainly tried hard to establish a sense of proportion. One peer reviewer concluded it was the best thing he had ever read on Mintoff!

For the record, I have had entries published in Oxford and New York about various other Malta-related personalities from Ball to Boffa, Mifsud to Strickland, Borg Olivier to Mintoff.

Eulogy is not history. Without a critical comparative edge in a context, any writer and his or her writings will lack credibility, quality and durability. Narrow parochial partisanship will inevitably limit their worth or lasting value, however ‘popular’ these might appear to a certain ‘insular’ audience.

This is an island of cults, saints or politicians. Thank God we do not practise voodoo

In my chapter ‘Why was Dimech not repatriated after WWII?’ (Europe and Empire, 2012, p143), I quoted Kenneth Morgan, who held that: “If history is not served by uncritical eulogy, neither is it helped by mindless abuse.”

Fr Montebello’s Talking Point brings to mind an incisive article which Jeremy Boissevain contributed to Ferment magazine, organ of the Society for the Promotion of Independent Expression. It was called: ‘Why do the Maltese ask so few questions?’

Unfortunately, certain individuals here are very intolerant of any criticism, including possibly a pointed question during a viva. Others are afraid of contextualisation, be that an attempt to come to terms with Borg Olivier or Mintoff, Giuseppe Donati or Umberto Calosso, for that matter. Monopolising and politicising seem to be a residual trait, albeit a sad one, the more so when paranoically ‘hurt’ persons bear grudges for life.

This is an island of cults, saints or politicians. Thank God we do not practise voodoo. Politicians get caught in this quagmire at their own peril. One expects better of would-be intellectuals – and, if I may add, of public broadcasters who are worth their salt.

Imagine writing about Borg Olivier, for example, without going into his clash with Herbert Ganado. Balancing out positives with negatives is not easy and is subject to interpretation, but ‘facts’, national or international, remain sacred. Was mortal sin imposed on Labour Party supporters in 1961 or not? Did housing boom in 1969 or not?  Did Malta confer its highest honour on Kim Il Sung of North Korea or not?  Was the Progress Press building gutted in 1979 or not?

The conclusion to my OUP entry on Mintoff reads as follows: “Mintoff was subsequently slowly rehabilitated, and upon his death it was planned to have two monuments erected in his memory, one in his home town of Cospicua and another in central Valletta. In homage to his cult, the Nationalist administration – ironically led by Lawrence Gonzi, Archbishop Gonzi’s great-nephew – decreed two days of mourning and a state funeral when he died at his home in Tarxien on August 20, 2012, 50 years to the day since Borg Olivier had officially demanded independence from Britain.

“When Borg Olivier died in 1980 he too had been accorded a state funeral, which Mintoff, as prime minister, had attended.

“If social reform and a gift of the gab were what had mostly endeared Mintoff to many people, a disruptive collapse in law and order, accompanied by discrimination and scarcities, was arguably what mostly alienated them from his rule. Idiosyncratic and vitriolic, he was a mover and shaker who left a larger-than-life mark on history.”

Henry Frendo directs the university’s Institute of Maltese Studies.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.