REALITIES

Now that the Labour Party has jumped onto the bandwagon of sticking up for the young editor of Realta’, Mr Mark Camilleri, everyone and his brother has started to realise that there’s something in what I was going on about so many months ago, when the story first hit the news.

It’s so easy to be in Opposition, isn’t it?

You can criticise and take all manner of positions, because it’s not you that is charged with maintaining respect for the rule of law and public order. Not to mention running the country without resorting to what is becoming known as the Mugabe School of Economic Theory (printing more money)

Where were the Labour Party when the Rector started off this farce by reporting a newspaper to the Police, for all the world as if we’d gone back to the heady days of criminal libel, with the cops being directed by this Minister or that Prime Minister to take steps against that paper or that editor?

It would not be surprising for you, if you have the slightest grasp of history, to know that the heyday of criminal libel was the Labour period of 1971 to 1987, which feels as if it was aeons ago, but isn’t, really. This is why I find all these calls for respect for freedom of expression and press liberty coming from the (so-called) Left so ironic: back in the day, Mintoff had the London Times banned for, I believe, something in the region of 18 months because it had dared to criticise him (like there weren’t grounds to indulge in that particular pastime).

Mintoff has just been welcomed back into the fold with open arms, so it’s perfectly justifiable for me to raise this particular spectre from the dead. But still, today is today and Labour have come over all freedom and respect for the press and all these great notions.

Their only problem is that, as usual, they were just a beat too late: clearly, they have come to the conclusion that there is a mood that requires pandering to in a segment that they have identified as a target segment with some disgruntled voters (the thinking class, if you like) so they’ve hopped onto that particular bandwagon.

Real thinkers, though, can see why and are not particularly impressed.

And nor, frankly, will Labour’s core be particularly impressed by this move towards liberalism. There’s no-one more hidebound and conservative than your average Labour voter, and when it comes to “moral standards” (public moral standards at least) you’d be hard pressed to find anyone more likely to go “tut tut tut these things shouldn’t be allowed”.

In this, they’re like Nationalist core-voters, of course, so basically, Joseph Muscat’s position will be appreciated by very few, and that few will be diminished even more by the tardiness of its taking, it being obvious that it’s a bit calculated.

The prosecution, if it goes ahead, is just a natural consequence of the lurch towards fundamentalism that the country has experienced over the last few years.

“Stitching”, sub iudice following the arrogation to itself of the right to tell me what I am mature enough to watch or not watch by the Film & Theatre Censorship Board, is but one symptom of the malaise, and there have been others. The cops passing on a complaint about naked mannequins in Mosta was another, though this was perhaps more in the nature of farce than tragedy.

While on the subject of the cops and farce, let’s take a step back, incidentally, and stick up for them a bit on the subject of this prosecution. In the nature of things, once a report has been made, it is incumbent on the police to investigate and, if they believe an offence may have been committed, to prosecute. It is not up to them to assess the reasonableness of the law and whether it has a place in the early 21st century, and it is probably quite right that this is the case, because you can’t have the police deciding whether or not to prosecute, or choosing who to prosecute or not.

Similarly, though to a lesser extent, the Government is not exactly to blame, except for failing to grasp this particular nettle and change the law many, many years ago. After the Oz, Lady Chatterly, Equus (I think, or was it Romans in Britain?) and Rupert the Bear trials (not in that order) in England it was clear to everyone with a quarter of a brain that the law on censorship and obscenity was anachronistic and, not to put too fine a point on it, ridiculous.

Mary Whitehouse lives on in Malta, however, mainly because no-one, not Labour in the Seventies and Eighties or the Nationalists in the Nineties and Noughties, thought to put her to the sword.

The Government could, of course, enact amendments sooner rather than later, especially now that the Labour Party has had to take a position, and kill the whole thing, but since when have politicians done anything sensible quickly?

No, the real culprit in all this was the Rector, the leader of Malta’s academics, who chose to take a position that I can only describe as anachronistic and anti-free speech and freedom of expression. It is almost as ironic that this attack on the latter two freedoms came from Tal-Qroqq as it is that Labour has come down on the side of the freedoms (just to make the point, the PN has kept schtum, to their shame). In the Seventies, Tal-Qroqq was a focal point in the fight against restrictions on our various freedoms.

To end this with another pointing finger: just as I see it as shameful that the Rector was moved to take this position, I find it equally shameful that the academic staff have failed to raise their voice against it. There are rumours that polite murmurs have been made, but to my knowledge, there’s been nothing public.

Sad, that.