Ninety years after the death of one of the most loved and hated of Maltese social thinkers, Manwel Dimech lives on in the hearts of young idealists.

An enemy of domination, repression and coercion, the “Maltese hero” passed away alone on April 17, 1921, during his exile in Alexandria, Egypt.

Born on Christmas Day in 1860, Manwel Dimech was brought up in extreme poverty. He made it in and out of prison 10 times, mostly on robbery charges, where he studied hard and mastered various arts.

His 12-member family lived in a single room in a common tenement house with over 60 other people.

At 13, Dimech committed his first recorded crime of petty theft, while at 17 he committed murder – a mistake that cost him a long prison term but also planted the seed for his long-term transformation.

While in prison, he discovered his love for languages and taught himself Maltese, English, French and Italian.

Once out of prison at the age of 36, with around 20 years of imprisonment on his shoulders, he embarked on a revolutionary spree and in 1898 started issuing the weekly Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin (The Flag of the Maltese).

The newspaper was his mouthpiece to delve in the structures of oppression in a country which had been a colony of Britain since 1800 and which was held tight in the Catholic Church’s grip.

Dimech proposed the education of the masses, insisting that Malta could become an economically self-sufficient independent republic. He dreamt of social transformation where the poor would be recognised as rightful citizens.

He travelled to Tunis, Montenegro, Genoa and Milan among others before he returned to Malta ready to bring about social change. In 1911, he founded the renowned Xirka ta’ l-Imdawlin (The League of the Enlightened).

The Church, however, condemned Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin and Ix-Xirka ta’ l-Imdawlin, and excommunicated Dimech himself.

Undaunted, he re-established his former organisation with the name Ix-Xirka tal-Maltin (The League of the Maltese) but he was arrested just over a year later.

At the beginning of World War I, Malta’s British governor accepted the allegation that Dimech was a spy for Germany and he was deported to Sicily. Arrested again and asked to leave to a country apart from Malta, he went to Egypt, where he spent seven years in prisons and concentration camps in Alexandria or Cairo living as an exile.

In 1920 the reformist became half-paralysed following a stroke and was transferred to Sidi Bishr, in Alexandria, where he died alone a year later and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Ninety years on, the Maltese revolutionist is considered a “Maltese hero”. The Labour Party will be commemorating Dimech in front of his monument in ­Valletta, opposite Castille, on April 27.