Way back in August 1982, while trundling down half the length of the Italian peninsula on the way back from Lourdes in the famous White Train, a fracas in one of the cabins disturbed the peace of the night.
... it is essential at this juncture in our history to bury hatchets, exchange healing potions and extend olive branches- Kenneth Zammit Tabona
A humongous quarrel had broken out between a group of Maltese women pilgrims who hitherto had been noticeably good humoured and jolly. The reason for the quarrel was that one of the ladies had brought with her a bouquet of the type usually reserved to place at the foot of the Incoronata statue at the end of the Lourdes Esplanade.
Her five friends pressed her and pressed her to explain why she had brought this bouquet with her on the train. Finally, she admitted that she intended to give it to Dom Mintoff as a birthday present: Is-Salvatur, as some people still call him, possibly because his birthday coincides with the feast of the Salvatur (Our Saviour) in Lija on August 6. Hence, the fracas and the bouquet was torn to shreds and thrown out of the window somewhere near Genoa.
Thirty years later this story may sound ludicrous to those who do not remember what 1982 was like. However, those who lived through it, like myself, will understand how tragically divisive politics was in those days.
This, of course, brings me to the controversy raging about this film called Dear Dom which, to date, I have not watched for various reasons.
I recently read this rather controversial book called The Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett. The author analyses and discusses, in a way that no Spaniard could, the aftermath of over a century of internal strife and civil war, of mass executions, torture and disappearances culminating in the worst form of Fascist repression aided and abetted by the Church and the establishment.
The Spain of today, ironically, owes its democratic freedoms to none other than its king, who, throughout the Caudillo’s lifetime, kept his sentiments to himself and bided his time as the dictator’s “anointed” till, upon succeeding, Juan Carlos turned Spain upside down even risking his own life during an attempted military coup.
Although today’s Spain appears superficially to be a not so thriving but modern democratic state, the terrible wounds are still there, barely healed and some still festering. They have to live with them and make the best of it.
It is the same in practically every country in Europe: France with Vichy, Germany with Nazism, Italy with the partiggiani and Mussolini.
Malta’s “Time of the Troubles”, to quote a well known period of Russian history, was precisely in the 1970s and 1980s during the regime of the Socialist Party. As we all know, it dragged Malta kicking and screaming into the 20th century in many ways but with far too many fatalities and casualties along the way to justify it.
For many, Mr Mintoff was and still is the “Antichrist” but for an equal number he was and still is Is-Salvatur. This is the fate of most forceful reformers and politicians. Think about it; Lenin, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Alexander, Peter the Great, you name them, they are all revered or reviled in equal measure to this very day.
That Governor Charles Bonham-Carter recognised Mr Mintoff’s political savvy and shrewdness and recommended his Rhodes Scholarship in the late 1930s is a fact. However, that was a Dom Mintoff who, yet, had to fight and lose the battle for integration, which made his return to power in 1971 an event coloured by an overpowering thirst for revenge on those who had thwarted his plans. These included the Nationalist Party, the Church, notably Archbishop Michael Gonzi with his anathemas, the courts and, ironically, the British themselves who rejected outright this hitherto pro-British politician, a man who had married into the British aristocracy just like his predecessor Lord Strickland.
For the British of the time, God was still an Englishman and accepting Mr Mintoff in Westminster... well! In retrospect, one gets the distinct impression that the Mintoff period was one in which all the good that the man achieved was, in the words of Mark Antony, interred in his bones except that Mr Mintoff is still alive though not still kicking in his formidable fashion.
The last time he kicked was in 1998 when he brought his own Labour government to its knees. Hence, Dear Dom ostensibly revives the spirit of the age many of us, including people in the Labour Party as well, had rather bury. For many, Mr Mintoff in 1998 was and still is a traitor to his own party.
This is why it is essential at this juncture in our history to bury hatchets, exchange healing potions and extend olive branches. If Germany, France, Spain and Portugal can do it why not us Maltese?
We live in a country where most of us are either related to everyone else or have known one another for generations. Therefore, reviving old memories and reopening old wounds does nothing to instil a sense of fairness and equitability in our democratic system, something that Eddie Fenech Adami was always adamant about and, in my humble opinion, succeeded in achieving.
Successive Presidents in the last three decades, all, save one, former Nationalist Party ministers, echoed this sentiment. Statesmen like Guido de Marco and Ċensu Tabone earned the respect of all the Maltese as may be attested by the eulogies that accompanied their funeral rites.
As for President George Abela, he has worked wonders.
This is our only way forward as a nation and this will not be realised if we make national issues about films like Dear Dom. I will never forget the experience of watching Tea With Mussolini with a German girlfriend of mine whose grandfather was in the Luftwaffe. By the end of the film I too was weeping with her.