Last Sunday was the 55th anniversary of the April 28, 1958 riots, which followed a general strike ordered by the General Workers Union and altercations between the police and demonstrators. The riots are also associated with the end of Dom Mintoff’s first government and his grave confrontation with the colonial authorities.

He was convinced he had been poisoned since then Governor, Robert Laycock, came down with hepatitis at the same time

Just how grave it was, or at least how grave Mintoff thought it was, is not generally known, however. Indeed, the impact of the events of 1958 on Mintoff, and on alliances he formed then, is often underestimated.

I was fortunate, in the course of many years of friendship, to have had Mintoff recount some key episodes to me. They were a series of anecdotal reminisces, usually provoked by a comment I had passed.

On one occasion he explained how he was aware that, in that period, his phone was tapped and his mail opened. He joked that he had had to create his own secret service to counteract the real British secret service.

The colonial authorities must have suspected that Mintoff had friends in Whitehall, and elsewhere, who were keeping him abreast of political developments. They were friends he had made in Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, and shortly thereafter when he was an engineer working on defence-related projects.

Mintoff found a way to receive the information. It would be by mail, which was, however, never addressed to him. He gave his friends a dozen or so addresses of ordinary persons, such as a grocer, a news agent, or a Dockyard worker who would receive mail intended for him right under the noses of British secret services.

On another occasion, I found out the story behind Mintoff’s famous thermos, which he never travelled without.

I was attending a conference with him in Paris. I was asleep in my hotel room when I was woken up by a loud banging on my door. I looked at the clock and realised that the conference was to start in about 20 minutes.

Sleepy-eyed, I opened the door. It was Mintoff, fuming. He had his thermos in one hand and an empty cup in the other. He took one look at me and immediately surmised that I had gone out the night before, a cunning plan I had kept from him. He exclaimed a few choice words, about how he had ended up bringing me breakfast in bed when I was supposed to be the one assisting him.

I was amused by the travelling thermos, with its staple concoction of tea, milk and honey, and the next day, while walking the streets of Paris with him, I brought up the subject by remarking how convenient it must be to carry one.

Convenience, he retorted, had nothing to do with it. In April 1958, around the time that he had resigned as prime minister, he contracted hepatitis. He was convinced he had been poisoned since the then Governor, Robert Laycock, came down with hepatitis at the same time.

Mintoff said the British Secret Services did not trust either of them because of their warm relationship. It had certainly been a friendly relationship because Laycock had a good humoured way with Mintoff’s abrasiveness, which Mintoff appreciated.

Apparently, at one of the first meetings Mintoff called Laycock “a tall British b*****d”. Laycock replied that while he did not take offence at being called a British b*****d, “I do certainly do take offence when you bring my height into it.”

Mintoff’s anxiety about poisoning went beyond carrying a thermos. During our 17 years of friendship, I only once saw him eat at an a la carte restaurant, and this was because we were hosting the chairman of Air Tunisia. On all other occasions, he preferred to select his own food from an open buffet.

The events of 1958 also sealed certain alliances that Mintoff had with leading Maltese business families.

I once passed an unwarranted remark about a prominent Maltese family. Mintoff reacted furiously, almost chewing off my head. I thought it was a bit much.

The next day, seeing I was still a bit hurt, Mintoff began to explain. There was a good reason he implicitly trusted certain families. There was a time when a number of heads of these families risked their lives for him. For they would have been arraigned for treason, by the colonial authorities, if what they had done for Mintoff had been discovered.

After the events preceding and following those of April 1958, he concluded the Maltese may have had to fight for their freedom. He managed to obtain a substantial quantity of weapons but had nowhere to hide them. He found help from unexpected quarters: a flour mill, a bottling plant, a commercial garage…

He told me the names, which I will keep to myself except one. My paternal grandfather put at Mintoff’s disposal a 250-foot tunnel beneath his villa in St Paul’s Bay, which led to the open seas.

My grandfather had constructed the tunnel at an enormous expense to safeguard his four luzzi, which were then reputed to be the largest and most powerful in Malta.

Many of the friendly and not-so-friendly myths about Mintoff assume he was fully formed from the outset of his career. Other accounts assume that some of the business class support that Mintoff had in the 1970s began post-1971.

The events of 1958, however, played an important role both in the formation of Mintoff’s political personality and in some of the alliances he made.

John Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.