It is indeed ironic that events that occurred centuries ago, like the Great Siege of 1565, are more indelibly inscribed in our collective memory than the epic struggle of our countrymen in World War II.
The great English novelist Thomas Hardy summed up this anomaly thus: “There is a limbo to which events are consigned when they have ceased to be news and have not yet become history.”
This feature is an attempt to put the record straight and highlight the social, economic and educational repercussions on the people of the Inner Harbour area after the ferocious aerial bombing of HMS Illustrious by the German Luftwaffe on that fateful afternoon of January 16. 1941, exactly 70 years ago, when this modern aircraft-carrier was berthed at Parlatorio Wharf.
Volumes have been written about the epic naval battles of this indomitable carrier but very few authors have recorded the social revolution which started on this fateful day ed in the Cottonera area, and to a lesser extent in the inland towns and villages where the Cottonera people sought refuge.
For the evacuees, the 1939-45 war may have been a very pleasant interlude in their life; for the miserable few who stayed in the Inner Harbour area the dreadful events and conditions still haunt them after 70 years, yet very few of the present generation are aware of these events for they are not fully recorded in the history books.
I shall also present my views, based on personal experience, regarding the overwhelmingly pro-British element prevailing in the Dockyard area at that time.
With hindsight one can really understand this pro-British sentiment in the pre-war years in the Inner Harbour area with the people living in close daily contact with the mighty British Navy; the spectacular extravaganza in Grand Harbour by the fleet on the occasion of King George V’s silver jubilee in May, 1935 was still vivid in their memory. Those were the golden days when the leviathans of the greatest navy in the world lay at anchor in Grand Harbour.
To the many sturdy boatmen in the Cottonera area with their gaily coloured dgħajsas, it was a source of revenue; for over a century these boatmen had forged strong links with the Royal Navy. To the Dockyard workers, the majority of whom hailed from this area, the presence of the fleet meant work and prosperity.
I recall with nostalgia when on December 20, 1940, the new Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, entered Grand Harbour on his flagship HMS Warspite after witnessing the first vicious attack at sea on HMS Illustrious. The usual colourful ceremonials were held as the guard was paraded and the band played on deck. All the vantage points were crowded with enthusiastic people who erupted into wild cheers of welcome. For seven months no big ship had entered Grand Harbour.
On touring the Dockyard, Admiral Cunningham was greeted by the workers singing God Save the King and Rule Britannia. In the evening my father proudly recounted the happy event:, “I was there. It was a great occasion,” he boasted.
And this was when news had already leaked out about the carnage and extensive damage on HMS Illustrious as it was steaming dangerously for urgent repairs towards Malta.
I suspect that some details of the tragedy and the precarious situation must have filtered through to some highly-placed Cottonera residents. It is no coincidence that a considerable number of families evacuated the Inner Harbour area at this time, thus starting an irreversible process that was to have a profound effect on the social, economic and educational life of this target zone, at that time the commercial, academic, cultural and industrial centre of Malta.
There were already ominous signs of the impending war scenario. After the 1940 blitzkrieg, when the Germans overran western Europe, it became abundantly clear that the theatre of war would move further south as Italian bases in Sicily were now available to the Germans.
In December of that year, Fliegerkorps X, a crack specially trained German force, was dispatched from Norway equipped with the famous Stukas Ju 87 dive-bombers, Ju 88 bombers and Me 109 fighters. Its mission was to attack the British Mediterranean Fleet and neutralise Malta.
When HMS Illustrious limped into Grand Harbour in January 1941, badly damaged after being ferociously attacked by Axis aircraft while it was escorting a convoy, this giant carrier berthed at Parlatorio Wharf, to the left of Senglea Point, for urgent repairs.
The Maltese Dockyard workers immediately took over and worked relentlessly day and night, in spite of the still smouldering fires, to get the aircraft-carrier operational. As the dying and the wounded were swiftly rushed to Mtarfa Hospital, most of the dead were buried at sea.
Observing this carnage and devastation, the returned evacuees, who had returned to their homes in the Dockyard area after the relative summer respite, hurriedly made their way back to the inland towns and villages. The air of foreboding in the harbour zone was shattered on Thursday, January 16, when the Luftwaffe’s first dive-bombing raid by took place. It was so devastating in its intensity, so brutal in its fury, that this fateful day has since been remembered as sounding the death-knell for the Cottonera area.
Senglea, Cospicua and Birgu took the brunt of successive German attacks which left vast areas in ruins. Loss of life was heavy in Birgu, where 33 people were entombed in the sacristy of historic St Lawrence parish church.
The second mass exodus got under way. All types of vehicles were contracted by government to speed up the evacuation. The Army was also roped in to provide trucks and to help with the general organisation.
Every effort was made to flush people out of the public shelters. Once again Cottonera became a ‘no-go’ area.
On February, 1941 a government edict ordered that “no person who is not in actual residence on January 31, 1941, in Senglea, Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Kalkara shall return to any of these places for the purpose of spending the night there, unless by permission of H.E. the Officer Administering the Government”.
The whole island was now under the relentless attacks of the Luftwaffe but the few people living under very primitive conditions in the target area were literally under siege, and endued the hardest battering, deprivation, hunger and misery.
Meanwhile, in the refugee centres like Rabat, Birkirkara, Naxxar and the Three Villages of Attard, Balzan and Lija, a great social transformation was taking place.
The Inner Harbour evacuees, so different in their manners, customs, accent, dress, mores and outlook on life, integrated perfectly with their hosts and shared the relaxed life of their rural friends.
In the words of the anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain, “all learned from each other... it is not surprising that many Maltese, especially in the villages, regard the last war as a social milestone”.
The well-known historian Ernle Bradford interpreted this mass exodus from the harbour area as “a return to peasant roots of a semi-sophisticated people, and the encounter for men and women who lived entirely within a circumscribed village, with their cousins from the early 20th century”.
In spite of the general friendly atmosphere prevailing in these localities the refugees could not fathom the strange morality of some of the villagers who saw nothing wrong in indulging in the lucrative black market selling eggs and other foodstuffs at prohibitive prices, and yet they were scandalised if a refugee lady dared bare her knees or wear a tight sweater.
Of all the challenges the Cottonera people living in the target area had to face none was more daunting and frustrating than their urgent demand for education.
The lack of educational facilities throughout the blitz left them disillusioned, and although they feebly joined in the national chorus for some measure of schooling, their insistent pleas fell on deaf ears.
The priority given to education by the evacuees from the Cottonera area had a very positive effect on their hosts in the inland villages and the rural communities; as a matter of fact the village children, emulating the evacuees, swelled the school population in their area at a time when education was not yet compulsory, while the lack of schooling from May 1940 to March 1943 had a disastrous effect on the educational standards of the Three Cities.
In other parts of the island there was a public outcry when schools closed down for a week in January, 1941; the Times of Malta joined in the protest with a scathing editorial: “Education must go on in wartime. It must not only go on but it must be conducted upon a well-thought out and sagacious policy with the aim of preparing the rising generation for post-war problems which will be none too easy unless the ground is prepared ahead while the war is in progress.”
Keeping up the pressure four days later the same newspaper carried another editorial on education, insisting that “education must go on, raids or no raids; bombs or no bombs”.
These pleas, echoing the Cottonera residents’ strong desire for education, again fell on deaf ears. Many believe this was a deliberate policy to discourage the tunnel dwellers of the Inner Harbour area and to make them give up their primitive existence.
Others discern in this attitude the genesis of ostracism partly due to lack of political clout in that period, an indifferent civil service and an inarticulate population deprived of the professional classes and intellectuals who had abandoned that area in the exodus after the fateful attack on HMS Illustrious.
The undeserved social status still accorded to Cottonera may owe its origin to this turbulent, murky period. On the other hand, those who evacuated this target zone gradually realised they had acquired prestige and higher social status in their new residential areas.
In the study The Internal Dynamics and Housing Standards (1990), David Boswell, who lived in Senglea, points out: “Those who stayed behind were looked upon as social outcasts. It is vital to emphasise the significance the Maltese people attach to residence on one side of the Grand Harbour or the other.”
(The Sunday Times)