I am prompted to write the following piece after having read the letter by Salvu Felice Pace with the title Integration And Independence (December 22). Mr Felice Pace's letter was in response to another letter by Desmond Zammit Marmarà which must have appeared earlier in this paper, and one which I have missed reading.

Unlike the big shots running the show now, I see certain fundamental similarities between Integration with Britain, as was proposed by the MLP in 1955 and the joining of the European Union as happened in 2004. Such similarities as Maltese MPs in Westminster and in the European Parliament; generous development funds to help the under developed countries, technical assistance, advice, controls cum/guidance and scores of other modes of aid coming in all the time... Of course the EU proposal is a much better idea than the Integration one but who could have possibly foreseen the EU in 1955?

The United States of Europe have far more wherewithal and disposition than Britain alone could possibly ever have had towards helping the underdeveloped countries. Such a mentality as we know it today in the EU was unknown all over the world.

Had young Mr Zammit Maramara done his homework properly, he would have come across the term Economic Equivalence. It was Dom Mintoff's own estimation at the time, that Malta would need 15 years to catch up with the standard of living of the UK. Certainly not overnight.

Thus, had the Integration plan ever came to fruition, Malta would have attained the same standard of living as Britian, in the 1970s, which, incidentally, was the time Britain opted in, or, should it be said, was let in, to the Common Market.

Now had Malta then been part of the UK with an equivalent standard of living, would it be logical to assume that Malta would have entered the market at the same time instead of having had to wait till 2004?

Of course this is pure conjecture and perhaps, even naïve. Because things just do not happen as easy as that. For example: Is Gibraltar a member of the EU ?

As in any democracy, the Integration proposal had its fair share of opponents and each, no doubt, had their reasons.

Having just read Max Farrugia's book L-Internament u l-Ezilju, I can well understand why the Integration with Britain proposal gave Dr Borg Olivier et al, the shivers.

But then, why didn't Mabel Strickland, of all people, not embrace with both hands, a closer union of Malta with God's Own Country?

And if it comes to that, why were Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant, the natural inheritors of a "United We Stand" policy, so much  against joining the European Union when this latter proposal was the best that top European statesmen could think of, and devise, with a view to preventing another terrible war happening, where the worst sufferers are invariably the underprivileged?

It just goes to show that what comes through to us from the media is nearly always what needs rather that what ought to be said.