Former President Eddie Fenech Adami, whose family was attacked at their home in Birkirkara 30 years ago, has described the Labour leader's apology made on Thursday as "generic".
He said no one from the Labour Party had ever offered him an apology for the pain caused to his family on that fateful day on October 15, 1979, when Labour thugs first burned The Times building and then attacked Opposition Leader Dr Fenech Adami's family at their home. No one was ever charged with the attacks.
"Dom Mintoff had even accused me of provoking those incidents. This attitude was utterly unacceptable," he said when contacted yesterday.
Joseph Muscat's apology for the violent events of Black Monday, made during a speech about journalism, may have been the first such declaration by any Labour leader but his statement has left a sweet and sour taste among those who were on the receiving end.
Dr Fenech Adami said he had been waiting for an apology for all these years and while Dr Muscat's statement was not the apology he was expecting, at least it was an acknowledgement that had long been due.
Significantly, on Thursday - 30 years to the day - Dr Muscat admitted that much more could have been done at the time to avoid the events of Black Monday, insisting those acts "should never have happened".
He reiterated the apology he had made on being elected Labour Party leader last year to those who may have been hurt by the actions of those "who used the Labour Party and then threw it away".
Former Nationalist minister Michael Falzon had mixed feelings about Dr Muscat's words.
"It is always positive for the leader of the Labour Party to speak with that conciliatory tone, but what irks me is that he tried to give the impression that the people who perpetrated those events used the Labour Party to their own ends. If anything, in reality, it was the Labour government that used the thugs to its own ends," Mr Falzon said.
On the other hand, Alternattiva Demokratika spokesman and former PN candidate Carmel Cacopardo disputed Dr Muscat's assertion that more could have been done to stop those events.
"Black Monday was a direct consequence of the way the Labour Party governed the country. The police were not there to protect the citizens but to defend the regime. They never did anything to stop violence and this attitude continued throughout the 1980s, until it climaxed at the mass meeting at Tal-Barrani," Mr Cacopardo said.
If there wasn't the political climate to encourage such things, he added, they would never have happened.
"I have no doubt Joseph Muscat and Alfred Sant abhor violence and are convinced it has no place in politics, but I am not convinced this was the attitude of their predecessors," Mr Cacopardo said.
The Nationalist Party accused the Labour leader of distorting the facts relating to the events that took place on Black Monday, 30 years ago.
"Joseph Muscat chose to blame the PN by giving the impression that those guilty of violence were just using Labour as a vehicle for their violence... The truth is, it was Labour supporters who perpetrated physical, emotional and psychological violence," the PN said in a statement yesterday.
Dr Muscat was trying to give the impression of an apology when in truth he was shifting the blame onto Nationalist supporters to appease hardcore Labour supporters.
The PN said it expected Dr Muscat to apologise for this deceitful version of the facts and not attempt to rewrite history.