The Malta Union of Teachers today recalled at attack on its offices 25 years ago, at the height of a bitter dispute with the then government.

On Tuesday, September 25, 1984, following a successful MUT rally for all teaching grades at St. Aloysius College, the Union's premises were broken into by a group of vandals, the union said. The attack happened soon after a meeting in which then Education Minister Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici had delivered a highly charged speech against the MUT and the teachers' strike.

The MUT Headquarters in Valletta was attacked around 8.30pm. A group of thugs forced open the main door using a metal bollard as a battering ram. The inner glass door was smashed and the stair balustrades were broken. All electric wall brackets were wrenched and a valuable statute of St. John Baptist de la Salle was also smashed. All office equipment was destroyed.

No arrests have ever been made by the police notwithstanding that the Government of the time had all the means to find out who the vandals were, the MUT said.

"The vicissitudes of the long and acrimonious teachers' strike and lock-out of the eighties are still relatively recent. However, those events should only be remembered to forestall possible, though now highly improbable, repetition," the MUT said.

"Unfortunately, some effects still linger. Times change but certain lessons ought to be remembered by all," the union said.

Contacted, MUT president John Bencini explained that what had happened in the past was past, but some people were still trying to associate or link current union policies or actions with what had happened a quarter of a century ago.

"Let us not go back to what happened then, but it was a historical event which should be recorded," Mr Bencini said.

The Malta Union of Teachers emerged stronger than ever.