Had Malta become integrated with Britain in 1957, as the then Labour government had lobbied for, then either the Libyan gun-boat incident would never have taken place, or the Royal Navy would have chased down and blown that same gun-boat clear out of the water!
The British government did send British Petroleum to drill an exploratory test hole on Malta. That hole came up dry. The same drilling rig BP had used in Malta subsequently made its way to Libya, and BP struck oil there in the early 1960s in what became known as the Sarir field. There must have been reasons why BP did not make any attempt to explore the continental shelf off Malta. The integration talks having broken down being one, possibly. On May 1 1965, five of the producing wells in the Sarir field were sabotaged with explosive devices having been placed at each of the five well-heads. The motives behind this sabotage have remained murky to this very day, but there was little doubt this sabotage was politically motivated.
The September 1, 1969 bloodless coup in Libya, brought to power a group of idealistic junior military officers, who became known as the Revolutionary Command Council. Subsequently, one of them emerged as the absolute authority over the country. Taking his cue from Egypt's Abdel Gamel Nasser whom he idolised, he proceeded to "liberate" Libya of all foreign (western) power and influence by insisting on the removal of the US Air Force from Wheelus Air Base near Tripoli, and several British Army units stationed around Benghazi.
Perhaps through no coincidence, the Maltese Labour government also expelled the British services from Malta in 1979.
And a very cozy relationship developed between the Labour government in Malta and the Libyan regime until that same Maltese government decided to go it alone with the exploration of the continental shelf by engaging the services of an Italian drilling company. This led to the Libyan gun-boat incident. Also, about this time the Libyan regime claimed that its territorial waters extended 200 miles from that country's northern coast. Malta is only 180 miles from the nearest point on the Libyan coast. So what was going on here? The US Navy forcefully challenged Libya's claim, and it was subsequently withdrawn.
But up to now one Maltese government after another has been reluctant to challenge Libya on a number of issues ranging from fishing certain parts of the Mediterranean, asserting Malta's right to explore the continental shelf, as well as the launching of numerous boats loaded with illegal immigrants from Libyan shores.
Why would the Maltese government, which is now part of the mighty EU, want to negotiate away its sovereign claim to the area of the continental shelf which Libya also covets? What do the Libyans know that we don't? A high-powered delegation, led by none other than our figure-head President, waxed euphoric during the past week about potential breakthroughs in "agreeing to agree" on joint oil exploration (forgotten are gun-boat incident and the war of words which followed), an agreement on health-care data and personnel exchanges (forgotten is the case of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor) and illegal immigration (the tide is endless and the worst is yet to come).
Despite the turbulant history, Labour spokesmen issued a statement that "the party had always believed that relations between Malta and neighbourly Libya should be special and built on reciprocal respect..." Does anyone recall if any reciprocal respect has ever manifested itself in this relationship?