Let us assume there will be a Mintoff in bronze, and fairly soon. Question is, Where to place it? The obvious answer would be some corner of Castille square or maybe the new spaces around the Piano Parliament. There’s a lot to be said for that but I figure it might make sense to move the whole idea an odd mile across the water, to Cottonera.

Mintoff especially increasingly looked towards Cottonera as a legitimate theatre for the spectacle of a nation- Mark Anthony Falzon

First, a disclaimer. The word ‘Cottonera’ is not one that locals use too often. They’re much more likely to talk about their cities individually, usually to tell you how great theirs is and how unimpressive the neighbours’. It gets even more specific. Bormliżi for example like to explain that although Mintoff was certainly iben Bormla (a son of Bormla) in the broadest sense, it was to the bastjun neighbourhood he truly and properly belonged.

Another thing Cottonera locals will point out is that, as they put it, “minn hawn ħarġu l-aqwa nies” (“some of the best people were from here”). The translation doesn’t work all that well, for the Maltese ‘ħarġu’ is forceful. It means ‘came from’ but it also means ‘came out of’, as in ‘left behind’ in this sense.

The statement asserts the greatness of the place and its sons (and daughters presumably, but traditionally daughters are not great and don’t go anywhere) and is usually followed up by a list of names by way of a proof. But it is also about negation: The only way to become great in Bormla and Cottonera is to leave the place. The obvious exception is Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, who to my knowledge has lived all his life in the house in Bormla where he was born.

True to character, Mintoff presents a much more complicated case. On the one hand he remained firmly rooted in Bormla. He was president of the Bormla band club for over half a century, local stories have it that he personally bought and donated the old Rialto cinema to the Labour Party, and so on. But he never actually lived there as an adult. That particular honour went to Tarxien, to Delimara more likely.

Only Mintoff was a creature of state. And it is precisely in that equation that his relation with Bormla and Cottonera gets interesting.

Mintoff’s biography includes the staple pilgrimage of state that takes important men and women from their localities to capital cities.

A good chunk of his political persona was manufactured in Valletta, whether it was the razing of the Mandraġġ slums or the waving in of the Republic from the Palace balcony. Or even the habit of chasing up to his office in Castille six steps to a stride, as clean-sweep macho modernisers do.

Perhaps it had something to do with our universal tendency to dig up our souls as we grow older. Fact is that the later Mintoff especially increasingly looked towards Cottonera as a legitimate theatre for the spectacle of a nation. If Malta was “l-ewwel u qabel kollox” (‘first and foremost’), Cottonera was the best place to declare that.

Aside, the move came at a high cost to our capital, to the extent that the 80s Valletta I remember had very nearly become a political backwater, with all the social and cultural implications of that.

In any case, the choice was hardly surprising. First, Cottonera was where Mintoff came from. Its elevation to the national stage implied a closer, geographical link between his own biography and that of the nation. The slogan ‘Malta ta’ Mintoff, Mintoff ta’ Malta’ took on an entirely new meaning.

Second, and more importantly, the shift meant that national history was being moved closer to that of the Labour Party heartland and its ħaddiema and suldati ta’ l-azzar, many of whom had been forged in the heat and vapours of the dockyard.

That may sound a bit stretched now that the Maċina and the dockyard have been very intentionally and conveniently forgotten, but it was anything but poetic back then.

The pinnacle, pardon the pun, came in 1979. The events of Freedom Day and their interesting incarnation in Anton Agius’s arrangement of rocks (intriguingly located right in front of one of Malta’s best baroque façades – but never mind) sealed Cottonera’s newfound status as a theatre of nation. In the longer term it meant that commemorations would be held there, as well as things like festivals sung to the tune of red and white carnations.

There were other, more nuanced, implications. I once interviewed someone who went to a Church school in the 1980s. His parents were – not surprisingly, given the circumstances – politically pro-Nationalist and religiously anti-Mintoff, and that was also the feeling at school and in the social circles he moved in. The one exception was his grandfather who was, as he described him, a “confirmed Labourite of the level-headed school”.

‘John’, as I shall call him, told me how his grandfather would regularly take him to visit places of historical interest in Cottonera. These were cultural tours right and proper and the word ‘Labour’ was not used a single time. The talk was of inquisitors, sieges, church treasures, and such. In sum, John’s grandfather was not apparently on a mission to save a wayward soul.

Or maybe he was, intentionally or not. What John’s grandfather was doing was initiating his grandson (or trying to do so) into a political space, figuratively as well as literally. The cultural tours were the antidote to a political cartography which had Cottonera down as a black spot to be avoided at all times. The redemption of Cottonera meant that his grandson might be rehabilitated into the history of the Labour movement.

The common wisdom is that what happened in 1998 was wholly unnecessary, that it was rash to bring down a government over a few pontoons and that the real reasons were elsewhere. There is probably some truth to that. But, as is often the case with Mintoff, his wisdom was not exactly of the common variety.

If it was indeed the case that Mintoff could look into the seeds of time better than most,it might just have occurred to him that the superyachts and casinos would one day lay waste to his very own political and national playground.

I suspect that the thought of people raising their eyebrows at the Monument tal-Ħelsien on their way to yet another macchiato was one il-Perit genuinely couldn’t live with. Especially since the plans had been drawn up by his own children.

This column offers its condolences to the Mintoff family.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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