Why do some past events come to be considered as historical? How is an event turned into historic fact, or even into a national day? 

Looking back at what happened on Sette Giugno 1919 one could study components that made the event ‘historically important’ for future generations. Over time events are constantly being reinterpreted and new meanings attributed to them as the social situation changes. The way this event marked the Maltese population early in the 20th century is significantly different from the way Maltese society remembered it up to a couple of score years ago and undeniably also diverse from the contextual representation it has grown into in respect of the construction of Maltese identity as construed a century later. 

The 1919 event took place in an age of imperialism characterised by domination. Malta at the start of the 20th century was struggling to obtain major constitutional franchises for the country though almost resigned that the British colonial authorities would not oblige. On the dreadful day of June 7, 1919, the majority of the press was encouraging the public to assemble in Valletta and join national protests petitioning for autonomous local governance.

After World War I most Maltese felt cheated having served England and the Empire to win the war and then facing a worsening of their social condition. Threatened by hunger, unemployment, lack of housing, emigration, the people were angry.  

Il-Ħmar of June 7, 1919, took umbrage with those Maltese who in Valletta were fluttering the Union Jack in loyalty to the Crown. The paper was expecting thousands rallying in Valletta “the poor, the rich, men, the young, the aged, even women and children, with one voice”. 

The Italianate newspaper Malta was prophetic when it warned of the sad consequences if demonstrations were to take place. As it turned out, the costs were tragic with six civil, unarmed Maltese men felled on the streets by the British army on the very same day. In the face of apathy by the colonial administration following a war that exhausted its resourcefulness, the National Assembly, while concurrently boycotting WWI victory celebrations, was heartened by the participation of practically all civil, religious and professional clusters. 

Crucial events such as that of June 7 make up our identity. The event accelerated the progress for a more favourable constitution, which indeed materialized on April 30, 1921. Nevertheless the national homage to the heroes of 1919 was limited to a monument at the Santa Maria cemetery in Paola, erected in 1925, away from Valletta where the tragedy had taken place, thus missing the opportunity of enhancing the significance of nationhood that its memorial presence in the Island’s capital would have established. 

In fact, national recognition in Valletta had to wait till 1986 when a monument to the 1919 patriots was raised.  In 1989, 25 years after Independence, the Maltese Parliament unanimously marked the day as a national one.

Albert Memmi attests that “colonialism produces deficient beings, victims of democratic starvation”; many learn how to turn a blind eye and forget their identities in order to survive. 

The limited powers given to the newly elected governing bodies had relieved some of the democratic deficit suffered before the 1919 decisive event. A chain of initiatives taken by colonial rule in Malta also succeeded to induce politicians, journalists and educators into remembering to forget soul-searching patriotic overtures in order to gradually gain more administrative and political freedoms enabling them to better self-govern their country. 

During WWII, after fighting shoulder to shoulder with British servicemen, the Maltese were awarded a medal ‘for gallantry’ which was also assigned to the flag, not only to totally inhibit Italianate culture and imprint Englishness on Maltese identity but also to better manipulate the local population into complete cohesion in an all-encompassing British hegemony. 

The Independence and Republic constitutions voluntarily perpetuated the award on their centuries-old national colours. The general public was totally immersed in a colonial mentality that pervaded into post-colonial decades. 

Anthony Smith insists that nations are historical phenomena embedded in particular collective pasts and emerge “through specific historical processes embodying shared memories, traditions and hopes of the population”. What was reported in print on the 50th anniversary of the 1919 event, seems to have offered a new opportunity for the nation, perhaps provoked by the spirit of independence, to wake up from its slumber in the afterlife of the Sette Giugno event. 

With Malta gaining legal independence in 1964 but retaining certain significant colonial strings, colonial mentality survived

The national servile attitude towards the ex-colonialist started to show fissures and was somewhat replaced by a degree of nationalist awakening. With Malta gaining legal independence in 1964 but retaining certain significant colonial strings, colonial mentality survived. The 1919 tragedy was not only disregarded by a group of lingering apologists for the British (fast disintegrating) Empire but there were even a few who went as far as condemning the 1919 street protests as the work of Fascist-backed criminals. 

In 1974 Malta matured into a republic with the majority of members of parliament voting for a number of agreed amendments to the Independence Constitution. This further triggered the gradual enfeeblement of direct British influence on Maltese society in spheres which in turn affect collective memory, and consequently present and future identities. 

Top of these changing domains concerned the constitutional head of the country: the queen was replaced by a Maltese president as guardian of the same constitution immediately projecting a strong nationalistic message to society highlighting the total exclusion of foreign powers. 

It appears that since the late 1980s the Sette Giugno memory has acquired another life of its own. An afterlife which is understood as ‘a continued life, the past that becomes actual in the present, or the past that haunts the present’. One could perhaps better conceptualize the event by looking at moments of history wherein the inhabitants of Malta were intimidated into an inferior position by a mighty power, this happening, as memory serves, since Roman times. 

For more than a century under British rule and up to 1919, numerous moments of despair, negligence and abandonment had pushed Maltese society up the wall until finally in June 1919 the bubble burst and its destiny changed for the better after paying the ultimate price with lost lives. Since that time, we cannot help perceive the Sette Giugno event without letting our eyes scan the whole canvas of historical memory and contemplate the particular significance of this event. 

During its afterlife one could hardly overlook the times Maltese society had to comply with and live in fear not to sever the hand that was inadequately feeding it. WWII facilitated a strong element of fraternization following British and Maltese shared action under Axis air attacks. Even passionate supporters of Italianate values and customs, who promptly became victims of air bombings by Italian war planes themselves, must have harboured feelings of gratitude towards Britain for defending the Island.  

The war did filter and alter the attitudes of the public, shifting it, from a united force to resist British predominance to feeling gratified that they were honoured by the Empire’s highest office – the King of England – awarding them with a patronizing merit for their loyalty and bravura.

Today, through education and the media, society needs to inculcate a respectable image of identity to its citizens. Leaders of the country – politicians, educators, media people – need to invest in improved methods of how best to outline identity, as Fernand Braudel would propose, by “constructing it to be different from others but without defying others”. 

(This article is an abridged version of a chapter appearing later this month in a new publication, Sette Giugno in Maltese History, edited by Henry Frendo.)

Charles Xuereb is a journalist and historian.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece