Maltese changing and contrasting perceptions of the major landmarks of the Cold War era (1947-1989)

Abstract

Freedom of the press was granted in Malta by the British colonial government in 1839. Between 1839 and 1848 as many as 800 Italian liberals, who were escaping the repressive régimes of the Italian states found refuge in Malta and many of them took up journalism as an occupation. Their publications evidently helped to propagate many new ideas on topics like freedom and education. The first papers to see the light were the monthly paper Spettatore Imparziale and the weekly Portafoglio Maltese. Through the diffusion of newspapers, Maltese liberals too could co-ordinate their hitherto isolated efforts on a much wider scale resulting in a profusion of printed literature. Many newspapers were published in Italian, English and Maltese, 180 in all between 1838 and 1870. By the end of the Second World War, journalism was to prove enormously effective in arousing popular interest in political matters. This interest was bolstered by the greatly increased literacy rate; by the greater participation in party politics after the granting of partial autonomous Council in 1887, and later responsible government in 1921,4 and also by the numerous international crises, including, among others, the Crimean War and the two World Wars. In other words, cosmopolitanism gradually developed in Maltese newspapers hand in hand with parochialism. One important characteristic was that most often the publisher-owner was the editor and therefore the opinions of the paper invariably reflected those of the publisher-owner and therefore were not fully independent. When this is applied to political parties, then the result was that the reader was influenced by and attracted to the party’s newspaper. The left wing stance of the MLP originated from the ideas of Manwel Dimech and his followers known as Dimechiani. Some of these Dimechiani such as Salvu Astarita eventually allowed the left wing stance to proliferate in the dockyard. As a result of the dockyard becoming a hotbed of left wing ideas by the mid-1920s, both the British colonial administration and the Maltese curia had no choice but to start looking out for any pro-socialist signs which originated from the dockyard. Already by 1925 there were some members of the LP who were extremely left wing, one of these being Ġino Muscat Azzopardi6 who was labelled by the British colonial administration in Malta as a person who associated himself with Maltese communists and had a close rapport with the Soviet trade commissar Arkady Rosengolts. At the start of the Cold War in 1947, the Labour Party under Dr Paul Boffa won the first general elections with universal suffrage in Malta by 59.9% of the votes, a record to date.8 Traditionally the Labour supporters, together with the supporters of the Constitutional Party, were Anglophile for many social, economic and political reasons. The Nationalist Party supporters, originally inspired by the nineteenth century liberal and nationalist movements in neighbouring Italy, traditionally sympathised with the latter. But Italy’s entry into the Second World War against the Allies, its disastrous conduct of the war and its aerial bombardment of [...]