Higher education, socialism and industrial development : Dom Mintoff and the ‘Worker-Student’ Scheme’

Abstract

Dom Mintoff’s death on 20th August 2012 marks the passing of another prominent post-war postcolonial politician. In his time as Leader of the Malta Labour Party (1949-1984) and as Malta’s Prime Minister (1955-58; 1971-1984), Mintoff sought to grapple, among other things, with the complexity of seeking to map out a socialist politics in the context of preparing the small Mediterranean island state’s (population circa 400,000) transition from a situation of mercantile capitalism to one of export-oriented, industrial development. This particular situation, born out of the country’s postcolonial condition, throws up a number of consistencies and contradictions in his party’s and government’s professed socialist politics that surface in many fields.