Recently I went to the small island nation of Malta, in the centre of the Mediterranean sea. There is a statue of the Maltese writer Manwel Dimech near the Upper Barrakka gardens, just as you come out of the St.James Centre of Creativity at Valletta, the capital city of Malta.

“Do you have any works of this writer� I asked a bookshop nearby. One of the attendants looked at me in a weird manner, as though I had asked her some very foolish thing.

The main person there was very helpful though, and he politely told me that the bookshop has no works of this Maltese writer and I was not likely to find any in the numerous other bookshops which mostly have tourism related books and guides. But I could try at Milesend in Hamrun where the headquarters of the Maltese Labor Party (MLP)is there, and I would probably find something.

Manwel Dimech-1860 to 1921- is regarded as the father of Radicalism in the Maltese Labor Movement. He wrote on the concept of forming a republic and the need for religious freedom.

NO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

A contemporary visitor to Malta cannot but be struck by the enduring reality behind the up to date façade of Tourism, the dockyards, automobiles, and shops of a Catholic civilization directly inherited from medieval and Mediterranean Christianity. Churches and priests and monuments bear conspicuous witness to heroic deeds, piety, folk custom and bitter struggle for survival of the working people down the ages from the Knights of St.John to the Second World War and to still more recent times.

The Medieval Knights and stories of the siege make nice tourism, but what about the original inhabitants of this island nation, which has the oldest free standing structure known to mankind in the form of the Gjantiga temples of Gozo?

The reception at the MLP headquarters was very helpful. One of them accompanied me to the basement store of books. The smell of the books, mixed with moisture was distinct and reminded me of similar libraries and stores back in India.

We tried searching for English translations of the works of Manwel Dimech. There were none. But the trip was not a waste.

VASSALI

Sifting through some works which I found, trying to trace the history of the real people and not just the fairy-tale stories of "gallant" knights, I came across another writer-Mikiel Anton Vassali (1704-1829). Vassali was amongst the first to address the Maltese people as a nation. Needless to say, he was not popular with the Church, nor the French and later British occupiers and spent his last days in prison for his radical views. Vassali is regarded as one of the intellectual precursors of the Maltese Labor Movement.

COTTONERA DOCKYARDS

The next stop, after the unsuccessful search for some English translations of Dimech’s works was Cottonera. Malta is unique in that it is part of both the European Union and the British commonwealth, having been a British colony till 1964. Hence it has many similarities with the Indian subcontinent. There are many lessons which one can draw from this small nation, which can be applied to other emerging developing nations.

The dependence of the economy upon foreign sources and the ability of the government to provide direct and indirect employment became the determining factor in the living standard of the population of Malta. In fact this was one other main tool at the disposal of the colonial administration through which it influenced the people’s minds as it controlled their fortunes.

This observation by a Maltese historian had a direct parallel between the way the British colonized India and through institutions like the railways,military and civil services, became the largest employers, thus influencing the way of thinking of many.

The historian H.Frendo points out:

“This fact is highly important in the country’s social history during the colonial era, because the proletariat, on the whole was favorably disposed toward the colonial regime, not so much because it agreed with its politics, but as a result of the fact that thousands of jobs were secured at a rage of pay which was not any worse, often rather beter,than that paid to workers in private enterprises, on the farms or indeed in the lower ranks of the Civil Service� (H.Frendo: Enroute from Europe to Africa: Malta, her people and history)

The enlargement of the dockyard around Cottonera provided a unique concentration of industrial workers. It is popularly known as the “cradle of the Maltese worker’s movement.�

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A NOTE OF THANKS.

Though I was unsuccessful in finding some English translations of the actual works of the writer Manwel Dimech, following his trail brought me into touch with some interesting works which speak of the same spirit in which he probably would have written about the issues of the real working people.

There were lessons to be learnt here, which could be applied to any emerging country, about the sense of powerlessness which a people feel after colonial domination and exploitation, the structures and tools created by the colonial powers to generate and maintain a particular type of thinking and moral value system.
Thank you-Manwel Dimech.