History to Politics

Our travels took a serious twist in the outer suburb of Żabbar, as a relative takes us to an underground World War 2 bomb shelter. The shelter was cut out of the limestone at lighting speed during a terrifying time for the British colony. The shelter was an intricate web of tunnels and rooms, each with a different function, from medical to accountancy. Now it sits open for all to see, decorated with items depicting the life and times of Jesus.

Walking the underground world of stone brought to life tales from long ago. A brother of my grandmother escaped death by not being at his barber's shop when it was bombed. My grandmother would send my grandfather and baby aunt into the shelters, but refuse herself, instead watching the planes fly overhead. Perhaps she was claustrophobic as the confined spaces are hardly comforting, but neither is the picture of my grandmother, a young pregnant woman, watching the planes turn Malta to dust.

World War 2 was merely the latest in a series of violent conflicts involving Malta, being a superb tactical naval location in the middle of the Mediterranean. Among others, Malta has been under the rule of Phoenicians, Carthage, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Siculo-Normans and the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John. One of the best known battles is the 1565 Siege of Malta, where the Knights of St John repelled the Ottoman Turks. Fighting was probably a good idea, given that the Turks casually enslaved all 5000 inhabitants on the smaller Maltese island of Gozo back in 1551.

Napoleon grabbed Malta for France from the Knights of St John in 1798. This was to be a brief ruling, as the French displayed remarkable arrogance towards the people and their Catholicism. The Maltese people rebelled, forcing the French behind fortifications before a French surrender in 1800. Malta chose to become a British Dominion and from 1814 part of the British Empire. Malta eventually become a republic in 1974. I have no doubt that the long run of external authority influences the Maltese attitude to politics.

Since my day job is in the office of an Australian Member of Parliament, I wanted to grasp Maltese politics while I was in the country. On the first day, I saw some footage on television of an election night crowd from the general election one week previously. There were many thousands of people, yet this is a place with a population (402,000) less than Tasmania (493,300) in Australia. This was the precise point when I realised that Malta has a substantially different political paradigm to Australia.

Politics in Malta was played out with passion. Over the coming week, I made a number of discoveries that left me fluctuating between awe and horror. I was in awe of the dedication, the passion and political engagement of the people. I was at times horrified by the viciousness, and how seriously political disagreements can play out between families, friends and communities.

I knew before arriving that the two main parties were the ruling Partit Nazzjonalista (Nationalist Party) and Partit Laburista (Malta Labour Party), but I did not know that every single town has a bar for each of these two parties. I thought the addresses on Labour's Internet site were where branch meetings were held, not bars! Occasionally, like in Hamrun, the two opposing bars would be within beer throwing distance.

With my father, I walked into the Labour bar in the capital of Valletta. Tourists were welcome on the sign, but the dialog was mainly Maltese. I ordered Cisk and got a few murmurs from my Australian Labor Party card, but could not get the residents interested. It probably did not help that we were walking in barely a week after the election loss, which consigned Labour to opposition for at least another five years. Later in the week, I ran into Labour leaning Canadian tourists who were also a little sad not to be able to strike up intense political discussion at the Valletta Labour bar.

Later in the week, I caused a commotion by not joining my father, Uncle and Aunt in the Nationalist bar in Dingli. Surely, I thought, there must be something else open in the town, but instead, I went without lunch. My Aunt and I had a passionate and utterly pointless stoush over the subject. I am still not confident about Maltese politics, but I could not justify putting money into the coffers of the main opponents of the labour movement in Malta.

Then, to add to the puzzle, there is the politics of our distant relatives.

Bomb Shelter, Żabbar