Desmond Zammit Marmara, in his assessment of Malta after the war (August 15), trips badly because of his ill-informed and biased assessments.

I will not enter into the merits of his assertions about Manwel Dimech or Enrico Mizzi, from which he has drawn the wrong conclusions, but I will certainly comment about his misleading and totally untrue statement that “when the war ended the British did not even give Malta a direct share of Marshall Aid.”

As Paul Boffa’s biographer he should have known that this was an issue a demagogic Dom Mintoff took up with his party leader to accuse him of incompetence in dealing with the British government over financial aid in the late 1940s to eventually oust him and to take over the Labour Party. Marshall Aid had nothing to do with the British government.

In 1948, the US was alarmed at the upsurge of Communism and drew up a plan to support the free people of Europe who were facing starvation by providing raw materials, fuel, machinery, goods and also advisers.

It was not meant to bolster up the economies of any British territory hit by the war – and Malta was not the only one.

The British government in fact assumed responsibility for this and as Brian Blouet wrote in his The Story of Malta: “Malta was given 30 million pounds by the British Government to finance reconstruction and this was of immense benefit to the islands. Just as the reconstruction and development spending of the Order of St John after the Great Siege refinanced the Maltese economy and raised its earning capacity, so the war damage fund kept the economy of the islands running at a high level and generally helped to increase wealth.”