It is indeed a great pity that there are several aspects of Malta’s political history that have never been researched. It was when I was writing Sir Paul Boffa’s biography that I became fully aware of the amount of valuable historical material that is being lost, year after year, because no researcher records it for the benefit of posterity.

I will be the first to commend the valuable work being carried out by the staff of the National Archives and by our professional historians and other authors but this is still a drop in the ocean when one realises the extent of our modern political history that remains either unresearched or, even worse, interpreted only by biased writers with a political agenda who twist historical events in such a way as to acquire political mileage.

As such, I would be the first to encourage all those who have the required depth of knowledge of our political history and are good and objective writers to contribute to an area of knowledge where much research is still needed. Eyewitnesses of important political events do not live forever and when they die their recollections are lost and a valuable part of our political heritage is lost to the nation. The same applies to valuable primary sources that form part of private collections. It is not unheard of for a collector to die and for his heirs to dispose of such documents by throwing them away because they have absolutely no interest in political history and are, therefore, unaware of their importance.

One need not write a whole book on a particular topic. One can write a good double-page feature in one of our top newspapers.

I have often admired the high quality of several of the contributions in The Sunday Times, for instance. Such newspapers provide the opportunity to publish important articles on Maltese history, including our political history, for those who have neither the inclination nor the time to spend years on the writing of a whole book.

It would also be a good idea if the University of Malta were to publish the large number of dissertations of a certain quality that it has in its archives. I was absolutely astonished at the number of valuable dissertations on political history that hardly anybody knows about and which one can find at the University, some of which have been lying idle for decades. This is indeed a pity because, when one examines the titles of these dissertations, one becomes immediately aware that several of them deal with topics that are of great importance and which have never been adequately researched.

While it is true that one has to be cautious when dealing with, for example, undergraduate dissertations, one must also gratifyingly note that the standards of the University of Malta’s Faculty of Arts have always been very high and the History Department a credit to academic research.

It is also very important to welcome revisionist versions of the accepted truth on various events in our political history. These, of course, have to be supported by evidence and not just on baseless subjective interpretation of historical events. Such revisionist works are badly needed because a part of our political history to date is based on myths created by the political parties for partisan political advantage.

We also need works on people and events that have shamefully been neglected through the years and risk disappearing from history because of this same neglect. For example, I would expect to find several major works on the suffragettes in Malta.

Yet, incredibly, while one finds tons of material on the suffragettes in other countries, one finds next to nothing here in Malta. How many Maltese have ever heard of Liza Fenech, Josephine Burns Debono or Helene Buhagiar?

To conclude, Maltese political historiography is very important because our political history is a heritage that we need to treasure.

I appeal to all those in a position of power to encourage and support all initiatives that contribute towards a better understanding of our political past so that we may better fashion our political present and future to the benefit of our country and all its citizens.