Alberto Magri – patriot and highflier

Though by nature obsessively self-effacing, Alberto Magri dedicated an entire lifetime to enhance the destinies of other people, not least of those hit by neglect, bad governance, misfortunes, injustice or abuse of power. Some of his understated contributions to the common good still survive, bold yet sadly faded out of the common memory.

A previous essay recalled his celebrity career as criminal defence counsel.  Today I will feature four, just four, highlights from the many I could, among his vitalizing injections that helped to make the nation healthier. And prouder. These four come from fields as diverse as possible – their only unifying thread: a compulsion to be of service.

Shortly  after qualifying as a lawyer in 1919, Magri joined the small nationalist faction of that extreme idealist, Enrico Mizzi (“The greatest of all Maltese” according to Dom Mintoff). In 1924 he contested successfully the second district – part of Valletta, Msida, Sliema, St Julians – in the  general elections under the new self-government constitution.  This would be the only time he took part in active politics. He withdrew permanently from the public arena in 1927, though he remained Mizzi’s favourite legal adviser and defender until the politician’s death.

The 1927 unveiling of the Great Siege Monument willed by Alberto Magri.

How many today know that the Great Siege monument in front of the lawcourts in Valletta is the outcome of a private member’s Bill pushed through parliament by Magri? On January 22, 1925, the House, then meeting in the Tapestry Chamber of the Governor’s Palace, debated with unconcealed passion, sometimes animosity, Magri’s proposal to erect the monument and to vote two thousand pounds sterling for the erection of a monument to those fallen in the 1565 Great siege.

He tabled a quite detailed motion: that Malta had a duty to honour the victims of the Siege by means of a monument in the heart of Valletta; that the best location would be the square between St John’s Co-Cathedral and the law courts; that  £2000 should be voted for this monument to be commissioned from the Maltese sculptor Antonio Sciortino; to have it ready by the next 8^th September anniversary; to rename the piazza ‘Eight September Square’.

A long and heated parliamentary debate followed. All the honourable speakers professed they agreed in principle, but…  Some criticized the motion as too detailed, some proposed to delegate a commission to study Magri’s proposal, some suggested alternative locations. Several amendments to the motion were proposed and debated for hours. The Speaker, Salvatore Borg Olivier, put the motion to the vote and seventeen representatives supported it. Only four Labour MPs voted against: Dr Paul Boffa, Colonel William Savona, Architect Giuseppe Mifsud Ellul and Vincenzo Farrugia.

Various parliamentary questions and debates about the monument recur later. On February 1, 1926, Col. Savona wanted to know who had approved the designs and the bozzetto. The Minister of Public Works Dr Giovanni Adami answered that the Inspector of Fine Arts and various Ministers had  seen the work in progress and had admired it. “The name and the unquestionable reputation of the sculptor are in themselves the best guarantee”. Col. Savona asked if Government was aware that the Sciortino design was “quasi a reproduction of the Colleoni monument at Venice?” Yeah, sure.  An armoured condottiero on horseback. Reproduction? A plagiarised carbon copy actually.

Coincidentally, the Inspector of Fine Arts was my father Vincenzo, who later married Magri’s sister. And no, they did not know each other at that time.

In the Senate meeting of February 13, 1925, Magri’s motion was adopted as a government proposition, not as a Private Member’s. Senators wanted to know who had originated the proposal. The Minister for Commerce and Industry informed them who, in the Legislative Assembly “first had the most noble and patriotic idea to propose this resolution; I am proud to submit to the sympathy and admiration of every single member of the Senate  the name of the Hon. Dr Alberto Magri, who is certainly worthy of the esteem and admiration of every Senator”.

Another view of the inauguration of the Great Siege Monument.

Two months later Senator Padre Anastasio Cuschieri protested that the Government had ignored the Senate and, what was more unpardonable, had not consulted  the Maltese people who, he claimed “have an instinctive sense of aesthetic beauty”. Other artists could have been asked to assess the validity of Sciortino’s project.  Cuschieri mentioned artists from “Italy, the glorious mother of all art”.  Mgr Paolo Apap Bologna,  another clerical Senator, chipped in  “I cannot accept that the opinion of the Inspector of Fine Arts should trump that of the government, of the people and everyone else’s”. Senator Col. Samut  concurred.

Magri’s patriotic dream came to fruition when the finished monument, fashioned as he had proposed, by Sciortino after several adventures and misadventures was finally inaugurated in the presence of huge crowds, on May 8, 1927. Sir Arturo Mercieca, chief justice, and the  Carmelite friar, poet and Senator Anastasio  Cuschieri, addressed the cheering masses in Italian and Maltese respectively.

This was to be only one of Magri’s several occasions in which he took part in ‘patriotic’ debates in the House. Another instance: the government was putting pressure on the colonial authorities to retake possession of the Auberge de Castile, to use as a house of parliament, meeting with dogged resistance from the military. Progress appeared slow indeed. Magri protested and asked formally for the exchange of correspondence  to be tabled.

Prime Minister Sir Ugo Mifsud  remarked that was not the right moment as it would prejudice the delicate negotiations but denied that as part of the deal the government would be giving up the Tapestry Chamber. Magri waxed indignant – wasn’t the Maltese government conscious of the outrage that, in between sittings of the House, the Governor used the Chamber as a cloakroom for his polka dances? Sir Ugo tried to placate Magri and the House – the Governor was doing his best to secure Castile for the Maltese authorities.

Magri’s epic fearlessness and professional prowess shone dazzlingly at the height of the second world war, when he accepted to challenge the deportation order of 42 unblemished Maltese citizens, interned without trial or charge, presumably as a security measure (they were never told why). Nazi-Fascist planes were busy killing and maiming civilians by the scores, destroying systematically anything standing,  Anti-Italian outrage had rightly reached hysterical levels. And yet Magri accepted to defend the rights of those suspected, without one shred of evidence, of being security risks.

The self-government members of parliament meeting in the Palace Tapestry Chamber in the 1920s.

His clients included top celebrities - the Chief Justice Sir Arturo Mercieca, Herbert Ganado the second President of Catholic Action (the first had been Magri), my father Vincenzo, Enrico Mizzi, destined to become Prime Minster, Magri’s law-course contemporary Dr Sander Stilon de Piro, Mgr Albert Pantalleresco, future rector of the Seminary, University professor Giulio Cortis, and many others. In 1942, the colonial authorities issued an illegal order for their deportation to Uganda.

Magri took it upon himself to challenge this high-handed, inhumane and illegitimate dictat. In three successive ground-breaking cases, he persuaded His Majesty’s judges that His Majesty had got it wrong and that it was patently anti-constitutional to exile Maltese citizens away from Malta, let alone honest persons who had never been charged or convicted of the slightest misdemeanour. It was an act of reckless bravery to push this defence at the hight of war, but for Magri and those who share his ethos, risking your life for a just cause was simply a routine duty.

His Majesty’s courts, once in first instance and a second time on appeal, accepted Magri’s impeccable and suicidally daring pleadings. They branded deportation of Maltese citizens out of their native island to be illegal and unconstitutional. Another basic right affirmed in favour of each and every Maltese. The colonial authorities ignored the court’s rulings and deported the victims all the same.

Let it be clear: this was one of the rather rare instances when the Maltese judiciary, faced with unpopular and dangerous dilemmas, found the guts to do the right thing, whatever the price. They did not soil their underpants conjuring craven escape routes, they did not clutch at empty formalities, opaque alibis for transparent cowardice. We sadly had to witness plenty of that later. And this boldness came to the fore during tragic and fearful times of war, before the concept of enforceable human rights had emerged.

Two of the judges concerned, Antoine Montanaro Gauci and Chief Justice Sir George Borg had, in their pre-judicial career, identified themselves with the British colonial regime. But despite their personal sympathies, despite popular wrath, despite the incessant rain of cordite, despite the Empire’s displeasure, they did what they believed to be their inescapable duty - justice without fear or favour.

In the eleven years Alberto Magri served as judge (1951 – 62) assigned to the Civil Court, he punctually produced a steady stream of  judgements which rarely, if ever, the Court of Appeal reversed. These mostly dealt with private, civil litigation. A few explored public law, and these had a much wider application, benefitting the community in general. One example – the vexed question on how far a government is liable when, acting in its governing capacity, it causes damages to others.

Governments wear two hats – those sovereign acts which only governments can perform, like policing, public works, national security, foreign affairs (jure imperi), or act as any other person does, like lease a property, enter into commercial contracts, import foodstuffs or medicines, organize entertainment etc (jure gestionis). Maltese governments conceded they were liable for damages in the exercise of their ordinary functions, but held on jealously to the claim that they were exempt from court scrutiny for damages resulting when performing their ‘sovereign’ functions. The courts justly grew progressively uncomfortable with this privilege, and a string of judgements, including Magri’s 1953 Xuereb v. Micallef, pulverized this convenient, if self-awarded, immunity.

Someone who used an office a stone’s throw from Magri’s house and could  see through his balcony, later recounted how, when writing difficult decisions, the judge would clutch a crucifix and pray loudly “Lord guide me! Lord guide me!” (Sinjur ighnni”).

After Magri retired from the Bench in 1961, he dedicated himself almost exclusively to philanthropy, prayer and meditation. He did, however, make one important exception. The later 1950s and early sixties were particularly turbulent times. On one side of the political divide stood Dom Mintoff, seemingly invincible, worshipped by the more muscular blue-collar masses and feared and abhorred by the rest. He personified the extinction of nationhood through his craving to integrate Malta with Britain, a perceived betrothal with Marxism, a definitive divorce from the Catholic church, and a rather cavalier rapport with the rule of law and human rights.

Magri with the Committee of the Chamber of Advocates taking part in the 1951 state funeral of Magri’s former client, Prime Minister Enrico Mizzi.

On the opposite side, under Giorgio Borg Olivier, stood the other party, the traditional nationalists, disorganized, lacking in resources and still reeling under the stigma of having championed cultural Italianità.

In his quest for independence at all costs, Borg Olivier was, rightly or wrongly, perceived to be putting up a weak defence to Mintoff’s wreck-ball campaigns. Herbert Ganado, a devoted nationalist himself, started being more openly critical of the leadership, to the point that a split became inevitable and Ganado formed a splinter party in 1961.

The traditional upholders of the values of Religio et Patria saw that splitting the already weak opposition to Mintoff, as calamitous. Alberto Magri could not let that befall his native land, without him giving his all to avert it. He formed a voluntary commission of wise men to try to engineer a fusion between the two warring nationalist factions, to present a common resistance to Mintoff.

The reconciliation commission included the revered university guru Prof. Victor Caruana Galizia, Dr Tommaso Fenech, a senior patriarch of the legal profession and Dr Vincent Tabone, an ophthalmic surgeon who eventually became president of the Republic - high powered wise men of self-evident integrity.

The commission did everything in its power to bring about a reunification of the opposition forces, but notwithstanding its repeated efforts, it failed, certainly not through lack of trying. I have written at some length about its secret workings. Magri lived long enough to see the coveted vision of independence, materialize shortly later.

After Magri’s death, Wallace P.  Gulia, scholar and eventually Judge, published a moving tribute to this “man of many parts, leading civil and criminal lawyer, man of letters, philanthropist, member of the legislative assembly … outstanding gentleman who manifested true Christian qualities”.