The Second World War was devastating for people living in Malta, but in Australia it was a watershed moment for Maltese migrants who, until then, were at the receiving end of racial slurs and attacks.

Maltese migrants were described as “parasites”, “coloured” and a “black menace” who were “ignorant of all sanitary precautions”, “animal-like in their tastes”, “brutal in their relationships”, “grossly superstitious” and illiterate. Worst of all, they were allegedly taking jobs from Australians and threatening Australians’ standard of living with their “cheap labour”.

This little-known reality was recently illustrated in a Royal Historical Society of Queensland Journal article about racial boundaries, discrimination, and restrictions against Maltese migrants during the war. The article was researched as part of the National Archives of Australia’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Malta-Australia migration agreement.

Authors Patrick Ferry and Luis Calleja investigated how the war and ‘populate or perish’ immigration policies ultimately represented a turning point in perceptions about the Maltese.

The first Maltese to arrive in Queensland sugar cane fields in the 1880s shared British nationality with Australians; however, they were usually bracketed with Italians and other southern Europeans as “dagoes” who were “dirty and lazy”, Ferry and Calleja observe.

In the press, the Maltese were meanwhile portrayed as being hot-tempered, quarrelsome, and violent, allegedly drawing knives during brawls. “The most rabid opponents of Maltese migration even questioned whether they were European. They claimed the Maltese were ‘coloured’ or like ‘Gyppos’ (Egyptians).

In one particularly egregious tirade in the 1920s, the Truth newspaper grouped the Maltese with other ‘mixed races of indefinite breed’ allegedly ‘sweep[ing] into our open ports, sans character, morals, principles, health, and frequently, cash’, and ‘ignorant of all sanitary precautions… animal-like in their tastes; brutal in their relationships… grossly superstitious and illiterate’.”

Bloody dagoes – why don’t you go back?- One of the racist chants historian Barry York’s father Loreto recalls hearing multiple times daily in Australia in 1954, according to authors Patrick Ferry and Luis Calleja

The authors note that trade unions were among the earliest and fiercest opponents, considering Maltese migrants as ‘cheap labour’ threatening jobs, wages and standards of Australian workers.

“The most rabidly racist sections of the press gleefully acted as a megaphone for such sentiments, periodically publishing dire warnings of a ‘Maltese invasion’, ‘Maltese menace’ and a ‘flood’ of cheap Maltese ‘coolies’ into the country… The Brisbane Worker even described the Maltese as a ‘black menace’,” they add.

In Queensland, Royal Commissioner Thomas Ferry referred to the Maltese workers in sugar cane fields as ‘mostly uneducated’, while the Maltese standard of living was ‘inferior to that of the British or Italians’.

In 1927, tensions turned into physical violence against Maltese workers at the South Johnstone Mill during an industrial dispute. Some Maltese were assaulted and hospitalised after being accused of attempting to cross the picket lines.  “The incident was used to further stoke fears that the Maltese would undercut the wages and standard of living of Australian workers. Indeed, the Brisbane Truth portrayed the Maltese as parasites and a ‘despicable’ race, ‘many of whom seem to revel in a betrayal of their workmates’.

A pre-WWII image showing Australian trade unionists dragging three Maltese workers from a tram as they tried to reach the South Johnstone sugar mill. Photo: Daily Telegraph, Sydney, July 20, 1927. Courtesy of National Library of Australia

“Foreign cane cutting gangs which continued working during the strike were xenophobically derided as: ‘low grade Maltese and Sicilians, whose general physiognomy betrayed their recent descent, not indeed from the organ-grinder man himself, but rather the grotesque Simian that shuffled on top of the organ.’”

The press did not make things any easier for the Maltese who, due to being from a British colony, challenged their exclusion from employment quotas for British nationals, insisting they too were British.

“Equality with the Australian, if given to the Maltese, must be given also to Cingalese [Sinhalese], the Hindoo, the native of Palestine, the negro of British Africa, or the Indian of British Guiana,” the Truth put it bluntly.

The Australians were so reluctant to allow the Maltese to identify as British, that when in 1936, the Maltese again challenged their exclusion from the cane cutting quota, the court ruled that ‘British’ referred to people born in the British Isles or Australia, but specifically “not Maltese or men born in Europe who have become naturalised British subjects”.

Photographs break down barriers

Faced with continued restrictions on Maltese migration, Commissioner for Malta Captain Henry Curmi was among those who took steps to change the perception of the Maltese, giving talks and lectures, writing newspaper articles, and making radio broadcasts highlighting Malta’s heroic wartime defence against Axis attacks.

By September 1943 – exactly 80 years ago – the threat to Malta had passed, so he shifted his attention to promoting photos of Maltese migrants serving in the Australian military.

Commissioner Curmi organised an exhibition of photographs of Maltese serving in the Australian forces at his Melbourne office in a bid to overcome “misunderstandings” about the Maltese.

Photos of Maltese from Mackay, Queensland, in the Australian army during WWII (left to right): Andrew Frendo, John Vella and Paul Deguara. Such images were used to show the courage of the Maltese during the war. Courtesy: National Archives of Australia

Earlier, the Mackay Daily Mercury had similarly published photographs of Maltese who had enlisted under the headline ‘Our gallery of Mackay volunteers’. All the soldiers in the photographs were Maltese migrants.

The authors note that in the exhibited photos, the Maltese “were indistinguishable from Australians and far removed from pre-war depictions of them as lazy, ill-disciplined, untrustworthy, even threatening foreigners”.

Mackay soldiers, all Maltese migrants. These images helped break down cultural distance and perceived differences between the Maltese and the wider Australian community. Photo: Daily Mercury, Mackay, June 23, 1941, Courtesy: State Library of Victoria

By the end of the war, the Australian government agreed to place Maltese migrants on the same footing as British migrants from the UK, citing Malta’s heroic contribution to the war effort.

The war had acted as a watershed moment:  Henry Berry, of the Warrego Graziers’ Association, proposed a free flow of Maltese migrants, as they were “a people second only to the British” who would help maintain a “white Australia”. And the Australian Legion of Ex-Servicemen and Women proposed preference be given to migrants of “British and Nordic stock, and to the Maltese”.

But the authors note that while over 40,000 Maltese received assisted passage from 1948 to 1970, prejudices remained part of the lived experience of Maltese migrants.

Historian Barry York’s father Loreto, the authors note, recalled “really disgusting” racism after immigrating in 1954: “If I heard the word ‘dago’ once, I heard it 30 times a day… ‘bloody dagoes – why don’t you go back?’”.

An agreement drawn up in 1948 saw around 10 per cent of Malta’s population migrate to Australia.