What are we to do with monuments and memorials that offend us or those we simply think are occupying the wrong place? Pull them down and smash them to bits? Throw them away into the sea? Deep-freeze them somewhere where we can no longer see them? Put them away in a museum? Or, in Malta’s case, just kick them away to Hastings Gardens?

George Floyd’s cruel death in the United States in May sparked an orgy of destruction and defacing of statues, not just of slave traders but also of conquerors and imperialists. The American sentiment against ‘offensive’ memorials spread across the Atlantic at greater speed than the coronavirus, reaching Britain, France, Belgium and even New Zealand.

It was inevitable that the sentiment against unwanted statues would reach Malta, and so it did with a revival of the now tired argument over whether or not we should cart Queen Victoria away from its prominent place in Valletta and remove other colonial memorials and insignias.

Some delight in reducing the argument to one that brims with anti-colonial emotions, nuances and flippancy. Those who feel colonial memorials ought to be kept in their place often seem unwilling even to consider any counterargument. On my part, I find some of the counterarguments strong, but not strong enough in the particular case of Malta for us to start juggling with the historical make-up of the island.

Malta is not South Africa, India, Congo or Algeria, where thousands of people faced reprehensible atrocities at the hands of the British, Belgian and French empires. Arguments that hold well in other former colonies do not necessarily apply to Malta.

Britain may not have treated Malta well, considering the manner in which it had come to possess the island and, also, its value in its imperial route to India. Our forefathers acted in good faith when, irrespective of the extent to which they were truly representative of the people or who prompted them, they asked for the island to be placed under the protection of the Crown.

Malta is not South Africa, India, Congo or Algeria, where thousands of people faced reprehensible atrocities at the hands of empires- Victor Aquilina

Britain had promised full protection of our rights but we all know how matters turned out. Malta, like other colonies, had to fight every inch of the way to get self-government. When the Maltese, by the sweat of their brows, raised 30,000 florins to pay off the second of two mortgages, they were promised the island would never be given out in fief again. But the promise was broken, and, against the people’s wishes, Malta was given out in fief to the Order of St John.

How did the new rulers, the Knights, treat the Maltese? If heads of the most respectable Maltese families were not even allowed to cross the piazza without permission, you can imagine in what regard the people were held. No wonder they did not want the Order of St John back after they kicked out the French with Nelson’s help. And yet, their autocratic rule has faded away into the mist of the nation’s history.

Today we luxuriate as it were in the Order’s chivalric name and in the magnificent legacy in stone and art the scions of wealthy European families have bequeathed us through their Order. Its past has now become our past, just as Britain’s colonial period in Malta has become too, warts and all.

Indeed, despite a love-hate relationship, the people, or a great many of them, bonded so well with the coloniser that they wanted to be part of the colonising power. Who would want to be part of something he hates?

Removing the statue of Queen Victoria, memorials and insignias from their places will be like taking a coat or two off the patina our history has accumulated over time. Frankly, I would have preferred if, rather than a statue to a British queen, we had one of a great Maltese patriot in its place, but having been there for so long now, she has come to form part of our historical pages, regal and resplendent as she stands in Maltese lace.

Reinterpretation of past events on the basis of new facts as they emerge helps us get a better understanding of history. This is an ongoing process. And by all means, contextualise memorials where required, but in doing so, we have to stick to facts, too. Is it correct, for instance, to say, as the information stand next to the Sette Giugno monument in Palace Square, Valletta, declares, that the riots were against British rule? My reading is they were against the way the British were administering the country, not against their rule. Which brings me to a point that is altogether lost in the wash of the debate, yet is fundamental, in my view, to the assessment of colonial memorials. It is that at least half the electorate in the country felt proud that Malta formed part of the British Empire.

They did not believe, at that particular time, that there was a better future outside it. Indeed, to the Constitutionals, the empire was their country and Malta their home. Now, one can easily get oneself hoarse arguing the Constitutionals were wrong, and that the Nationalists of the time, who favoured closer links with Italy, were right, or vice-versa. 

But are we now going to airbrush their beliefs and feelings out of our history, or propose to cut Queen Victoria in two and let King Solomon decide? 

If we start touching up our history, if we attempt to remould it to the heart’s desire, to quote Omar Khayyám, we will end up impoverishing our history.

Our past is part of who we are, with all its good and bad points.