In pictures: The Union Jack in Malta’s postcards

The colours of Great Britain, popularly known as the Union Jack, feature quite regularly in pre-Independence Maltese postcards and other popular images.

They mostly show up, as all national flags do, flying proudly on flagpoles, cherished symbols of identity, sovereignty, unity and nationhood.

Postcard of the funeral of governor Congreve, February 28, 1927

Though not invariably. Early photographs record the Union Jack put to less iconic uses – to drape coffins of military personnel, to conceal monuments and wall plaques about to be unveiled, as curtains to hide gaps in construction sites, to swipe the ground in salute to foreign royalty, as decorations of floats or to form gymnastic patterns.

A funeral at sea near Malta, postcard by the Windsor Studio, Valletta.

A military funeral, Second Northamptonshire Regiment, c 1912

Outraging the Union Jack became central in the 1919 Sette Giugno riots. Protesters vented their resentment, to the applause of indignant crowds, by ripping and trampling on the shreds of the colonial colours.

Schoolchildren celebrating the coronation of King George VI in 1937.

Apart from that tragic episode, the Union Jack generally received respect and affection in Malta as a symbol of the royal family.

A 1930s naval parade

The most abundant output of postcards featuring prominently the British flag saw light in the first world war.

Postcard publishers flooded the market with patriotic real-photo, hand-coloured postcards based on many variants in designs, but often not missing a prominent Union Jack, or its derivatives, the red ensign for the merchant navy, the white for the Royal Navy or the blue for ships other than the military fleet.

A German interwar postcard of a mythical flag of Malta.

But every royal coronation, wedding, jubilee, visit and funeral, every military parade or other grand formal occasion offered a chance not to be missed to assert symbolically but emphatically through the British colours who, ultimately, owned the islands. 

A postcard sent in 1916 from the Church Army Recreation Tent in Għajn Tuffieħa camp.

The grand Patriotic Concert held in December 1917. Postcard by Richard Ellis

A ballroom in Mtarfa decorated in 1909.

The armed forces rifle competition in a 1913 postcard

As the production of Malta Union Jack postcards proves so abundant and varied, I may produce a second feature to show some more.

The flag used on the car of governor Robert Laycock (1954-59).

All postcards from the author’s collections

The Union Jack was very prominent in the 1956 political campaign to integrate Malta into the UK.