The 1920s witnessed a young nation exploring self-awareness and embarking on a consistent political journey towards what looked like a mirage of statehood. Before that, patriotic movements already boasted some presence, but rather unfocussed in their ideals and isolated in their action.

Those home-grown nationalists who struggled to blossom identified more clearly with what they didn’t want than with what they wanted.

The hordes of highly vocal Italian political exiles who found refuge in Malta in the second third of the 19th century carried to the island their baggage of strident libertarian philosophies and ideals of national dignity, which spilled over and slowly contaminated some Maltese dreamers, admittedly rather few and quite unregimented at first.

Italian refugees published their own newspapers in Malta, extolling unification, democracy and freedom from foreign oppression, and also infiltrated some of the purely domestic Maltese dailies and periodicals. Moulding pride in national identity proved a determining catalyst.

When, in 1921, Malta for the first time achieved a semblance of limited self-government, the political media scene blew up. Some fractures which pre-existed the liberal constitution solidified, others waned, and new fault lines appeared.

The nationalist movement comprised two, at first unfriendly, wings; one – the Panzavecchian – moderate and ready to try and make the imperialist concessions work, another – the Mizzian – less conciliatory, relentlessly resisting the war on Malta’s historic Italian culture waged by the colonialists.

On the imperialist side, Gerald Strickland and Augustus Bartolo believed that Malta could aspire to no finer destiny than that of remaining the colony of a great empire. A nascent labour movement solidified into an organised party under William Savona.

The followers of Manwel Dimech, a lay visionary with a social and progressive mission, had their adherents too, but never jelled into a political party.

Each of these blocs promoted its own newspapers, either formally or through the initiatives of (mostly volunteer) sympathisers in any of three languages – English, Maltese or Italian.

These media represent a veritable encyclopaedia of political thought and action in those turbulent years. Some of these dailies and periodicals have been studied and the results have contributed to enrich the social history of the era.

Not so L’ Ors. I confess I had never even heard of its existence before a friend recently showed me a few yellowed copies he had inherited. Nor had any of the cognoscenti of 20th-century political history of our islands heard of it. Not one of our prolific and excellent professional historians, like Henry Frendo, Dominic Fenech or Joseph Pirotta, has, as far as I could ascertain, ever mentioned L’ Ors. That proved a challenge I would not even try to resist. Little could I guess how frustrating any headway would prove.

L’Ors, a political and satirical weekly in Maltese, saw two distinct spats of life. The first issue went public on February 22, 1923. Then, after a long hiatus, it resumed publication in 1929, but with a new format and an apparently different political programme.

The paper prided itself on its light contents “Folju tad-dahc, pulitcu u varju” fortified by a rhyming couplet: Jecc intom tcunu mdejka, ghax ghandcom xi dulur  /  L’Ors ixtru u akrauh seuua, bid-dahc tinkasmu sgur. A copy sold for one-and-a-half pence.

Preliminary to all other questions: who was the editor of the paper? The journal itself never identified the current incumbent and all the articles are anonymous. But the press law required that the responsible editor of any periodical should first register with the police, who kept a specific register of publications and editors.  Unfortunately, the Department of Information could only locate this register starting from the 1950s. Neither the police, nor the DOI, nor the National Archives, though courteously most cooperative, could trace the earlier registers – an irreparable loss for the history of the media. Discouragingly, I had tripped on the first hurdle.

In default of official info, I had to sleuth around for other clues. The political orientation proved the first surprise – I detected great affinities with Manwel Dimech, who had died in wretched exile in Cairo on April 17, 1921. Although never mentioning Dimech by name, the editorial policy of the paper proclaimed the following after the formulaic allegiance to Religion u Kassisin:

“Language: Maltese is our truly beloved language above all others, and we declare war on those who want it abolished. 

“Political party: We side with anyone who promotes the people and with all those who, through good ideas and experience, push the people forward in prosperity and education.

“Workers: Who can be against them, if he is one of them himself? Though we may disagree with those who lead them (because we know their intention is to cheat them, as they have already done) we will still do our best in the interest of Maltese workers, and with this in mind we will insist on compulsory education and on social welfare and other favourable labour laws”. 

A forgotten source of Malta’s 100-year-old political narrative

A policy entirely Dimechian – a programme echoed in the guru’s own Il Bandiera tal Maltin.

All the subsequent “serious” articles harp on pressing social issues: unemployment, soaring prices, labour exploitation, emigration, poor education. One entire editorial denounces the price of a rotolo of sugar, raised overnight by a ha’penny. Again, the Dimech hallmarks.

For some unclear reason, the paper promoted Icilio Calleja, the Maltese lawyer who became an internationally acclaimed tenor. But the breakthrough beckoned from the very masthead of the newspaper – a polar bear on the prowl.

It is not anonymous. On the contrary, it is signed ‘S. Astarita’. That immediately set off a loud set of chimes. Salvu Astarita was Dimech’s closest confidante and friend, the only disciple who summoned the courage to visit and bid farewell to the exile on his way to his fatal banishment to Egypt.

Astarita (25.1.1890 – 31.7.1972) translated his admiration for Dimech into a cult. Self-taught, he was a man of considerable culture, familiar with literature, a competent painter and graphic artist. 

Astarita had already published a pro-Dimech newspaper, Malta tal Maltin.  This makes the attribution of him being editor of L’Ors more plausible.

Every issue of L’Ors published two political cartoons; some proudly display the signature S. Astarita. Others included S. Agius, ToT, E. Cepardi (?), A. Dacoronia and Bos.

Those caricatures, never reproduced before, deserve a place in an illustrated history of Maltese political humour.

One of the many problems with political satire is that it ages rapidly. The graphics often refer to some narrative which contemporaries would immediately recognise, but the barb loses its bite the moment the transient target fades from memory. It is relatively easy to recognise the politicians satirised, much less so to identify what failing, scandal, gaffe or misdeed the cartoonist is aiming at.

Even the name of the paper raises questions. Is L’Ors a play on words? In Maltese the word may mean either a bear or a pastime. I well recall my foreign language teacher confessing how baffled he was when he asked for a translation into Italian of the sentence: my pastime is fishing. Relying on Maltese, a student approximated: Il mio orso è pisciare.

The first run of L’Ors stopped publication on April 7, 1923, probably through failing popular support. A second run tried its luck again on January 12, 1929, as a Giurnal ghas-sod u ghac-ciait. Its orientation changes drastically and it becomes openly nationalist. Very likely run by different publishers and directed by a different editor, it contains the expected uncomplimentary pen pictures of adversaries and criticism of the current Strickland government, but shorn of any political graphics.

A favourite and frequent butt of its derision becomes the trade-unionist and politician Joseph Orlando Smith portrayed as a sorry object of ridicule, his very name turned to Burlandu – from burla, a joke. Not that the negative judgements passed by political adversaries have to be taken as gospel truth, but, many years later,

Governor Bonham-Carter too recorded in his secret diaries how poorly impressed the Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald had been by Orlando Smith, “a very lightweight” (John Manduca, The Bonham Carater Diaries, Malta, 2004, p. 256).

I trust this brief and hurried introduction to a forgotten source of Malta’s 100-year-old political narrative will only serve as an appetiser. There is still so much to discover and to learn.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Paul Borg Olivier, Leonard Callus, Jeremy Debono and Theresa Vella.