Henry Frendo (editor): The Sette Giugno in Maltese History 1919-2019
Midsea Books
Like all other commemorations, the 100th anniversary of the Sette Giugno is bound to slowly fade from the collective memory. The excellent Culhat al Belt exhibition will be dismounted; the laudatory speeches will remain dormant on paper awaiting researchers in future years. What will remain readily available are the few excellent publications that have duly seen the light of day.
The new, extensively revised and timely edition of Paul Bartolo’s X’Kien Ġara Sew fis-Sette Giugno will remain the definitive record of what happened over those couple of bloody days and deserves a proud place on every patriotic bookshelf.
The present book, The Sette Giugno in Maltese History 1919-2019, by contrast calls itself a modest commemoration but it has also got its great value as it gives a wider view of the event and even puts it in its international context. This is in itself most important especially for islanders who see themselves as living in the hub of the world.
The four authors analyse the historical, political, international, juridical and economic aspects, as well as its role in the collective memory and as a measure of national identity.
Henry Frendo, the editor of this collection of papers and who was one of the main movers in helping to reassess the importance of this event way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, writes about the Sette Giugno as “A sad, evocative and seminal national event”.
Following the end of “the war to end all wars”, many colonies, who had all played their part in the great hecatomb, were becoming aware of their right to self-determination, even in the face of persistent denial by the colonial powers who wanted to fool themselves that nothing had changed much. The shameful massacre of hundreds of unarmed demonstrating Indians at Amritsar is one example, perhaps the worst of them all, of this self-inflicted blindness and deafness.
Prof. Frendo gives a pithy account of some of the causes that led to the angry crowd assembling in Valletta that fateful Saturday afternoon as well as an account of some of the signal incidents that led to three bystanders being shot dead by awfully unprepared British troops. Some of the individuals in the crowd that reassembled the following day seemed to have more nefarious and opportunistic intentions but the man bayoneted near the Francia building which was being ransacked was apparently just calling his son to come out.
Frendo also analyses the reactions of the Maltese to the events. Although the vast majority were shocked by this first shedding of Maltese blood since the insurrection against the French, there were the pro-imperialists who tried to downplay the whole thing. Instead of uniting all the Maltese against the foreigner, some chose to turn against their fellow countrymen.
In ‘1919 and the post-war British Empire. The international context of the Sette Giugno’, André DeBattista gives an excellent overview of what was happening at the time in the various corners of the empire as well as the developments in the immediate aftermath.
World War I, a war which was allegedly and ironically being waged on democratic values, provided the first warning that the over-extended empire had done its time as imperialist needs came to clash violently with rising local aspirations. World War II would deliver its final blow.
DeBattista gives an account as to how blood was shed in Ireland, India, Egypt and Palestine when the empire struck back to cling to past values and to delay the legitimate calls for self-rule.
Instead of uniting all the Maltese against the foreigner, some chose to turn against their fellow countrymen
The author then concludes by putting the Sette Giugno in this context. Here “the demands of the populace v the need of the needs of the empire; the domestic situation v the changes of the region; the desire for greater sovereignty v the reserved matters” came to clash fuelled by “the disenchantment with post-war conditions combined with the role of the indigenous elites in contrast with the demands and the aspirations of Empire”.
Tonio Borg presents a keen legal analysis of the events, initially starting by quoting Sir Winston Churchill’s round condemnation of the Amritsar massacre in the House of Commons in 1920. How justified is the resort to violence by the authorities in the case of a public demonstration, particularly a non-violent one?
The British troops’ undisciplined reaction would even be condemned by the standards of Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights of 1950.
The official report of the commission of inquiry predictably whitewashed the assailants, justifying the action by the false statement that the Maltese had fired first on the troops in Old Bakery Street.
The authorities can also be blamed for having failed to take suitable precautions, especially since the general anger was quite palpable.
Not only, says Borg, ‘some of the deaths could have been prevented’ but the law enforcers ‘lacked proper training and even panicked under provocation’ and their reactions were ‘disproportionate and excessive’.
Paul Bartolo delves into how the imperial government by commission and omission pushed the Maltese into rebellion. Indeed, there were multiple causes which London and its local representatives failed to read, or perhaps it was reasoned that the past 120 years of colonial rule had shown that the Maltese were only liable to grumble but then accept meekly whatever was meted out to them.
Indeed Bartolo’s long essay gives a most interesting and wide-ranging account of the social, economic and political backgrounds which coalesced together in the months leading to the shedding of blood in Valletta.
The war had not brought actual fighting to Malta’s shores but a series of unfortunate circumstances were to bring widespread unemployment and shortages and dramatic rise in the cost of living, with the price of breading tripling and shooting up beyond the reach of the working class.
The financial situation led to the introduction of direct taxation and succession and donation duties in particular affected the Church as well as the professional, business, and propertied classes all of which could usually be counted upon to keep the general inarticulate population in abject meekness.
The underpaid local police force was discontented and mulled action itself, while even the imperial dockyards organised a week-long strike, an unheard-of treasonous action in time of war. Why the British should throw more fuel on the fire by changing the degree qualifications for university students on the eve of their examinations, can perhaps only by explained by the ancient Greek observation that the gods first drive mad those they wish to destroy.
The general situation even managed to bring together such natural opposites as the followers of Nerik Mizzi and Manwel Dimech, even though the latter were least affected and potentially stood most to gain by the introduction of direct taxation on wealth and property.
In ‘Perspectives of Mnemohistory on the Afterlife of the Event and Maltese identity’ Charles Xuereb discusses how some past events come to be seen as historic and acquire their name and significance, since “events are constantly being reinterpreted and new meanings attributed to them”.
He states how the event was marked differently in its immediate aftermath, a couple of score years ago, and its more recent manifestations. Although many Maltese saw in the bloody events an opening that led to the self-government constitution of 1921, the authorities and their supporters were not keen to raise its visibility; when it came to putting up a monument, a site at the Addolorata cemetery was chosen where very few could indeed see it. Xuereb argues that the colonial mindset imposed on the Maltese meant that the event was barely acknowledged before independence was gained in 1964. A few even denigrated the event as a ‘myth’: street protests, the work of Fascist-backed criminals.
It had to be its 50th anniversary when the event, now celebrated by an independent administration, started being properly but tentatively revalued, eventually leading to the erection of a large monument in social realist style in central Valletta in 1986. The recent changes which have seen the House of Representatives leading these celebrations have led to them rising above petty party lines.
The book also contains the full 39-page text of the Parnis inquiry dated September 18, 1919 that effectively whitewashed the British interventions as well as that of the third sitting of the Comitato Provisorio held on June 14, 1919 which listed the names of the killed and wounded and the compensation given to some of the survivors who were in abject poverty.