Paul Bartolo:X’kien Ġara Sew fis-Sette Giugno
Midsea Books, €39.50.

Several factors led to the people crowding into Valletta and the innocent blood shed on that fateful Saturday and Sunday in June 1919.

Most sectors of society had been  given axes to grind. For over a century, the British had cannily pitted one sector of society against the other, paying supreme attention to the Church establishment (a lesson well-learned following the rising of the locals against the French in 1798) and also to the professional and business classes who were prepared to keep their mouths, and those of who depended on them, shut in return for official recognition and financial reward.

Now, circumstances over which they had little control had changed. World War I had altered everything, even the balances in a tiny island in the Mediterranean that had not been directly hit by the carnage. Massive unemployment and shortages of essentials or sky-rocketing prices hit all but the very few. With two or three fell swoops, the colonial administrators managed to upset everybody.

The Church, a bulwark of conservatism always trusted to dampen any disquiet, was hit by newly-introduced donation and succession taxes like the land-owning upper classes and the professionals.

Supplies were scarce cutting the profits of business people who had little alternative but to raise prices and leave a good section of the population hungry. Workers faced lay-offs in their thousands; the price of bread – the staple food of nearly everybody– shot up.

Even the students (much more vociferous then than today) found their age-old system of awarding degrees changed a few months before their finals (the changes had actually been mooted in 1915) and the courses for doctors and lawyers extended by two years. Everybody had chips on their shoulders – all it needed was an inconsiderate decision! The old trusted system of dividing and ruling came a cropper.

Moreover, just as the British ignored the winds of change blowing in various parts of the empire, such as Ireland, India and Egypt, with bloody outcomes, they must have thought that they could not afford to give the island-fortress a measure of self-determination. 

All this and much, much more can be found in the new edition of Paul Bartolo’s X’kien ġara sew fis-Sette Giugno. This second edition, being published 40 years after the first one and one hundred years after the event, is a greatly expanded and lushly presented version that makes it basically a different book altogether.

It is, of course, obvious that the nature of historical research means the constant discovery of new facts or the interpretation of old ones. While there are parts of the book that re-present the first edition, other sections are completely new. These propose new interpretations and invite some new questions and re-thinking.

The new edition includes the official police list of the dead and the wounded, with details of the places where the incidents actually took place as well as new research in the Kew archives, which house the comments and discussion notes of the Colonial Office, as well as some secret correspondence, a complete record of the witnesses who appeared before the military inquiry as well as the full report by Dr Michelangelo Refalo, the crown attorney.

Bartolo’s meticulous research explains how the situation had been slowly deteriorating and resentment building for quite some time. The huge intake of workers at the dockyard was a double-edged sword. It had increased employment but it had also served to give thousands an increased awareness of rights in a place that was the hotbed of the followers of Dimech and the birthplace of trade unionism, especially when the locals realised the great disparity of their wages compared to those of British nationals.

The new edition includes the official list of dead and wounded

The actual spark was the calling of a meeting of the delegates of the National Assembly at the premises of La Giovine Malta on June 7. Since the previous meeting of February 25, which had asked for definite responses from London, the situation had remained tense with regular demonstrations in Valletta and inflammatory articles in the newspapers.

The meeting was set for 4pm but, a couple of hours before, the angry crowd had attacked the Lyceum in Merchant’s Street and tore down the Union Jack flying on the meteorological station.

By 4pm, the crowd had gravitated to Palace Square where there was the printing press of the Anglophile Daily Malta Chronicle and forced their way in and ransacked the offices.

The arrival of British troops might have raised tempers further and the soldiers fired at the crowd. At 5.10pm, Lorenzo Dyer, who had been there just watching, lay dead in a pool of blood.

The crowd then moved to Old Bakery Street where the troops fired and, by 5.30pm, two other bystanders, Emanuel Attard and the Gozitan Giuseppe Bajada, were fatally wounded.

The people who made it to Valletta the following day were an angrier lot and some individuals of a less desirable character also joined in. The attack on the Francia palazzo, opposite the Opera House, provided for some an excellent opportunity for trouble-making and some looting, but Carmelo Abela, who was bayoneted there at 7.30pm, was just calling his son to come out of the house. He died 38 days later.

The whole story is told in riveting detail using the official records were eyewitnesses described what they had actually seen. The records of the investigation are priceless in spite of the fact that many of the questions posed by the official side were blatently leading ones and would have been thrown out by an impartial judge. It was clear that the decision as to who was the innocent party had already been taken.

Reading the various accounts coming from the mouths of the actual players is indeed as vivid as it is painful and makes the reader almost a participant.

There are certainly some memorable vignettes. The young doctor Antonio Paris, later a minister of education in the Nationalist administration of the 1960s, giving first aid to the bleeding Dyer in the Main Guard and asking a British soldier for help only to be met with the f word.             

Tereza Gauci, the maid of the Farrugia family, who hid the family’s jewels and diamonds in the house at Ħamrun when she was told that a rampaging mob of over 700 men, women and children was on its way. She bravely returned to the house when she remembered the safe which she found the men trying to force in a field nearby. Sitting defiantly on the safe, she told them to go away. They did.

The fourth section of the book is entirely new and discusses, among other matters, the role of the importers of corn and of the millers, who faced serious problems of supply, in causing the disquiet. To compound the misery, a government with poor financial means was not able to raise subsidies.

Bartolo also presents and comments on the various interpretations especially by the authorities that were made of the riots after the events which somehow sought to explain the reasons for them. There is also an account of the demands made for compensation, how they were met and how the political forces continued to press for the recognition of the rights of the Maltese.

Another topic which regularly raises its head concerns the actual number of the dead and the wounded. To the four whose names were inscribed on the monument at the cemetery, there could arguably be added Antonio Cassano who died from complications after breaking his leg and Francesco Darmanin who died in the mental hospital suffering from ‘heartache which developed into an acute mania’ caused  by the riots. Were these direct or merely collateral victims? Incidentally, in a country enamoured by putting up plaques and memorials, it is strange that the four sites in Valletta where the deaths occurred are not marked at all.

Bartolo also analyses the vexed question of whether we are to see the events of June 7 as a riot, a revolt or a revolution by exhaustively quoting and discussing the various British reactions as well as the comments made in the local press.

He is of the opinion that the events had ‘an important impact in the development of Maltese politics’ which was seized upon by the politicians to affect significant changes. He lucidly explains the political developments after the riots and hoe they led to the political formations that emerged leading to 1921.

The appendices include hour-by-hour records of the events of June 7 and 8, which are made even clearer by maps of Valletta showing where the various incidents took place; the report of the commission and the official comments made in Malta and London, letters by Manwel Dimech and Nerik Mizzi and a newspaper article by the latter published in June 1946.

This edition also features numerous contemporary photographs that give a taste of the social and economic life of the time, the various personages involved, adverts and flyers distributed on the day, and many other subjects, providing a special bonus to the reader. Many of the photographs are very little known and some are being published for the first time and provide a precious pictorial record.

Of the actual events only two photographs have survived, both taken from the balcony of La Giovine Malta in Republic Street corner with St Lucy Street, as well as the moving sketch drawn by Ganni Vella of the wounded Pawlu Zammit being carried into the hall where the assembly was meeting.

What is quite noticeable in the photographs is that most of the men (there are no women present) are wearing white Panama hats with only a few wearing cloth caps which is indicative of the social status of most of the demonstrators who turned up in front of the La Giovine Malta premises. Incidentally in the photograph that shows the proclamation of the new constitution there are indeed a few women to be seen.

Bartolo’s book is destined to remain for long the definitive account of those bloody days in June; perhaps in a hundred years’ time a new edition with more information and analysis will be published. Somehow, I very much doubt it.