On December 28, 1943, 80 years ago this month, King George VI, through ‘a gracious act’, assigned the George Cross – the medal awarded to ‘the island of Malta’ on April 15, 1942 – ‘to be incorporated in the Arms of Malta’. The royal warrant that led to the George Cross being put on Malta’s national medieval colours was released to the public in 1944, as front-paged by the Times of Malta of February 23, 1944.

Reacting to the granting of the warrant, the previous British governor William Dobbie (1940-42) had felt certain that Malta would “continue to show itself worthy of this unique honour”. He added that he was in no doubt that the Maltese would “always serve the King and Empire with the same devotion as in the past”.

Foreign symbols on flags

If one searches Google for ‘war medal on national flags’, the only one in the world with a foreign wartime medal on its colours is Malta. During World War II in Europe, there was another popular symbol on a flag: the Lorraine Cross, representing the resistance movement in France. After the war, however, the distinctive cross was not transferred to the flag of the French republic. The Italians, similarly, also removed La Croce di Savoia from their flag in 1946 following the republican referendum.

Compared to France and Italy, Malta’s case is curious, to say the least. Whereas these two European countries, after World War II, removed their own wartime crosses from their flags, after independence, Malta failed to do away with a foreign cross that, albeit an honour, still brands the island with its former inferior colonial status.

There are 23 territories – the majority British islands scattered in the Pacific Ocean – that were slapped with the symbolic Union Jack on the flag during Empire days. They include Australia, which is set to hold a republican referendum during the current legislature, New Zealand and Fiji, which as a republic tried to remove it in 2015 but found the procedure too expensive. Tuvalu, Ascension, Virgin, Cayman, Falkland, St Helena and Cook islands are among other such British territories. Canada replaced it with the maple leaf in 1967.

It is a fact that in 1943, when the British king foisted the George Cross on the flag without prior Maltese consultation, he was within his rights as he was bestowing royal favour on his colonial island fortress. Identity questions arise, however, when this gesture of gallantry was confirmed both by the 1964 independence constitution and its amended 1974 republican version. In 1964, since Queen Elizabeth II became queen of independent Malta for the following 10 years, retaining her father’s George Cross might be construed as having been a sentimental token, albeit perpetuating a bizarre situation.

Retaining the British medal on a republican flag in 1974, however, is hard to figure out. A reason for this was offered by then Nationalist opposition MP Ugo Mifsud Bonnici’s published notes on the event: the PN opposition seems to have persuaded then Labour Prime Minister Dom Mintoff not to do away with Malta’s centuries-old colours and have them replaced by the then non-heraldic republican emblem. All told, according to late journalist Anton Cassar, Mintoff was not fond of the GC.

Unfortunately, however, during the past half a century not one political party has yet been interested in this significant question of identity

Dependence after independence

In post-colonial countries, according to Norwegian political scientist and social anthropologist Iver Neumann, policies continue to be “informed by memories of the logic of the suzerain system to which they once belonged”. One could thus understand such reasoning in the 1960s and 1970s with the local adult population still having memories of World War II.

However, 80 years later – and 50 since the last constitution enabled the possible removal of the George Cross from the flag by a simple parliamentary majority – questions could be raised regarding the Maltese mindset when it comes to real independence. Does Maltese identity preserve colonial propaganda props to enhance its international estimation? Has it no faith in its own distinctiveness?

French intellectual Albert Memmi (1920-2020), author of the renowned Portrait of the Colonised, Portrait of the Coloniser, reiterates that “the colonised continue to define themselves in connection with the coloniser, within the colonial relationship” even after independence, therefore putting into question whether the former colonised subject is “truly independent”.

One cannot help but ask: is Maltese society still bearing the George Cross on the flag with the same subservient devotion promised to the late British king, when the empire ceased to exist and the king’s grandson is today ruling over the UK, which recently exited from the same continent the Maltese were valiant in saving before they received this tribute?

Peace-embracing vocation

Sixty years after independence, with neutral Malta steadfastly rooted in its peace-embracing vocation, like hosting pacification talks for the Ukraine Peace Summit last October and chairing the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe next year, is the George Cross – a wartime relic given by the head of the Anglican Church to a Catholic country – on the flag, a sign of perpetual servility to its former coloniser?

Facts and answers do not always follow the rationality of an independent republic continually recovering its Mediterranean characteristics while keeping the friendly relations it enjoys with the British nation. The George Cross is an honour the Maltese value but should it remain where the coloniser had assigned it as a mark of lasting proprietorship?

In other words, should the stoical Maltese, who braved it out defenceless under thousands of air bombardments in the early 1940s, have allowed the medal to leave its place in the museum, where the original decoration is deservedly revered? Which country remembers its war dead on its historical national colours? Monuments do that.

Mystique of monarchy in Valletta

The GC on the medieval flag of Malta forms part of a past strategy to immerse the island in British symbols when it was still a colony. A tour of Valletta still inexplicably manifests the mystique of monarchy the colonisers had deliberately used as an instrument of propaganda – Queen Victoria in Republic Square and several gigantic royal insignia in stone around the Maltese President’s Palace stand out.

With the majority of colonial monuments in the city ‒ along with current irresponsible planning permits around the capital ‒ this heritage risks ruining aesthetic views and vistas of prestigious baroque architectural gems, also often marred by protected obsolete red telephone coffin boxes in excessive numbers.

As if persevering colonial perimeters was not enough, as recent as 2015, the State extended British soft power when it decided to entrench in Valletta’s historic streets a score of crown markers representing the monarch as head of the Commonwealth, instead of the group’s logo, to commemorate the organisation’s meeting in Malta.

Together with the king’s cross on the flag (which, unlike the eight-pointed cross, is absent in practically all other national identifiers), many colonial symbols – they constitute the majority of memorials in the capital – undeniably show that their ubiquity is not historically justifiable.

Several stone blazons of the grand masters, which once adorned public places, are now displayed at St Elmo; releasing the majority of public British royal insignia from Valletta would only follow a justifiable precedent in respect of the past.

Almost two centuries of British indoctrination, reaching their peak particularly in education and the media in the 20th century, produced a number of influential de-Maltesised ‘imitative Englishmen’, as Indian politician-thinker Shashi Tharoor described, inculcated native victims suffering from what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls the maladie historique.

Obsession for a foreign nation

Vincenzo Cuoco, wisely reflecting upon his own insurgent Naples in 1800, warned that “the obsession for foreign nations first denigrates, then impoverishes, finally ruins a nation, extinguishing in it all love for its own things”.

Memory is the major tool that helps one select a limited number of crucial events – out of an infinite number of experiences – that mark turning points in one’s life. The nation may undergo a process of change after an event that marks the lives of its members.

However, Sara Reith from Mainz University warns that since some experiences may jeopardise the community’s identity, “changes (should) take place according to the problems people are facing in the present and the goals that confront them for the future”.

This warning applies also to the current property greed, where a number of unpatriotic speculators are bent on land grabbing, alas often sanctioned by state authorities, to the detriment of a healthy environment for the citizenry. Such ravenousness promotes insensitivity to a sense of belonging to one’s own territory and heritage.

This author believes that retaining the colonial George Cross on the flag, consequentially belittling one’s own independent identity, today presents a case for revision.

In 1974, the majority of Maltese parliamentarians offered the constitutional instrument to remove it. Unfortunately, however, during the past half a century, not one political party has yet been interested in this significant question of identity. Most believe that such a move – giving the people the right and opportunity to decide on their national flag – might dent their electioneering chances with victims of a colonial mentality. When are the Maltese going to raise their head and tilt the unstable balance of colonialism?

 

Charles Xuereb is the author of Decolonising the Maltese Mind, in Search of Identity (Midsea Books), 2022.