Politicians are generally remembered for two things: the problems they created and those they solved. If we want to mull over the likely legacy of the current lot, we could do worse than turn to history.

Joseph M. Pirotta’s latest work – 28 April 1958: Mintoff and the national interest (Midsea) – treats of a single day. Its main focus is one man, Dom Mintoff, and his role in orchestrating that day’s riots.

But, just as we’re urged to see the world in a grain of sand, Pirotta demonstrates how that day’s events are inexplicable without taking account of the preceding decade. As for the future, one, integration, was rendered impossible; the alternative, independence, came to seem inexorable.

It was a fork in the road for Malta. It was the culmination of over a decade of political activity by Mintoff, from his gradual takeover of the Labour Party, the ousting of its erstwhile leader, Paul Boffa, and the reorganisation of a split party such that, by 1953, it had the relative majority of seats in parliament and, in 1955, the absolute majority.

The photographs suggest a lost world. There’s scarcely a woman to be seen. Men pulled up their trousers above their navels, wore shorts with their jackets in summer and some still swam wearing one-piece bathing suits that modestly covered their chests; Mintoff appears in one of these with his then ubiquitous pipe. Politicians thought nothing of posing for photos, even formal ones, with cigarettes.

It’s the world we have lost in a secondary sense – the world we yearn for today. There were several political parties represented in parliament, including a Gozo party (snidely described as the Irish party by a colonial official).

The nascent General Workers’ Union was led by leaders with a mind and vision of their own, even if the links to Labour were strong. The police acted on behalf of the State, not the government, with a police commissioner, Vivian De Gray, ready to stand up to the prime minister.

By 1958, that world had begun to unravel. Most of the political parties disappeared after 1955, leaving only the Nationalist Party, Labour and Mabel Strickland’s Progressive Constitutional Party. The latter would fade in 1966, together with other small parties that grew from splits in the major ones, leaving the polarised duopoly we have today.

The GWU was on course to losing its independence. It had some years to go but Mintoff’s controlling hand was already making life difficult for its leaders.

If we’re going to think about our own world in terms of problems we’ve inherited, we need to go back to this period. Our world was partly created out of a set of contesting visions, stratagems and miscalculations, of a wide cast of characters, active then.

Pirotta’s aim is to understand the period for its own sake and to straighten the record. He wants to explain Mintoff’s actions, against the exaggerations of both fans and adversaries.

From a young age he identified readily with international social democracy and anti-colonial politics. So how come he proposed integration with the UK in successive general elections? Even as he was pushing for an integration referendum, he was looking eastward at the independent socialisms pursued by the likes of Yugoslavia and India.

An undated photo of prime minister Dom Mintoff and minister Emmanuel C. Tabone off to London for talks. Photo: The Mintoff Family Collection / 28 April 1958: Mintoff and the National Interest (Midsea Books, 2023).

In the 1940s, he was willing to countenance starting a new political party, attracting Labourites, centrist Nationalists and liberal Constitutionalists. How did he end the following decade as the polarising force to be feared by all moderates, a radical leftist who needed to be kept away from power?

Today, the very idea of a national interest... seems elusive- Ranier Fsadni

Pirotta’s Mintoff emerges as a bundle of restless fury permanently in search of a target. He had a clear, clinical vision of the national interest, with considerable organisational ability in mobilising support for himself. He was a consummate tactician but a rash strategist.

From an early age, in his power struggle with Boffa, he made good use of brinksmanship and unpredictability. But over-dependence on those stratagems was a weakness when patience was needed and the colonial authorities could simply turn their backs on him.

In his sights were three hierarchies. Class inequality was the instrument, not just the result, of underdevelopment, with poor living standards for most. The privileges of the Catholic hierarchy called for the secularisation of the political order. The colonial apparatus discriminated against Maltese interests, both national and personal – lower pay for equal work and limited openings for promotions.

Mintoff proposed integration as the most efficacious way to achieve the first two objectives quickly. He gave less importance to the colonial order; unlike the PN, which believed you had to get political autonomy first before settling the rest.

Mintoff found a sympathetic ear in the UK – until the Suez Canal crisis damaged its finances and made the cost of Mintoff’s integration demands prohibitive. He rushed the integration referendum.

British enthusiasm waned. Opposition in Malta to integration was strong; Mintoff dismissed it. He tried to force the UK’s hand by orchestrating the 1958 riots. It led to much damage to government property and many arrests. But there was neither wide popular participation nor a British overreaction. Only the police were deployed; they were measured and Mintoff himself sought to keep protests contained.

After the riots, integration was no longer on offer nor demanded. From that point, only independence was demanded by Mintoff and his counterpart, Georgio Borg Olivier.

But the British would have nothing to do with Mintoff. The patient Borg Olivier gradually returned to centre stage. He exploited British antipathy to Mintoff in negotiations and obtained better terms.

For us, one thing stands out starkly. There was a time when our politicians had an articulate sense of the national interest and were ready to explain it even to the least of their followers.

Today, the very idea of a national interest, which isn’t simply the sum of private interests, seems elusive. You just have to wonder if that’s the problem for which future generations will resent us. What’s the use of better swimwear when land and shoreline have new colonists and the sea has turned tropical?