The current potential Nationalist Party split is the most serious crisis within the party since some of its staunchest supporters walked away and formed the Partit Demokratiku Nazzjonalista just over 60 years ago.

George Borg Olivier was at the helm of the party at the time, facing numerous foes within while trying to battle fiery Labour leader Dom Mintoff and the British colonial administration.

Herbert Ganado.

Lawyer and writer Herbert Ganado, a long-serving member of the PN, who was exiled during the war for his pro-Italian sympathies while editing the Catholic Action newspaper Leħen is-Sewwa, argued that Borg Olivier was too soft on Mintoff and was not strong enough to stand up to him.

He disagreed with Borg Olivier about the party's set-up and social welfare policies, and he especially disagreed with the central plank of Borg Olivier’s policies - independence from Britain -- insisting that Malta was not yet ready for it.

Ganado finally broke ranks in 1958 and formed his own party, the PDN, which did not, however, take any of the PN’s MPs. The new party won 9.3% of the votes in the 1962 elections and elected four MPs (one of whom, the late Coronato Attard of Gozo, shortly afterwards switched to the Nationalist Party).

But Nationalist supporters generally rallied around their embattled leader. Borg Olivier still won the 1962 general election and crowned his long political career by achieving Independence for Malta in 1964. In the 1966 elections, Ganado's PDN and the other two small centre parties failed to win any seats and were eventually dissolved.

Borg Olivier and Ganado argued in the newspapers - see pdf link below.

Borg Olivier went through two other crises in his party, one in his early political career, and another near its end.

The first was in 1947 when party leader Nerik Mizzi returned from exile. Veteran MP Prof Guze Hyzler (who had been elected in 1932) wanted a fresh, more liberal PN and eventually went on to form the Democratic Action Party. Borg Olivier was reportedly offered a position within the party, but stayed loyal to Mizzi and eventually succeeded him in 1950. The DAP won four seats in 1947 and just one in the 1950 elections. It was dissolved shortly after.

Then in 1974, the PN, in Opposition, faced serious policy divisions over Borg Olivier's insistence that a referendum must be held to decide whether Malta should become a republic. No referendum was held, and Borg Olivier and another five Nationalist MPs (out of a total of 26) voted in parliament against the Republican Constitution, which was approved since it had won the votes of more than two-thirds of the House of Representatives. But the party held together, although Borg Olivier was persuaded to resign as party leader a few months after losing the 1976 elections.

The only other time since then that the PN faced something of a split, however minor, was when Josie Muscat was the only Nationalist MP who in 1987 voted against amendments to the Constitution to ensure majority rule and also, controversially, Malta's neutrality and non-alignment. He had clashed with the party after holding unauthorised talks with Prime Minister Dom Mintoff to break the constitutional impasse caused when the PN, winning an absolute majority of votes in the 1981 elections, ended up with a minority of seats due to gerrymandering.

Dr Muscat, who had set up a right-wing group, Front Freedom Fighters, then left politics before reappearing briefly as the head of a small party, Azzjoni Nazzjonali, which unsuccessfully contested the 2008 elections. In the last general election Dr Muscat was a PN candidate once more, but failed to be elected

Labour’s splits – Mintoff ousted the party leader in 1949, then brought down the government in 1998

By far the best known political split occurred 70 years ago within the Labour Party, when young minister Dom Mintoff managed to oust veteran leader Paul Boffa.

The Labour Party was even more powerful than it is today, having won just under 60% of the vote and 24 seats in the Legislative Assembly in 1947. But Mintoff viewed Boffa as being too soft with the British authorities in disputes over discharges from the dockyard and Britain’s failure to give Malta a share of Marshall Aid. He resigned as works minister and started holding rival political events, bitterly attacking Boffa and going so far as to accuse him of incest.

Paul Boffa with Mabel Strickland.

Matters came to a head in October 1949 at the Labour Party's general conference when Mintoff successfully moved a motion of no confidence in Boffa and was elected party leader instead. Five other Labour MPs followed Mintoff.

Boffa and the other 17 Labour MPs left the party and became known as the Boffa Labour Group (BLG). In the elections held in 1950, the Labour Party and the BLG each obtained 11 seats, but the Nationalist Party, with 12 seats, formed a minority government under Enrico Mizzi, who died in office three months later. This was defeated a few months later, with fresh elections held in 1951.

By this time Boffa had set up the Malta Workers Party (MWP), which won seven seats to Labour's 14. The Nationalists, now led by George Borg Olivier, won 15, and formed a coalition government with the MWP.

The coalition was restored after another election in 1953 (which saw the PN win 18 seats and MWP three) but only lasted till 1955. In that year's election, the MWP had disappeared and most Boffisti went back to Labour. Mintoff won 23 seats and thus was able to form a government.

In the 1970s, Mintoff erected a larger than life-size monument to Boffa at the top of Merchants Street, facing the Auberge de Castille.

Mintoff was to cause another split in the Labour Party in 1998 when he broke ranks with Prime Minister Alfred Sant, on a motion concerning the development of the Cottonera Waterfront, which Mintoff opposed but which Sant declared to be a vote of confidence. Denying the Labour government its one-seat parliamentary majority, Mintoff forced Sant to hold elections just 22 months into its five-year term, which Labour lost.

Mabel Strickland, Toni Pellegrini and Dom Mintoff (right).

But Mintoff himself had suffered a split within his party while he was in opposition in the 1960s and on the warpath against the Church. His tactics were too much for a section of the party. Led by Toni Pellegrini, Labour’s erstwhile general secretary, they formed the Christian Workers’ Party in 1961.

Pellegrini, like Ganado, won four seats in the 1962 general election but the party only lasted till 1966, with most of its members eventually returning to Labour, including Pellegrini himself.

Split of the once strong Constitutional Party

The Constitutional Party under Sir (later Lord) Gerald Strickland was one of the major political forces before the war and led a government in a compact with Boffa’s Labour Party from 1927 to 1930. Its strength peaked in 1939, when it won six of the ten seats on the Council of Government, but waned in the war years, especially after Lord Strickland died in 1940. The party, now led by Strickland's nephew, Roger Strickland, was dissolved in 1946, only to be reconstituted in 1950, when it won four seats, as it did in 1951.

However in 1952 Lord Strickland's daughter Mabel declared herself an independent in protest against the party's stand against the PN/MWP coalition and its alignment with Mintoff.

In 1953 the Constitutional Party successfully unseated Mabel Strickland on the grounds that her company had been given a government contract, and she went on to found the Progressive Constitutional Party, which fought that year's elections, which were also contested by the rump Constitutional Party.

Neither PCP nor CP won any seats. PCP went on to contest the 1955 election, also unsuccessfully, but Mabel Strickland was elected in 1962. The party unsuccessfully fought the 1966 and 1971 elections, after which it was dissolved.