People of my age remember – and sometimes still mention it, even though they would not have been old enough to vote for it – the days when Gozo had its own political party: Partit Għawdxi, the Gozo Party.

I googled it: founded in 1947, disbanded in 1950. It’s time to resurrect it.

The Gozo of that era, when the islanders asked for little more than to be recognised as a community, has long gone. In fact, the Gozo that anybody aged over about 40 can remember has gone, too, never to be recovered or regained.

What was it that we (I include myself in this) loved about Gozo?

What was it that made people proud to be called Gozitan, as distinct from being Maltese, which is what it said on their passports?

We used to say – and even taxi drivers used to say it, on the journey from Luqa to Ċirkewwa – that it was greener, cleaner and quieter than the other place. You could see the sky.

Down at Xlendi, or Marsalforn or Ħondoq you could smell the sea.

Yes, actually ingest the fresh invigorating ozone wafting from sea to shore.

Nowadays, if you take a deep breath you are more likely to inhale a couple of lungs full of exhaust emissions, brick dust and concrete mixer’s sand.

For, in the words of Abide With Me, a popular English hymn (it was sung before every cup final): “Change and decay in all around I see.”

You don’t need me, a foreigner, to tell you. But somebody needs to say it: it is time to stop it! Put simply, Gozo with building everywhere is no longer Gozo, and no more than an embryo suburb of Malta. Get a fixed link, or anything faster than a fast ferry, and Gozo becomes no more than North Malta.

Is that what Gozitans really want? Is that what they aspire to and how they see the island of their forefathers, dating back to the building of Ġgantija and beyond?

If Gozo becomes the new Buġibba no foreign tourists will want to come- Revel Barker

Is this how their unique historical heritage is doomed to expire?

There seem to be plenty of people – and plenty of smallish groups – who do not want to see such an instant demise of the island. And this is a call to unite them in their ultimate objectives.

What I am suggesting is not that they disband and join together as one, for I am aware that their targets are not at all similar: they range from wildlife and nature to ancient monuments, to town planning, to tourism.

There are Facebook groups, bird-life groups, even a turtles’ group. There’s a Green Party, I believe, which most likely also has an opinion.

Gozo’s mayors have set aside party differences to unite. What they all have in common is a wish to be watchful over new development (nowadays better known on Gozo as overdevelopment) and the wilful destruction of the island.

Not even the hunters, feared and dreaded by both political parties, want to see any more development on Gozo – one reason we don’t have a golf course which, it might be argued, would have automatically become a nature reserve but it would have required the removal of about 100 hunters’ “hides” and no party was likely to risk putting that in its manifesto.

So what I am proposing is a non-political confederation, a union of societies that has no tribal allegiances, an overseeing watchdog, a non-party party of like-minded people who will tell the elected or hopeful politicians when enough is simply enough and when what’s necessary needs to be appropriate in both style and in scale.

A lobby. That’s what the politicians need to keep them in check. Not long ago, a petition signed by only 2,000 people caused the suspension of a planning application when it was suggested that there might be pre-historic remains where the building was planned.

Trust me on this: there is barely a field or a plot on Gozo that is not in that category. There are even remains of prehistoric (mud-hut) settlements pre-dating Ġgantija beneath the road everybody uses to drive up towards Victoria from the ferry. Nobody knows what lies under Gozo’s fertile soil.

Do we want to preserve what’s left? Do we want Gozo to become more like the other island to the extent that nobody will see the difference between them?

Do we even want to stay, and to live, in such a place?

I would not presume to put myself forward to chair such a union but I am prepared to coordinate it in the beginning, in the hope that what I am calling the Gozo Party can actually find a common cause.

The politicians need to be told. The Planning Authority needs to be told. Most of all, the developers need to be told.

If Gozo becomes the new Buġibba, with its “lively night life, sports bars and pizzerias on every street”, no foreign tourists will want to come.

Why would they? It would drive away more quality tourists (and residents) than it would ever attract.

So… dissenters of Gozo unite! You have nothing to lose but your island.

Revel Barker, a former UK journalist, is a long-term resident of Gozo and author of The First Gozitans (…and Ġgantija).