Republican Malta is still not colonially free | Charles Xuereb

Raphael Vassallo’s interview with my friend Simon Cusens made interesting reading especially since it did not gaze at the event with a romantic and gallant platina ultimately justifying the George Cross on the flag.

Allow me however to bring up some more reflections about this extraordinary event, which I am certain readers would appreciate to form a better judgement of the Island’s recent history at a crucial moment during WWII.

The Santa Marija connection

Believers wallow in miraculous narratives, often claiming as such opportune occasions of desperate situations that eventually finish with a successful conclusion. The first weeks of August 1942 leading to the expected arrival in Malta of a handful of limping remaining ships belonging to Operation Pedestal’s convoy were predicted to have particular weather conditions. The forecast of several August moonless nights was bound to disturb enemy precise air bombing, thus potentially enabling the fleet to have faster sea movement during the last critical distance to destination. Coincidentally the last of this despairing relief docked in on the feast of the Assumption.

Operation Pedestal

Operation Pedestal was not the first (and certainly not the last) convoy meant to relieve Malta’s frantic predicament. Earlier in 1942, several others from closer ports, including Alexandria and Gibraltar, failed to make it to the Island; they were either sunk or forced to return to base. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at a point was so disappointed with his navy that he described its futile continuous efforts to reach Malta as ‘deplorably weak’.

His very own reputation, and maybe his own government, were threatened by a situation wherein the British Navy was letting the Island, including 30,000 British fighters, to be abandoned. In Cairo, drunk British personnel were often heard singing: ‘Roll out the Rodney and the Hood (two battleships), since the whole (fucking) force is no (fucking) good!’ Another convoy in November 1942, overshadowed by the publicity surrounding the Santa Marija one, was the factual saviour of Malta that finally really relieved the Islanders.

The George Cross

The decision to give a medal to Malta in April 1942 came right after the Island had suffered extreme bombing in more than 3,000 sorties of the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Regia Aeronautica operating from three neighbouring airports in Sicily between November 1941 and February 1942 (the Black Winter, as dubbed by the population). The urban area around Grand Harbour ended up in ruins and the inhabitants, many refugees in their own country, were miserable. Their reaction to the award of the George Cross in fact, triggered mocking graffiti such as “Hobż mhux George Cross” (Bread not the GC) on the walls of Valletta. One woman recounted how GC was interpreted to mean “Guħ Chbir”, spelled in old Maltese.

While ‘gallantry’, as the interviewer implied, must have referred more to ‘stoical forbearance’, the intention of the British colonialist to impose the medal on the centuries old Maltese flag in December 1943 – 20 months after the award, a period during which it was ignored by the famished population – appears to have been more of a strategic and political nature.

By the end of 1943, Malta’s war was over. The Maltese did not need to decorate their flag to pluck courage – they had proved themselves enough during the Black Winter. In the political world the medal on the flag was meant to brand the Island more than ever as a British possession (‘our Islands’ is in the royal heraldic proclamation). This act also served to further sever the Island’s Italian cultural associations (post-WWII, operas in Valletta were even sung in English) and continue to inculcate in the Maltese, blind loyalty and mystique towards the British Crown, the ‘saviours’ of the George Cross Island.

All this happened when the state of the mind of the population was at its weakest vulnerable level, having survived long months of fear for their lives, hunger, sickness and loss of their bombed-out property. The war distinction must also have helped to assuage the locals’ bad feelings towards the British authorities for leaving the colony defenceless during the worst period of shelling, with defending Spitfire planes arriving late.

Today after 80 years, it is normal that current generations start to forget the sacrifices experienced by those who lived three generations earlier. The hype surrounding WWII gradually diminishes and in a couple of score years, it will be perceived on a similar perspective as that of the Great Siege of 1565.

How great was that siege? Did the 1942 ‘second siege’ really save months of world war combat, as some war observers argue?

In 1947, the British governor ordered that at the September 8 commemoration of the Great Siege in Valletta – a previously unique Maltese national memorialisation – the Maltese flag would henceforth ‘accompany’ the Union Jack to include remembrance of ‘Malta’s second siege’. A diplomatic hijack for colonial propaganda.

In this author’s strong opinion, the George Cross presence on Malta’s national colours, however, has lasting negative effects. Not on the ‘bravery’ fading association, but more on the display of colonial strings, globally inferring that Malta feels proud at having been a British colony with all the colonial inferior implications it suffered for almost two centuries, including the very ill preparedness and near-abandonment of the Island in 1942, when Governor Gort was ready to evacuate by September.

Contrary to the Maltese Cross, the George Cross never established itself as some national Maltese identifier. Up to the 1950s, teachers in state schools encouraged pupils to include Malta GC. when writing their home address, as if Malta ceased to be the famous Island, known for its artistic Baroque legacy and other Mediterranean historical characteristics.

On the flag, it remains the symbol of a foreign monarch in a republic state (like Queen Victoria in Republic Square in Valletta), the insignia of the head of the Anglican Church (now the queen) in Catholic Malta, and above all a remnant of the now criminalised period of colonisation.

Maltese MPs who in their majority voted for the Republican Constitution in 1974 must have known that one day the GC would have to be removed from the Maltese flag. While the national colours (red and white) need a two-thirds majority to be altered, the national flag of Malta could shed off the medal by a simple parliamentary majority.