[WATCH] A tale of two colours

Good-natured banter peppered with a few abusive chants characterised the feast in Hamrun, as the town was painted in blue and red.

On Sunday morning, St Gaetano and St Joseph band clubs held the customary marathon marches in which hundreds of revellers clad in blue or in red celebrated their patron saint and the long-standing rivalry between the two clubs. 

In a mixture of the profane with the sacred, the reds of St Gaetano club and the blues of the St Joseph club exchanged bragging rights, hurled a few insults and claimed the patron saint St Gaetano as their own.

A strong police presence watched the revellers covered in red or blue paint as these danced and chanted to the tune set by their respective bands. Fears that the feast might turn into a pitch-battle were extinguished by the friendly nature of the marches.

The colours do not only represent the band club divide but they also represent the political divide in the town. A true reflection of the whole country, the town is divided into the red Labour camp and the blue Nationalist camp.

However, the presence of Nationalist Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who attended the celebratory mass, passed largely unnoticed, as the two camps were busy chanting and teasing each other.

Black and red may be Hamrun's traditional colours, but for today it's blue and red which would coat the town's main thoroughfare, as hundreds are set to fall in line with their respective clans: St Joseph and St Gaetano.

Popularly known respectively as Tal-Miskina and Tat-Tamal, these two clubs are the key players in today's celebrations, as bands will play alongside each other, albeit divided by a strong contingent of police officers.

It is a reality, and certainly no secret, that although musical societies, affiliation to the St Joseph and St Gaetano band clubs is also tied to political allegiance.

Traditionally known to be Nationalist-leaning, the St Joseph band club sports the blue colour, while the St Gaetano band club, further down the road, sports the unmistakable Labour red -for obvious reasons.

Whoever visited Hamrun this week would have immediately been impressed with the flurry of activity of volunteers wearing blue or red t-shirts, busy decorating their club's facades and the streets, while a number of large trucks delivering supplies (mainly drinks) to bars and other establishments.

Hundreds of lager cases have been stocked in all the bars along Hamrun's Republic Street, as alcohol is also set to play a major part during the two band's 'Marc tal-Briju' this morning.

Walking into St Joseph's band club at noon last Friday, I meet former trade-union leader Gejtu Vella, a known Hamrun resident who is now also a Nationalist Party candidate.

While Vella hosts his friends for drinks at the club's bar, I notice a special guest to his rendezvous: Deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister Tonio Borg, who assures me that all there is to the occasion is simply "drinks with a friend".

Borg's presence at the club was telling of the traditional political connotations, an assumption however which was diplomatically played down by Vella. "Oh come on, we are all here to celebrate St Gaetano, and politics really doesn't feature," Vella says, rejecting any political influence on the feast.

"This is the week where all Hamrun comes together to celebrate its patron saint," he says, adding that those who bring politics into the feast would really have no interest in the feast itself.

In the wake of serious violent incidents which had marred the feast in 1987 during the Sunday band march, tensions remain high year after year, albeit with sporadic incidents, which transpired to be unrelated to politics.

While I am mobbed by patrons who insist I have a drink with them, one man tells me to just ignore the hype about the tensions. "Let them say what they like, we are Hamrunizi and this is our feast," one man tells me as he tries to find his footing with a plastic cup with half a pint of lager beer.

I try to ask whether it was true that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi was expected in the club for this morning's celebrations. "Who knows? If he does come, he is more than welcome..." they tell me.

So I walk down Republic Street under a scorching sun, and reach St Gaetano's band club, only to find a steel and wooden structure being pulled out of the club to be taken up the road and be set up as the traditional 'plancier' - the band's main stage.

So I call on Labour MP and Hamrun's former mayor Luciano Busuttil, known to be Labour's heavyweight in the locality, who bluntly admits that owing to the pre-electoral season, tensions have been running high between the two sides. "We will strive to keep the feast clean from incidents, and diffuse any unnecessary tensions," Busuttil said, adding that he noted how both presidents from the 'Tal-Miskina' and 'Tat-Tamar' clubs made a joint appeal for calm and peaceful celebrations.

"For us, St Gaetano is not only a feast but a cult in every sense of the word," he says.

Almost 100 police officers have been summoned for duty this morning, in a bid to keep law and order in Hamrun as both bands will play.

But while the Hamrunizi are traditionally known as Tas-Sikkina (literally meaning 'of the knife' or 'those who carry a knife') or as Ta' Werwer (which means 'those who scare' or more colloquially, 'the scary ones'), these are nicknames which don't stem from any violent associations, but from the fact that many Hamrunizi worked as stevedores on the docks, and thus carried a knife at all times.

Another theory was that the community of Sicilians who settled here illegally in the 16th century danced a traditional dance which involved the wielding of small stilettos which they carried in their socks, waving them in the air and back to their sheaths.

But Hamrun is also the home of Malta's only Saint - Gorg Preca, the founder of the Society of Christian Doctrine (MUSEUM), who's home opposite the parish church was incidentally turned into a gaming parlour.