Dockyard blue collar working class experiences : 1945–1970s

Abstract

Overview: Malta’s role as a naval base has been the subject of a variety of historical writing. Notable importance is usually given to the occupation of the Order of Saint John and Malta’s involvement in their naval activities, especially against the Ottomans. Malta’s importance as a naval base was further highlighted during the British period, where it was instrumental in Military operations such as Operation Husky, the allied invasion of Sicily in World War Two, as well as repairing ships at the Dockyard thanks to Malta’s naturally shielded harbours. Despite the importance given to the subject, there is a notable lack of writing focusing on the people that worked and functioned within these naval institutions. This work will focus on the Dockyard during the period of British occupation after the second World War from 1945 to 1979. The focus of this work however will be the workers employed at the Dockyard and the intermixing of their experiences with the political scene in Malta at the time. While a number of works have been produced on the Dockyard, its workers have largely been ignored for most of Maltese historiography until recently where John Chircop and Edward L. Zammit have produced a number of works on the topic where the lived experience of the common worker was the focus of their studies, although it should be noted that Zammit adopts a sociological rather than a historical perspective. Other notable writers on the subject of the Dockyard include Godfrey Pirotta, whose works adopted an institutional perspective of the subject, and Dominic Fenech whose works on the Dockyard adopt a largely political perspective. Chircop, along with Charles Farrugia, also headed the opening of the Memorja Oral History archive whose aim is the recording and preservation of the experiences of those whose voices are unheard in the traditional archives. This work is meant to be an extension of this approach, focusing the historical lens on the workers and their experience and activities The main aim of this work is to answer the question of just how involved the common Dockyard worker was in the political landscape of the island through the involvement and participation of labour organisations and trade unions. Methodology: Due to most archive material being governmental in nature there are some issues in trying to write a history purely from the perspective of the working class. As such, some use of Oral history was made where I conducted two interviews, one with a former worker at the Dockyard and another with a man who worked for some years as a newspaper seller, bringing him into frequent contact with the British Admiralty. Due to time constraints I was unable to conduct more interviews personally but other interviews from the Memorja archive were consulted. These interviews were then cross referenced with other sociological and historical works, notably Edward L. Zammit’s A Colonial Inheritance: Maltese Perceptions of Work, Power and Class Structure with Reference to the Labour Movement, in an attempt to build a general framework of the thoughts and ideas of the Dockyard workers during this period. Revisiting Labour History however served as the main springboard for this work. It contains an assortment of work from authors whose research interests are concerned with the themes explored in this work. The work of the authors of Revisiting Labour History were read and noted in order to establish the current consensus reached among current scholars of the subject. The Bibliography section contains a complete list of all works consulted. Particular importance was given to primary sources which were direct organs of labour organisations such as The Dawn, which served as the official newspaper of the Labour Party during the period under study, as well as The Torch, another newspaper, which often published articles by the General Workers’ Union and the Malta Labour Party. Other newspapers were also consulted, The Times of Malta, for a more neutral approach as well as Il-Ħaddiem, a newspaper focusing on worker issues but from the Church’s perspective. As the Church and the Nationalist party were often political allies, the views of Il-Ħadd can generally be inscribed to a good part of the Nationalist Party intelligentsia and its supporters. A variety of files from the National Archives of Malta were also consulted. While these files are admittedly symptomatic of the problem of archival bias expressed above, they nonetheless proved a useful fountain of information when analysed through a different framework with an emphasis on workers. Importance was given to the economic background and conditions of the island which were the catalyst behind the formation of the unions. While a general Marxist methodology was adapted, analysing the period as a reaction to material conditions, the importance of Maltese culture was not discounted especially since its largely Catholic way of life also played a large role in how the Unions and workers approached these economic issues. This work is split into three different chapters, each exploring a different facet of the workers’ experience. The first chapter is largely a demographic overview of the island, with an emphasis on the Harbour towns and the economic and social conditions of this area. The second chapter relates to the variety of labour organisations and trade unions which were budding on the island during the post-Second World War period and the involvement of workers in these groups. The third chapter will close the parameters of analysis tightly on the Dockyard and bring together the aspect of demography and labour organisation explored in the previous two chapters into the context of the Dockyard. Lastly, the Conclusion will include the main argument formulated throughout this work.