Defacing Malta postal pillar box, and how they were saved

Abstract

Way back in March 1974, I received a phone call from our late colleague Mr Tony Fenech, who told me that he had just been informed, that Government workers were sanding off, postal inscriptions on the red Postal Pillar boxes in Valletta, and that instructions had been given to sand off all British Period postal inscriptions on all Postal boxes including the Queen Victoria ones, and others, which were installed in the wall next to Police Stations in the villages. At that time I was a Member of Parliament (1962-1978), and immediately rang up The Hon Minister, Mr Wistin Abela, and told him that what the Labour Government of the day was doing was a repetition, of what Napoleon in 1798 had done, when he ordered to destroy all heraldic symbols on buildings belonging to the Oder of St John, which he had just expelled from Malta, and repeated by Governor Maitland in 1818, on the instructions of the Colonial Office to destroy the remaining Order's heraldic symbols, that were not destroyed by the French, history condeming both events later. [excerpt]