The Gozo Party (1947-1950)

Abstract

Studying the life of a political party is indeed challenging. A political party is founded for a set of aims, in a particular context, to represent a particular section of the people which are attracted by its ideology and policies as well as aims. It is founded to be directly involved in politics, in our case, in the national politics. It was therefore a hard but rewarding task to study and deeply analyse the Gozo Party, which existed between 1947 and 1950. In doing so, I had to dig up the context in which emerged, its real aims, its active role in the Legislative Assembly, its impact and the legacy it left. To do so, I engaged myself in different types of sources ranging from primary sources such as the Gozo Commission Report of 1949 and an interview with Dr Francesco Masini's son Franco, to printed primary sources: mainly the newspapers and the Legislative Assembly Debates. I employed also a vast selection of secondary sources, both local and also foreign to help me get both the local perspective of the Party and its context, as well as understand how foreign political authors dealt with political parties and try to make some sense of the Gozo Party within the framework of politics. Though only enjoying a short life, the Gozo Party found itself in different situations. In 1947 it was still in its infancy while it managed to obtain three seats in the Legislative Assembly. From 1947 to 1949, the Gozo Party exercised considerable influence and contributed to the many national issues taking place in Parliament while it also bore in mind that its main aim was precisely the people it represented: the Gozitans. A new page was turned in the 1947-1950 legislature when, in 1949, Dom Mintoff and his colleges decided not to support Boffa anymore. Boffa was ousted from the Labour Party leadership, but through his ability, he succeeded in remaining in power for the few months which followed up to June 1950. During this period, the Gozo Party was at its peak. It had enough power to press Prime Minister Boffa for Gozo's needs. The latter too, with great ability managed to succeed in keeping the smaller parties' votes on his side. The disintegration of the Gozo Party did not go unnoticed in history. It had left Gozo on the fore at the national level and subsequent governments were now conscious of the island's needs. In its home island, the Gozo Party left a vacuum which needed to be filled with something else, and thus experimenting with the return of Gozitan candidates to contest with the national parties, the Gozo Civic Committee, the Gozo Civil Council and the Ministry of Gozo. The latter had been originally proposed back in 1949 by the Gozo Commission. The Commission itself was partly founded on the Gozo Party insistence and the Party itself contributed in it through the Party leader himself Dr Francesco Masini.