Word: dockyards
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Cause of Mintoff's wrath was an Admiralty decision to fire 40 workmen at the Royal Navy's dockyard, which, together with a NATO naval headquarters constitutes the chief source of employment in the island. Keenly aware of the declining utility of naval bases in a missile age, Mintoff had vastly complicated his integration negotiations with Britain by insisting that whatever becomes of the dockyard, the British must not only agree to maintain full employment in the island, but must also promise to raise Maltese economic standards within twelve years to the same levels enjoyed by the British...
...Mintoff's eyes, the prospective firing of the naval dock workers was a "pregnant symbol" that Britain did not intend to meet his demands. He seemed cheerfully oblivious of the fact that his threatened break with Britain would mean that not just 40 but all 13,000 dockyard workers would be out of work. Mintoff shouted to cheering crowds: "If Britain comes against us with hydrogen or atom bombs...they will not be able to govern Malta against our people's will...
...London the first reaction was: "He's mad-stark, staring mad." Mintoff's next move was to fire off a cable to Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd proposing a "truce," and urging that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan intervene with the Admiralty to get the dockyard firings canceled. A day later came news that the firings had been cut from 40 to 30, and that alternative jobs would be offered all 30 discharged workmen...
...British proved to be the most casual of mothers. They set up a dockyard at Valletta harbor, and for more than a century, the Navy Estimates were the most exciting thing that happened in Malta, as well as the chief source of livelihood of its 320,000 inhabitants. But the island hardly interested the British until, in World War II, it became the center of bitter struggle with the Italians and the Germans for control of the Mediterranean. Then, as a British air and naval base, with the Maltese dug into its golden limestone, the island held out against...
Such complete integration is an old dream of young Prime Minister Mintoff, son of a onetime British navy cook stationed at Malta's dockyard. A Rhodes Scholar and civil engineer, ambitious young Mintoff has been a leader in Malta's Labor Party since 1936, and Prime Minister since last March. "If I fail in this," he said last week, "I shall resign, and the others will have to govern Malta as best they...