Word: mintoff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quickly than it often thinks wise. But Britain turned back the clock last week on the island of Malta, site of the Royal Navy's main base in the Mediterranean. Unable to satisfy the voracious demands of the island's unpredictable, Oxford-educated former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff (who last year wanted to incorporate Malta into Britain itself, but now talks about making it a neutral port guaranteed by the U.N. Security Council), and unwilling to grant independence to the rock-bound island that must import nine times as much as it exports, the British suspended...
...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 Jib. Mintoff had won his point, but his tactics had aroused cold hostility in British officialdom. From the start, Britain had jibbed at Mintoff's costly economic conditions for integration. In a 1,000-word cable Lennox-Boyd bluntly warned the Maltese leader that he had "recklessly hazarded" the whole integration plan. Snapped the London Economist, hitherto a cautious partisan of integration: "Let Mr. Mintoff be left in no doubt that he is demanding from Britain too high a price for something that Britain does not much want...