The Unholy War: a five-part series on Malta’s Interdett – Part 1
First of a MaltaToday series on the January 1961 Church Interdett, first published in MaltaToday in 2005
17 April 2021, 5:34pm
by Michaela Muscat
In January 1961, the diocesan commission issued a circular which was read out in all churches condemning the MLP’s affiliation with the Socialist International and the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation. In a bid to wield its power over the god-fearing masses, it declared a sin the reading of Labour newspapers and the attendance of MLP meetings.
The events of the sixties would re-carve Maltese society as Gonzi’s ‘holy soldiers’ battled Mintoff’s ‘evil’ ‘soldiers of steel’ (suldati ta’ l-azzar), the total number of people who had voted in favour of Labour’s proposal for integration of the Maltese islands with the United Kingdom.