So, I have been running late on personal affairs lately and have been too tired to do some work, so I went back to my history archive to find something nice to share.
This is a letter that Bertrand Russell sent to Dom Mintoff in 1963 asking him to open a radio station in Malta. Nothing came out of the interaction despite Mintoff’s great interest in Russell’s proposal. Mintoff used to have a lot of correspondence like this with international contacts. This was a time when the Labour Party was conducting an international campaign to solicit support for its struggle back home.
I found this letter when I was restoring the Labour Party archives back in my other life as a socialist Labour Party delegate. The library and the archives had been abandoned to a deteriorating state for many years (despite the fact that the Party had an “intellectual author” as leader), but Toni Abela, Party deputy-leader, had back then accepted my requests to purchase filing cabinets in order to professionally archive all the documents. The project had to be stopped shortly after Toni Abela left the Party to become a judge as all the cabinets had been filled and the Party refused to buy more (all the money was going to ONE, a failing enterprise).
The state of the Labour Party archives is still in a very sad state with many official documents remaining missing. I have no idea what they did after I had to leave. I hope they continue the restoration and the cataloging I had started. My heart breaks for the total disregard for history and heritage by Labour Party officials who are more focused in keeping the rent-seeking machine going while doing good for themselves.
How come Bertrand Russell addresses Mintoff as Prime Minister in 1963 when Mintoff had resigned his Premiership in 1958 ?