A Root Which Never Grew
brill.com
Abstract Prior to the Second World War, Malta appeared vulnerable to fascist influence due to the connections between the Italian Fascist regime and Malta’s irredentist political movement, then led by Nerik Mizzi. In part this Fascist influence was present in cultural propaganda promoting irredentist ideas such as the ‘Mare Nostrum’, which Mizzi and his conservative political party, the Partito Nazionalista, helped propagate. However, previously unseen British documents also reveal significant financial support by the Italian government to Mizzi and his political activities. Mizzi never disclosed this, including the financial support he was granted by Mussolini after having met him personally in Rome on 30 November 1936. Mizzi never openly expounded fascist views, although he consistently supported an irredentist vision of Malta and openly campaigned for Malta to fall under Italy’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, support for domestic fascist organisations was negligible. At the onset of the War, the Imperial Government started to clamp down on the irredentists, eventually exiling Mizzi and most of his collaborators. The author argues that Mizzi’s dalliance with fascism was not just a convenient relationship for a greater cause, but also a direct acceptance of fascist politics given that making Malta part of Italy’s jurisdiction would also have meant accepting fascist rule.

Nerik Mizzi […] openly support[ed] [Fascist] imperialism by supporting [the Fascist] war effort in […] Abyssinia.31 Mizzi’s views can be quoted directly and extensively from MALTA, the newspaper he edited. This was written in Italian and constantly propagated Italian culture, the cause for the official use of the Italian language in Malta and constant praise for the […] fascist government and its policies.32 Ivan Vassallo, who describes Mizzi as an Italian imperialist, offers a very comprehensive digest of Mizzi’s views, but fails to mention the British documents which show the extensive financial support that Mizzi received from the […] fascist government.33

Henry Frendo states that many Nationalist Party members loved Italy and generally admired Mussolini,34 and we can find many instances of open and public Maltese support for fascist Italy. For example, after the assassination attempt on Mussolini’s life in 1926, the Maltese Casa del Fascio in conjunction with the [Fascist] consulate organised several religious services to commemorate the event. In a Te Deum ceremony held in Saint Catherine’s Church in Valletta, a prominent Italian Jesuit, Vincenzo Furci, praised the Duce and extolled his virtues.35

Another example is when several Maltese contributed to the ‘Oro per la patria’ campaign started in December 1935 after Italy lost a significant amount of gold reserves during the Abyssinian War. They included the son of Arturo Mercieca, Vittorio Mercieca, the Italian Consulate Legal Advisor Dr. A. Stilon de Piro (later interned), and Rosa Maria and Anna Mallia who were daughters of Carlo Mallia, once a Nationalist Minister and president of the King’s Own Band Club.36 Nerik Mizzi made a donation as well, but his party did not.37

[…]

It is also clear from the British government’s intelligence report that Mussolini himself pledged financial support to Mizzi. We already know that Mizzi had met with Mussolini twice in his lifetime—once in 1931 and again in 1936.53 On 12 November 1936, Mizzi was in Rome and lodged at the Hotel Continental where he requested a meeting with the Duce. Mizzi met Mussolini on 30 November and requested, amongst other things, adverts and subscriptions for MALTA, and these demands were met.

Mizzi also asked for signed photos of the Duce, of Badoglio and H.E. Debono. The newspaper subscriptions were meant for institutes and bodies such as Casa del Fascio (the Italian funded Malta based clubhouse [yes, a clubhouse])54 and the cultural institutes.55

[…]

The early 1930s had started with Britain tightening its grip over Malta, but it was first the socialists who were purged before the British authorities turned towards Mizzi and the irredentists. In 1932, the Prevention of Seditious Propaganda Ordinance was passed. This was a bill enacted by the Imperial Government to prevent the possession and dissemination of any radical and political material and, in 1933, this bill would be used to purge socialists.

The socialists were also charged with the importation of foreign propaganda and trials led to the dissolution of the Socialist League. Mizzi and his collaborators were in government, however, and their widespread support meant that it would have taken more work to purge them. […] Mizzi was arrested in May 1940 while at the MALTA office in Valletta, expelled in 1942, but returned to Malta from Uganda in March 1945. Once returned, a rehabilitated Mizzi re‐took his post in the Council of Government.83

(Emphasis added.)

While this next bit isn’t especially important, I… well… maybe after reading it you’ll understand why I’m including it here:

On 8 September, around fifteen fascists gathered at a demonstration in Ħamrun where they started chanting fascist songs. A crowd of street children soon gathered and starting molesting them, with the leader Victor Savona injuring his forehead in the process, probably from being hit or pushed to the floor.67

…no comment.

[Footnote]

Mostly untouched in the essay is how the Maltese responded to Fascism in the 1920s. Alan Cassels’s Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy offers some answers. Pages 86–7:

On the British island of Malta, Italian culture was only one of many strains. Fascist Italy’s interest in fostering an Italian spirit in Malta was anticipated in the island itself. Mussolini’s rise to power was greeted in the Maltese parliament by some plain speaking regarding the danger of Fascist propaganda in the island. A Mussolinian display of self‐righteous indignation was able to win from the Maltese authorities an expression of regret for such supposedly unjustified Italophobe manifestations.12

Having thus obtained recognition of the innocence of his intentions, Mussolini proceeded to envisage the cultivation of “an awakening of the Italian national conscience in the Maltese people,” and required his diplomatic representative in Malta to keep him “informed of every increase that this movement, now in its indistinct state, will experience in the future.”13

By the spring of 1923 an Italian Fascist–Nationalist society was established in Malta. The [Fascist] consulate was used as its headquarters. On the other hand, Luigi Mazzone, the [Fascist] consul, warned that the venture was a dubious one in the face of expected strong British opposition and the apparent apathy of the Maltese people in general for the cause of Italian nationalism.

Mazzone’s fears were confirmed. The early meetings of the newly formed society were poorly attended, and the fanaticism of the small nucleus of Maltese Fascists tended to repel rather than attract most of the local population.14 Mussolini was eventually forced to lower his sights and be content with indirect and cautious propaganda beamed at the Maltese. The matter occasionally threatened to become a formal Anglo‐Italian issue, but not during Fascism’s early years.15

Page 385:

Mazzone was instructed by Rome to encourage the Maltese to demand union with Italy, but he was rash enough to doubt Maltese affection for Fascist Italy and to warn of probable repercussions from the British authorities. When the Maltese failed to show much evidence of their italianità as the consul had forecast, he was accused by Fascist party officials of deliberate dereliction of duty and forced to resign. A colleague who testified to Mazzone’s ability and probity axiomatically found his own loyalty called into question.27

Events that happened today (September 21):

1894: Anton Piëch, Fascist lawyer, was born.
1934: A large typhoon struck western Honshū, Japan, killing more than 3,000 people.
1939: The Iron Guard murdered Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu.
1942: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Axis scum sent over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaitsi to Bełżec extermination camp, while in Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, other Axis scum massacred 2,588 Jews. At Yom Kippur’s end, the Third Reich ordered Konstantynów’s Jews to permanently move to Biała Podlaska.
1944: Artur Gustav Martin Phleps, Axis lieutenant general, died in combat.
2012: Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen (a.k.a. Sven Hazel), Axis soldier, expired.