TIMES OF MALTA FRIDAY, APRIL 17,2020 f 11 ANNIVERSARY FEATURE Remembering Manwel Dimech 99 years after his death

FR MARK MONTEBELLO rarely found and an excel­ lence seldom encountered. Prior to his exile in 1914, for A year short of a hundred 17 years, Dimech had almost years ago, on April 17, 1921, single-handedly championed a Sunday, Field Marshal in Malta the cause of the dis­ Viscount Edmund Allenby, possessed and the impover­ Britain's Spectal High Commis­ ished in order that they may sioner of Egypt and Com­ live in dignity and happiness. mander of the Egyptian He advocated Malta's inde­ Expeditionary Force, had little pendence more than 50 years time and care for petty news. before it was attained. His mind was elsewhere. A self-educated and a self­ He had a major riot on made man born in Valletta's his hands at Cairo. Though slums, Dimech paid the dear tempted to be rash and irrita­ price of the illiteracy, exclu­ ble, which never paid, he chose sion and poverty he was made instead, as he invariably did, to suffer by spending his youth the English blase, tarrying as if and early adulthood, some 20 unperturbed while sipping his years in all, behind bars. gin and tonic. During his public life, he The matter· was serious made two fatal mistakes which enough and partly his brought him ruin: he embold­ own doing. Saad Zaghloul, ened women to attain equal Egypt's one-time minister of rights in education and em­ education, minister of justice Manwel Dimech 1860-1921. Right: Dimech as drawn by Salvu Astarita in 1914. ployment, and enlightened and vice president of the Leg­ Dockyard worket'S to unionise. islative Assembly, was back The former being the domain from exile in France with a soul, Emmanuel Dimech, as a and repeated to Malta. It said, pire on which the sun never of the Church, and the latter of vengeance. He, Allenby, had sort of deterrent against the "Dimech died here April 17th." set, minnows like D-i-m-e-c-h the British colonial govern­ consented that Zaghloul be al Governor of Malta, Herbert That was the end of it. Case were utterly dispensable. ment, Dimech made a mortal lowed to be freed from his Plumer. The Field Marshal closed. Next. Had he enquired, he would enemy of both. Verdala prison in Malta. dared threaten to throw in Of course, AlJenby could have been told that the de­ It was basically because of Now, at the beginning of Allen by's lap Egyptian undesir­ not have cared less about ceased, half-paralysed for the this lethal double-pointed spike April 1921, he returned to ables held in Malta. whatever had happened to last five months, forsaken by that Dintech died in exile, bro­ Egypt to a popular welcome, as Vaguely conscious that this. Dimech's mortal remains or each one of his countrymen, ken and humiliated ... though expected, brandishing his pol· Dimech was unwanted back whether he had been given a even by a certain John Mamo certainly not vanquished. For itics of freedom and independ­ home due to some paltry squab­ decent burial, Catholic or not. who had previously visited he was not destined to oblivion. ence from Britain. The gamble ble with the local bishop, and None of this was his affair. him in his captivity for some Throughout the hundred to appease Zaghloul and his that self-government was in the Someone would have taken time, had been laid to rest. years that separate us from Wafd Party botched. Revolu­ offmg, Allenby impishly sug­ care of those trivialities. A coarser person would have him, it was only for less than tion - that word any sensible gested that, had Plumer to go told him that, when the ill-fated three decades, from about the British dreaded - was in the ahead with his threat, he would wretch kicked the bucket, his mid-1930s to the late-1950s, air. It was not good. send this Dimech over. "Barely two weeks emaciated carcass had been that Dimech's name was not Better deal with some Nobody was aware that hastily wrapped in the soiled honoured. This was mainly small fry for the moment, Al­ Dimech had by then been after Dimech's bedsheets where it lolled, taken due to the soc\al impact of lenby must have thought, just already half-dead. Anyway, out to some desert patch, un­ local Church politics. to soothe the nerves. This however preposterous, the death, part of his ceremoniously dumped there From the early 1960s on· particular message he had bluff seemed to have worked life's ambition, and covered in sand. wards, his name continued to before him, coming from one nonetheless. At his bedside, the few grow in moral stature and ac­ of the hospitals in Alexandria Palpably, such prisoners, to see Malta prayers said had been by an claim. Today, he is collectively that were pulled together whatever their guilt or lack Anglican pastor who piously hailed as a national hero worthy during the Great War, would of it, were not Allen by's direct self-governed, did his religious duty. of respect, study and heed. do fine enough. concern, however bizarre was achieved" Beholding such a sorry Barely two weeks after It concerned a British subject their case might be. What sight of this 60-year-old suf­ Dimech's death, part of his from Malta who, oddly enough, worried the High Commis­ ferer, little could the pious life's ambition, to see Malta had been held prisoner of war sioner were the riots con­ He most certainly never man suspect of what really self-governed, was achieved. in British custody for the last stantly brewing under the even thought about such mat­ lay before him. This came about with the six years. This was one of those very ground he walked on. ters just as he had never for a Not only did it seem that the proclamation of the 'Amery­ odious if inexorable things an Anyway, now all this babble single second pondered what spark of so much brilliance Milner Constitution' on April administration sometimes in­ with this Maltese prisoner was Dimech's story, or that of any­ had been wiped off his counte­ 30, 1921, with which the herits without knowing what is over, it appears. one else in a similar predica­ nance, not only did it appear Maltese wer·e granted their to be done about it. The note Allenby was given ment, might have been. Why that the blaze of so much first parliament. The prisoner's family name earlier said that Dimech had waste one's time on such tri­ vigour had been recoiled from The first centenary of both was almost certainly pro­ breathed his last breath less fles, after all, when other his heart but it also looked as will be marked next year. The nounced wrongly. It was spelt than a week before. All Allenby much weightier matters were if the fine nobility of his dig­ occasion will be one which D-i-m-e-c-h. Whatever, since he had to do now was officially in­ at stake such as the fate of nity had been besmirched. should unite all local political had become High Commis­ form London. He thus dictated British Egypt? This, however, was only the shades into one bright rain­ sioner of Egypt in 1919, Allenby a terse telegram to the Foreign Besides, seen against the cruel appearance which hid bow of gratitude, brother­ had tried to use this wretched Office to be sent immediately background of a mighty em- from mortal eyes a greatness hood, goodwill and hope.