It’s the working class that needs free public space and Piano’s garden

The monti issue is simple enough: an arrogant lobby has used electoral blackmail to occupy valuable space at the expense of the rest of the community, which has a right to walk through the new dignified entrance of our capital city

Those who have the interests of the working class at heart should be battling to ensure that the ditch below City Gate is turned into a public garden as proposed by Renzo Piano, for all to enjoy.
Those who have the interests of the working class at heart should be battling to ensure that the ditch below City Gate is turned into a public garden as proposed by Renzo Piano, for all to enjoy.

I spent the first decade of my life living in Fgura and the next living in a small flat in Gzira. My parents paid for my education through hard, honest work, with the State doing the rest through the stipends system.  They managed to inculcate in me an appreciation of culture, aesthetics, politics and a sense of basic decency and morality.

That is why am particularly incensed when the privileges of hawkers, hunters or squatters are justified by the invocation of class. 

In what for me appears like an inverse guilt-ridden classism, people defending free pedestrian space around the entrance of Malta’s capital city are labelled as “snobs” – while exhibiting red panties at the entrance of the capital city becomes the ultimate statement of working-class identity. 

It is the kind of reverse classism, which assumes that working class people have some natural affinity towards what is ugly, chaotic and bullish. 

For me the monti issue is a much more simple affair. An arrogant lobby has used electoral blackmail to occupy valuable space at the expense of the rest of the community, which has a right to walk through the new dignified entrance of our capital city, which thankfully includes open spaces. 

I have nothing against hawkers.  I love flea markets and they are always top on the list whenever I travel. My suggestion would be to issue new licences for new specialised markets – books, food, crafts and farmers’ markets – and locate them in areas of Valletta, which need a lease of new life. The old abattoir in Merchants’ Street is crying out for a new lease of life.  In the meantime, let’s keep the generic market in Merchants’ Street and hope that it will respond to the competition. 

Instead of defending hawkers, those who have the interests of the working class at heart should be battling to ensure that the ditch below City Gate is turned into a public garden as proposed by Renzo Piano, for all to enjoy. For it is the working class which benefits most from public spaces. Others may have a holiday whenever they like. It is the working class that is stuck here: it is the working class which stands to gain most from the extension of public space. 

I am even more incensed when class is invoked in the hunting debate.  Surely there is a despicable minority who associate any redneck behaviour with the behaviour of plebs. But there are also those who suggest that opposing redneck behaviour and the hunters’ bullish tactics is some snobbish statement. Using the same logic, social reformists like Manwel Dimech and Juann Mamo, who were so unforgiving when confronting popular ignorance and superstition, would be dismissed as snobs. 

My suggestion to the no campaign is to continue emphasising that the struggle against spring hunting is one to reclaim the countryside from an arrogant lobby.  It is all about the right of working-class kids being able to roam freely in the countryside.

It is unfortunate that while class is so easily invoked to defend the privileges of bullies, it is so rarely invoked to rally support for issues, which would really contribute to the improvement in the living conditions of working class; issues like raising the minimum wage. 

Another issue is that of introducing a mandatory second-pillar pension schemes in which the State would pay the contributions of those on low incomes. This is the only way to ensure a decent pension for working-class people who cannot afford a private pension. But does anyone care about old working-class people whose only choice today is to continue toiling way past what used to be retirement age, simply because state pensions are not enough?