Family wants return of house used as Labour club: 'We are being forced to subsidise a political party'

A Santa Venera family whose home was requisitioned in the 1960s and abusively transformed into a Labour Party clubhouse has asked the courts to order the property be returned to them, after a decades-long legal battle, arguing that they are being forced to subsidise a political party against their will.

The Grech family home in Santa Venera was requisitioned by the Nationalist government in 1967 – only to be taken over as a Labour Party for a clubhouse six years later when Labour came to power.

After it was allocated to the PL, the Rent Regulation Board had unilaterally fixed the rent at the derisory sum of €382 annually.

In a constitutional application to the First Hall of the Civil Court, filed by lawyer Claire Bonello on 14 January, the plaintiffs argue that the defendants: the Attorney General, Director of Social Accommodation and the Labour Party, had ignored a 2009 judgment which awarded the Grechs €75,000 in compensation (reduced on appeal to €60,000) with legal interest from the date of judgment.

“Therefore it is established by the courts that the taking of the property was ultra vires and through an abuse of the powers given to the defendant Director of Social Accommodation,” reads the application.

Although legal amendments had come into force to lessen the discrimination and injustices that the rent laws were causing to property owners, these did not affect this case as the property taken over was for a party club and not a residential dwelling. The lease would likely also continue to be inherited.

The Grechs had no reasonable hope of repossessing the property during their lifetime. This amounted to a breach of the right to the enjoyment of personal property, argued their lawyer.

But in addition to this, it was argued that “they were also being forced to subsidise a political party against their will,” effectively contributing a lot more than any membership fee ever could. This breached their right to freedom of association as protected by the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, argued the plaintiffs.

For these reasons, the family asked the court to declare all the effects of the requisition order as null and without effect, also extending the nullity to the landlord-tenant relationship which resulted from it.

They also demanded a remedy, including adequate compensation, bearing in mind the long time they had been deprived of the property and the lack of any real hope of ever having it returned to them in their lifetimes.