Malta's bread strike

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In February 1977 the bakers of Malta went on an unprecedented strike. It sent shock waves through the Maltese people who couldn’t imagine life without their favourite food… bread. Before long the military was guarding bakeries, the panicked population had created a bread black market and local prisoners were enlisted to bake for the public. Forty-five years later Maltese cultural historian Noel Buttigieg shares his memories of the time, with Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty. (Photo: A queue outside of a bakery during the 1977 strike. Credit: Noel Buttigieg)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC World Service, and now witness history with me, Anishkumat Andadowati.
0:10.8	Today I'm taking you back 45 years, when the breadbakers of Malta went on strike for
0:16.6	the first time.
0:18.0	It was so disastrous that the army, the police and even local prisoners were brought in to
0:24.5	help resolve it.
0:28.4	As February 1977, and Malta's bakers have gone on strike to protest about the rapidly
0:33.9	rising cost of flour.
0:35.9	This was the first time they had ever put the mixing bowl down and left the Malta's
0:40.2	people in a dough deficit.
0:42.6	The issue was related to bakers who felt that they had to pay more money to purchase their
0:49.4	product and thus that resulted in a cut from their profits.
0:55.2	As a result of that, we have, for the first time, a collective agreement among local
1:01.0	bakers in Malta who decided not to produce bread unless the government was willing to
1:07.6	increase the price of bread for the general population.
1:12.1	That's Norbutsch Gaieg, a multi-cultural historian.
1:15.7	He was seven at the time of the strike and living in Hamran, a small town in the south
1:19.8	of Malta.
1:20.8	He remembers the frustration of the breadless people and the extreme measures the government
1:25.3	went to to try and get the people their bread back.
1:29.6	Bread was being distributed using military trucks, bakeries that did agree to support the
1:35.9	government, ended up being guarded by police or actually soldiers.
1:41.5	Within the second day of the strike, Malta would experience large queues of people outside
	...

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