Foundation
The Party was formed in 1921, in time for the first elections to the Legislative Assembly, from the merger of Strickland's Anglo-Maltese Party and the Maltese Constitutional Party of Augustus Bartolo, editor of the Malta Chronicle. The predecessor parties had just been founded and the choice to merge was strategic: they were both pro-British and, united, they stood a better chance against the Nationalists.
Despite this, the merger still came as a surprise as there were some personality difference. Strickland had been Principal Government Secretary who had become unpopular for raising taxes through Orders in Council, something of which Bartolo was highly critical. It was rumoured that Strickland threatened Bartolo that he would use his personal wealth to create a paper that would kill off the Chronicle if the merger did not come about. Strickland was to make the threat true years later with the creation of Progress Press and the publication of the dailies Il-Berqa (in Maltese) and the Times of Malta which did, eventually, kill off the Chronicle.
Read more about this topic: Constitutional Party (Malta)
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody’s wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)