Where are Labour's political intellectuals? – Desmond Zammit Marmarà

In the mid-1990s, after completing my Master’s degree in education, I was invited by the internationally renowned Maltese academic and scholar, Peter Mayo to give a couple of lectures on the subject of adult education to Faculty of Education undergraduates at the University of Malta.

I did so for five years and I distinctly remember the most interesting and invigorating intellectual discussions I used to have with my students about the theme of the empowerment of the oppressed classes in a modern society.

Today, more than a quarter of a century later, I cannot fail to recall with a sense of irony what great thinkers, writers and social reformers in the field of adult education such as the Fascist-era Marxist Antonio Gramsci and the Brazilian Paulo Freire, who was exiled by the military junta in the 1960s, wrote about the role of intellectuals/teachers in the empowerment of those citizens suffering oppression.

When I see the state my country is in today I cannot but reflect on the fact that,  even in a modern, European Union member state such as Malta, oppression can still exist. Every Maltese citizen today is aware of the hegemony of big business over the interests of the rest...