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Commemorations 1997 Stamps Issue
PR2328
04/12/1997
04/12/1997
| On the 5th December 1997 the Office of the Postmaster General will | issue a set of four stamps - Commemorations 1997. |
| The stamps are being issued in the following values: 2c and 16c | commemorating the Victoria Lines, and 6c and 37c commemorating the 1947 Self-Government Constitution. |
| The stamps are designed by the Graphic Design Section of the Office | of the Postmaster General, and are printed by Printex Limited. This set will be withdrawn from sale on the 2nd December 1998. |
THE VICTORIA LINES CENTENARY
| During their first sixty years in Malta the British had been quite | satisfied with the protection provided by the many kilometres of bastions, which they had inherited from the Knights of St. John. However, by 1869 new technological advances had rendered these fortifications largely obsolete. |
| Malta had become by then one of the most important bases of the | Royal Navy and home to the Mediterranean fleet. |
| It had therefore become imperative to preclude a potential invader | from approaching too close to the harbour area. Consequently after 1870 Britain embarked upon a very significant construction programme to build new fortifications in Malta so as to create an extended defensive perimeter around the naval base with its strategically important docks. The final link in this chain of new fortifications was a 12 kilometre long infantry line joining together a number of forts and other gun batteries, built between 1875 and 1890 along the natural fault line which cuts across Malta from Fomm ir-Rih in the West, to Madliena in the East. |
| Nearing completion in 1897 this line of defence was dedicated to | Queen Victoria on her Diamond Jubilee and named in her honour the 'Victoria Lines'. This dedication was recorded on a marble plaque placed at Targa Gap which can still be clearly seen today on one side of the main road leading down from Mosta to Bidnija and Burmarrad. |
1947 SELF-GOVERNMENT CONSTITUTION
| In the Government Gazette of 10 September 1947 there appeared a | proclamation by the Governor of Malta, Mr. F.C.R. Douglas to the effect that the Malta (Constitution) Letters Patent 1947, which were passed under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, would come into effect on 22 September 1947. |
| The 1947 Self-Government Constitution, also known as the MacMichael | Constitution, provided for the re-establishment of responsible self-government for the Maltese Islands on the pattern of the previous Constitution as enjoyed between 1921 and 1933. |
| This Constitution was to keep the diarchal form with the difference | that it established universal suffrage and abolished plural voting. |
| Although the Warring Powers had ceased hostilities in 1945, Malta | had virtually been out of the war since 1943, with the result that the birth-rate was going up, commodities were still in short supply and profiteering was rampant. The resulting rise in the cost of living was exacerbated by growing unemployment, a spectre which was growing larger due to the now declining importance of H.M. Dockyard. One of the safety valves available to Maltese society before the war, emigration, was now effectively at a standstill. |
| These were the grave problems the Maltese were facing and which the | newly elected Government headed by Dr., later Sir, Paul Boffa was about to tackle. The 1947 Constitution was a step towards the achievement of full sovereign statehood. It signalled the beginning of the end of British Colonial rule in the Maltese Islands. |
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