Was Independence in 1964 Inevitable? Testing a Teleological Plan
A candidate is preparing an answer to: 'Independence in 1964 was the inevitable outcome of British rule in Malta.' How far do you agree? The candidate's notes read as follows. A referendum in February 1955 endorsed integration with Britain rather than independence. The integration scheme collapsed by 1958 and self-government was suspended. A new constitution in 1961–62 restored responsible government, and elections in February 1962 returned Borg Olivier's Nationalist Party with a majority; independence talks in London followed. On 21 September 1964 Malta became independent within the Commonwealth, with a defence agreement allowing Britain to keep its forces and bases on the island. On 13 December 1974 Malta became a republic, and the British forces finally left on 31 March 1979. The candidate's plan has three paragraphs: (1) Britain always intended to leave its colonies; (2) the Maltese wanted independence; (3) therefore independence was inevitable.
1. Identify the reasoning error in the plan and rewrite it as an argument.
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The error is hindsight, or teleology: because independence happened, the plan treats it as having been bound to happen. Paragraph (3) is also circular - the conclusion restates the premise - and 'inevitable' is a claim no evidence could falsify, since the plan considers no alternative outcomes.
A rewritten argument would begin by defining the claim: that no realistic alternative to independence existed after 1945. It would then set out the alternatives that were actually live - integration with Britain, as endorsed in the 1955 referendum; continued colonial status with a garrison; a dominion-style arrangement - and show what made each less likely over time: British retrenchment and the cost of maintaining the base, the collapse of the integration talks and the suspension of self-government in 1958, the 1962 election result, and the international climate after the 1960 UN declaration on decolonisation.
Then a counter-argument: independence was not automatic even in 1962–64, since the defence agreement and financial questions had to be negotiated and could have failed. The conclusion would be that independence became highly probable after 1958 but was not inevitable, and that contingency and political agency - not an impersonal tide - explain the timing and the form it took.
2. The plan's second paragraph says simply that 'the Maltese wanted independence'. How should the 1955 integration referendum be used instead?
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The referendum is not an inconvenience to be skipped; it is the strongest evidence against the plan, and a good answer puts it to work.
It shows that in the mid-1950s a substantial part of the electorate supported integration with Britain, not independence. That directly undermines any claim that the Maltese people had a single, fixed national aspiration from which independence necessarily followed. It also forces the candidate to explain change: why did a project that had majority support in 1955 cease to be viable within three years? Explanations would include the limits Britain placed on the scheme, the dispute over representation and finance, the resignation of the Labour leadership in 1958, and the resulting suspension of self-government.
Used this way, the referendum strengthens rather than weakens a contingency argument. It shows that the constitutional future was genuinely contested, that different political parties offered different destinations, and that independence emerged as the outcome of a struggle rather than the unfolding of a plan. It also prevents the candidate from writing about 'the Maltese' as a single undifferentiated actor - a habit examiners penalise in questions that turn on political choice.
3. Explain how 'within the Commonwealth' and the defence agreement complicate the statement that Malta was fully independent in 1964.
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They complicate it because independence is not one thing but a bundle of powers, and 1964 delivered some more completely than others.
Constitutionally and legally, Malta became a sovereign state able to legislate for itself and conduct its own affairs; it joined the United Nations in 1964. Domestically, that is real independence. But the defence agreement allowed Britain to keep its forces and bases, which constrained foreign policy, occupied land, and gave a foreign government a continuing presence in the island's economy and society. The head of state remained the Queen, represented by a Governor-General, until the republic in 1974, and the forces did not leave until 31 March 1979.
The skill being tested is defining terms before judging with them. A candidate can argue that 1964 was independence in the legal and symbolic sense but qualified in the military and financial sense; that full sovereignty was reached in stages, 1964, 1974 and 1979; or that the defence agreement was the price of independence rather than a denial of it, given Malta's dependence on British employment and markets. Any of these is defensible if the criteria are stated. What is not defensible is asserting 'Malta became independent in 1964' and leaving the qualifications unexamined while the question is precisely about them.