Emmanuel Giovanni Salvatore Pietro Dimech, also known as Manwel Dimech (25 December 1860 – 17 April 1921) was a Maltese socialist, philosopher, journalist, writer, poet and social revolutionary. Born in Valletta and brought up in extreme poverty and illiteracy, Dimech spent significant portions of his early life in the Maltese prison system, mostly on charges of petty theft. At the age of seventeen, Dimech was arrested for the crime of involuntary murder, and sentenced to seventeen years in jail. After being thrown in jail, Dimech started to educate himself and became a man of letters.
Upon his release from prison, Dimech became a teacher and publisher, becoming a major figure in the public life of Malta. Dimech spoke freely among the social issues facing the populace of Malta, earning him great support and popular approval. However, the ideas espoused by Dimech caused him to come into conflict with both the Catholic Church and the colonial government of Malta. After the Governor of Malta grew frustrated by Dimech's growing support among the Maltese populace, he was permanently exiled to Sicily, Italy. Dimech later moved to British-controlled Egypt, as it was the closest territory controlled by Britain at the time. Despite pleas from high-ranking British officials, Dimech was refused permission to return to Malta, and he died in Egypt in 1921.
Manuel Dimech was born on 25 December 1860, at St John Street, Valletta, Malta, and baptised at the church of St Paul Shipwreck, Valletta. His family was poor and lived in a single room that was part of a common tenement house with over sixty people. His ancestors on his father's side were genuine artistic sculptors, though up till Dimech's birth his family had fallen on difficult times. During his childhood, Dimech's family moved residence twice, leaving Valletta for Qormi (today Santa Venera), and then moving to Msida. His father tried hard to make ends meet, but his weak health prevented any success in this endeavour. He died at the age of 37, leaving his widow to care for their ten young children, along with four from her previous marriage to her widow, Salvatore Testa (1832–1855).
Just a fortnight after his father's death the 13-year-old Dimech committed his first recorded crime of petty theft. He was a street urchin with no education, guidance or direction. For his first crime he was sent two days in a lockup. This experience did not stop him from delving deeper into a life of crime. Subsequently, he was to be sent nine more times to prison, sometimes for very serious crimes. Mostly it was for theft or burglary, but in 1878, when he was 17 years old, he committed involuntary murder, and was imprisoned for more than twelve years. In 1890, he was found guilty of forging counterfeit money (though he only traded it), and was imprisoned for a further seven years. He was released from prison in 1897 at the age of 36. In all, he was incarcerated for twenty years.
While in prison, Dimech began to learn how to read and write in 1877 at the age of 17. He studied various subjects, including literature, grammar, politics, history, philosophy, and religion. He learned multiple languages, including Maltese, English, French, and Italian during his incarceration. This linguistic knowledge later enabled him to work as a language teacher. Dimech also developed an interest in politics, focusing on the structural causes of poverty and social inequality. These pursuits later influenced his contributions to public life.
In prison Dimech had another kind of formation. During his last stint in prison between 1890 and 1897, a certain Marquis Giorgio Barbaro was appointed Commissioner of Prison. This man was considered a psychopath who made the life of prisoners vulnerable. He had tortured, murdered, persecuted and tormented prisoners ceaselessly. He also perjured his way into sending at least two prisoners to the gallows for crimes they had not committed. Dimech saw all this and lived through it with growing agony. The experience, together with the reading he was doing, moulded him into a daring, powerful and intrepid personality.
Dimech adhered to a philosophy that he called 'of action', a position very close, though directly unrelated, to the contemporaneous pragmatism of the United States. He came at this position through his acquaintance with the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and other British Empiricists and philosophers of utilitarianism. He claimed that actions can be considered right or wrong, and value judgments can be rightly gauged, according to whether they perform well when applied to practice. Actions, he maintained, proceed from the power that knowledge possesses from itself. Furthermore, actions are aimed at acquiring happiness, first, for the individual, and, simultaneously, for the whole community of individuals.
Once out of prison in 1897, Dimech embarked on an outstanding public career that brought him fame, though not immediate success. From the start of 1898 he issued a weekly in Maltese that was to serve him as his mouthpiece for many years to come. He called it Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin. Through it he explored, albeit with the language and prose of the times, the Maltese social structure. Furthermore, Dimech proposed the way forward. He advocated the education of the masses, and audaciously specified how Malta could one day be an economically self-sufficient independent republic.
During his lifetime Dimech issued various publications. The 462 editions of Il-Bandiera tal-Maltin are perhaps the foremost. But others are also interesting. Amongst these one can find other newspapers in foreign languages (of short duration), two novels, grammar books (in Italian, English, French, and Maltese), and pamphlets. Unfortunately, books of poetry have not survived. Dimech's main objective with these publications was to form a political class from amongst the people, especially young men and women who had not the possibility of acquiring an education otherwise. Dimech was enamored of the Maltese language, and saw it as an efficacious tool of emancipation.
Dimech had travelled to Tunis in 1890 for expediency reasons. However, in 1903 he visited Montenegro (for almost three weeks) to study at close range the social and political situation there. He enhanced this experience by travelling twice to the north of Italy (especially Genoa, Milan and Turin), where, in all, he spent almost four years. There Dimech became particularly acquainted to workers' movements and the trade unions. He was also very interested in the state-church relationship that prevailed in Italy during that fascinating time. Understandably, he came back to Malta fired up and all ready to bring about the social changes he had been mulling over for many years.
It is indisputable that Dimech wanted, and worked for, an overhaul of the social system. His main aim was to reform social inequalities whether they were maintained by the colonial government, the Catholic Church, the privileged class, the landed gentry, or whoever. His strategy was to begin with the political education of a new grass-root group of people, and subsequently permeate the illiterate, underprivileged and destitute masses. His ultimate aims were to make Malta an industrialised country that could be economically self-reliant and, eventually, be worthy of self-rule.
Definitely back to Malta from Italy in 1911, Dimech founded what he called Ix-Xirka ta' l-Imdawlin (The League of the Enlightened; pronounced ishirka taal imdaaulin). This was a sort of union in the modern understanding of the word, in the sense that it was a social club, an organisation militating for workers' rights, a school of adult education, and a political party all in one. Through this league Dimech hoped to have a say, and transformative influence, in the political, and then the social, and maybe also the religious, fields. Young idealists and people craving for change flocked to him, and not only from the lower class but also from the middle and higher classes. Dimech's political "revolution" had begun.