Malta - The Cold War’s Mediterranean Hotspot: Britain’s Escape 1971-1979

‘You can stay if you want to, we’re pulling out and pulling out fast’, said British prime minister Ted Heath to Italian premier Emilio Columbo in January 1972.He had just ordered an emergency withdrawal operation when renegotiations over Britain’s continued 180-year-old presence in Malta collapsed and its socialist, table-thumping prime minister, Dom Mintoff, threatened measures against 3,500 service people and their families. Dom Mintoff’s election victory in June 1971 changed Cold War dynamics in the Western Mediterranean.It risked handing over the island, a strategic choke point, to the Soviet Union, threatening Italy, Nato’s exposed southern flank, and the US Sixth Fleet. President Richard Nixon was paranoid about losing Malta and his government was already secretly funding Italian political parties to stop a socialist or communist government winning power in Rome.Italy - in complete political turmoil - was likewise obsessed, and Libya’s young and unpredictable Colonel Muammar Gadd