Yana Bland or Yana Bland Mintoff (' Yana Joan Mintoff) is a
Maltese Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
politician, economist and educator.
Mintoff was born on 21 August 1951, the daughter of the former
Prime Minister of Malta
The prime minister of Malta ( mt, Prim Ministru ta' Malta) is the head of government, which is the highest official of Malta. The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet meetings, and selects its ministers to serve in their respective portfolios. The P ...
,
Dom Mintoff
Dominic Mintoff, ( mt, Duminku Mintoff, ; often called ''il-Perit'', "the Architect"; 6 August 1916 – 20 August 2012) was a Maltese Socialist politician, architect, and civil engineer who was leader of the Labour Party from 1949 to 198 ...
and Moyra De Vere Bentinck, by whom she is descended from both Dutch and British nobility.
[Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: ]Burke's Peerage
Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher founded in 1826, when the Irish genealogist John Burke began releasing books devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great Br ...
(Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), Vol., p. 3183.
Career
As a teacher in the United Kingdom, Yana Mintoff was a member of the
Socialist Workers Party. On 6 July 1978 Mintoff took part in a demonstration in the
UK House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England.
The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 mem ...
; in a protest against the presence of UK troops in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
, three bags of horse manure were hurled from the public gallery during a debate on
Scottish devolution
Devolution is the process in which the central British parliament grants administrative powers (excluding principally reserved matters) to the devolved Scottish Parliament. Prior to the advent of devolution, some had argued for a Scottish Parl ...
; John Mcsherry and Mintoff were arrested and she was later fined.
On her return to Malta, she helped establish the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region. Mintoff helped compile four books of collected works:
*Militarism in the Mediterranean, Malta 1994
*Health in the Mediterranean, including interviews with Tuareg Nuclear test Victims, Malta 1995
*Nobody Can Imagine Our Longing: Refugees and Immigrants in the Mediterranean, Plain View Press, Austin TX 1996
*In Search of Peace, Plain View Press, 1998
An economist by training, her publications include an article published in the ''International Journal of Health Services'',
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
, MD, USA.
In Texas in 1998, Mintoff was a founder and superintendent of the
Katherine Anne Porter School, a
charter school
A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of auto ...
in
Wimberley.
Having returned to Malta to tend to her ailing father, Mintoff addressed the Maltese
Labour Party's General Conference of 2012.
She was a candidate in the
2013 Maltese general election, but failed to get elected to the House of Representatives.
Family
Mintoff's first husband was Geoff Mainwaring. She married David P. Bland in 1991.
Her children are Cetta S. Mainwaring and Daniel X. Mainwaring.
After the couple separated, Mintoff formed a relationship with a younger man from Romania, Gheorghe Popa.
On 24 October 2016, Popa became suspicious that she may have been dating another man, which led to a fight involving knives at the family residence in
Tarxien
Tarxien ( mt, Ħal Tarxien) is a town in the South Eastern Region of Malta. Its population stood at 8583 in March 2014.
The town is most notable for the Tarxien Temples, a megalithic temple complex which is among the oldest freestanding structur ...
. Her son, Daniel Mainwaring, intervened to stop the fight from escalating.
As Mintoff and her son went to seek medical attention, Popa allegedly set the house on fire which lead to severe structural damage to the property. The 39-year-old Romanian was found in the vicinity after a man hunt, soaked in blood.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mintoff, Yana
Living people
1951 births
Maltese women activists
Maltese educators
Maltese environmentalists
Maltese women environmentalists
Maltese emigrants to the United States
People from Hays County, Texas
Alumni of the University of Exeter
Bentinck family
Beauclerk family
Socialist Workers Party (UK) members