In Italy, the protest and turbulence of 1968 were
not confined to student groups or to a rebellion
of youth, but spawned in their aftermath an
upsurge in the militancy of the industrial workers.
The divisions and weaknesses of the trade union
movement were overcome by local bargaining and
by the development of factory organisations – the
factory councils. The Marxist student-protest
movement struck real roots among the workers,
unlike in West Germany and France, where
protesting students met with little sympathy from
working people, whose taxes gave students time
for their sit-ins and endless debates; in Britain,
student protest and influence were negligible
outside the universities, prompting tolerant
amusement or perhaps criticism of the authorities
for allowing such disruption. In Italy the protests
and the breakdown of order were far more serious.
The ‘hot autumn’ of 1969 saw the spread of
many strikes, supporting demands for higher pay
and better working conditions. The Italian people
could no longer be easily led; there was a loss of
respect for institutions and for the political leadership
that extended through all parties and traditions.
Labour legislation the following year, in
1970, gave the trade unionist more power. The
Italian economy began to suffer from characteristic
stress: inflation took off in the mid-1970s;
the sudden increase in oil costs hit the Italian
economy hard; workers’ wages outpaced productivity;
the agricultural south lagged ever more
behind the industrial north. The expansion of the
Italian economy slowed. Although the average
annual growth in GNP in the 1970s still exceeded
3 per cent, it gyrated wildly from year to year.
The economic upheavals and the social ferment
were reflected in the instability of governments
from 1968 to 1976. The Christian Democrats
hardly changed in electoral strength, but internal
divisions and the continued political jockeying
among coalition partners, who agreed on little
beyond the need to keep the communists out, produced
one crisis government after another. The
trend was to form centre-left alignments, and the
contemporary legislation reflected this, as did
the distancing of politics from the demands of the
Church, as Italy became increasingly secularised.
In 1970 a civil divorce law finally passed through
parliament. Effective implementation, however,
required a referendum. The Church continued to
oppose divorce vehemently, and so did the leadership
of the Christian Democrats, but when the referendum
was finally held in 1974 a majority of the
Italian population backed divorce. Women’s rights
too gradually made headway in Italy in the 1970s
and the 1980s, as elsewhere in the Western world.
And youth gained more influence, with the voting
age reduced from twenty-one to eighteen in 1974.
In another attempted reform of the Italian
political landscape, decentralisation and regional
autonomy were taken further. The first regional
elections of 1970 brought only limited progress;
they nevertheless made possible communist par
communists into central government. The Communist
Party provided comparatively efficient
administration in the ‘red’ central regions of
Emilia Romagna, Umbria and Tuscany, when
contrasted with the corruption of the other
parties. The communist response to welfare and
environmental needs spurred the Christian Democrats
and other parties to compete on these issues.
But political bargaining and central power in
Rome nevertheless predominate, inhibiting the
development of genuine regional autonomy as
intended by the Italian constitution. What the
regional system has not achieved is a levelling out
between the wealthiest and the poorest parts of
Italy. In 1978 against a gross national product
per head for Italy as a whole of 100, the poorest
region – Calabria in the southern toe – achieved
only just over half the average (53) and the
wealthiest – the Val d’Aosta in the north-west
corner three times as much (157), while industrial
northern Italy has more than twice the GNP
of the south. Italy remains divided.
There is a darker side to recent Italian history.
The grass-roots political militancy produced a
fanatical extremist element, small in number but
great in their impact because of the ruthless terrorist
tactics they employed; the best known were
the Red Brigades. Bombs were set off in railway
trains in Milan, in Bologna and elsewhere, with
considerable loss of life. Their purpose was to
destroy the social and democratic political structure.
The most spectacular Red Brigade terrorist
action was the March 1978 kidnapping of Aldo
Moro, the leader of the Christian Democratic
Party, when he was on his way to parliament. The
terrorists demanded the release from prison of
thirteen of their companions. The government
held firm, despite heart-rending messages from
Moro. Eight weeks later Moro’s corpse was left
in the trunk of a car in the centre of Rome. The
general revulsion was so great that it strengthened
rather than weakened Italian democracy. But terrorism
continued, reaching a horrific climax in
August 1980 when bombs were set off in
Bologna railway station, which was crowded with
tourists. Eighty-four people were killed.
Italy also experienced common West European
problems – it was no longer backward, a nation
apart. For a long time Italians had had to emigrate
to more prosperous countries to find work.
Now Africans were coming to Italy, and, as in the
rest of Western Europe, the stream of immigrants
– often performing menial functions for poor pay
which Italians no longer wished to take on –
created multi-ethnic communities in the cities
with their attendant problems of exploitation, discrimination,
poverty, crime and tension. At the
general election of 1976 the Communist Party,
now led by Enrico Berlinguer, hoped to overtake
the Christian Democrats, since Berlinguer’s open
defiance of Moscow and his leading role in the
rise of Eurocommunism had enhanced the party’s
standing. It came close to succeeding.
The communists demanded full acceptance
within the political system, particularly inclusion in
a government of national unity. They were supported
by parties of the left. Italy’s NATO partners
were thoroughly alarmed and warned the Christian
Democratic leadership against such a step. To avert
the danger that no government would be found,
that Italy would be virtually ungovernable because
the Christian Democrats could form no coalition
with the non-communist left which would give
them a majority, agreement was reached with the
communists in 1976 that they would support a
minority Christian Democrat government in
return for consultation. This involvement of the
communists in the government of the country,
which was called the ‘historic compromise’, came
to an end after the 1979 election, when the
Christian Democrats formed a new coalition government
with the non-communist left.
Widespread corruption and influence-peddling
continues to mar the workings of Italian democracy.
Links between Christian Democrats and the
Mafia in Sicily have proved highly embarrassing
to the party. The scandal of the freemason lodge
known as P2, which broke in 1981, was both
alarming and sensational. The lodge formed a
secret society of nearly 1,000 members drawn
from political, administrative and military elites,
including members of the government and
extending to links with high finance and the
criminal underworld.
Later investigation uncovered another murky
secret underground organisation called Operation
Gladio. It was originally set up early in the Cold
War as a secret military group to move into action
to counter a communist takeover of Italy. Its
functioning was known to successive Italian prime
ministers, including Giulio Andreotti, and revelations
by the judiciary in 1990 caused the ruling
political elite considerable embarrassment. It
seems to have become an extreme-right terrorist
organisation which attempted to incite anti-left
reactions. It was rumoured that Gladio was
responsible for a number of bombings in the
1970s and 1980s, including the explosion at
Bologna railway station. The theory was that
Gladio intended thereby to undermine the left,
whose terrorists were blamed for the outrages. If
so, Gladio was as much out of control as the Red
Brigades. What is clear is that Gladio belonged to
the unacceptable side of Italian politics. Yet it was
a healthy sign that there were other politicians,
civil servants and men with responsibilities in the
regions who were willing to bring corruption to
light. The mass trials of Mafiosi in Palermo in the
mid-1980s attested to their courage and determination.
The fight against corruption had not
been won, but at least it was being waged.
With a period of political stability, reinforced by
the financial reforms of Bettino Craxi, the first
Socialist to become prime minister, which he
achieved in 1983 with majority Christian Democrat
backing, the Italian economy was nursed
back to better health. Inflation fell to an acceptable
5 per cent and unemployment fell too. But the
fundamental problems of Italy remained. The
north–south gap was increasing; northern industry
was geared to, and competitive within, Western
Europe; the regions south of Rome, despite thirty
years of development aid, remained backward and
uncompetitive, with a few remarkable exceptions.
The Abruzzo region, west of Rome, with a population
of 1.2 million, was no longer tied to poor
farming, but had developed modern industry
and tourism. Was that a harbinger of things to
come? There was little sign of this in Calabria,
Sicily or Sardinia. Twenty million Italians lived in
the south in the early 1990s; one in five was unemployed.
Thirty-six million Italians lived in the
northern half, where about one in fourteen was
unemployed and standards of living were almost
twice as high. As Western Europe integrated in
the 1990s, the south could be left increasingly
behind. If Italian government remained unstable –
and the auguries were not good – the mismanagement
of public resources, the growth of the huge
public debt and the inefficiency of an army of
bureaucrats would carry on unimpeded, and interest
groups would continue to be paid off from state
funds. It was a considerable burden, mainly carried
by the efficient, large-scale private industry of the
north. Without political reform, all these problems
would intensify.
Craxi managed to remain in office until August
1987, just short of an unprecedented four years.
In the election held that month he slightly
increased his percentage of the vote at the expense
of the Christian Democrats, who nonetheless
gained twice as many votes as the Socialists. The
alliance of the Socialists and Christian Democrats
under the premiership of Craxi had been one of
pure electoral convenience rather than common
aims or mutual trust. It was replaced by an uneasy
five-party coalition headed by a Christian Democrat
and including Craxi’s Socialists. March 1988
saw another administration formed by a Christian
Democratic premier in increasingly uneasy partnership
with Craxi. This administration succeeded
in passing the long-overdue abolition of secret
voting in the Chamber on most issues. When in
March 1989, Craxi withdrew his party from the
coalition, the Christian Democrat prime minister
resigned. It took nine weeks to find a new premier.
In July 1989, the veteran politician Giulio
Andreotti became prime minister for the sixth
time, leading the forty-ninth post-war administration,
yet another five-party coalition, including
Craxi’s Socialists. Thus the stability of government
continued to rest on the cooperation of the
Christian Democrats and Socialists, which allowed
Craxi pretty much to name his conditions.
A feature of Italian politics unique in Western
Europe was the relatively small change in the
shares of the vote on left and right. Majorities in
parliament could at times be secured only by striking
bargains with the communists, who were thus
able to influence the national government without
being part of it. In the regions a Socialist–
communist alliance was not unusual, so the communists
were not entirely excluded from the political
coalitions that ran Italy. In the early 1990s the
Christian Democrats had been in power as the
largest partner in coalition governments without
interruption since the liberation. Changes of policy
had, nevertheless, occurred, changes which
roughly mirrored the political swings in the rest
of Western Europe. In Italy, however, they were
the result not of governments changing hands
between opposite parties, but of the parties themselves
changing direction. Party policies were
pragmatic. The Communist Party had altered
course; the Socialist Party was hardly ‘socialist’;
the Christian Democrats did not always follow
policies to the right of centre – all this made
changes of direction in government possible. The
1990s brought old problems once more grimly to
the surface: the web of Mafia corruption and drug
trafficking had spread to the north. The whole of
Italy was shocked when in the spring and summer
of 1992 two of Italy’s most prominent Mafia
judges were murdered. Organised crime appeared
to be beyond the control of the government.
Corruption scandals further alienated the people
from the self-serving politicians. The huge deficit
caused by government spending had doubled the
country’s debts during the 1980s. At the same
time, Italy’s infrastructure – its railways, its roads,
its telecommunications – was crumbling.
Somehow Italian politics had managed to defy
gravity in the past. A founding member of the
European Community, Italy enthusiastically
backed the monetary and political union envisaged
by the Maastricht Treaty, but its parlous
economic condition made the idea of convergence
with the economies of France and Germany
within a few years difficult to take seriously.
The general election in 1992 weakened the
four-party governing coalition, leaving it with so
small a majority that it could not hope to push
through any reforming measures. As a result,
Giuliano Amato, the deputy leader of the Socialist
Party, was asked by the president to form the
fifty-first Italian government. Amato was faced
with the problem of gaining parliamentary
approval for necessary financial reforms, to cut
welfare and pension payments. There was no
other way to meet Italy’s burgeoning deficit. In
September 1992 it suffered the indignity, in
company with Britain, of having to devalue and
leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In the early
1990s Italy seemed to have reached a turning
point. Political scandal, Mafia criminality and an
economic debacle threatened a continuous
national crisis unless fundamental reforms were
carried through, and not just talked about.
The criminal investigations begun by members
of the judiciary in Milan in 1992 involving Craxi
snowballed in 1993 to reveal endemic political
and financial corruption throughout the upper
echelons of local and national government and in
commerce. Even Andreotti, the veteran political
survivor, seven times prime minister, was accused
of being in the service of the Mafia. The collapse
of the Cold War in any case altered the shape of
Italian politics. Government coalitions formed
around the Christian Democrats and Socialists
to keep the communists out had lost their raison
d’être. So many party leaders, ministers and
deputies were touched by scandal and accusations
of corruption moreover, that the political game
simply could not continue as before. The electorate
was disillusioned; business wished to end
government waste; the people of the north
baulked at subsidising the south; unemployment
ran at over 10 per cent. The demand for political
change thus became irresistible.
Reforms were passed in time for the March
1994 national elections. Three-quarters of the
seats were allocated to ‘first-past-the-post’ winners
in constituencies and one quarter on the basis of
the old proportional representation but with a
new 5 per cent hurdle. The politicians of the established
parties rushed to put on new clothes. The
Communist Party, phoenix-like, re-emerged as the
Democratic Party of the Left (PDS); a minority
of the old orthodox party now called themselves
Reconstructed Communists; the disgraced
Christian Democrats turned to its pre-fascist past
and fought the election as the Popular Party of
Italy; but there were also entirely new forces such
as the Northern League led by Umberto Bossi, a
regional party wishing to break up the centralised
state and demanding the right to keep the wealth
generated by industry in the region; it had already
made a striking debut in the elections of 1992. The
real phenomenon of 1994, however, was the emergence
of an anti-socialist, free-market, right-wing
party, the brainchild of a charismatic business
tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, owner of three national
TV channels and the Milan football club whose
battle cry, forza, inspired the name of his party,
Forza Italia. Formed only a few weeks before the
March 1994 elections to stop the expected bandwagon
of the left, Berlusconi scored an unprecedented
victory. The elections were fought in
alliance groupings of the left as the ‘Progressives’,
the right as the ‘Freedom Alliance’, and the centre,
‘Pact for Italy’.
Italian political traditions are deeply ingrained
and electoral reform will not change them
overnight. Bribery and patronage are endemic;
non-payment of taxes is a sport for the selfemployed.
What appeared to be a breakthrough
when Berlusconi with his new Forza Italia Party
won the elections of 1994 proved illusory.
Predictably, Bossi’s Northern League broke up
the coalition, later becoming more extreme in
demanding ‘independence’ for the north. Basic
problems – the hole in public finance, disparities
of regional wealth, taxation and welfare reform –
remain. The technocrat caretaker administration
had no time during its brief period of office
between January 1996 and the elections of April
1996 to achieve much. The elections, however,
did mark a change when Romano Prodi, who
headed a centre-left Olive Tree coalition, defeated
Berlusconi’s Freedom Alliance. For the first time
the new government included ‘reformed’ communists;
but it also had to rely on the votes of the
unreconstructed ones.
The fundamental change in politics has not
just been the demise of the corrupt old Christian
Democrat Party but the entry of the communists,
who continue to enjoy strong electoral support in
government. Although they do not have a twoparty
system, alternative and opposing coalitions
can now provide the electorate with a real choice:
a gain for democracy.
In Italy the need to qualify for monetary union
also topped the political agenda. Its reputation for
unsound finance has been strenuously repudiated
and reforms have been driven through with
determination. Stringent campaigns were fought
against those prominent politicians and industrialists
who were involved in bribery and corruption
scandals. With the formation of the centre-left
Olive Tree coalition government in May 1996 the
administration of Prime Minister Romano Prodi
also brought some political stability to the country
after a turbulent decade that saw the emergence
of Silvio Berlusconi’s new right-wing Forza
Italia movement and Umberto Bossi’s separatist
Northern League. Prodi wanted to tackle the
roots of Italy’s deficit spending, the over-generous
welfare payments, especially pensions, and the
bloated civil service and bureaucracy, in order to
qualify for the European Monetary Union. But
this centre-left coalition, which included the
reformed communists, also needed the support of
the Marxist rump communists, who had formed
the Communist Refoundation Party. The 1997
budget created tensions but the Marxists were
reluctant to risk another general election in which
they might lose support. With the benefit of some
creative accounting, Italy was judged to have met
the Maastricht criteria and so was able to join the
Monetary Union in 1999.
The Olive Tree coalition ousted Prodi in 1998
and in quick succession had three new leaders as
prime minister – in October 1998 Massimo
D’Aleima, followed by Giuliano Amato, who was
removed in time for the former mayor of Rome,
Francesco Rutelli, to contest the May 2001 general
election. With all those changes it looked like the
old politics of musical chairs. As for Berlusconi, the
electorate did not appear too much concerned
with charges of corruption in running his media
business empire or in the conflict of interests that
would arise when a prime minister controls the
main news channels, three national TV stations, a
large publishing house, the AC Milan football
team, a major newspaper and financial services. A
self-made billionaire, he promised success in the
handling of government. There was a reaction
against Italy’s old political elite in favour of a maverick
business tycoon who promised to cure Italy’s
ills, though it was far from clear how he could
make good providing better services while spending
less – the classic conservative appeal. The electorate
gave Berlusconi’s own party solid support in
the Freedom Alliance he formed. His coalition
partners in the centre-right administration were
the same as in his ill-starred short government of
1994 – the populist rhetorically extremist leaders
of the Northern League Umberto Bossi and
Gianfranco Fini’s Social Movement with echoes of
the old Fascist Party. But Bossi’s poor showing in
the election no longer gave him the leverage to
bring down the government as in 1994, and Fini
was doing his best to shed the lingering fascist
image.
The big reforms Berlusconi promised remain to
be enacted. Nothing much changed. The Italian
budget remained out of skelter, the looming pension
crisis has not been tackled, economic growth
in difficult global conditions was low.
In the European Union, Italy became more
assertive, but Berlusconi did not risk taking conflict
too far. At home too he has avoided confrontations
with vested interests. His careful
middle way was well illustrated by his handling of
Italy’s position in the Iraq war. Italian public
opinion as elsewhere in continental Europe was
strongly opposed to the war. Berlusconi masked
his own pro-American feelings declaring no
Italian combat forces would be sent while quietly
permitting the US to use Italian bases. On the
home front, Berlusconi was dogged by allegations
of business corruption going back to the 1980s.
As a serving prime minister he had been forced
to defend himself before magistrates in Milan on
the very eve of taking over the revolving presidency
of the European Union in July 2003.
National pride would not allow that. A new
bill was passed freeing Berlusconi from prosecution
while prime minister but the constitutional
court in the following year struck down the
bill. Unprecedented for a serving prime minister,
Berlusconi at the close of 2004 once again
became the defendant in a criminal corruption
trial, accused of bribing judges twenty years
earlier, before he had entered politics. He was
acquitted; a political crisis was averted. Before he
leaves office, Italians will have tired of the legal
dramas and will judge him on the success of his
administration.
World History
