PARTITO POPOLARE ITALIANO. — Political party that arose after the First World War, with a strongly democratic character, inspired by the doctrines of the Christian social school.
I. ORIGIN
It was founded by d. Luigi Sturzo together with a group of politicians already well known in Italian public and administrative life who, after several preparatory meetings (in November and December 1918), on the evening of 18 January 1919, from Rome, released to the press the first appeal to the Country and the text of the programme. The appeal “to the free and strong” was signed by a provisional commission composed of eleven members: d. Luigi Sturzo, hon. attorney Giovanni Bertini, attorney Giovanni Bertone, Stefano Cavazzoni, accountant Achille Grandi, Count Giovanni Grosoli, hon. Dr Giovanni Longinotti, hon. attorney Angelo Mauri, attorney Umberto Merlin, hon. attorney Giulio Rodinò, Count attorney Carlo Santucci. The commission temporarily assumed the direction of the new Party and from the outset designated d. Sturzo as political secretary.The Party drew its motives from the antithesis between moderate Catholics and democratic Catholics that provoked—Christian Democracy (v.)—between 1904 and 1906. D. Sturzo, from his speech at Caltagirone (29 December 1905), had already brought to light the synthesis of the vague aspirations of the Christian democrats, which often manifested themselves in excesses aimed at asserting a religious doctrinal autonomism, thereby placing powerful weapons in the hands of the conservatives, enabling them to react against democratic action under the guise of defending orthodoxy. From that time onward, in order to operate effectively in the political and trade-union spheres in Italy, he had indicated the necessity of a strictly national party which would not, in its positions, imply the responsibility of the ecclesiastical authorities; but which, acting autonomously and through its own forces in the political and social spheres, could affirm fundamentally Christian principles precisely in the sphere of historical reality and contingencies. Thus, at the end of 1918, in laying the foundations of the P. P. I., he did no more than resume the logical line of his own thought. Historically, the Party is linked to Christian social doctrine, from Ozanam to Toniolo, but principally to Rerum Novarum; politically, to the political praxis of the Christian social parties of Christian Democracy (v.).
The First World War had not merely altered boundaries between one people and another, nor merely resolved old problems and raised new questions in the international sphere; within every nation it had also brought about profound social changes. Between the two dominant Parties—the liberal and the socialist—there was room for a new party, for the affirmation of a new democratic concept of the State, based not on the dictatorship of any class, even the proletarian class, but on the decentralisation of all functions and activities, on respect for every freedom, and on the rigorous application of justice. The working masses belonging to the “Italian Confederation of Workers” were pressing to insert themselves between the two then-dominant Parties and to attempt the reorganisation of Italy on the basis of Christian justice.
On 4 November 1918 Italy entered into an armistice and, on the 17th, d. Luigi Sturzo delivered his “Milan speech” on the problems of the post-war period, in close ideal connection with the programme of the P. P. I. The principal characteristic of the Milan speech lies in its having marked out the fundamental and necessary reconquests of freedom, so that it might then act effectively upon the modern world.
II. PROGRAMME
L. Sturzo and his associates took up the question of regional decentralization and placed it on the political and parliamentary plane, establishing it on a firm national foundation, while holding fast to the anti-pantheistic concept of the State as an organ of direction, coordination, supervision, and protection, making the region a unit not divergent from but convergent with the State, and recognizing it as a specific unit.Under the Nitti ministry, during the first half of 1919, the Party conducted a vigorous campaign for proportional representation, which, despite considerable difficulties, achieved a victorious conclusion in Parliament with the approval of the Micheli report. The new electoral system replaced contests among individuals and local factions with contests among parties, that is, among ideas. The general political elections of 16 Nov. 1919, based on proportional representation, with the P. P. I. winning 100 seats and 156 Socialist deputies being elected, brought onto the political stage the discussion of a problem that had already been presented several times: the problem of cooperation between liberals and democrats and the Socialists. An agreement between the Popular Party and the Socialists was also considered; but, in this regard, Don Sturzo, questioned on the subject, pointed out that events were not yet mature for such cooperation.
When Bolshevik propaganda began to assert itself more vigorously, the Party leadership felt the need to issue a manifesto to the country, a true anti-Bolshevik proclamation that called upon the masses to “shun every form of anarchic violence” and urged Parliament and the government to resolve swiftly the most important moral, social, and economic problems.
The first Congress of the P. P. I., held in Bologna on 14 June 1919 under the presidency of Alcide De Gasperi, reaffirmed the fundamental principles—not theoretical but technical, economic, and legislative—intended to restrain Bolshevik agitation; it called for the legal recognition of organized classes, precisely in order to direct the resolution of all conflicts between class and class toward peaceful orientations through stable representative bodies; the legal recognition of trade organizations—in order to make them responsible for their own actions; effective freedom of organization—that is, equal treatment of all organizations before the law, precisely in order to remove anarchic violence among organizations—and finally it called for the transformation of the wage contract and the introduction of workers’ profit-sharing and worker shareholding, in order to make the interests of capital and labor mutually solidaristic and to suppress struggles that disturbed the peace of society and were fatal to national production. At the second Congress of the P. P. I.—held in Naples from 8 to 11 Apr. 1920—the debates were extremely lively, but the central programmatic line, represented by the political secretary, had been delineated with such precision that the Party’s internal consolidation proceeded without deviation. Don Sturzo summarized the aims of the Party in three points: to overthrow state centralization, to restore consciousness to natural bodies, and to stimulate individual energies. The discussion then turned to educational reform, and concluding resolutions were adopted which, while outlining a broad program for the reform of public schools, insisted above all on the need to institute a state examination for schools of every level. The agrarian question was also extensively discussed; the report submitted began from a number of principles: the social function of the land, the problem of production, the need to foster the union of ownership with labor, the need for regional decentralization and representation of the agricultural classes, and so forth. It was a notably bold programmatic complex, from which, however, the concept of even partial confiscation of property for the benefit of the community was absent. The political and parliamentary situation, particularly grave during that period, was examined in the final days of the Congress.
The P. P. I. established itself in the Chambers and in the government through the work of its well-prepared politicians and organizers: foremost among them Filippo Meda, followed by Angelo Mauri, Giuseppe Micheli, architect of the first agrarian reform, Giulio Rodinò, Giovanni Battista Bertone, Fulvio Milani, Salvatore Aldisio, Antonino Anile, Giovanni Gronchi, Giovanni Maria Longinotti, Umberto Tupini, Mario Augusto Martini, Francesco Degni, Mario Cingolani, Vincenzo Tangorra, Umberto Merlin, and others. The figure of Alcide De Gasperi was already emerging at that time. The Party leadership was supported by a central office, in which the two political deputy secretaries, Mario Cingolani and Giuseppe Spataro, successively served, and finally, in the private secretariat, Mario Scelba; there was also a press office directed by Don Giulio de' Rossi (a noble figure of priest and scientist), with the collaboration of Igino Giordani, Giuseppe Fuschini, Vincenzo Mangano, and Giuseppe Petrocchi, the latter especially in matters concerning education and culture. In 1920, during the two great postal-telegraph and railway strikes, the Party supported the “white organizations” opposed to the strike; at the end of Aug. and beginning of Sept. 1920, during the occupation of the factories, it supported the “white” organization, the “National Metalworkers’ Union,” and promoted it politically, defending it against reprisals by the “reds.”
The Fascist movement began to develop and to threaten Socialist and Popular political and trade-union organizations. Il Popolo nuovo, the organ of the P. P. I., deplored the government’s inertia.
III. ELECTORAL TRIALS
On 7 Apr. 1921, Hon. Giolitti dissolved the Chamber and summoned the electoral colleges. The P. P. I. took a firm position in the struggle, raising the voice of national discipline, social reconciliation, and the moral, juridical, and economic reconstruction of the country. In the electoral battle, d. Sturzo spoke at the Augusteo and then in Turin and Palermo, advocating the restoration of the authority of the State and respect for the laws.The victory of the P. P. I. in the elections of 15 May 1921, in which it won 107 seats, resonated profoundly, despite Giolitti’s open opposition, since he allied himself with the Fascists to combat the popolari and the Socialists. The Tovini order of the day, also signed by Hon. Cavazzoni, secretary of the popular parliamentary group, marked the position of the P. P. I., which stood midway between the opposing wings.
When the civil servants’ strike had ended, L. Sturzo, in an interview, after indicating a series of reforms, disapproved of the rebellious attitude of the state employees, acknowledging that the moral crisis to which the country had come was due to a state hypertrophy «desired, cultivated, nourished, and endured by the governing classes and liberal democracies». During the Bonomi ministry, the action carried out by the P. P. I. was clear and consistent, directed toward the defense of the State, threatened from opposing sides, and toward social reconstruction. In Aug. 1921, the Party’s National Council laid down firm directives. The Gronchi order of the day affirmed that any cooperation with other political forces could take place only according to the principle of the progressive, profound renewal of economic and political institutions and through clear programmatic positions.
At the Congress of Venice (20 Oct. 1921), the P. P. I., having observed that «from the Congress of Naples onward, the collaboration of the popular parliamentary group in the various ministries had been imposed by the duty to make the parliamentary institution function and to cooperate in restoring the authority of the State, and that the failure to implement the programmatic points established as a pact of alliance (especially agrarian reform, proportional representation in local administration, the state examination, and cooperative legislation) was due not only to the slow and obstructed functioning of the Chamber, but also to the succession of political and electoral events», reaffirmed this limit on collaboration with political groupings. At the Congress of Venice, Sturzo reported extensively on the problem of the region, framing it on organic foundations. The report remains authoritative even today on this subject. A few days before the reopening of the Chamber, in Jan. 1922, d. Sturzo, commemorating the third anniversary of the Party’s birth, delivered a speech in Florence on the crisis and renewal of the State, highlighting the deficiencies, weaknesses, and errors of the policy of the governing classes, directly confronting the problem of the State and suggesting an audacious solution. When the Bonomi ministry submitted its resignation to the Chamber because of Giolitti’s maneuvers, the directorate of the popular parliamentary group unanimously adopted an order of the day establishing that, in the event of a crisis, the following should remain «as conditions precedent to its resolution, on the part of the popular group: the determination of a policy direction for the government and of a legislative program of work previously agreed upon with the responsible organs of the groups; the formation of a permanent majority committee; and proportional participation in the ministry in relation to the numerical strength of those groups». Il Popolo nuovo, on 5 March 1922, dwelling on the events, noted that the P. P. I. – after having been the first, as early as Oct. 1920, to sound the alarm against the financial proposals of Hon. Giolitti, and after agreeing with the Bonomi ministry to suspend application of the law on registered securities – had revived the economic and financial question apropos of Giolitti’s possible return to power, forcing everyone to declare themselves in favor of a change of direction.
Since the parliamentary situation was exceedingly confused, the King rejected Bonomi’s resignation and induced him to present himself again before the Chamber (16 Feb. 1922). But the Cabinet was again torpedoed by Giolitti, who was attempting to regain power. The popolari could not lend themselves to these maneuvers, especially in view of the extremely grave internal situation, which was almost revolutionary, provoked by the Fascists and Communists. The Party therefore took a resolute stand against Giolitti as an exponent of the degeneration of Italian democratic politics, also accused, de’ Rossi says, of having «assumed the guise of defender of the secular State against encroaching clericalism» and of covert divorce maneuvers. It was at this point that the famous «veto» was issued by the Party leadership and the popular parliamentary group against Giolitti’s political reincarnation. Giolitti finally understood the futility of his dream and fell back on the weak and uncertain Hon. Facta. The solution, however, could only have been a Meda, Amendola, Turati cabinet. Unfortunately, Meda, the popular leader, withdrew. But Hon. Giolitti was old and tired; the methods he had employed in the past were no longer effective; he no longer had popular support behind him; and his agreements with the Fascists in the 1921 elections to combat the popolari and the constitutional Socialists had compromised him in the eyes of their masses. And the man whom he would have had to overthrow or bend—namely, Mussolini—was superior to him in audacity and unscrupulous inventiveness, supported as he was by an armed organization that had infiltrated even the highest ranks of the army, and by a movement without scruples or limits to its activity.
IV. IN THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC CRISIS
Regarding the policy of the new Facta ministry, the National Council of the P. P. I. urged the Party leadership and the parliamentary group to act upon the government so that, in defending constitutional liberties and safeguarding public order against a resurgence of agrarian-Fascist violence by armed squads, it might make felt “in the public conscience the force of the authority of the State and of the moral principles of civilized life.”When the Facta ministry fell in July 1922, the crisis proved protracted, and the King reconfirmed Facta, who returned to the Chamber with the same ministry. The Populars then compelled the approval of agrarian reform (the colonization of the latifundia), which the Chamber approved on 10 August 1922. This led to an intensification of the struggle by the Fascists, allied with the agrarians, as well as to the occupation of town halls, the burning of cooperatives, and attacks in the streets and squares. The National Council of the P. P. I., which met urgently in Rome on 20 October 1922, issued an appeal for a return to internal peace. B. Mussolini, who from 1921 to 1922 had prepared to enter a coalition government, had subsequently set his sights on a government of national unity centered on the Right; now, while conducting inconsequential negotiations with Giolitti, Orlando, and Salandra, he was instead aiming for a complete seizure of power. The Fascist Congress of Naples was nothing more than a prelude to the March on Rome. The Popular ministers and the political secretary, who from the outset had understood the aims of Fascism, attempted to alert Prime Minister Facta to the danger, but failed to shake his confidence.
As early as the end of 1920, d. Sturzo had defined Fascism as a movement that had emerged from the war, to which one could grant the merit of restoring the reputation of the war and of victory, which the Socialists had been wrong to disparage; but it was a movement, born with socialist leanings and revolutionary-anticlerical in character, that was coming to rely on the “agrarians” of the Po Valley. Exploiting national and patriotic sentiment, it would serve as a pretext for the industrialism and agrarianism of Upper Italy to rally around itself the forces of reaction and the preservation of privilege against the demands of the working classes. “The government,” d. Sturzo added, “with its classical tactics of expediency and accommodation, will support and assist Fascism, and will then become its subject and victim.”
V. CON IL FASCISMO AL GOVERNO
After Mussolini’s accession to power and the formation of the first coalition ministry, in which the liberals, the popolari, and the democratic socialists had entered, together with the nationalists and the Fascists, d. Sturzo did not accept collaboration and reserved the right to bring the matter before the Congress; he declared that he would leave the parliamentary popolari group free to conduct the experiment(as a personal initiative of the group); such was the spirit of his speech of 1 December 1922 in Turin.
The collaboration could not last: the rupture occurred shortly thereafter. Sturzo had not given Mussolini a blank cheque. The autonomy and dignity of the P. P. I. had to remain intact at any cost. Hence clarifications and adjustments: reservations and criticisms whenever necessary. The critical brief articles published from time to time by d. Sturzo, his speech in Turin on 20 December 1922, provoked increasingly serious reactions, and the report delivered at the national Congress in Turin on 12 April 1923 marked the definitive withdrawal of the popolari from the government.
The Congress of Turin was an “act of audacity” on the part of the Party leadership, and the timid, complacent men of good sense did not want it to be held; but d. Sturzo had grasped its absolute necessity and had even foreseen its historical function. In the meantime Il Popolo had appeared, the daily newspaper of the P. P. I. directed by Giuseppe Donati. A fighting organ, Il Popolo contributed to the clarification of the Party and to its differentiation, up to the definitive break with participation in the first Mussolini ministry, culminating in open opposition.
Having failed in the attempt to insert the Fascist revolution within the orbit of the constitution and legality, and the electoral reform of 23 July 1923 having been approved—despite the efforts of the popolari group authoritatively led by De Gasperi—which from the outset assured a majority to the Mussolini government, the P. P. I. definitively passed into opposition, notwithstanding the defection of a small group of its deputies. The legislature having closed on 24 January ’24 (in December the first attack against Amendola had taken place in Rome, and other very serious episodes of violence against Catholic and popolari organizations followed), the political elections called for 6 April ’24 took place amid an atmosphere inflamed by violence, with the decisive victory of the Fascist Party. “With these elections, the position of the P. P. I. in Italian public life undergoes a radical change,” Jacini observes; “no longer a party of government and of the centre, no longer the pivot of the parliamentary majority, free in its movements and also formally released from a collaboration that weighed increasingly heavily upon it, it finds itself aligned, with an ancillary role, alongside a growing group of liberals, democrats, and socialists, forming with them the varied body of the constitutional opposition committed to defending the statutory liberties.”
But we must go back to an extremely significant event in the life of the Party. D. Sturzo, overwhelmed by the reaction, submitted his resignation on 10 July 1923 to the National Council of the Party, which had assembled in those days, amid the vigorous opposition conducted by the parliamentary group against the electoral reform and the Fascist government. He declared that he was not prompted to do so by disagreements with the parliamentary group, but in order no longer to provide the adversaries with a pretext for misconstruing the relations between the P. P. I. and the Church and thus involving the latter in the inevitable political conflicts that the Party had to face in defending and implementing its ideal and practical programme. The National Council then decided to entrust the functions of the political secretariat to a triumvirate, to which the Hon. Rodinò was appointed president, the Hon. Gronchi secretary, and the lawyer Spataro deputy secretary. The impression within the Party was profound, and the tribute paid to d. Sturzo was imposing. His resignation was variously interpreted: in ministerial circles as a success for Mussolini, in other circles as a prelude to the popolari group’s hardening of its opposition; but it had become inevitable, since the government’s directives of persecution gave rise to fears that Fascist hostility toward d. Sturzo and the Party might extend to the clergy in general. Meanwhile, the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti was murdered (10 June 1924), as was d. Giovanni Minzoni, archpriest of Argenta (14 August 1924).
After his resignation and until the day of his exile, d. Sturzo resumed his studies with great intensity and founded the Bollettino di scienze sociali e politiche, a lively critical review devoted to examining and debating the principal problems agitating the field of Italian and foreign social and political culture. When d. Sturzo left Rome for London, on 25 October 1924, the Party’s secretariat and leadership were assumed by Alcide De Gasperi, who, with Spataro’s assistance, maintained and strengthened the ranks until he too was overwhelmed by violence.
The popolari gave very effective assistance to the political movement known as the Aventine, provoked by the political crimes and other extremely serious attacks on liberty perpetrated by the black squads, which made the opposition’s exercise of parliamentary power impossible.
The Matteotti campaign was the Party newspaper’s, Il Popolo’s, greatest title to honour. Donati, through his denunciation of De Bono submitted to the High Court of Justice and through a series of meticulously documented articles, exposed the political responsibility for the crime in an irrefutable manner. He displayed the same ardour in the journalistic campaign and in the denunciation of Balbo for the assassination of d. Minzoni (after the Matteotti crime, De Gasperi, who was one of the most active members of the Aventine steering committee, went to the Quirinal together with Amendola and Di Cesarò to present the opposition’s demands against the crime to the King).
VI. LAST CONGRESS
The last Congress of the P. P. I. was held in Rome in the spring of 1925, in a cramped hall near S. Andrea della Valle, where De Gasperi gathered his loyal friends. After an examination of the situation, it was concluded that, with every possibility of action or reaction by now removed, nothing remained but to affirm their moral independence. On 14 Dec. 1925, De Gasperi too was forced to resign as the Party’s political secretary and retire to private life.On 25 Jan. 1927, the dissolution of the Chamber was decreed, and the popular parliamentary group, already crushed by the measure depriving the Aventine deputies of their parliamentary mandates, ceased to exist even in theory. Most of the Party’s leading figures were deprived of their passports and firearms permits and forced to accept identity cards bearing their fingerprints. They were barred from holding any public office and were permitted to engage in professional activity only within very narrow limits.
VII. THE HISTORICAL FUNCTION OF THE PARTY
To summarize the historical function of the P. P. I. in a synthetic judgment, it may legitimately be stated that, by transferring the principles of the Christian social school into an autonomous sphere, the Party gave a Christian-democratic consciousness and a sense of responsibility to a considerable section of Italian Catholics, freeing them from the tutelage and subordinate status imposed by the ruling political classes; and, on the other hand, helped to disengage the Church from party conflicts.The present-day Christian Democratic Party is none other than its heir and continuator.