Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Impressions of Italian Politics ROME ITALY IS THE last of eight European countries which I have visited during the last three-and-a-half months,...
...Against them stands a Leftist bloc, 22 per cent Communist, 15 per cent Left-wing Socialist, headed by Pietro Nenni...
...Nenni himself, in written answers to questions which I put to him, expressed emphatic disapproval of Soviet suppression of Hungarian freedom...
...Hungary did create a kind of "crisis of conscience" among the Nenni Socialists...
...In most European countries (the little islands of very moderate socialism in Scandinavia excepted), prosperity has affected politics...
...The Italian gross national product is up 50 per cent, compared with 1953: it showed a growth of five per cent during the last year...
...So, while Italy has certainly shared to a considerable extent in the upward economic surge that is characteristic of Europe today, it is not surprising that special economic difficulties and political frustrations remain in this beautiful and historic peninsula...
...The first things that strike a foreign traveler—railway trains and stations—are much improved, compared with my last visit eight years ago...
...And if you take a line running roughly along the southern slope of the Alps, leaving Germany, Switzerland, France and Austria to the North and Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia and Greece to the South, you have a boundary between the more and the less prosperous parts of Europe...
...Said one well-known conservative journalist: "That party is split between Catholic conservatives and Catholic socialists, and one faction paralyzes what the other tries to do...
...Ettore Bernabi, editor of the Rome Christian Democratic newspaper, Il Popolo, replied to my question as to whether there are differences in the party: "Yes, many and deep...
...In many villages the struggle is between the priest and the local Communist party secretary...
...Consider the bright side of the picture first...
...Labor and Socialist parties have gone to the Right: and the voters, most recently in Britain, have shown their preference for parties and groupings to the right of the Socialists...
...The lira has never been in such a sound position...
...Here, despite evidences of material improvement, there has been surprisingly little change in the voting habits of the people...
...This is perhaps an oversimplification, but the divergence between the Left and Right wings of the Christian Democrats is a fact...
...The larger cities, notably Rome and Milan, have erected huge blocks of new apartments...
...Many Italian Leftists (and some Rightists too) are uneasy and unhappy about the prospect of continued rule by a party which is closely allied with the Catholic Church...
...A possible way to eliminate the present frozen immobilism of Italian politics, one that is probably not distasteful to President Giovanni Gronchi, who inclines to the Left faction of the Christian Democrats, is to persuade the Nenni Socialists to break their ties with the Communists...
...But this is easier said than done...
...Anti-clericalism is a tradition with Italian radicals and also with some Italians who are conservative in social and economic outlook, but who still remember Cavour's struggle with the Papacy in the unification of Italy...
...Milan, which has always been the pacemaker in industry and commerce, with a tempo of life more reminiscent of Zurich or Brussels than Naples and Palermo, is fairly burgeoning with new office buildings containing mechanical elevators and all other modern equipment...
...But he was sceptical of the possibility of rapprochement with the Christian Democrats, because, as he put it, "although there are outspoken democratic and popular elements in the Christian Democratic party, the party as a whole is dominated by conservative and confessional interests...
...Italy's gold and dollar reserves are the highest in history, about $3 billion, and the country's overall balance of payments is strongly favorable...
...So the Italian political spectrum remains blurred and confused, although one senses that slowly improving economic conditions are making for a climate where violence is less likely...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Impressions of Italian Politics ROME ITALY IS THE last of eight European countries which I have visited during the last three-and-a-half months, and the only one south of the Alps...
...Like it or not, the Christian Democrats and the Communists are the two effective mass parties in Italy today...
...Not so in Italy...
...What complicates the political picture still more is that the Christian Democrats are by no means a solidly united party...
...The other 20 per cent is divided among half a dozen or more small, almost splinter, parties, which are further weakened by continuous splits and secessions in their own ranks...
...The Christian Democrats, united by allegiance to the Catholic-Church but seriously divided on some social and economic issues, remain the strongest single party, with about 43 per cent of the popular vote and of the seats in Parliament, since Italy has proportional representation...
...Yet the only visible political alternative, a government led by Communists, or strongly influenced by Communists, seems even more intolerable...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 40
