Action Party (Italy)
Action Party Partito d'Azione | |
---|---|
Logo of Justice and Freedom (1929-1943) and Action Party (1943-1947) | |
President |
Carlo Rosselli (1929-1937) Emilio Lussu (1937-1943) Ferruccio Parri (1943-1945) Ugo La Malfa (1945-1946) Ernesto Rossi (1946-1947) |
Founder (s) | Carlo Rosselli, Gaetano Salvemini, Sandro Pertini |
Founded |
July 1, 1929 (as GL) June 14, 1942 (as PA) |
Dissolved | 25 April 1947 |
Newspaper | L'Italia Libera |
Armed wing | Giustizia e Libertà |
Ideology |
Anti-fascism Republicanism Liberal socialism[1][2] Liberalism[3] |
Political position | Centre-left[3] |
National affiliation | National Liberation Committee (1943-1945) |
International affiliation | None |
Colours | Green |
Party flag | |
The Action Party (Partito d'Azione, PdA) was a liberal socialist political party in Italy.[1]
History
Founded in July 1942 by former militants of Giustizia e Libertà ("Justice and Freedom"), liberal socialists, and democrats. Ideologically they were heirs to the "Liberal Socialism" of Carlo Rosselli and to Piero Gobetti's "Liberal Revolution", whose writings rejected Marxist "economic determinism" and aimed at the overcoming of class struggle and for a new shape of Socialism, respect for civil liberty and for radical change in both the social and the economic structure of Italy. From January 1943 it published a clandestine newspaper, L'Italia Libera ("Free Italy"), edited by Leone Ginzburg. In the same year members of the Party came into contact with Allied secret services stationed in neutral Switzerland. In particular, this activity was commissioned to Filippo Caracciolo which had a special relationship with British Special Operations Executive. Caracciolo tried to avoid Allied bombing on Italy, but most of all he tried to get British support for an Anti-Fascist Committee that was supposed to lead the new government after an anti-Mussolini coup.[4]
After the armistice of 8 September 1943, as a central member of the National Liberation Committee, the Action Party actively participated in the Italian resistance movement with units of Giustizia e Libertà commanded by Ferruccio Parri. It maintained a clear anti-monarchical position and it was opposed to Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party's Salerno Initiative for postwar governance.[5] The party adopted the symbol of a flaming sword.
In the immediate post-war period it joined the government securing the post of Prime Minister for Ferruccio Parri from June to November 1945. However, as a result of the internal conflict between the democratic-reformist line of Ugo La Malfa and the socialist line of Emilio Lussu, combined with the electoral defeat of 1946, the party folded. Unwillingness of the "Actionists" to work with reviving political parties "tainted by association with Fascism" also resulted in the decline of the Action Party. The main group of former members, led by Riccardo Lombardi, joined the Italian Socialist Party, while the Malfa group entered the Italian Republican Party.
Prominent members
- Giorgio Agosti
- Giorgio Bassani
- Riccardo Bauer
- Norberto Bobbio
- Andrea Caffi
- Piero Calamandrei
- Guido Calogero
- Aldo Capitini
- Nicola Chiaromonte
- Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President of the Italian Republic (1999–2006)
- Tristano Codignola
- Enrico Cuccia
- Guido Dorso
- Francesco de Martino
- Enzo Enriques Agnoletti
- Oriana Fallaci
- Vittorio Foa
- Alessandro Galante Garrone
- Ettore Gallo
- Aldo Garosci
- Leone Ginzburg
- Natalia Ginzburg
- Ugo La Malfa
- Massimo Mila
- Carlo Levi
- Primo Levi
- Riccardo Lombardi
- Emilio Lussu
- Raffaele Mattioli
- Ferruccio Parri, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy (1945)
- Ernesto Rossi
- Manlio Rossi Doria
- Joyce Salvadori Lussu
- Gaetano Salvemini
- Altiero Spinelli
- Giorgio Spini
- Alberto Tarchiani
- Adolfo Tino
- Silvio Trentin
- Leo Valiani
- Franco Venturi
- Paolo Vittorelli
- Bruno Zevi
See also
References
- 1 2 Steve Bastow, James Martin. Third way discourse: European ideologies in the twentieth century. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press, Ltd., 2003. Pp. 74.
- ↑ Bernard A. Cook (8 February 2001). Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 671. ISBN 978-1-135-17932-8.
- 1 2 Ercolessi, Giulio (2009), "Italy: The Contemporary Condition of Italian Laicità", Secularism, Women & the State: The Mediterranean World in the 21st Century, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, p. 13
- ↑ Mireno Berrettini, La Gran Bretagna e l’Antifascismo italiano. Diplomazia clandestina, Intelligence, Operazioni Speciali (1940-1943), Firenze, 2010
- ↑ Mireno Berrettini, La Resistenza italiana e lo Special Operations Executive britannico (1943-1945), Firenze, 2013
Sources
- Website of the Italian Resistance Historical Society,, including in-depth bios, recent remembrances, and selections from party documents.
- Historical Dictionary entry from Paravia Mondadori Editori, an Italian Educational ipublishing house: .