MUSSOLINI'S MEN STAGE A COMEBACK

The most significant outcome of the talian General Election last week was the sweeping gains made by the fascist Italian Social Movement.

This party, which campaigns on an openly corporatist programme and appeals particularly to admirers of the Îate Benito Mussolini, is now a serious political force, with 56 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 26 in the Senate.

Giorgio Almirante, its leader, has been receiving the plaudits of Rome's well-heeled socialites ever since the results came through. He had predicted the MSI would double its vote and he almost achieved this goal. The MS campaign, conducted under an umbrella of police protection at a series of provocative meetings in the main Italian towns, was particularly successful in Rome and the South.

It attracted the prestige support of a number of military figures - including Admiral Gino Birindelli, formerly commander of NATO's Mediterranean fleet. Birindelli was elected in three constituencies and • can now nominate two MPs to fill the seats he doesn't want.

The admiral gave up his NATO post to stand in the election 'because I regard this moment as particularly crucial for national life and for NATO'. '. He added: 'It is a moment in which the fate of the alliance, which even with its imperfections has guaranteed peace for 20 years, could be put in serious danger by the disintegration which seems to have struck our national community.' Birindelli epitomises that section of the Italian bourgeoisie which seeks a strongman-another Mussolini —to keep the working class in order at the point of a gun. Sections of the Italian ruling class have long looked back with nostalgia to the days of the fascist Duce and his 'empire'. But only now have they begun to see a serious prospect of restoring those days again.

Their opportunity comes with the development of great economic crisis in Italy, a situation of falling investment, mounting unemployment and declining industrial profits. Some capitalists, frightened by the upsurge of working-class militancy in a series of violent strike struggles, have been sending their money out of the country.

The economic position has been greatly worsened by the Nixon measures of August 15 last year. The collapse of the world monetary system has hit Italian exports and many big firms are reporting neavy losses.

The situation of Italian industry is described by Renato Lombardi, president of the Employers' Confederation of Industry as 'evident recession' At the end of last year he said he could see no signs that the recession was 'bottoming out'. So bleak is the future for Italian capitalism that at the December 18 currency talks in Washington, the Americans were persuaded to let Italy off with only a 7.5 per cent revaluation of the lira against the dollar.

Other countries were forced to mark up their currencies by as much as 17 per cent. Meanwhile, more than a million workers, concentrated particularly in the economicallydeprived southern regions, are condemned to rot in unemployment or scrape a living in a sub-proletariat of 'underemployed' The MSI's denunciations of government bureaucracy and mismanagement have a certain appeal to these sections in the absence of any genuine socialist alternative. It is worth noting that the party made its biggest election gains in the South.

These areas have been neglected by the biggest working-class party, the Communist Party, which has made determined efforts to woo the middle class by watering down its programme. The Stalinists were nowhere to be seen, for example, when the workers of Reggio Calabria engaged in a lengthy struggle with the state authorities a year ago.

The Stalinist-led union, the CGIL, was the last to support the Reggio workers when the first big strike erupted there at the end of 1970. The fascists won the leadership of this movement born of frustration and hatred for the regime by default.

Police and troops were repeatedly used to suppress the Calabrian uprisings and the fascists were able to pose as defenders of the rights of ordinary people against the state.

The MI's demagogic poses and slogans are only a means to an end, however. What the fascists dream of is the complete subjection of the Italian working class. That is why the MSI leaders have such admiration for the Greek colonels.

Their ties with the Greek regime are extremely close. Young members of the fascist movement are sent to special training camps on the Greek islands and there is much evidence pointing to financial support from Athens for the MSI.

Two years ago, secret NATO documents were uncovered indicating a plot to stage a Greek-style coup d'etat in Italy and crush the independent organizations of the working class. MSI sympathizers in the officer corps were implicated in The revelation of these plans was a setback for the fascists, who like to cultivate an image of pristine patriotism. It was at about this time that the MSI set out to conquer a bigger as recognized parliamentary Its leaders played down their links with the more extreme fascist terror specialists and became zealous advocates of law and order. They directed most of their propaganda against the groups to the left of the Communist Party, accusing them of bombing outrages and demanding more police powers.

In these attempts to smear the left they had the willing assistance of the thoroughly corrupt police authorities. Milan police turned a blind eye on evidence implicating the fascist group Ordine Nuovo in the bombing of the Agricultural Bank on December 12, 1969.

They tried instead to pin the crime on anarchists.

Pietro Valpreda is still in prison awaiting trial for this offence and another anarchist, Guseppe Pinelli, 15 dead after window at Milan police HQ. Other witnesses have died in mysterious and violent circumstances.

Ordine Nuovo (new order) is closely linked to the MS, trains its members in the use of sten guns and dynamite and aims at the armed overthrow of the parliamentary system. Some of its members were recently arraigned under a law of 1952 outlawing , attempts to revive 'the principles, symbols and methods proper to the dissolved fascist party' Similar to the Ordine Nuovo are the so-called 'Mussolini Action Squadrons' which also specialize in terror against the left. Earlier this year, Angelo Angeli, a defector from the MSI who also belonged to the 'action squadron', revealed that Left: Chief of the fascist Italian Social Movement (MS), Glorglo Almirante. Above: MSl youth on torchlight parade in Rome.

the MSI had organized the bombing of its own headquarters in Milan in order to blame left-wing groups.

Liberal pundits are now trying to dismiss the Italian fascists as having simply 'nuisance value' because the Christian Democrats have refused to take them into a coalition. This is an impermissible illusion. The fascist danger in Italy cannot be measured by the number of parliamentary seats occupied by admirers of Mussolini.

It can be measured only by the intensity of the social and economic crisis of Italian capitalism.

That is what makes the Communist Party's claims to have won a victory in the election so empty and bombastic: Their reformist policies offer no answer to the frustrated middle-class and the unemployed and drive them into the arms of the archenemies of socialism and the working class.

Pages from Railway History 1839-1972 by lan Yeats