Italian Liberal Party (historical)
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| Italian Liberal Party | |
|---|---|
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| Founded | 1861 |
| Dissolved | 6 February 1994 |
| Main leaders | Benedetto Croce, Bruno Villabruna, Gaetano Martino, Giovanni Malagodi, Agostino Bignardi, Valerio Zanone, Alfredo Biondi, Renato Altissimo, Raffaele Costa |
| Newspaper | L'Opinione |
| Membership (1958) | 173,722 (max)[1] |
| Ideology | Liberalism, Conservatism, Conservative liberalism |
| International | Liberal International |
| European party | European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party |
| European Parliament Group | European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party |
The Italian Liberal Party (Partito Liberale Italiano, PLI) was a liberal Italian political party.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Origins
The original Liberal Party, also known as "Historical Right", was formed as a parliamentary group by Cammillo Benso di Cavour in the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia following the 1848 revolution. The party was moderately conservative and supported centralized government, restricted suffrage, regressive taxation, and free trade. The party dominated Italian politics following Italian unification in 1861 but faded after World War I.[2]
Later on the Historical Right split into two factions, the "Liberal Conservatives" (Liberal-Conservatori) led by Antonio di Rudinì and then Sidney Sonnino, and the "Liberal Left" (Sinistra Liberale) of Giuseppe Zanardelli and Giovanni Giolitti. The second group was by far the larger of the two and dominated Italian politics in the 1900s and 1910s. At that time the Liberals governed in alliance with the Radicals, the Democrats and eventually with the Reform Socialists.
The Italian Liberal Party was re-united and organized in 1921, under the leadership of Giolitti, formed an alliance with the National Fascist Party (at the time a small political force) and was finally banned under Benito Mussolini in 1925.
[edit] Post World War II
The party was re-founded in 1943 by Benedetto Croce, a prominent intellectual and MP whose international recognition allowed him to remain a free man during the Fascist regime, despite being an anti-fascist himself. Various groups had claimed the label "Liberal" before, but had never organized themselves as a party. After the end of World War II, the Liberal Enrico De Nicola became "temporary chief of state" (not President of the Republic, as the general elections had not yet been held) and another one, Luigi Einaudi (who, as Minister of Economy and Governor of the Bank of Italy between 1945 and 1948, had reshaped Italian economy), first President of Italy.
In the 1946 general election the party, which was part of the National Democratic Union, won 6.8% of the vote, which was somewhat below expectations. Indeed PLI was supported by all the survivors of the Italian political class before the rise of Fascism, from Vittorio Emanuele Orlando to Francesco Saverio Nitti. In the first years, the party was led by Leone Cattani, member of the internal left, and then by Roberto Lucifero, a monarchist-conservative. This fact caused the exit of the group of Cattani, so that Bruno Villabruna, a moderate, was elected secretary in 1948 in order to re-unite all Liberals under a single banner.
[edit] Giovanni Malagodi
Under Giovanni Malagodi, the party moved further to the right on economic issues. In particular the party opposed the new centre-left coalition that included also the Italian Socialist Party and presented itself as the main conservative party in Italy. This caused in 1956 the exit of the party's left-wing, including Bruno Villabruna, Eugenio Scalfari and Marco Pannella, who founded the Radical Party.
Malagodi managed to draw some votes from the Italian Social Movement, the Monarchist National Party and especially Christian Democracy, whose party base was composed also by conservatives who were suspicious of the Socialists, increasing the party's share to a historical record of 7.0% in the 1963 general election. After his resignation from party leadership in 1972, the Liberals were defeated with a humiliating 1.3% in 1976 and tried to re-gain strength by supporting typically liberal issues, such as divorce.
[edit] The Pentapartito
After Valerio Zanone took over in 1976, the party moved to the centre. The new secretary opened to the Socialists, hoping to put in action a sort of Lib-Lab cooperation, similar to that experimented in the United Kingdom from 1977 to 1979 between Labour and Liberals.
In 1983 the PLI finally entered in the government coalition with the Christian Democracy (DC), the Socialist Party (PSI), and the smaller Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI) and Italian Republican Party (PRI); the coalition was dubbed for a long time pentapartito, or "five-parties". In the 1980s, the party was also led by Renato Altissimo and Alfredo Biondi.
With the uncovering of the corruption system nicknamed Tangentopoli by the Mani Pulite investigation, many government parties experienced a rapid loss of their support. In the first months the Liberal Party seemed immune to investigation. However, as the investigations further unraveled, the PLI turned out to be part of the corruption scheme. Francesco De Lorenzo, the Liberal Minister of Health, was one of the most loathed politicians in Italy for his corruption, that involved stealing funds from the sick, and allowing commercialisation of medicines based on bribes.
[edit] Dissolution and diaspora
The party was disbanded in February 1994 and there were at least six heirs:
- the Union of the Centre (UdC), led by Alfredo Biondi, Raffaele Costa and Enrico Nan, was an associate party of Forza Italia and was merged into in 1998;
- the Liberal Party (PL), led by Stefano De Luca, Ernesto Caccavale and Luigi Calligaris, was too associated to Forza Italia, before distancing from it;
- a group, that included Antonio Martino, Giuliano Urbani, Giancarlo Galan and Paolo Romani, joined directly to Forza Italia;
- the Italian Liberal Right (DLI), led by Gabriele Pagliuzzi and Giuseppe Basini, joined National Alliance;
- the Federation of Italian Liberals (FdL), led by Raffaello Morelli and Valerio Zanone, first joined the Patto Segni, then The Olive Tree;
- the Liberal Left (SL) of Gianfranco Passalacqua, represented the left-wingers of the party and was finally merged in the Democrats of the Left in 2006.
After some years from the party dissolution, most members have migrated to Forza Italia or other parties of the centre-right, while some other joined the centre-left, and especially Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy.
[edit] Re-foundation
In 2004 the party was re-founded by Stefano De Luca, then leader of the Liberal Party, Renato Altissimo, Carla Martino (sister of Antonio), Giuseppe Basini, Attilio Bastianini, Savino Melillo, Salvatore Grillo, Arturo Diaconale and Gian Nicola Amoretti. This new party gathers some of the Italian right-wing liberals, but has soon distanced from the centre-right coalition dominated by Forza Italia, where most Italian Liberals are today, in order to follow an autonomous path.
[edit] Popular support
Before the World Wars the Liberals were the political establishment that governed Italy for decades. Their political base of support was in Piedmont, where many leading liberal politicians of the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Italy (including both Camillo Cavour and Giovanni Giolitti) hailed from, and Southern Italy. The Liberals never gained large support after World War II as they were not able to become a mass party and were replaced by Christian Democracy as the dominant political force of the country. In the 1946 general election, the first after the war, the Liberal Party gained 6.8% as part of the National Democratic Union. At that time they were strong especially in the South, as Christian Democracy was mainly rooted in the North: 21.0% in Campania, 22.8% in Basilicata, 10.4% in Apulia, 12.8% in Calabria and 13.6% in Sicily.[3]
The party soon became the party representing the industrial elites of the North-West, the so-called "industrial triangle" formed by Turin, Milan and Genoa. The Liberals had their best results in the 1960s, when they were rewarded by liberal-conservative voters for their opposition to the participation of the Italian Socialist Party to the government. The party won 7.0% of the vote in 1963 (15.2% in Turin, 18.7% in Milan and 11.5% in Genoa) and 5.8% 1963. After that the Liberals suffered a decline in term of votes and settled around 2-3% in the 1980s, when their strongholds were reduced to Piedmont, and especially the Provinces of Torino and Cuneo, and, to a minor extent, Western Lombardy, Liguria and Sicily.[4]
In fact, as the other parties of the Pentapartito coalition (Christian Democrats, Socialists, Republicans and Democratic Socialists), the Liberals strengthened their grip on the South, while in the North they all would have lost many votes to Lega Nord and its regional precursors. In the 1992 general election, the last before the Tangentopoli scandals, the PLI won 2.9% of the vote, a decent result thanks to the increase of votes from the South, which can be considered the Indian summer of the party before the 1992–1994 storm.[4]
After the end of the so-called First Republic former Liberals were very influent within Forza Italia in Piedmont, Liguria and, strangely, in Veneto, where Giancarlo Galan was three times elected President of the Region. Former Liberals are still dominant within the party ranks of the The People of Freedom (the successor of Forza Italia) in the Province of Cuneo and in Liguria.
[edit] Leadership
[edit] Secretaries
- Giovanni Cassandro (1944)
- Manlio Brosio (1944–1945)
- Leone Cattani (1945–1946)
- Giovanni Cassandro (1946–1947)
- Roberto Lucifero (1947–1948)
- Bruno Villabruna (1948–1954)
- Alessandro Leone di Tavagnasco (1954)
- Giovanni Malagodi (1954–1972)
- Agostino Bignardi (1972–1976)
- Valerio Zanone (1976–1985)
- Alfredo Biondi (1985–1986)
- Renato Altissimo (1986–1993)
- Raffaele Costa (1993–1994)
[edit] Presidents
- Benedetto Croce (1944–1954)
- Raffaele De Caro (1954–1962)
- Gaetano Martino (1962–1972)
- Giovanni Malagodi (1972–1985)
- Valerio Zanone (1985–1986)
- Alfredo Biondi (1986–1994)
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.cattaneo.org/archivi/adele/iscritti.xls
- ^ Italian Liberal Party, Britannica Concise
- ^ Piergiorgio Corbetta; Maria Serena Piretti, Atlante storico-elettorale d'Italia, Zanichelli, Bologna 2009
- ^ a b http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php?tp=C
