Ugo La Malfa
| Ugo La Malfa link (Politician) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 16, 1903 Palermo, Sicily, Italy |
| Died | March 26, 1979 Rome, Lazio, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Alma mater | Ca'Foscari University of Venice |
| Children | Giorgio La Malfa |
| Party | Italian Republican Party, Republican Democratic Concentration, Action Party |
Italian Bilderberger politician. During World War 2 he had contact with the Special Operations Executive, and kept close contacts with the British later on. After the war, he was selected minister, designated to represent Italy at the International Monetary Fund in 1947,and a member of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe. He attended two Bilderberg meetings, in 1964 and 1965 when his party was kingmaker in Italian politics. His son Giorgio La Malfa later attended the Bilderberg. | |
Ugo La Malfa was an Italian Bilderberger politician. During World War 2 he had contact with the Special Operations Executive, and kept close contacts with the British later on. After the war, he was selected minister, designated to represent Italy at the International Monetary Fund in 1947,and a member of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe. He attended two Bilderberg meetings, in 1964 and 1965 when his party was kingmaker in Italian politics. His son Giorgio La Malfa later attended the Bilderberg.
Education
La Malfa was born in Palermo, Sicily. After completing his secondary schooling, he enrolled in the Ca' Foscari University of Venice in the Department of Diplomatic Sciences. During his years at the university, he had contacts within the republican movement of Treviso and other anti-fascist groups. During his military service, he was transferred to Sardinia to disrupt the anti-fascist publication Pietre, on which he worked. By 1928, he was among those arrested following the 12 April bombing in the Fiera di Milano for allegedly planning to assassinate Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, only to be interrogated and released.
Early Career
In 1929 he took a job editing the Treccani Encyclopaedia, working under the direction of the liberal philosopher Ugo Spirito. At the request of Raffaele Mattioli he took a job with Mattioli's Italian Commercial Bank in 1933, of which he became director in 1938.
World War 2
On 1 January 1943, La Malfa and the lawyer Adolfo Tino succeeded in publishing the first of their clandestine publication, L'Italia Libera. Later that year, La Malfa fled Italy to escape arrest, travelling to Switzerland, where he had contacts with representatives of the British Special Operations Executive. With these he tried to organize a trip to London in order to make use of his personal influence at the Foreign Office. He tried to prevent the Allied invasion of Italy and to obtain a negotiated Italian retreat from the war.[1] Later he returned to Rome in order to take part in the resistance movement with the Partito d'Azione and the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale.
Post war career
In 1945, under the reconstruction government of Ferruccio Parri, La Malfa assumed the role of Minister of Transportation. In the following government, under Alcide De Gasperi, he was Minister of Reconstruction, a position later renamed Minister of International Commerce. He joined the Italian Republican Party, commonly known as the PRI.
He was designated to represent Italy at the International Monetary Fund in 1947 and was named vice president the following year. Meanwhile, with Giulio Andrea Belloni and Oronzo Reale, he assumed the temporary role of party secretary. Reelected to the parliament in 1948, and confirmed in the subsequent legislature, he held numerous positions, including as a minister without portfolio charged with reorganizing the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), before he was appointed Minister of Foreign Trade in 1951, where he liberalized the Italian economy and lowered import tariffs. In 1951 he was an informant for a CIA document about the political situation in Italy.[2]
After the Republicans withdrew support for the government in 1957, Randolfo Pacciardi left as party director. La Malfa assumed direction of the party's newspaper, La Voce Repubblicana, in 1959. In 1962, he was named Minister of the Budget in the first center-left government under Amintore Fanfani, following the socialist abstention. In May, he introduced the Nota Aggiuntiva, in which he supplied a general vision of the state of the Italian economy, including the inequalities which characterized it, and delineated the instruments and objects of their regime. Though criticized for his plan by the Confindustria, the Italian employers' union, he decided to nationalize the electricity industry. On the occasion of the 29th conference of the Republican Party, in March 1965, he was elected party secretary. The following year, he opened a dialogue with the help of his old friend Giorgio Amendola, son of Giovanni Amendola, between the republicans and communists, inviting them to leave behind their old orthodoxy and help develop a more "pragmatic" approach.
Discussing the Communist Party in government
In the early 1970s, one of British most prestigious" clients", the Christian Democrat Minister of the Interior Paolo Emilio Taviani, made a spectacular left turn, and even proposed to experiment with a "historical compromise" between DC and PCI, at least in the context of local administrations.[3]
In 1971, he gave a realistic assessment of the PCI to British ambassador G.A. Fitzherbert. "It is possible to detach the PCI from the Russian embrace", although the process "would be long, lasting at least ten years. [...] "The Communist leaders themselves privately admit the dangerousness of the USSR. However, if the democratic evolution of the party will take time, it is because "the roots of the PCI have been poisoned by pro-Soviet attitudes" and, if the Italians abruptly break away from the USSR, "Moscow could create a new pro-Soviet party".[3]
On February 11, 1975, La Malfa confirmed to the new English ambassador, Sir Guy Millard, an opinion similar to Taviani's: "The PCI is a serious, national and responsible party" even if, like the other political formations, "it goes through an internal crisis". However, he adds, the possibility of a government with the communists is to be excluded, "especially for reasons of international politics". Malfa too, therefore, sees the Soviet opposition as one of the greatest obstacles to the march of approaching the Italian "Eurocommunists" to power.[3]
During the tumultuous 1970s, the Republican Party played a small but vital role in determining the government of Italy and maintaining continuity. Following the fall of Mariano Rumor's third government in 1970, La Malfa refused the invitation of incoming Prime Minister Emilio Colombo to take the role of Minister of the Treasury. For him, the government was not able to delineate a strategic plan for financing reforms with their education, health, and transportation services, and Colombo only lasted one year on the job.
La Malfa pulled his party out of the subsequent Giulio Andreotti government, said to be over the issue of state control of cable television [4]. Asked again in 1973 by Mariano Rumor's fourth government, he accepted the Minister of the Treasury job. In that position, he blocked the request to grant increased emergency financing to Finambro, a bank owned by Michele Sindona, opening the door to the collapse of Sindona's banking empire and his eventual indictment. He resigned in February over fiscal policy disagreements with the Minister of the Budget, pulling the PRI's support for that government and causing its collapse. That December, he was named deputy Prime Minister in the fourth government of his friend Aldo Moro, and in 1975, he assumed the presidency of the Republican Party with Oddo Biasini replacing him as secretary.
The last years of his life were among his most productive. Upon defeating resistance from left-wing republicans in 1976, La Malfa brought the party into the pan-European federation, which later became the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party. In 1978, his action determined Italy's decision to join the European Monetary System. Following the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, La Malfa gave a tearful and memorable speech in the Chamber of Deputies condemning "terrorism" and the Red Brigades. Though nominated by President Sandro Pertini as Prime Minister in early 1979, the first secular politician to reach this stage, he could not form a government and later became Deputy Prime Minister and then Minister of the Budget in Giulio Andreotti's second government.
On 24 March 1979, he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died two days later in Rome.
References
- ↑ Mireno Berrettini, La Gran Bretagna e l’Antifascismo italiano. Diplomazia clandestina, Intelligence, Operazioni Speciali (1940-1943), Firenze, 2010
- ↑ https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00457R005600630011-3.pdf
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Mario José Cereghino, Giovanni Fasanella Il golpe inglese
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20081222072556/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943560,00.html