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National Union (Italy, 1923)

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Unione Nazionale (Italian for "National Union") was an Italian Catholic political party founded during the 1920s with the permission of Pope Pius XI. Mostly made up of conservatives and monarchists, it came to support a rapprochement with Benito Mussolini. The party was one of the two major political tendancies which claimed the Catholic mantle at the time, the other being the Italian People's Party which was closer to the socialists.[1][2]. Luigi Sturzo, a leader of the latter coined the epithet "clerico-fascist" in a polemic against the National Union.[3]

The Unione Nazionale's membership primary came from aristocratic and pro-monarchist Catholics in Turin, Milan, and Naples, along with members of the Black Nobility. These groups represented over half of the signatories of the party's April 1923 manifesto.[4] Pollard describes the Unione Nazionale as "essentially an aristocratic clique".[5] Its manifesto credited the government of Mussolini with the goal of establishing "a lasting social Christian and Italian order".[6] Up to that point there had been a lot of conflict between state and the Church, sown during the Italian unification by the likes of Giuseppe Mazzini. The National Union saw it as a chance to come to a full rapprochement and reconciliation.

According to the Il Momento of Turin, the party was hostile "towards the works and towards trade union organizations", then under the influence of communist and anarchist groups.[7]

The Unione Nazionale, and the similar Centro Nazionale, supported Benito Mussolini and the Fascist list in the March 1929 elections, only to virtually disappear from the political map after the conclusion of the Lateran treaties.[8] The Centro Nazionale dissolved in the summer of 1930, leaving the Unione Nazionale as the sole remaining pro-Mussolini Catholic political party.[8]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Atkin and Tallett, 2003, p. 206.
  2. ^ Pollard, 1996, p. 81.
  3. ^ Blinkhorn, 1990, p. 32.
  4. ^ Blinkhorn, 1990, p. 34.
  5. ^ Pollard, 1996, p. 82.
  6. ^ Blinkhorn, 1990, p. 42.
  7. ^ Blinkhorn, 1990, p. 35.
  8. ^ a b Blinkhorn, 1990, p. 44.

References

  • Atkin, Nicholas, and Tallett, Frank. 2003. Priests, Prelates, and People: A History of European Catholicism Since 1750. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195219872
  • Blinkhorn, Martin. 1990. Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in twentieth-century Europe. Routledge. ISBN 0049400878
  • Pollard, John. 1996. "Italy" in Political Catholicism in Europe, 1918-1965. Eds. Torn Buchanan and Martin Conway. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198203195
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