Il Piccolo
- The Aims and Scope of the New Measures
- Issue of a 5% Consolidated Loan
- The New Public Security Law
Il Piccolo built this front page around the Fascist government's new measures. It quoted the daily La Tribuna, which argued that the measures adopted “yesterday” showed the regime recognizing itself as totalitarian and formed an integral system of defence for regime and nation, aimed at open enemies and at masked ones, including the anti-Fascism said to nest within Fascism itself. The paper also printed Article 1 of a law authorizing a 5% consolidated national loan to absorb the state's short-term debt, exempt from all present and future taxes and shielded from conversion until the end of 1936. Finally, it described two novelties of the new public-security law: a police licence for building porters, who were now to guarantee vigilance over their buildings as well as honesty, and the identity card.
Translation
The Aims and Scope of the New Measures
Under the title “The Totalitarian Regime”, the Tribuna writes, among other things: “The measures adopted yesterday mean two things: 1) that the Fascist regime recognizes itself as totalitarian, that is, as an essential condition of life for the Nation; 3) that the measures taken together constitute a system of integral defence for the Regime and for the Nation, that is, a system of defence directed not only against open enemies, but also against uncovered or masked enemies, against the anti-Fascism that nests within Fascism.”
Issue of a 5% Consolidated Loan
Art. 1. To provide for the consolidation of the State's [?] interest-bearing short-term debt, the issue of a national loan is authorized through the creation of a consolidated debt security to be entered in the Great Book of the Public Debt, bearing annual interest of 5 lire per cent, exempt from every present and future tax and not subject to conversion until the end of the year 1936. The said interest of 5 per cent is payable in the Kingdom and in the Colonies in Italian lire in half-yearly instalments falling due on the first of January and the first of July of each year.
The New Public Security Law
Among the innovations contained in the new Public Security law are also those concerning the “licence for porterage” and “the identity card”. To be able to work as a porter in apartment buildings a police licence will be necessary, since the porter of a building must from now on be a person who gives a guarantee not only of honesty but also of vigilance over the building in his custody.
Context
Which attacks on Mussolini preceded the measures of 1926?
The Tribuna's language of integral defence came at the end of a year of attacks on Mussolini. The former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested for attempting to assassinate Mussolini on 4 November 1925, and the regime benefited: Zaniboni's Unitary Socialist Party was dissolved and its newspaper La Giustizia shut down. On 11 September 1926 the anarchist marble worker Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at Mussolini's limousine at Porta Pia in Rome, injuring four other people. On 31 October 1926 a shot fired at Mussolini as he rode through Bologna led to the lynching of fifteen-year-old Anteo Zamboni, and that attempt resulted in laws creating Mussolini's secret police. The measures the Tribuna praised were adopted within days of the Bologna affair. The terrorism specialist J. Bowyer Bell later wrote that the boy was probably innocent and the affair either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists. That doubt matters when reading the Tribuna's claim that the measures also targeted enemies hidden inside Fascism itself.
What were the Special Tribunal and the 1926 leggi fascistissime?
The system of defence celebrated by the Tribuna corresponds to the leggi fascistissime of 1926. Besides closing the parties and newspapers hostile to the regime, these laws created the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, a special department of the Fascist government used to judge crimes against the regime. The laws consolidated the totalitarian regime, the same word the Tribuna adopted approvingly when it said the regime now recognized itself as totalitarian. Zaniboni, arrested a year earlier, came to trial only after the new laws were in place: his trial for high treason began on 11 April 1927, and he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which he served until 1943 in Viterbo, Volterra and Ponza. The newspaper's quotation thus records, in the regime's own vocabulary, the moment when this legal machinery was assembled.
Police confinement under the new public-security law
The porter licence and identity card reported by Il Piccolo belonged to the same law that introduced police confinement. In 1926, alongside the Special Tribunal, a new public-security law substantially changed the institution of confino. People judged subversive could be ordered to live in a designated place under surveillance for one to five years, with possible extensions, and mere suspicion of anti-Fascist activity, even without any crime committed, was enough to justify the order. More than 12,000 people are estimated to have been struck by the measure between 1926 and 1943. Requiring porters to guarantee vigilance over their buildings fits this law's wider reliance on police oversight of daily life, although the article itself presents the requirement simply as a condition for practising the trade.
What monetary policy surrounded the 5% loan?
The loan article appeared less than three months after Mussolini announced Quota 90, a controversial revaluation of the lira, in a speech at Pesaro on 18 August 1926. Ten days earlier, on 8 August 1926, he had written to his finance minister Giuseppe Volpi that “the fate of the regime is tied to the lira”. The text printed by Il Piccolo addressed the state's short-term debt, which it proposed to replace with a long-term 5% security, free of all present and future taxes and protected from conversion until the end of 1936. The revaluation was followed in 1927 by industrial and agricultural wage reductions that went further than the fall in prices and so lowered real wages. The page therefore shows the financial side of the same autumn in which the regime tied its political survival to both public order and the lira.
Original
Gli scopi e la portata dei nuovi provvedimenti
Sotto il titolo «Il Regime totalitario» la Tribuna tra l'altro scrive: «I provvedimenti adottati ieri significano due cose: 1) che il regime fascista si riconosce totalitario, ossia in condizioni essenziali di vita per la Nazione; 3) che l'insieme dei provvedimenti stessi costituiscono un sistema di difesa integrale per il Regime e per la Nazione, ossia un sistema di difesa diretto non soltanto contro i nemici aperti, ma anche contro i nemici scoperti o mascherati contro l'antifascismo che si annida nel Fascismo».
Emissione di un prestito consolidato 5%
Art. 1. Per provvedere al consolidamento del debito [?] fruttifero a breve termine dello Stato, è autorizzata l'emissione di un prestito nazionale mediante la creazione di un titolo di debito consolidato da inscriversi nel gran libro del debito pubblico, fruttante l'interesse annuo di lire 5 per cento esente da ogni imposta presente e futura e non soggetta a conversione a tutto l'anno 1936. Il detto interesse del 5 per cento è pagabile nel Regno e nelle Colonie in lire italiane in rate semestrali scadenti il primo gennaio e il primo luglio di ciascun anno.
La nuova legge di P. S.
Tra le innovazioni che contiene la nuova legge di P. S., sono anche quelle che riguardano la «licenza per il portierato» e «la carta di identità». Per poter esercitare il portierato nei palazzi sarà necessaria una licenza della polizia, poichè il portiere di uno stabile dovrà essere d'ora innanzi persona che dia garanzia non solo di onestà, ma anche di vigilanza dello stabile di cui ha la custodia.
Source: Source: Internet Archive