Il Piccolo
- The first meeting in Odessa between Chicherin and Rüştü Bey
- The end of the British strike is said to be imminent
- The salute to the pennants
This issue of Il Piccolo, as far as it can be read, carried news from abroad alongside an item from Italy itself. A brief dispatch reported that Chicherin and Rüştü Bey had met in Odessa that morning for a first conversation lasting two hours, and added that no other details were yet available. A report headlined as forecasting an imminent end to the British dispute gave the toll in lost working days for January to October 1926: about 142 and a half million, against eight million in 1925. It put 126 and a half million of these down to the miners' strike, 15 million to the general strike and about two million to other disputes. A third item quoted a Fascist statement calling it a more than legitimate custom to demand that passers-by salute the pennants during parades, since the pennants were the living symbol of a new Italian and Fascist faith. The readable excerpts are short fragments of a badly scanned page.
This reading covers three short excerpts taken from a heavily garbled OCR of the page. The Odessa and strike excerpts begin mid-sentence, so the subject of the Odessa sentence and the opening of the strike paragraph are missing, and the selected text of the pennant item does not name its speaker. The OCR misreads names, the left-hand columns near the binding are curved and unreliable, and a library stamp partly covers the masthead. The total of 142.5 million lost days is translated as printed, although the three components given in the same passage add up to 143.5 million.
Translation
The first meeting in Odessa between Chicherin and Rüştü Bey
…this morning in Odessa and had a first conversation lasting two hours. But for now no further details of any kind are available.
The end of the British strike is said to be imminent
… From January to October 1926, the working days lost in this way total approximately 142 and a half million, compared with eight million in 1925. Of this figure, the loss of 126 and a half million days is to be attributed to the miners' strike; another fifteen million days were sacrificed to the general strike and about two million in other disputes.
The salute to the pennants
“It is a more than legitimate custom of the Fascists to demand from passers-by, during our parades, the salute to the pennants, which are the living symbol of our passion nourished by sacrifice and of our new Italian and Fascist faith.
Context
Tevfik Rüştü and the 1926 Odessa visit
The 'Ruscdi Bey' of the headline is Tevfik Rüştü, later known by the surname Aras, who had been Turkey's minister of foreign affairs since 4 March 1925, when he served in the third İsmet İnönü government. An encyclopedia biography of him lists Odessa in 1926 as the first of three visits he made to Soviet Russia, the other two being to Moscow in 1936 and 1937, and states that these visits came at the invitation of Maxim Litvinov. Il Piccolo, for its part, named Chicherin as Rüştü's partner in the two-hour talk. The dispatch itself reported only that the first conversation had taken place and how long it lasted, and said plainly that no further details were available, so the page gives no account of what the two men discussed or agreed.
The 142.5 million figure and the official count of 143.5 million
The strike report's numbers come from an answer given in the House of Commons on 11 November 1926, two days before this issue. Mr Betterton, replying to a question addressed to the Minister of Labour, put the working days lost from January to October 1926 at 143,500,000, against 8,000,000 in 1925, and divided the 1926 total into 126,500,000 for the coal dispute, 15,000,000 for the general strike and 2,000,000 for other disputes. Il Piccolo reproduced the breakdown exactly but printed the total as 142 and a half million. Since its own three components add up to 143.5 million, the missing million is a slip in the Italian report rather than a different estimate. Betterton also stated that the figures covered only days lost at the establishments where the disputes occurred, so the official count leaves out losses that spread to other firms.
How the 1926 coal dispute actually ended
The headline's forecast proved broadly correct. The Italian report spoke of a 'miners' strike', but by the summer of 1926 the dispute had taken the form of a lockout: on 5 July the coalowners posted new terms of employment based on an eight-hour working day, and on 15 July the Trades Union Congress General Council undertook to give financial support to the locked-out miners. The miners went back to work between 27 and 30 November 1926, a fortnight after this issue, on lower pay and longer hours. The University of Warwick's Modern Records Centre timeline sums up that outcome in two words: 'Total defeat'.
The pennant salute and the November 1926 crackdown
The quoted defence of making passers-by salute the gagliardetti appeared just as the regime was tightening its hold. Mussolini had been the target of several assassination attempts in 1926, the last on 31 October, and on 9 November the Fascist government invoked emergency powers that led to the arrest of many anti-fascists, among them the communist Antonio Gramsci. The National Fascist Party was then led by Augusto Turati, its secretary from 1926 to 1930, who helped consolidate Mussolini's rule and who also spoke of party dress in symbolic terms, calling the black shirt 'the virile symbol of our revolution'. The excerpt does not name its speaker, but its description of the pennants as 'the living symbol' of a new Fascist faith uses the same language, in which deference to party emblems was presented as something the movement could rightfully demand of anyone in the street.
Original
Il primo incontro a Odessa fra Cicerin e Ruscdi Bey
stamane ad Odessa ed hanno avuto un primo colloquio durato due ore. Ma per ora manca qualsiasi altro particolare.
La fine dello sciopero inglese sarebbe imminente
. Dal gennaio all'ottobre 1926, le giornate di lavoro così perdute sommano approssimativamente a 142 milioni e mezzo, in confronto di otto milioni del 1925. Su questa cifra la perdita di 126 milioni e mezzo di giornate è da attribuirsi allo sciopero minerario; altri quindici milioni di giornate furono sacrificate allo sciopero generale e due milioni circa in altre vertenze.
Il saluto ai gagliardetti
«E ' una consuetudine dei fascisti più che legittima, quella di esigere dai passanti durante le nostre sfilate il saluto dei gagliardetti, che sono il simbolo vivo della nostra passione nutrita di sacrificio e della nostra fede nuova italiana e fascista.
Source: Source: Internet Archive