Experiencing war as the 'enemy other': Italian Scottish experience in World War II 9781526126313

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Experiencing war as the ‘enemy other’

Cultural History of Modern War Series editors Ana Carden-Coyne, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Bertrand Taithe

Already published War, disability and rehabilitation in Britain: soul of a nation

Julie Anderson

Christine E. Hallett

Jo Laycock

Containing trauma: nursing work in the First World War

Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, ambiguity and intervention

Juliette Pattinson Behind enemy lines: gender, passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War Jeffrey S. Reznick Healing the nation: soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War Jeffrey S. Reznick John Galsworthy and disabled soldiers of the Great War: with an illustrated selection of his writings Michael Roper

The secret battle: emotional survival in the Great War

Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird Contesting home defence: men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War Colette Wilson

Paris and the Commune, 1871-78: the politics of forgetting

Experiencing war as the ‘enemy other’ Italian Scottish experience in World War II

WENDY UGOLINI

Manchester University Press Manchester

Copyright © Wendy Ugolini 2011 The right of Wendy Ugolini to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7190 8269 6 hardback 978 1 5261 2631 3 Institutional

First published 2011 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in 10/12pt Minion by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

In memory of John Herbertson

Contents

List of figures

page viii

List of abbreviations

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Introduction

1

1

‘I didn’t want to be Italian at all’: representations and realities

22

2

‘Long live Mussolini and Fascismo’: inter-war fascistisation

55

3

‘Collar the lot!’: the historiographical legacy of internment

90

4

‘They’re going to kill us!’: restrictions, riots and relocation

118

5

‘I don’t want to fight against my uncles’: military service in Britain

144

‘He was shot by the Italians’: confronting military service overseas

171

‘My life wasn’t very great’: women on the home front and in the services

199

‘Non vi scorderemo mai’: commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star

223

6 7 8

Appendix Respondents’ biographies

251

Select bibliography Index

256 263

~vii~

Figures

1. Geraldo Cozzi, 1999. Credit: Miles Tubb. 2. Dora Harris, 1929. 3. ‘A neat device for catching wops’, 1940. Source: Mary Evans Picture Library. 4. Glasgow Fasdsti, 1924. Source: Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University. 5. 270 (Italian) Company, Pioneer Corps, 1945. Source: Islington Local History Centre. 6. Paratrooper Italo Grumoli. 7. The Way to the Stars (1945). Source: British Film Institute. 8. Land Girl Iole Grumoli. 9. Norma Ventisei, 1944. 10. Tony Lucciano in Foyle’s War (2002). Credit: Stephen Morley.

~viii~

page 6 35 42 74 162 179

209 215 240

List of abbreviations

ATS CID CO CWGC ECAC HLI KOSB LDV NCO PNF POW RA RAF RAMC RASC WAAF WRNS

Auxiliary Territorial Service Criminal Investigation Department Conscientious Objector Commonwealth War Graves Commission Executive Committee of the Army Council Highland Light Infantry King’s Own Scottish Borderers Local Defence Volunteers Non Commissioned Officer Partito Nazionale Fascista Prisoner of War Royal Artillery Royal Air Force Royal Army Medical Corps Royal Army Service Corps Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Women’s Royal Naval Service

~ix~

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to the men and women who agreed to be interviewed as part of my original research project. Finding interviews was not a straightforward process and I appreciate the kindness and generosity of all those who invited me into their homes, sharing their memories and their hospitality. I am grateful for the assistance and expertise of staff at the National Archives, the National Archives Scotland Edinburgh City Archives, Edinburgh City Library, the British Library Sound Archive, the School of Scottish studies Archive and the Reading Room at the imperial War Museum. In particular, I would like to thank Sheila Mackenzie, Senior Curator at the Manuscripts Collection, National Library Scotland and John Powles and Audrey Canning of the Gallacher Memorial Library, Glasgow Caledonian University. Numerous individuals and organisations helped me to identify potential interviewees, locate relevant documentation and provide photographs. In this regard, I would especially like to thank Charles Dixon-Spain, Bethan Evans of Greenlit, Marij Helmond, Lieutenant Colonel John Starling of the Royal Pioneer Crops Association and Miles Tubb. Anne-Marie Fortier, Lucio Sponza, Brain Simpson and Andrew Wilkin responded with great courtesy and shared their expertise when I contacted them with specific research enquiries. For granting me permission to quote from family documentation or to reproduce personal photographs, I would like to thank Patricia Girard, Dora Kennedy, Allan Porchetta, Peter Ruffoni, Ronald Togneri and Diana Sellars. I am pleased to acknowledge the award of a research grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland in 2008 which enabled me to undertake postdoctoral research. I was also delighted to receive the 2009 Ratcliff prize for my research on the Italians in Scotland and warmly acknowledge the support of the trustees. Emma ~x~

Acknowledgements Brennan and the team at Manchester University Press have been wonderfully supportive throughout the whole of the production process. The following publishers have granted permission to cite material from my earlier publications: Ashgate for a chapter which appeared in W. Kidd and B. Murdoch (eds), Memory and Memorials. The Commemorative Century (2004), 151-166; Maney Publishing for Family & Community History, 1 (1998), 57-69 (www.ingentaconnect.com /content/maney/fch); the University of Edinburgh Press for the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 24:2 (2004), 137–158 (www. euppublishing.com) and Taylor and Francis for National Identities, 8:4 (2006), 421-436 (www.informaworld.com). The gestation of this book has occurred over a long, drawn-out period and I have been fortunate to work alongside wonderful colleagues at Edinburgh Napier University, the University of Dundee, the Scottish Oral History Centre at the University of Strathclyde and the University of Edinburgh. For encouragement, guidance and support over the years I would particularly like to thank my supervisors Maggie Mackay and Gary West, my PhD examiners, Panikos Panayi and Perry Willson, the late Roger Absalom, Ewen A. Cameron, Jeremy Crang, Martin Evans, Tony Kushner, Alistair McCleery, Arthur Mclvor, Juliette Pattinson, Gordon Pentland, Gavin Schaffer, Graham Smith and the late Jim McMillan. Especial thanks go to Jeremy, Juliette, Gavin and Perry for generously taking the time to read individual chapters and provide constructive and helpful comments. In addition, participants at research seminars at Dundee, De Montfort and Edinburgh universities and the anonymous readers at Manchester University Press provided invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the typescript. My dad, Mike Herbertson, read innumerable versions of this book without complaint whilst my brother-in-law, Charles Jenkins, supplied an expert overview on the military chapters. Whilst every reasonable effort has been made to trace relevant copyright holders, I would appreciate being contacted if there are any oversights or omissions. On a more personal note, this book is dedicated to my late grandfather, John Herbertson, who encouraged my love of history from an early age. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my parents, Val and Mike, for a lifetime of support and for their generosity of heart and spirit. Last but not least, I would like to thank my children, Alex and Holly and my husband, Paul, for pretty much everything.

~xi~

Introduction

In the neglected 1953 play, Gentle Like a Dove, set in Edinburgh on the night Italy declares war on Britain, local people ferociously attack the shop of their neighbour, Italian ice cream maker, Luigi Campanelli. Offstage, his son Domenico, a British-born soldier home on leave, confronts the angry mob but fails to quell the onslaught. He re-enters the scene from the tenement stair, ‘bruised, dishevelled. There is blood on his brow and hand and his tunic sleeve is torn from the shoulder’. A symbolic representation of the fragility of his status in Britain, Campanelli’s ‘British battledress’ is in tatters. Earlier on, his childhood sweetheart had admonished their neighbours: ‘Ye should think black burnin’ shame o’ yersel’. A foreigner! But he’s in the British Army.’ Even though Campanelli has demonstrated his loyalty to Britain by joining up in 1939, his attempts to belong are doomed to failure: he will always be an ‘Italiano’; a ‘fancy ice cream man’.1 When Italy declared war on Britain and France in June 1940, the estimated Italian population in Britain stood at around 35,000, including 10-15,000 children born and raised in Britain.2 Most second-generation Italians were dual nationals, deriving Italian citizenship from their father on the grounds of jus sanguinis (nationality acquired by descent or blood) and British citizenship from jus soli (nationality derived from birth).3 In the most dramatic fashion, the outbreak of war between the two countries illustrated the existence of competing or overlapping ‘communities of allegiance’ amongst this second generation.4 Indeed, the experiences of the Italian population in Britain during World War Two illuminate the complex and diverse ways in which ethnicity interacts with a sense of belonging to a nation at a time of conflict and how notions of who is ~1~

Introduction entitled to be part of a ‘national’ community can shift and evolve over time.5 The outbreak of World War Two necessitated powerful definitions within the national imaginary of ‘we’ and ‘them’ with the articulation of a unitary British identity inevitably raising questions of ‘who was included and who was excluded’.6 At the same time, as Sonya Rose has shown, the wartime pull to unity was ‘haunted by the spectre of division and difference’ and the ‘meanings of citizenship’ remained subject to contestation.7 By recovering the personal testimonies of men and women of Italian origin who lived in Scotland during the war, many of whom served in the British forces, this monograph aims to contribute to the debate on how we examine and document ‘the phenomenon of hybrid identity’ amongst second-generation immigrants at a time of national conflict.8 The government’s construction of Italian, German and Austrian immigrants as the ‘enemy within’ during the invasion scare of 1940 was reflected in its policy of internment, deportation and relocation and meant that Italian families were, both literally and metaphorically, excluded from the wartime rhetoric of national unity. In the run-up to the war, MI5 had compiled a list of 1500 Italians, categorised as ‘desperate characters’, based largely on the membership lists of the Italian Fascist clubs which had formed across the United Kingdom. When Italy declared war on Britain on 10 June 1940 there was increasing press hysteria about a potential ‘fifth column’ within Britain following Germany’s sweeping invasion of the Low Countries, and Churchill ordered that all male Italians between the ages of sixteen and seventy who had been resident in Britain for less than twenty years and all those listed on MI5’s list should be interned. Under Defence Regulation 18B, 600 British subjects of Italian origin, including some women, were also detained; around one-third were from Scotland.9 Internees were deported either to the Isle of Man or the Dominions, and in July one ship transporting internees to Canada, the Arandora Star, was torpedoed killing over 400 Italians. Italian nationals not affected by internment but living in ‘protected areas’ on the east or south-east coast of Britain were ordered to leave their homes and relocate twenty miles inland. At the same time as the government pursued its policies, antiItalian feeling erupted onto the landscape, with riots breaking out across the United Kingdom, in London, Liverpool, Belfast and other cities.10 It is generally agreed that the attacks were at their most vociferous in Scottish cities; the mass looting which broke out in Edinburgh was described by the local paper as ‘an orgy of destruction’.11 ~2~

Introduction The publication of three White Papers from July to October 1940 cumulatively provided internees with the opportunity to leave internment camps. Most Italians were released under Category 22, which dealt with those who had been living in Britain ‘since early childhood, or for at least twenty years’, and were friendly towards their adopted country.12 Con-currently, women were able to apply to move back to ‘protected areas’ and thus 1941 witnessed the beginning of a return movement by Italian immigrants back to their homes and businesses. Some second-generation detainees remained interned until Italy’s surrender in 1943 whilst an even smaller cohort chose to remain interned until the end of the conflict in 1945, as an expression of loyalty to Italy. Throughout this period, thousands of second-generation Italians, as British subjects, were subject to military conscription and had enlisted in the British forces. The wartime experiences of Italians in Britain during World War Two were, therefore, far more variegated, contested and complex than traditional accounts have acknowledged.13 By analysing the personal testimonies of second-generation Italians in south-east Scotland in conjunction with archival records, this book aims to show how, in contrast to the usual narrative motifs associated with domestic wartime Britain such as evacuation, air raids and rationing, remembrance within the Italian community revolves around varying manifestations of anti-Italian hostility ranging from state-sponsored policies through to localised incidences of verbal and physical abuse. Like second-generation Irish immigrants in Britain studied by Bronwen Walter and her colleagues, men and women of Italian descent who lived through World War Two offer ‘hybrid constructions’ of personal identity which emerge in oppositional ways to the traditional meta-narrative of Britain at war.14 One of the leading authorities on the Italian presence in Britain, Terri Colpi has argued that second- generation Italians who grew up during the war ‘linked Italianness with “negative enemy status” ’15 and have since tried to ‘camouflage their true identity’ by assimilating into British society.16 She defines assimilation as second-generation Italians who have Anglicised their names, ‘refused to speak or learn Italian’ and married ‘out’ of the community.17 The findings contained within this monograph challenge this hypothesis by demonstrating the extent to which ethnicity is one of the key ‘imaginative categories’ through which experience is organised, recalled and passed on.18 Far from suppressing a sense of Italian identity, as Colpi asserts, the war often instilled a deep self-identification amongst the second generation of themselves as ‘Italian’. Yet, in a present-day culture which celebrates and ~3~

Introduction romanticises the Italian presence in Scotland, the traumatic experience of enduring the war years as the ‘enemy other’ has been largely overlooked and its long-term psychic scars ignored. In recent decades, as part of a wider trend towards ‘rememoration’ of World War Two,19 Italians in Scotland, and elsewhere in Britain, have begun to claim their own sites of memory, reflected in the growing literature surrounding the experience of internment and increasing memorialisation surrounding the Arandora Star disaster.20 This monograph addresses the relative invisibility of second-generation Italian experience both within popular memory of World War Two in Britain and within the Italian community itself. It outlines the construction of powerful myths and stories about the war amongst the Italian population in Scotland and looks at how the dominance of a singular elite narrative, focusing on the first-generation male experience of internment, has silenced the memories of different groups within the community. Indeed, major aspects of Italian Scottish experience - service in the British forces, life on the home front for women and children, essentially the memories of non-internees — have been largely concealed. The work of Colpi and Lucio Sponza, for example, totally fails to address the experiences of second-generation Italians who enlisted in the British forces. Indeed the silence surrounding those who fought in British uniform reflects the durability of the concept of the ‘good Italian’ which prevailed in the inter-war period when Mussolini’s Fascist regime aimed to encourage members of the Italian diaspora to retain allegiance to Italy. Colpi acknowledges that when war broke out between Italy and Britain, ‘the community became deeply split into the so-called “good Italians” (the Fascists) and “bad Italians” (the others)’, creating a great deal of factionalism and bitterness.21 Yet, to a quite remarkable degree, it is the memories and experiences of the former group which are consistently foregrounded in communal representations. In the post-war period, it has perhaps been in the interest of the more successful, commercially based members of the Italian community to reconstruct the past to suit the needs of the present, to emphasise the bonds of friendship and ignore the ‘tangled’ histories of the past.22 There is a tendency to use a singular elite narrative to make generalisations about the experiences of the Italian community which in turn denies class, gender, generational and political difference amongst the Italians in Scotland. The sheer human tragedy of internment and the Arandora Star disaster means that the meaning of these events has been amplified ‘into a symbolic and narrative formalisation of a culture’s shared self-representations’ marginalising the narratives of those who were not interned.23 The central internment ~4~

Introduction narrative has been utilised to create the ‘story’ of the war and has come to represent what it meant to ‘be Italian’, or to be a ‘good Italian’, during the war. By analysing the personal testimonies of second-generation Italians, this monograph aims, to deconstruct the myths surrounding Italian Scottish wartime experience and question who remembers on behalf of thes Italian community in Scotland. It endorses Nancy Wood’s assertion that historical analysis ‘must embrace not only memories that achieve public articulation, but those that are denied expression or recognition, as well as those memories that are displaced or merely alluded to’.24

Research methodology As well as accessing national government records, local government documents, newspaper articles, MI5 intelligence reports, personal diaries and sound recordings held at the Imperial War Museum and the British Library, I interviewed forty-four respondents of Italian origin, twenty-five women and nineteen men, born primarily in Edinburgh. The respondents were born between 1906 and 1940, with the bulk born in the decade 1920-29. The average age of male interviewees in 1940 was eighteen, the women slightly younger at thirteen. As a result of patterns of immigration, Colpi points out that ‘the Scottish Italian community is not only historically old, but it is also sociologically old in type and form’.25 Generally, ‘old’ Italians in Scotland are the children of Italian immigrants who arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Scotland, these ‘old Italians’ in their eighties are already second generation.26 Of the respondents within my research sample, thirty-eight were second-generation Italians, five were third generation and one was first generation.27 Nearly all respondents were British-born with English as their first language and although around half of the interviewees said that they did not speak ‘Italian’ most retained a basic understanding of their parents’ regional dialect. All those born in the inter-war period would have had dual nationality, unless their fathers had opted for naturalised British status (for biographies, see Appendix). The relatively young age of my research sample reflects my frustrated attempts to reach the oldest surviving members of the community and, in particular, the difficulties I encountered during my fieldwork trying to find people willing to be interviewed. The wartime demarcation of Italian immigrants, and by extension their families, as ‘enemy aliens’ was hugely painful and distressing and there are many Italian Scots who ~5~

Introduction

I. Geraldo Cozzi, born in 1906, was the oldest person interviewed. He served in the Royal Army Service Corps during World War Two.

~6~

Introduction are still unwilling to talk about or revisit this period in their lives. Colpi writes that Italians who lived through the distress of the war have ‘tried to put the war behind them and to forget about it’.28 In his work on British citizens detained under Defence Regulation 18B, Brian Simpson concurs that second- generation Italians ‘seem to- have wished to forget the whole awful affair’.29 At the start of my fieldwork, I received a negligible response from adverts placed in national and local media and many people simply refused to talk to me. As the American historian Stephen Fox found when seeking informants on the wartime internment and relocation of Italians in the United States, ‘for every door that opened, three were politely shut’.30 In an attempt to locate female respondents, I placed gender-specific adverts in the widely circulated national publications The Scots Magazine and People’s Friend asking to hear from women of Italian origin who had been called up for war work. These magazines were selected on the criteria of having a wide popular readership, a tradition of publishing ‘nostalgic’ appeals for interviewees and having the potential to reach women who might not primarily identify themselves as Italian. Surprisingly, even with this level of national exposure, I received only two responses. Thus, whilst I was keen to interview ‘low identifiers’,31 those who have drifted away from the Italian community through marriage or deliberate choice, ultimately those who responded to my adverts or agreed via intermediaries to be interviewed had already self-identified as ‘Italian’ to some degree. I carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews but following Luisa Passerini’s maxim that ‘To respect memory also means letting it organise the story according to the subject’s order of priorities’, respondents were encouraged to relate their story and place emphasis on those areas which were important to them.32 The very process of finding interviewees outlined above meant that many were aware of my specific interest in World War Two and responded to that. Yet, ultimately, the tendency of most respondents to accelerate to and dwell on the wartime period when being interviewed serves to underline the profound impact of the war on the narratives of Italian Scots and, most significantly, the extent to which they share a ‘knowledge of a different national past’ rooted in their wartime identities as Italians, the ‘enemy other’.33 To a remarkable degree, when asked about ‘the outbreak of the war’ the majority of respondents would refer to the events of June 1940, as opposed to September 1939, reinforcing the concept of a distinct set of memories held amongst this ethnic group. The period in which the interviews were undertaken, 1996-2001, is also significant. When my fieldwork began in the late 1990s, memories ~7~

Introduction of the Bosnian conflict, in which neighbours were perceived as having violently turned against each other, were commonly drawn on. The international crisis of Kosovo and the related ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Albanians occurred whilst I was undertaking interviews and also influenced the ways in which interviewees articulated their own wartime experiences: those who were relocated during the war, for example, identified with the sense of forced expulsion and displacement from their homes. My final interview occurred four weeks before terrorist planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001 and four years in advance of the London terrorist bombings of 7 July by British-born Muslims, events which both reactivated racialised attacks on migrant communities and dramatically reconfigured the debate about the meanings of second- generation allegiance within the popular media.34 It is now widely recognised that identity is not something that is fixed and static but, rather, is continually evolving and changing.35 Furthermore, as the research of David McCrone and his colleagues demonstrates, a person’s national identity, as presented to others, is not only socially constructed but sensitive to context: ‘individuals make identity claims, be they explicit or very tentative, in differing contexts over time, and these claims are received in different ways and in turn modified according to their reception’.36 Whilst recalling their childhood or adolescent selves, respondents often referred to themselves as ‘Italian’, ‘British’ or ‘Scottish’; their tendency to use the terms ‘British’ and ‘Scottish’ interchangeably reflecting the cultural pre-eminence of the concept of ‘Britishness’ during the wartime period. However, in present day interviews, they foregrounded their Italianness within the context of a Scottish, rather than British, identity, often describing themselves as ‘Scottish-Italian’. To some extent, this self-ascription mirrors the adopting traits of the indigenous population: most people living nowadays in Scotland give primacy to being Scottish rather than British, a trend which began in the final decades of the twentieth century in the wake of Thatcherism, increasingly confident assertions of Scottish national identity and contested notions of Britishness.37 However, it could also reflect the specificity of Italian experience, most notably the memories of growing up as part of a Catholic minority in Presbyterian Scotland or, more simply, a desire to access and subscribe to the hugely positive discourse which now surrounds the Italian Scottish presence. Overall, the use of a ‘bi-cultural’ self-definition underlines the centrality of Italianness to the construction of personal identity amongst those who lived through the war in Scotland, as ~8~

Introduction underlined by one interviewee’s summation: ‘We all like the name “Scottish-Italian” but we’re Italian, just the same.’38 Although I am not of Italian origin myself, my perceived ethnicity was a significant factor in my fieldwork; my links to the Italian Scottish community through marriage undoubtedly influenced the way that I was viewed by respondents and had methodological implications for my research. The question of ‘passing’ as an Italian, first raised by Anne-Marie Fortier in her study of institutional representations of London Italian identity, was also relevant.39 Numerous interviewees commented on how with my physical characteristics of dark hair and dark eyes, I appeared to ‘be Italian’, as in the following exchange with respondent Angelo Valente: AV:

Backhanders - that’s how they do it over there [Italy]. I’m sorry; you belong to the Italian origin yourself.

WU:

I don’t actually.

AV:

You don’t? Well, that’s a funny name you’ve got.

WU:

It’s my husband’s.

AV:

You look Italian.40

Being viewed as a representative of my husband’s family undoubtedly conferred upon me some degree of ‘Italian affiliation’.41 Furthermore, although I would be explicit at the outset of interviews that it was my husband who had the Italian ‘connection’, in interviews this distinction would often become blurred. Respondents would ask after my family or seek reassurance that I had had similar experiences. At the close of one interview, one respondent commented, ‘I don’t know how you feel in your heart about what you are,’ before going on to re-state her identification with Italy.42 This sense of a shared familial past, however tenuous, validated me in the eyes of many respondents. It also enabled me to build up a relationship of trust with those I interviewed, which was crucial as many were recalling traumatic and upsetting memories. This sense of being entrusted with people’s memories has, in turn, fundamentally influenced the ways in which I have approached writing this book. Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird define oral history as ‘occupying a position at the interface of memory and social and cultural change’.43 The process of remembering is now recognised as the key to exploring the subjective meanings of lived experience and the nature of individual and collective memory.44 This ‘cultural-memory approach’ focuses attention on the complex and multiple ways in which people recall their personal histories and how meaning is conveyed through the structure of personal narratives.45 Defining subjectivity as ~9~

Introduction ‘that area of symbolic activity "which includes cognitive, cultural and psychological aspects’, the Italian historian Luisa Passerini stresses the need to pay particular attention to the cultural and symbolic import of people’s stories as well as their factual content.46 Another key dimension is the way in which narrators draw on public discourses in constructing accounts of their pasts for their audiences, commonly referred to as the ‘cultural circuit’.47 Building upon Summerfield’s magisterial work on war and memory,48 this monograph addresses the interaction between wartime discourses and individual subjectivity and, in particular, ‘the relationship to personal narratives of cultural silences’ relating to Italian experience in wartime Britain.49 One of the most significant features of the personal narratives contained within this study is the extent to which they reveal the long- lasting psychological impact of traumatic wartime events, particularly on women who were adolescents during the war. The fact that so many people refused to be interviewed for my research project is also highly significant and even those who did agree often appeared reluctant to dwell on certain aspects of their wartime lives. A significant factor could, of course, be the fact that there is no readily identifiable framework available through which those of Italian origin can articulate their memories; what Summerfield defines as the struggle to achieve composure ‘in the face of lost histories’.50 Certainly, the ethnic diversity and plurality of memory of Britain’s ‘multi-stranded population’ during wartime remains largely unacknowledged.51 As Paul Ward emphasises, the predominant discourse of World War Two, foregrounding community and togetherness, ‘constructed the “people” as socially and ethnically homogenous, not just in the 1940s but across the decades since’.52 Furthermore, the increasingly stereotypical depiction of World War Two in Britain, with the ritualistic nature of commemoration centring around key calendar events such as Dunkirk, D-Day and VE Day, tends to foreclose ‘possible differences in experience, interpretation and meaning’.53 However, Michael Roper cautions against the tendency to focus exclusively on dominant collective meanings and functions when addressing personal narratives, arguing that the individual memory of war is not only produced through the ‘overlay’ of social codes on experience but also has an ‘underlay’. The latter is structured through the nature of the war experience itself so that the remembering of war needs to be recognised as ‘a psychically-orientated process, and one which operates forward from the event as well as backwards through the impact of public representations’.54 The personal narratives of secondgeneration Italians testify to the profound psychological impact of the ~10~

Introduction war on many of those who lived through it and support Roper’s hypothesis that ‘Some silences originate from the very beginning.’55 There is a growing realisation that wartime experiences may have longterm psychological effects on civilian populations. Clinical psychologist Steve Davies acknowledges that ‘people who have experienced significant war trauma are likely to meet these events again in old age in some way’.56 One elderly woman I met at an Italian Scottish social event said memories of the war had started to ‘penetrate’ in recent years. Another interviewee remarked that at the end of the war, petrified of looking for work and afraid of meeting animosity, she ‘felt like an alien’ at times. When asked how long it took for that feeling to go away, she replied, ‘I don’t think it ever does.’57 Indeed, concerns raised by some respondents when I returned interview transcripts to them and the occasional request for anonymity reflect anxieties and fears which stem directly from their wartime identification as the enemy ‘other’. Amongst those I interviewed some had suffered trauma through the loss of others, whilst others had witnessed traumatic events.58 Six of the women interviewed were daughters of Arandora Star victims, one lost her grandfather and two women had lost their uncles in the disaster. Another woman’s father had survived the Arandora Star only to drown on his return from internment in Australia later in the war. It may be that this particular cohort of women came forward to ‘bear witness’ on behalf of their families. Whereas in the immediate post-war period ‘discussion of war experiences was discouraged both socially and officially’,59 respondents were recalling hardships, and in many cases personal tragedy, in a modern-day culture where there is a general consensus that it is necessary and desirable to articulate grief.60 Mourning for those who lost relatives on the Arandora Star was certainly not allowed full expression in the wartime period and, afterwards, many secondgeneration Italians would have remained silent ‘out of shame, for fear of not being heard, or because of self-imposed censorship’.61 In some of the interviews, taking place after an interval of six decades, a sense of loss, devastation and occasional bitterness was still tangible. As Selma Leydesdorff and her colleagues acknowledge, it ‘takes a particular form of courage, and a painful effort, to call to mind those phases of life in which excessive stress, sadness and violence have been experienced’ and at times during my fieldwork I encountered interviewees for whom the act of remembering was clearly problematic.62 As I have been writing up my research, and campaigns for an apology for internment have started to emerge, I have wondered whether those women who agreed to talk to me who had lost relatives ~11~

Introduction did so because they believed I would raise awareness about the Arandora Star tragedy. By providing a critical analysis of the ways in which Italian internment has been represented, I worry that I may offend some of those I interviewed. Indeed, sensitivity to the feelings of some respondents has threatened to overshadow the writing-up process and, at times, I have had to resist the urge to ‘censor’ aspects of my academic interpretation.63 This particular dilemma, arising from the intersubjective nature of oral history research, highlights the limitations of what Ballinger identifies as the ‘solidarity-rapport model’ of ethnography.64 The assumption underlying much of the literature on oral history methodology is still the ideal of empowering cultural minorities65 - recovering the life stories of those who have been ‘hidden from history’ has traditionally been presented as largely unproblematic and there is far less discussion about what happens when a researcher ultimately offers a more challenging interpretation of a community’s history.66 However, as Joanna Herbert indicates in her oral history research with South Asian communities in Leicester, it is also important to recognise that respondents are not simply powerless individuals but are fully able to ‘communicate their message’.67 By showing a willingness to be interviewed by me in the first instance, by approving the interview transcripts and granting permission for extracts to be cited in this book, respondents were indicating that they are ready for some form of public acknowledgement of their wartime experiences. As Steve Gamer emphasises, ‘understandings of who fits where in the social hierarchies can change’.68 Most of my interviewees voluntarily raised the idea of being part of a less ‘visible’ community, contrasting their experiences with those of the post-war arrival of immigrants from the colonies and the ‘New Commonwealth’ in Scotland and the rest of Britain. Although some felt that the Italians had faced a ‘bigger struggle’,69 most shared the opinion expressed by Joe Pieri: ‘we were the Pakistani immigrants of our day, tolerated but not quite accepted by our neighbours.’70 In her work on European Volunteer Workers in Britain, Wendy Webster suggests that in the post-war era, ‘The idea of British society as homogenous was invoked to cast all “immigrants” as outside the boundaries of nation, but the notion of “suitability” also signalled the idea of a hierarchy of belonging.’ She highlights how hostility towards post-war Eastern European immigrants could be tempered by some measure of agreement between official and popular discourses about a hierarchy of belonging in Britain, noting how the new influx of black and Asian immigrants enabled earlier groups to be forgotten.71 It is perhaps only now, with domestic hostility focusing on more ‘visible’ ~12~

Introduction immigrant groups and with Italian culture universally celebrated, that Italianness can be more safely articulated and foregrounded in the construction of personal identity. Since World War Two, with the transition into the politics of the Cold War era, Italians have been increasingly constructed and embraced within the wider' notion of a shared European identity. Webster notes how official discussions about the recruitment of Poles and other refugees to the British labour market in the immediate postwar era defined these groups in terms of the white ethnicity they shared with Britons as ‘fellow-Europeans’.72 Although Webster does not mention Italians specifically, they would have been subject to this wider discourse, with ‘new’ Italian immigrants entering Britain from 1949 onwards to work in textiles and foundries as part of inter-governmental ‘bulk recruitment schemes’.73 Subsequently, as Fortier notes, the integration of Britain in the European Union in 1973 ‘cleared a space for Italians to claim some form of equal status in relation to Britons, on the grounds of their European identity’.74 This monograph suggests that both the traumatic events of the war, including internment, relocation and the anti-Italian riots and the parallel complexity of opportunities for dual identification within the British forces, served to reinforce a sense of ‘otherness’ amongst secondgeneration Italians. The personal testimonies introduced throughout the text support the notion of hybridity amongst second-generation immigrants discussed by Walter and colleagues ‘in which both placed and displaced identities are held in tension, their expression varying contextually in time and space’. This conceptualisation of the carving out of ‘new forms of identities’ is particularly relevant when addressing World War Two and its impact on identity construction amongst secondgeneration Italians.75 This monograph argues that the traumatic events of 1940-45, by reinforcing a sense of ‘difference’ actually contributed to a heightened sense of Italianness amongst the children of Italian immigrants. Indeed, as Fortier insightfully points out, the alienation of the wartime period, in conjunction with the fact that Italian families have been settled in Britain for over a hundred years with little return migration, has produced ‘a distinctly Italian form of belonging in Britain’.76

Outline of the book David Cesarani and Mary Fulbrook highlight how notions of citizenship are inextricably tied up with questions of nationality, national identity and immigration, especially since, with the rise of nation states in the ~13~

Introduction late eighteenth to late twentieth centuries, new definitions of national identities began to emerge within Europe. Primarily, ‘notions of citizenship’ defined by common ideals and the right to reside in the country of birth rather than of ancestry began to overlay the primacy of kinship.77 In the case of Britain, the creation of the United Kingdom and the British Empire ‘necessitated a flexible category of belonging’, which was supplied by the perpetuation of allegiance to the Crown by British subjects throughout the Empire. However, as Cesarani and Fulbrook argue, Britain’s status as an imperial power, the emergence of the dominions and the entrenchment of racial thinking led to a bifurcation of white and nonwhite British subjects: ‘the racialisation of belonging’.78 Chapter one traces the ways in which Italian immigrants who began to arrive in Britain in the late nineteenth century were subject to racialising discourses which laid the groundwork for the overt and aggressive manifestations of hostility endured when war was declared between Italy and Britain in 1940. By analysing inter-war narratives of childhood ethnicity, this chapter illustrates the extent to which the alienation of the war years, a period of intense Italophobia, built upon a pre-existent sense of not ‘belonging’ amongst second-generation Italians. The work of Pamela Ballinger notes how both the exigencies of Cold War politics and the post-Cold War re-evaluation of those politics have facilitated the emergence of ‘moral narratives’ about World War Two which are particularly contentious in relation to countries such as France, Yugoslavia and Italy, where the legacy of Nazi occupation and antifascist resistance has left ‘a fractured collective memory of the war’.79 Chapter two looks at how historiographical debates surrounding the ‘divided memory* of Italy’s war have functioned in the post-war period and, in particular, how the notion of Italiani, brava gente serves to obscure Italy’s Fascist and wartime record and suppress narratives of complicity, culpability and responsibility. This chapter looks at the role of the Fasci all’estero, clubs set up by Mussolini’s regime in order to ‘fascistise’ Italian diasporic communities in the inter-war period and examines how, in Scotland, elite-led memory promotes the idea of the Fasci as social clubs, denying their political and propagandistic dimension. Using the Edinburgh Fascio as a case study, this chapter shows how involvement in blackshirted Fascist ceremonial by a very small number of Fasci members contributed to their external identification as political actors in the lead-up to the war. Chapter three looks at the internment of civilian populations during World War Two, providing a comparative account of Italian internment in Englishspeaking countries and analysing the ways in which different countries ~14~

Introduction racialised ‘enemy’ ethnic groups. Focusing on Italian internment, it addresses different experiences on the grounds of generation and gender as well as examining complex questions of loyalties and allegiances amongst second-generation internees born in Britain. Chapter four illuminates the readiness of British society to identify and target the internal ‘other’ at times of national crisis by looking at the cumulative impact of alien restrictions, the anti-Italian riots of June 1940 and the policy of relocation. During the war, the national discourse of defending Britain’s freedom was fundamentally undermined by Britain’s heavyhanded actions against Italian citizens in its midst; it was a time when, in Fortier’s words, ‘Italians encountered the violences of the British state’.80 However, the supremacy of the ‘Blitz spirit’ discourse in British popular culture, with its reliance on the motifs of fortitude and unity, has marginalised those with more discordant wartime memories of antiItalian aggression. By investigating the impact of the government’s policy of forced relocation on Italian women and their children, this chapter also highlights the long-lasting emotional impact of these traumatic events on second-generation Italians, particularly women. Chapters five and six examine, for the first time, the experiences of men of Italian parentage who served in the British forces. It would appear that the act of British-born Italians serving in the British Army, raising difficult questions of loyalties and allegiances, has resulted in them being excluded from representations of the community’s past. For second-generation Italians facing call-up, the act of joining the British armed forces was powerfully symbolic. They were placed in the paradoxical position of being called up by the very state which had, in many cases, labelled their parents as the ‘enemy’. The knowledge that they could potentially end up fighting Italian cousins overseas further amplified a sense of divided loyalties. Salvatore J. LaGumina defines the similar challenge of ‘straddling two cultures’ faced by second-generation Italians in America, as a ‘two-ness dilemma’.81 These two chapters explore how military service in the army for British-born Italians was complicated by their ‘enemy’ alien origin and examine the ways in which these men negotiated and constructed their identities both during the war and since. Chapter five focuses on narratives of resistance and negotiation amongst second- generation Italian men by looking at declarations of alienage, conscientious objection and service in 270 (Italian) Company of the Pioneer Corps. This latter unit, by incorporating Italian internees and Italian dual nationals, served as a wartime site of ethnic identification for second- generation men who were unwilling to serve overseas and potentially fight Italian troops. ~15~

Introduction Chapter six looks at the experiences of British Italian men who served in active units overseas and illustrates how the accommodation of difference within a military setting encouraged the formulation of a distinctive dual identity, which rested on identification with both Britain and Italy. Chapter seven focuses on the neglected experiences of two groups of second-generation Italian women: those who bore the brunt of racial hostility on the ‘home front’ after taking over the responsibility for running family businesses in protected areas and the slightly older age cohort who were called up into the British auxiliary services or war work. It addresses the ways in which women remember (or forget) the wartime period and shows how women who endured the war as the enemy ethnic ‘other’ remain in the shadows, ‘muted’ by both national and communal discourse. Bosworth notes the increasing tendency within Italian communities in both the United States and Australia to produce a literature which represents internment as ‘another of those parts of the war for which governments should be expected to apologise and pay compensation’.82 In Britain, the beginning of the twenty-first century has also witnessed the emergence of apology campaigns whilst memorial activity and commemoration within the community, drawing on the elite narrative of internment, reinforces the tendency to exclude non-internees from wartime representations, particularly those who served in British uniform. Linking into Liz Stanley’s impressive analysis of the ‘post/memory’ of Boer War concentration camps, the final chapter explores the developing relationship between private memory, history and public remembrance.83 It analyses how narratives of victimhood which have emerged across Europe in relation to World War Two have also been embraced by the Italian Scottish community and explores who remembers on behalf of the Italians in Scotland and for what purpose.84

Notes 1 2

3

A. Mackie, Gentle Like a Dove (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1952), p. 12. L. Sponza, ‘The internment of Italians in Britain’, in F. Iacovetta, R. Perin and A. Principe (eds), Enemies Within. Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 276; T. Colpi, The Italian Factor (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1991), p. 72. The Italian Nationality Law of 13 June 1912 stated that an Italian citizen ‘shall retain Italian citizenship if born and resident in any foreign State where he shall be considered a natural-born citizen of that State’. National Archives (hereafter NA), KV (Security Service), 4/290, Appendix A.

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Introduction 4

5 6

7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16

17 18 19

20

21

Phrase used by R. Ueda in ‘The changing path to citizenship: ethnicity and naturalization during World War II’, in L. A. Erenberg and S. E. Hirsch (eds), The War in American Culture. Society and Consciousness During World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 207. D. Cesarani and M. Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 1-3. S. O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2006), p. 2; A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz, (London: Pimlico, 1991); L. Noakes, War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). Rose, Which People’s War?, p. 286. J. Herson, ‘Family history and memory in Irish immigrant families’, in K. Burrell and P. Panayi (eds), Histories and Memories. Migrants and their History in Britain (London: Tauris, 2006), p. 231. A. W. B. Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious. Detention Without Trial in Wartime Britain (London: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 194. ‘Anti-Italian riots in four cities’, Guardian (11 June 1940), p. 9. ‘Anti-Italian outburst’, Edinburgh Evening News (11 June 1940), p. 5. L. Sponza, Divided Loyalties. Italians in Britain during the Second World War (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), p. 153. Colpi, Italian Factor, Sponza, Divided Loyalties. B. Walter, S. Morgan, M. J. Hickman and J. M. Bradley, ‘Family stories, public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second-generation Irish in England’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 118:3 (2002), 203. T. Colpi, ‘The Italian migration to Scotland: fact, fiction and the future’, in M. Dutto (ed.), The Italians in Scotland: Their Language and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986), p. 43. T. Colpi, ‘The impact of the Second World War on the British Italian community’, in D. Cesarani and T. Kushner (eds), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1993), p. 185. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 193. M. Chamberlain, Narratives of Exile and Return (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 10. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s influential text, Les Lieux de memoire, Nancy Wood defines belated commemorative activity, relating as much to the present as the past, as ‘rememoration’. N. Wood, Vectors of Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (Oxford: Berg, 1999), p. 17. R. Stent, A Bespattered Page? The Internment of‘His Majesty’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens’ (London: Andre Deutsch, 1980); P. and L. Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’ - How Britain Interned and Expelled its Wartime Refugees (London: Quartet Books, 1980); M. Kochan, Britain’s Internees in the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1983); Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens; P. Zorza, Arandora Star (Glasgow: Italiani in Scozia, 1985). Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 100.

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Introduction 22 23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38

39 40 41 42 43

A. Principe, ‘A tangled knot: prelude to 10 June 1940’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 27. A. Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia. Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 153. Wood, Vectors, p. 10. T. Colpi, ‘An old migration: a century of Italian settlement and tradition in Scotland’, Unpublished paper presented to the Strathclyde University conference Growing Old in a Multi Cultural Scotland (April 1992), p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Within my definition of second generation I include three respondents who were born in Italy but were raised from infanthood in Scotland. Most of the second-generation respondents were born to two Italian-born parents. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 99. Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 194. S. Fox, Uncivil Liberties. Italian Americans Under Siege during World War II (Boca Raton: Universal, 2000), p. xviii. Walter, Morgan, Hickman and Bradley, ‘Family stories’, p. 205. L. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory. The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 8. Walter, Morgan, Hickman and Bradley, ‘Family stories’, p. 212. R. Cameron, ‘Help stop the terror of racism’, Edinburgh Evening News (10 October 2001). A. Saeed, N. Blain and D. Forbes, ‘New ethnic and national questions in Scotland: post-British identities among Glasgow Pakistani teenagers’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22:5 (1999), 821. D. McCrone, R. Stewart, R. Kiely and F. Bechhofer, ‘Who are we? Problematising national identity’, Sociological Review, 46:4 (1998), 651; Bechhofer, D. McCrone, R. Kiely and R. Stewart, ‘Constructing national identity: arts and landed elites in Scotland’, Sociology, 33 (1999), 527. Saeed, Blain and Forbes, ‘New ethnic’, p. 837; McCrone, Stewart, Kiely and Bechhofer, ‘Who are we?’, p. 630. Saeed, Blain and Forbes, ‘New ethnic’, p. 839; SA1997.106, Recorded interview with Ronnie Boni, 16 August 1997. All interviews are deposited at the School of Scottish Studies Archive, University of Edinburgh, unless indicated otherwise. A. Fortier, Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 7. SA2002.055, Interview with Angelo Valente, 11 February 2000. A. Fortier, ‘Troubles in the field. The use of personal experiences as sources of knowledge’, Critique of Anthropology, 16:3 (1996), 310. Salt of the Earth (hereafter SOE) 65, Carmen Demarco, 13 February 2000. Held at the Scottish Life Archive, National Museums of Scotland. P. Summerfield and C. Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence. Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 207.

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Introduction 44 45

46

47

48 49 50 51

52 53

54

55 56

57 58

59

A. Thomson, M. Frisch and P. Hamilton, ‘The memory and history debates: some international perspectives’, Oral History, 22:2 (1994), 33. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, pp. 207-8; K. Fisher, Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain 1918-1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2008), p. 25. L. Passerini, ‘Work ideology and consensus under Italian fascism’, History Workshop Journal, 8 (1979), 85; L. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, p. 4. P. Summerfield, ‘Culture and composure: creating narratives of the gendered self in oral history interviews’, Cultural and Social History, 1 (2004), 65. Graham Dawson developed Richard Johnson’s concept of the ‘cultural circuit’, the feedback loop between personal accounts and public discourse, whereby certain narratives become marginalised whilst others gain prominence. See G. Dawson, Soldier Heroes, British Adventure, Empire and the Imaginings of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 24. P. Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Narratives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). Summerfield, ‘Culture and composure’, p. 65. Ibid. D. Cesarani, ‘Lacking in convictions: British war crimes policy and national memory of the Second World War’, in M. Evans and K. Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg, 1997), p. 36. P. Ward, Britishness Since 1870 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 124. P. Coleman and M. Mills, ‘Listening to the story. Life review and the painful past in day and residential care settings’, in L. Hunt, M. Marshall and C. Rowlings (eds), Past Trauma in Late Life. European Perspectives on Therapeutic Work with Older People (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1997), p. 175. See also T. G. Ashplant, G. Dawson and M. Roper, ‘The politics of war memory and commemoration. Contexts, structures and dynamics’, in T. G. Ashplant, G. Dawson and M. Roper (eds), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 3-85. M. Roper, ‘Re-remembering the Soldier Hero: the psychic and social construction of memory in personal narratives of the Great War’, History Workshop Journal, 50 (2000), 184. Ibid., 199. S. Davies, ‘We’ll meet again. The long-term psychological effects on, and intervention with, UK Second World War evacuees’, in Hunt, Marshall and Rowlings (eds), Past Trauma, pp. 191-4. SA1998.27, Interview with Rina Valente, 26 January 1998; SA1998.63, Rina Valente, 13 November 1998. S. Leydesdorff, G. Dawson, N. Burchardt and T. G. Ashplant, ‘Introduction: trauma and life stories’ in K. Lacy Rogers, S. Leydesdorff and G. Dawson (eds), Trauma and Life Stories. International Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 13. Davies, ‘We’ll meet again’, p. 188.

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Introduction 60 61 62 63

64 65

66

67

68 69 70 71

72

73 74 75 76 77

78 79

80 81

J. Damousi, Living With the Aftermath. Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Postwar Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 3—4. Leydesdorff, Dawson, Burchardt and Ashplant, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. Ibid., p. 13. E. A. Sheehan, ‘The student of culture and the ethnography of Irish intellectuals’, in C. B. Brettell (ed.), When They Read What We Write. The Politics of Ethnography (Westport: Bergin 8c Garvey, 1993), p. 77. P. Ballinger, History in Exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 271. M. Frisch, A Shared Authority. Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. xxi. See A. Thomson, Anzac Memories. Living with the Legend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1995), p. 5; K. Borland, ‘“That’s not what I said”: interpretive conflict in oral narrative research’, in S. Berger Gluck and D. Patai (eds), Women’s Words. The Feminist Practice of Oral History (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 64. J. Herbert, ‘Negotiating boundaries and the cross cultural oral history interview’, in R. Rodger and J. Herbert (eds), Testimonies of the City. Identity, Community and Change in a Contemporary Urban World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 266. S. Garner, Whiteness. An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 68. SA2002.065, Interview with Diana Corrieri, 21 August 2001. J. Pieri, Isle of the Displaced (Glasgow: Neil Wilson, 1997), p. 5. W. Webster, ‘Defining boundaries: European Volunteer Worker women in Britain and narratives of community’, Women’s History Review, 9:2 (2000), pp. 260-1. W. Webster, ‘Britain and the refugees of Europe 1939-50’, in W. Webster and L. Ryan (eds), Gendering Migration. Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 45. Colpi, Italian Factor, pp. 144-5. Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 22. Walter, Morgan, Hickman and Bradley, ‘Family stories’, p. 202. [Italics in original] Fortier, Migrant Belongings, pp. 164-5. D. Cesarani, ‘The changing character of citizenship and nationality in Britain’, in Cesarani and Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe, p. 57; Cesarani and Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, p. 1. Ibid., p. 7. Ballinger, History in Exile, pp. 101-2. See H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome. History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991); J. Herf, Divided Memory. The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997). Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 93. S. J. LaGumina, THe Humble and the Heroic. Wartime Italian Americans (New York: Cambria Press, 2006), p. 86.

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Introduction 82 83

84

R. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy. Life Under the Dictatorship 1915-1945 (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 392. L. Stanley, Mourning Becomes... Post/memory and Commemoration of the Concentration Camps of the South African War 1899-1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), p. 88. G. R. Smith, ‘Oral history and the historian: in praise of hindsight and selective memories’, Open University DA301 Newsletter (1998), 2. www.socsci.opn.ac.uk/SocSci/da301/oral.html, accessed 28 May 1998.

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Chapter One ‘I didn’t want to be Italian at all’: representations and realities

Although a substantial historiography exists testifying to historical traditions of intolerance and prejudice towards different immigrant communities in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century, there is a tendency within leading British Italian texts to portray the Italians as somehow immune from the difficulties faced by other ethnic minority groups.1 Colpi sees the Italian community in Scotland as being in a ‘unique and aristocratic position amongst the immigrant populations of this country’ whilst Marin describes the Italians in Britain as ‘a privileged collectivity’ which has harmoniously integrated within British society and represents ‘a kind of Eden within the troubled emigration front’.2 Journalist Simon Pia acknowledges that the stereotypical image of Italian immigrants in Scotland as ‘jolly peasants from Sunny Italy giving a rendition of O Sole Mio as they dished out the ice cream or chips across the counter’ is one which Italians themselves have often colluded in and promoted.3 Overall, academic and popular representations have coalesced to present a celebratory and romanticised overview of Italians in Scotland which serves to obscure historical incidences of racism and hostility. The wealth of clichés contained in an Edinburgh Evening News feature on the local Italian community is characteristic of many: ‘They brought us restaurants, ice cream sold from street vending vans ... “They” are the Italians whose humour is as rich as their wine and whose charm is as warm as the sun in any vineyard. They are a gregarious race, who, since arriving in Scotland, have become as closely entwined with Scots society as spaghetti lengths in a bowl.’4 A common motif running through popular representations of the Italian presence is the idea of the Italians bringing the warmth and vibrancy of the Mediterranean to the austere Scottish landscape.5 In these interpretations everything is, quite literally, ~22~

Representations and realities sweetness and light.6 Fundamentally, the tendency within communal discourse to portray the Italian immigrant community as holding a relatively well-tolerated position in Scotland functions to represent World War Two as-an isolated rupture in harmonious relations between Italians and the host community.7 This chapter offers a brief overview of the migration patterns of the Italian diaspora, explores the ways in which Italians and other immigrant groups in Scotland were racialised from the earliest days of settlement, and how, ultimately, long-enduring perceptions of racial difference shaped reactions to Italians at the outbreak of the Second World War. The stereotyping of the Italians as fifth columnists, traitors and cowards during World War Two, combined with the rhetoric of national unity fostered a sense of marginalisation and, perhaps more significantly, contributed to a sense of ‘dissociation’ amongst the children of Italian immigrants.8 By providing a case study of the Edinburgh Italian community in the inter-war period, this chapter provides an analysis of childhood narratives of ‘difference’, based on ethnicity, religion, language and appearance and shows how the wartime configuration of Italians as the ‘enemy within’ served to dramatically reinforce a sense of ‘otherness’ and not ‘belonging’ already prevalent amongst the children of Italian immigrants.

‘Being Italian’ - the Italian diaspora Since 1861, over twenty-five million Italians have emigrated from Italy, with their descendants around the world numbering around sixty million. Donna R. Gabaccia writes that Italy’s migratory workers and exiles repeatedly formed broad, transnational social networks that resembled ‘diasporas-in-formation’, scattering in multiple directions.9 Since the seventeenth century, an Italian elite of professionals and craftsmen - architects, sculptors, artists, musicians and scholars - had travelled to the British Isles in search of patronage.10 This traditional ‘elitist’ immigration was supplemented in the early nineteenth century by the arrival of highly skilled instrument makers and glass blowers from northern Italy and also, more significantly, the influx of nearly a thousand political refugees from Italy, whose ‘nationalist’ struggles against the Austro-Hungarian Empire in favour of Italian unification had forced them to seek exile.11 This latter group found ‘hospitality and sympathy from those liberal- minded Englishmen who had cultivated Italophile sentiments during their extensive travels in Italy’.12 Well received by British society, the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini was able to play ~23~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' an influential role in the embryonic community, establishing a workingmen’s association and a school for poor Italians and generally propagating notions of Italianità (Italianness).13 This ‘social climate’ of Victorian romantic ‘Italophilia’ reached its apogee in 1864, when the military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi visited Britain and was welcomed as a heroic figure by both the liberals and the working classes, attracting huge crowds.14 Throughout this period, an itinerant group of seasonal migrants had continued to travel between Italy and Britain, disseminating information about opportunities for permanent settlement and laying the groundwork for the poor unskilled Italian immigrants who were arriving in significant numbers by the 1880s.15 In Italy, from the late eighteenth century onwards, Gabaccia notes, small villages in central and northern Italy specialised in training workers with trades or skills that facilitated their emigration: ‘organ grinders left from one village, while other villages nearby might send chimney sweeps to Paris, domestic servants to Marseilles, ice cream vendors to London, or seasonal harvesters to Austria’.16 By the onset of World War One, almost fourteen million had declared their intention to leave Italy: forty-four per cent migrated to other European countries; more than thirty per cent went to North America and twenty-four per cent to South America.17 Italian emigrants typically supplied unskilled labour for fanning, road and railway construction, building and manufacturing.18 For example, the Italians who settled in Australia largely found work in the canefields of North Queensland, the mines of Western Australia and in the fields of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.19 In the United States, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, they began to move into better-paid work in steelworks, foundries and mills.20 Gabaccia notes how many of Italy’s migrants experienced ‘a somewhat troubled relation’ with the natives of the countries where they settled. Viewed as threats to jobs, wages and living standards, Italian labourers were ‘not universally welcomed’ even where their labour was badly needed.21 However, a unique feature which distinguishes Italian settlement in Britain, and particularly in Scotland, was the ‘boom’ in the catering professions which occurred at the end of the nineteenth century which enabled Italian families to remain largely self-employed.22

Constructing the internal ‘other’ James Hampshire points out that in response to immigration from the colonies and New Commonwealth in the post-World War Two period, ~24~

Representations and realities the idea of ‘belonging’ was utilised by the British government as a legitimating device to distinguish between citizens who did ‘belong’, those born in Britain or the descendants of someone born in Britain, and ‘nonbelonging’ colonial immigrants. This served, ultimately, to restrict the entry of non-white-immigrants into Britain.23 Cesarani believes that this racialisation of belonging has its historical roots in the treatment of earlier immigrant groups such as Jewish arrivals in Britain at the close of the nineteenth century.24 Indeed Webster notes that before 1945, it was mainly against white groups in Britain that racisms were articulated in relation to internal others.25 Edward W. Said’s hugely influential work, Orientalism, demonstrates how Western conceptions and treatments of the Other, particularly in reference to the relationship between the Occident and the Orient, rests upon a ‘flexible positional superiority’ which interprets and contains the ‘other’ through a ‘system of representations’.26 Fredrik Barth also underlines how ethnic groups become most aware of their cultural identity at the boundaries where they engage and interact with others; ethnic identity can be ‘constrained or shaped by its necessary dependence upon the categorization of Others’.27 From the late seventeenth to the mid nineteenth century, the idea that some people’s identities were ‘white’ came to be attached to the new ways of understanding mankind. According to Garner, this was the period of colonial expansion when Europeans ‘were beginning to encounter people from Africa, the Americas and Asia on an ongoing basis, and notice the obvious if cosmetic differences between groups alongside the cultural ones’.28 Elite scientific discourse encouraged the idea of empirically provable racial differences that explained cultural, political and technological inequalities and justified the enactment of colony-level legislation against voting rights for Blacks, ‘race’ mixing and restrictions on property ownership for black people. Notions of Anglo-Saxon supremacy also gained intellectual support: the hierarchical idea that within the white ‘race’, Anglo-Saxons were particularly capable of civilisation in comparison to Celts, Slavs and Latins.29 These notions of racial difference played a major role in shaping the reception of immigrant and minority communities in Britain throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.30 In his study Racial Science, Gavin Schaffer points out how Jews would be racially demonised for their perfidy and craftiness whilst Africans and Asians were mostly characterised as primitive, barbaric, simple and uncivilised. Indeed, ‘every race was prescribed with its own mentality which, like a physical difference, could pollute or undermine the body politic if allowed to enter the racial stream of the nation’.31 ~25~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' In relation to the Italian diaspora, Beverly Allen and Mary Jo Russo point out that in settlement areas for Italian immigrants across the globe, social positioning was determined ‘according to highly varied notions of skin colour’.32 Garner demonstrates how, in nineteenthcentury America, Italian and other European immigrants could be literally ‘denigrated’ and likened to black Americans: ideologically and culturally they were considered different and lesser ‘white races’.33 Indeed, from 1921 onwards, ‘olive’ or ‘swarthy’ South European migrants and ‘dark’ Slavic ‘stock’ were officially excluded from the US.34 Garner argues that in Australia in the 1920s the Italians occupied a similarly ambiguous position ‘straddling the lines of whiteness’. Officially categorised as ‘white aliens’, they became the object of a discourse aimed at presenting them as a threat not just to jobs but to living standards and the cultural future of Australia, due to their perceived clannishness, corruption and general unfitness for pioneer activity. He points out that two of the largest ‘prohibited groups’ in the 1901 Immigration Act who were refused the right to land were the Maltese and Italians.35 Loretta Baldassar’s study of Australian Italians confirms that the common pejorative names, ‘dago,’ ‘eyetie’ and ‘wop’ signalled the construction of Italians as ‘dirty, dangerous, dark-skinned, uncultured, and untrustworthy’.36 Gamer acknowledges that the ‘blackwhite binary model of urban America’ was largely absent in Victorian Britain.37 However, as Anne McClintock illustrates, imperial discourse still needed to place groups such as the ‘pale-skinned’ Irish within the hierarchy of Britain’s colonial empire. Thus, ‘where skin colour as a marker of power was imprecise and inadequate’ and could not be employed as the crucial sign of otherness, English racism drew instead on the notion of domestic barbarism as a key marker of racial difference. The iconography of ‘domestic degeneracy’ was utilised not only in respect to the Irish but also to other ‘white negroes’ such as the Jews, prostitutes and the working classes.38 In the nineteenth century, argues McClintock, ‘the iconography of dirt’ became deployed increasingly to police the boundaries between normal codes of behaviour and deviance, ‘linking into wider discourses about “pollution”, “disorder” “moral contagion” and racial “degeneration” 39 Fortier highlights how public debate about hygiene, street noise and the degeneracy of the city in nineteenth-century Britain was often ethnicised by figuring Italians as sources of that degeneracy.40 The anti-alien invective of W. H. Wilkins, Secretary of the Association for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens, underlines this tendency to represent the Italians in Britain in terms of dirt and insanitariness: ‘The Italians mostly come from Naples ~26~

Representations and realities and the vicinity where they live in pauperism, filth and vice, with no other ambition than to get cheap food enough to keep them alive.’41 In a Punch article from 1864, when Italian street performers were becoming more visible in British cities, an Italian organ grinder is characterised in a sketch as facially black and described in the accompanying text as a ‘repugnant’ nuisance ‘whose clothes are always saturated with dirt’.42 Sponza underlines how a traditional ‘split image’ of Italy led to this constant ambivalence towards the Italian immigrant presence in Britain: ‘on one side of the coin was “Italy”, the country of beauty and culture visited as part of the “Grand Tour” of Europe; on the other side were “the Italians”, an ingenious but corrupt, untrustworthy and licentious race’.43 He identifies a gradual metamorphosis during the course of the nineteenth century in attitudes towards the Italian presence in Britain, transforming from romantic idealisation and compassion to spiteful annoyance, which reflects both the changing character of the Italian colony (in quantitative and qualitative terms) and broad changes in British public opinion.44 This ‘adverse shift’ in the perception of Italian immigrants from the 1860s onwards crystallised around four key issues: the exploitation of children working in street trades as organ boys, annoyance with street music, anxieties over overcrowding in the Italian Quarter (specifically the unhygienic conditions in which ice cream was manufactured) and concern over ‘illegal, violent and immoral practices’ by Italians, such as begging.45

‘You always got called “You filthy Italians”’46 – responses and reactions to Italians in Scotland In Cesarani’s view, the arrival of thousands of Jews in the late nineteenth century provoked fundamental concerns about citizenship and belonging, rooted in anxieties over whether alien Jews could be good citizens and whether they even had a place in a Christian country.47 Their presence led to the first legislation, in 1905, to restrict immigration into Britain, followed by the wartime 1914 Act which created controls over the movement of aliens and 1919 legislation which denied former ‘enemy aliens’ the right to sit on juries or take government service.48 Throughout the nineteenth century, Irish and Lithuanian immigrants and Jewish refugees arrived in Scotland in significant numbers in search of employment and, in the case of the latter, fleeing from religious and political persecution.49 The Irish and Lithuanians are generally viewed as having received a hostile reception due to their concentration in the coal ~27~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' and iron industries in the west of Scotland, where they were regarded as a threat to employment and wage rates.50 However, Garner also points to the significance of ‘racialising and moralising discourse’ which associated naturally depraved lifestyles to aliens’ living conditions. In midnineteenth-century Scotland, Irish immigrants, who numbered over 120,000 by 1841, represented the embodiment of disease, dirtiness and low morals.51 When the cholera epidemic of 1848 ravaged Glasgow, for example, the Irish were blamed as ‘the agents of plague’ rather than bad sanitation and overcrowding.52 In their turn, Lithuanian settlers in Scotland, who numbered 7000 by 1914, were identified with crime, drunkenness, bad housing and unemployment. John Millar also believes that the tendency of Lithuanians to maintain their traditions - they had their own clergy, shops, insurance societies and ethnic newspapers — made them visibly ‘different’ and, as such, the targets of verbal and physical abuse.53 Of the 150,000 Jews who arrived in Britain between 1881 and 1914 around 7000 settled in Glasgow.54 Here, Jews were identified as being responsible for the ‘contamination’ of working-class life with their perceived involvement in prostitution and gambling and unsanitary living conditions.55 Italians had been arriving in Scotland in relatively low numbers throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1871 Scottish census records 268 Italians present in Scotland compared with 5063 in England and Wales. By 1911, the Italian population in Scotland stood at 4594 and 20,771 in England and Wales.56 Peaks in immigration to Scotland occurred at the turn of the century, in 1913, and again after the First World War in 1920-21.57 Prior to the outbreak of World War Two, the 1931 census enumerated an Italian-born population of 5216 in Scotland.58 Italian immigrants in Scotland primarily settled as part of a process of chain migration whereby the earliest immigrants who had established themselves would send back for relatives and neighbours in their village to work in their businesses. These ‘chain migrations’ linked particular villages in Italy to particular neighbourhoods, or colonie, in foreign countries. Thus, as Gabaccia notes, in village-based diasporas, familiarity with the wider world incorporated rather than undermined migrant localism.59 Chain migration also enabled a system of patronage, padronismo, to flourish whereby the most successful immigrants, padroni, would recruit young men from their villages to serve as shopboys, under a contract lasting two or three years. Padronismo further heightened links between Scottish areas of settlement and specific source regions in Italy as well as concentrating power and influence in the hands ~28~

Representations and realities of some of the earliest immigrant families.60 The earliest emigrants to Scotland originated from two clearly defined zones in Italy no more than 250 miles apart: Barga, in the northern province of Lucca, and Picinisco in the more southerly province of Frosinone.61 In addition, those from Emilia, Parmigiani settled in Perth, Dundee and Aberdeen whilst the Spezzini from the Val di Vara settled primarily in the 1920s in Gourock, Port Glasgow, Greenock and the Clyde estuary islands.62 At the peak of immigration to Scotland a strong sense of nationhood was still lacking amongst Italians. Indeed, as Morgan acknowledges, ever since the political and territorial unification of Italy in 1870, commentators have agonised over ‘whether a country so internally divided by class and local and regional identities did, and could, constitute a nation’.63 Relatively few migrants before World War One possessed a strong sense of shared nationality or italianità; instead, ‘their sense of belonging, intimacy, and community was a single village ‒ paese ‒ with its own diasporic networks and consciousness’.64 Conversely, natives of the countries where they settled almost always perceived them as Italians. As Allen and Russo stress, as notions of ethnic or regional difference were constituted in Italy, Sicilians or Genovese often became ‘Italians’ only by virtue of their displacement from Italy.65 Although the majority of Italians in Scotland settled in large cities, with the largest Italian population in Glasgow, there was also an ‘arterial process of dispersion’ into the smaller towns, particularly in maritime coastal areas with a growing demand for outdoor refreshments.66 Sponza believes that the common stereotyping of the Italians was based on the ‘partial and prejudiced knowledge of them’ as street performers - itinerant musicians and organ grinders, terrazzo workers, peddlers of plaster statuettes, and street vendors of chestnuts and milk ices.67 This ties in with Gamer’s comment, in relation to Irish immigrants, that those who adopted ‘wandering and migratory’ modes of life were denigrated and perceived as inferior because ‘rootless’, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century.68 The massive influx of unskilled rural Italians into Britain, and particularly into Scotland, in the late nineteenth century, transformed the occupational structure of the community with a significant transition from nomadic street hawking to the establishment of small family-based shops in the 1890s.69 When the Aliens Act of 1905 empowered immigration inspectors at designated ports to exclude immigrants without any means, the possibility of itinerancy for Italian immigrants was removed and the transition to a more formal economy accelerated.70 Setting up a ~29~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' small shop selling ice cream or fish and chips required little investment and was ‘an easy if laborious job’.71 By the end of World War One, R. E. Foerster reports, over one thousand shops existed across Scotland ‘selling drinks, candy, Bovril and ice cream’.72 Whilst numerous early Italian settlers never set up their own businesses and remained in poverty, many began to prosper in the early twentieth century. In 1903, the Italian Consul in Glasgow remarked that: ‘Many who live here own individually three or four shops, for the selling of ice cream, and several of them own up to 10-15 shops.’73 However, this shift into the catering trade did little to alter negative perceptions; as Sponza notes, selling food was ‘not the stuff of an imperial race’.74 Compared to England and Wales, the fish and chip trade in Scotland was considered ‘unique in the scale of activity and the extent of Italian domination’; by the early 1930s, it was estimated that eighty per cent of all Scotland’s fish friers were of Italian origin.75 A local newspaper in 1914 explained the monopolisation by Italians of fish and chip shops in Edinburgh in the following racialised terms: ‘The wily Italians found out that there was much more money in this class of shop than in the icecream variety, and so they have gradually wormed their way into the business, and ousted the Britishers.’76 At the beginning of the twentieth century, church and temperance groups, the police and trade unions joined together in opposition to Italian businesses, ostensibly raising objections to late opening hours and Sunday trading.77 In Walton’s opinion, the fact that there was no overtly moralistic campaign against ice cream or fish and chip shops in England suggests that the Italian influence in Scotland ‘may have made the trade seem particularly suspect there’.78 Indeed, James Ballantine, spokesman for solicitors acting on behalf of the Sunday Traders’ Defence Association, testified before the 1906 Joint Select Committee on Sunday Trading that the antagonism towards ice cream shops ‘arises largely from prejudice against foreigners’.79 These types of anti-Italian crusades provided a backdrop of antipathy in the period when most respondents were growing up although only two interviewees referred to it specifically. Instead, narrators tended to dwell on the antagonism and aggression they faced from customers during their daily business; the abusive drunk being a common feature of narratives. In an unpublished memoir, Italian immigrant Olindo Porchetta provides a colourful account of life for the Italian colony in pre-World War One Glasgow, who were: subject to constant assaults, petty thefts and brawls of drunks who frequented their shops, when publicans had filled them with alcohol

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Representations and realities and duly thrown them out. Many were the fights and broken heads. When rowdies patronized these shops they usually took advantage of the unintelligible Italian shop tender by refusing to pay for stuff eaten, or break plates and do all sorts of damage that forced the poor Italian to retaliatory acts, which consisted in the. use of-bottles, pokers or even lethal weapons. This constant friction made the Italian notorious as knife users ... Even barbers carried razors for they were often waylaid once they were spotted as foreigners.80

The memoirs of Eugenio D’Agostino who ran the Royal Cafe in Edinburgh similarly relate incidences of drunken violence from his customers, including one infamous occasion, just after the First World War, when a crowd of sailors appeared outside his cafe ‘armed with sticks, stones, bottles and some with bricks’.81 Narrator Renzo Serafini, who was born in Hawick in 1915, refers to ‘the hammerings that our fathers had before the war when we had fish and chip shops and people used to come in and knock hell out of you’.82 The wartime aggression focused on the Italian population, therefore, did not emerge from a vacuum but was rooted in a pre-existent antagonism towards and categorisation of Italians as ‘dirty’ foreigners.83 As Colin Holmes writes about anti-Semitism during World War One, wartime hostility ‘was not divorced from what had gone before, nor was it without its significance for the future’.84

‘You daren’t... you know, be a foreigner’ — narratives of childhood ethnicity Twenty-four of the interviewees within my research sample were born in Edinburgh, five in Fife, four in Italy and three in West Lothian. The remainder were born in other towns and cities including Glasgow, Stirling and London. Of those who took part in my research, thirty-eight respondents said their father had either an ice cream or fish and chip shop and often both. Significantly, the majority of respondents went into the family business immediately on leaving school and most of them remained in the catering trade all their working lives. In 1933, over two-thirds of Italians were recorded in Edinburgh as having originated from the province of Frosinone in the region of Lazio; a fact endorsed by my research sample, where twenty-three respondents gave Frosinone as their family’s area of origin.85 Edinburgh had the second largest Italian population in Scotland at the time of World War Two and the Edinburgh Register of Aliens shows 350 Italians were registered in the city at the end of 1939: 211 males and 139 females.86 Italians settled in two key residential areas of the Grassmarket and Leith as well as the coastal districts of Portobello and ~31~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Musselburgh.87 The Edinburgh Post Office Directory of 1935-36 shows that nineteen out of twenty-two ice cream makers were Italian and twenty-six out of forty-six fish restaurant owners.88 Colpi writes of World War Two that, in Scotland particularly, ‘children who had grown up without their fathers and had to live with their “tally bastard” status as the former enemy were often tainted for life by their experience’.89 She pinpoints the morning of 11 June 1940 as the time when children of Italian origin ‘faced agonising taunting at school’ as ‘Wog’s and ‘Ay-tie’s’, concluding, ‘It was in this way a generation of British Italians learned that it was not a good thing to be Italian and how it was better to “assimilate” or de-Italianise themselves.’90 With these statements, Colpi implies that the war was wholly responsible for fostering a sense of difference amongst secondgeneration Italians. Yet oral testimonies, by revealing the extent of prewar prejudice towards Italians, highlights a miscalulation in presenting the war as the primary expression of anti-Italian hostility. Although many interviewees shrugged off incidences of name calling and taunts, overall respondents painted similar pictures of childhoods in the 1920s and 1930s blighted by feelings of difference and repeated exposure to harassment. Growing up as part of a Catholic minority in Presbyterian Scotland, in particular, fundamentally shaped the life stories of secondgeneration Italians and the construction of personal identity. Linda Colley stresses the historical importance of anti-Catholicism in constructions of British identity, pointing out that even though the Catholic community on the British mainland was a small one, they were mythologised as ‘an omnipresent menace’.91 Essentially, ‘Catholics were beyond the boundaries, always on the outside even if they were British- born: they did not and could not belong’.92 Colley believes that this kind of intolerance deepened in the nineteenth century and was particularly pronounced in Scotland because of the substantial Catholic presence in the Highlands and the Ulster connection.93 A great body of work exists addressing the nature and extent of anti-Catholic bigotry in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scotland94 and it is clear from personal narratives that, in Scotland, the Italian population were highly sensitive to the dominant discourse of anti-Catholicism. Olindo Porchetta notes how, like the Irish, the Italians were ‘treated as low type aliens’.95 He comments on the inter-war Italian community in Glasgow, that although they did not attend religious services, they were ‘proud to remain Italians and Catholics in a nation which made these two human fetishes difficult to uphold’.96 In Edinburgh, where Catholics comprised only nine per cent of the population, the inter-war years were marred by ~32~

Representations and realities significant sectarian tensions.97 The decade preceding World War Two witnessed the growth of militant Protestantism with orator John Cormack and his Protestant Action Society (PAS) involved in ‘organised harassment and vilification’ against the city’s Catholic community.98 This hostility culminated in large-scale rioting when the Catholic Eucharist Congress was held in the Edinburgh suburb of Morningside in 1935." Although most of Cormack’s rhetoric and abuse was directed at Irish immigrants, the Italians’ identification as Roman Catholics undoubtedly pushed them to the boundaries of acceptance. Cormack’s PAS was also concentrated in the area where many Italian families lived, scoring seven out of its ten electoral victories in Leith.100 Gallagher acknowledges that ‘there had been no love lost’ between Cormack and members of the Italian community, stating that the practice of some Italian Fasci members of wearing black shirts on commemorative occasions ‘was a gesture calculated to anger members of Protestant Action’.101 In a newspaper editorial in November 1938, Cormack relates a fracas with ‘a horrible-looking Italian’ outside St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, concluding ‘that is just how those Italians love us as Protestants, so treat them accordingly and KEEP OUT OF THEIR SHOPS, boycott them and force them to go back to their BELOVED ITALY AND DUCE.’102 Within the narratives of those who grew up in Edinburgh, Cormack was the personification of anti-Catholic sentiment. Fiorinta Gallo recalls Cormack coming into their fish and chip shop and calling her father an Italian Pape103 whilst Richard Demarco states that so many children were being ‘abused and shouted at’ by Protestant Action supporters as they walked to their Catholic school in Portobello, that police were brought in to provide an escort.104 Anna Davin, in her study of poor London 1870-1914, points out that whilst the children of immigrants shared the social conditions of other children, ‘at the same time they were different, on the one hand in their sense of identity, created in home, community and perhaps religion and on the other in being perceived and treated as different by some of their peers and by their school’.105 She also acknowledges that ‘children whose physical appearance suggested foreign parentage were sometimes made to feel different or even inferior, whether (at best) by being patronised, or by being ridiculed, teased, insulted and bullied’.106 Italian Scottish narrators recall facing a catalogue of insults in the street and playground, most commonly ‘Macaroni’ and ‘Tally’, and being ridiculed for ‘eating worms’ (spaghetti). A notable gender difference within narratives was the tendency of female respondents to focus on physical appearance as a key indicator of racial difference. References to their ~33~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' own skin or hair colour — ‘dark’, ‘sallow skinned’, ‘honey blond’ or ‘foreign looking’ - abounded within women’s narratives; an emphasis summed up most explicitly by Carmen Demarco: ‘I was a fair-skinned, grey-eyed Italian so I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb. But the frizzyhaired, brown-eyed ones with the sallow skins they really got a lot of stick because they were obviously foreign.’107 Another source of conflict for children of Italian origin was language, whereby an exacerbated sense of difference encouraged a desire to conform. Farrell notes that amongst many immigrant families in Scotland, the Italian language ‘stopped being used at home very quickly’, with parents not transmitting their native language to their children.108 Less than half of those I interviewed said they could speak ‘standard’ Italian (frequently picked up in later life at language classes) although most retained a memory of their parents’ regional dialect. This contrasts with Lithuanian settlers in Scotland who encouraged Lithuanian to be spoken and read at home so that their children became, by necessity, bilingual.109 Porchetta identifies a key source of antagonism towards Italian shopkeepers being ‘the Italians’ bad English’ which acted as a trigger for the ‘egregious insults which the poor drunken customers thought it their privilege to offer the “dirty foreigner”’ 110 One narrator stressed how it became strictly ‘taboo’ to speak Italian in the public arena of the shop where Italian families spent most of their time.111 Elizabeth Di Ponio, who grew up in the West Lothian mining community of Whitburn, explained: ‘you daren’t... you know, be a foreigner. Now it’s a different thing with people going abroad but then, you weren’t allowed to talk.’112 Davin acknowledges that hostility towards children of different ethnic backgrounds could occur within the school walls as well as outside and could come from adults, ‘teachers included’, as well as from children; a fact reflected within my research sample.113 The childhood narrative accounts of Italian Scots are often framed around the idea of individual academic achievement being thwarted or resented by the teaching establishment. The schooldays recollections of Alex Margiotta, born to Italian parents in 1921, are worth quoting extensively as they touch upon many issues raised by other respondents: a sense of secondclass citizenship, of ‘not belonging’ and of hostility from teaching staff: I didn’t go to a Roman Catholic school but I was at Leith Academy. Leith Academy in those days was a fee-paying school. [...] It wasn’t a big fee-paying school but you had to buy your books and you had to pay per term. And I even felt... you could feel it there. Now a lot of the lads their fathers were in the civil service and they all had good jobs and

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Representations and realities here’s me ‒ I’m an ice-cream man’s son. I think there was a big resentment amongst the teachers even and the only teachers who were understanding were the French teacher - Jenny Jamieson. She was mad over me. She was just absolutely daft over me. You know how teachers have favourites? I never invited any favouritism but I was good at French for instance - and the Geography teacher. He was very realistic and I think I’ve got a feeling that sometimes he maybe leaned over backwards to try and make me feel part of the... he might have gone over the edge just to make me feel sure that I was amongst the crowd sort of thing. But the rest of the teachers had a very veiled - sometimes it wasn’t veiled - hostility because you were out of kilter being there. You were an embarrassment to them from the point of view that: here’s somebody whose father hasn’t been to the school and his sisters haven’t been and his brother’s not been. So you got stuck into St Andrew’s House. St Andrew’s House where all the dribs and drabs got stuck in. [...] We had the worse rugby team; we had the worst cricket team! [laughs] But it was there, even at that early age, I could discern it. They were definitely not pro-Italian.114

At her Edinburgh convent school, Carmen Demarco, born in 1930, recalls how the nuns ‘really didn’t like the Italians ... they made things quite difficult for us’. She sensed that the nuns ‘grudged’ her winning school prizes and became so unhappy at school that her parents decided

2.

Dora Harris, n6e Valente, seated on the left, at her sister’s wedding, Edinburgh 1929.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' to move her.115 Dora Harris, nee Valente, recalls her teacher Miss Barnett at St Ignatius school: DH:

WU: DH:

I was scared o’ her like mad. Well, we had all gone to the same school, all the sisters ... ‘Oh she’s another ...’ This is how it went, you see. [...] They just used to hammer you. She used to say, ‘Come out Tally-Anne’. She used to do this [mimics being pulled by the ear], The teacher? Aye.‘Come out Tally-Anne!’116

Two narrators chose the annual school Burns competition, a celebration of the national poet who culturally embodies Scottishness, to highlight their alienation both within the classroom and the wider community. When Alex Margiotta won the prize at St Margaret’s junior school, ‘the teacher had the class on their feet and she said, “You should be ashamed of yourself allowing a young Italian boy to beat you at your own national poet”.’117 Elizabeth Di Ponio, born in 1918, one of the few narrators who dwelt almost universally on positive memories, still recalled how: I was very good at Rabbie Burns when I was at school and one of the committee came in and said to my father - they used to have a competition every year - and they said, ‘Betty’s very good at the poetry and Rabbie Bums’ things. You’ll let her come?’ And my father wouldn’t allow it. He said, ‘No’. He said, ‘If she won it it’d cause a lot of animosity.’ In the wee village. So I wasn’t allowed.118

Narrators also addressed memories of abuse from fellow school pupils in their life story testimonies. Significantly, male narrators tended not to dwell on this aspect of their childhood, presenting fights in the playground as part of their everyday reality and therefore unremarkable. Romeo Ugolini, who grew up in Armadale, states, ‘We were always fighting. Had to fight all the time’119 whilst Alex Margiotta remembers, ‘When I was at school it was always two blokes I had to fight, I never had to fight one bloke.’120 In contrast, women’s narratives were often detailed accounts vividly imbued, in their present-day narration, with a sense of anger and defiance. For example, Antonietta Paci, born in 1923, recalls her spirited response to the bullying she experienced at St. Thomas’s high school: There was a crowd that used to call me names because I was Italian ... but then I beat them up! I was a wild cat at times. I couldn’t stand anybody calling me names, an ‘Italian - ’ I just couldn’t take it. That was as a child; I just hated it. They used to pull my hair but they were

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Representations and realities bullying everyone. There were a gang of them and I thought, ‘Well, I can’t fight the whole lot of them but I’ll wait’. I locked myself in the cloakroom and I knew that the head one, the girl that always pulled my hair and spat at me sometimes and things like that, I thought, ‘I’ve got to get her’. So I locked myself in. [...] I crouched there, waited until the door opened, the janitor went away and when she came in, I jumped out on her. I said, ‘Go on. Call me Italiani Macaroni now.’ I said like this, ‘Go on!’ She wouldn’t. ‘It’s not me, it’s the rest,’ you know. ‘No, it’s you’. And I kept pushing her. I said, ‘Go on, hit me, hit me, hit me!’ Because I wanted her to hit me first, you see. So she went to put her hand out to hit me and that was it! I tore her gym [slip] off... I pulled her hair, I scratched her, I kicked her. Really I was a wildcat. All my temper came out and I thought, ‘You’ll never do that to me again’.121

Anna Fergusson, who was born to an Italian father in Alloa in 1925, presents a similar tale of physical retaliation from her schooldays: While I was at school I would get called, ‘Away you Italian so-and-sos. Away this and that.’ But that never bothered, that’s never upset me. Then, because [laughs] I had really auburn hair - ‘Away you carrotheaded Tally something.’ So, one day these lads came from the school on the left-hand side because their school was down there. We came down the left-hand side from our school, St Mungo’s. So, I was coming down with my brother Francis who was very quiet and I have always really been an extrovert. [...] Well, this day going down from school, there were three of them. So, ‘Away wee Tally, carrot-headed, Papish B.’ And I went, ‘Francis, hold my case a minute’. Took my blazer off and I really, honest to goodness, I don’t know where my strength came from but I leathered this lad. The other two ran away.122

Yet female respondents were also more likely to dwell on the anxieties they felt as children of Italian origin. Rosalina Masterson, born in 1919, said that ‘you’d always that fear’. She recalls her sister returning from school in tears after a friend announced, ‘My mummy said that I’m not to take your hand because you’re an Italian.’123 The testimony of Dina Togneri, born in Irvine in 1928, by recalling her sense of ‘difference’ represents a common emphasis within women’s narratives of childhood: When I was a little girl, I remember one time I was in hospital with diphtheria. I must have been about five or six and the matron, meaning it kindly, coming round with the doctor in the morning: ‘This is our little Italian girl’ she said. ‘I’m not Italian; I’m not Italian.’ Children don’t want to be different. ‘Look at me; I’ve got tartan ribbons in my hair.’ I made my mother bring the tartan ribbons in. I didn’t want to be Italian at all.124

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Other themes introduced in narratives were the sense of being secondclass citizens and of being looked down on as ‘ice cream people’. A sense of exclusion could often be expressed in quite literal terms as in not being invited into peoples’ homes.125 Irene Politi, who grew up during the war in the ‘one horse town’ of Loanhead on the outskirts of Edinburgh, felt, as the daughter of second-generation Italians, that ‘you weren’t brought into the community’. Her narrative also testifies to the resilience of the degrading stereotypes surrounding Italian families: ‘Mum always used to give me a birthday party and it was to try and encourage the children to play with me because their parents had put thoughts into their heads that we were bad people. And they were dirty. That was another one that used to offend my mother, that the Italians were dirty. And you had to live that down.’126 The invasion of Ethiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, by Mussolini’s regime in 1935-36, was identified by a number of respondents as contributing to a significant shift in the ways Italians were configured in their local communities, with more open expressions of hostility. Robert Graves and Alan Hodge note how feeling in Britain ran high against Italy at this time: ‘Atrocity stories were printed: the use of poison gas and the deliberate bombing of hospitals and ambulances ... The Left in England held protest meetings and formed committees to organise bazaars in aid of the Abyssinians.’127 Joe Pieri, who was born in Italy in 1919 just prior to his family’s emigration to Scotland, acknowledges that Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and later intervention in the Spanish Civil War ‘created a wave of ill feeling against Italy in the general population. The childhood taunts of “dirty wee Tally” had given way to more frequent, forceful and insulting remarks about my nationality from some of the more drunken and belligerent types who made up a good percentage of our night-time clientele.’128 Margiotta identified Ethiopia as the time when ‘things started going bad for the Italians’ in Edinburgh with the boycotting of Italian businesses, including his father’s shop in the deprived district of Abbeyhill: the papers had a lot of adverse articles about the Italians and all this and what they were doing in Abyssinia. Of course the people were ‘Oh aye’ and they reacted in that manner and consequently things were pretty bad. When we’re talking about a happenny cone and a penny cone and a tuppenny packet of Woodbines. You can’t keep a family going if you don’t sell something ... So my dad got rid of the shop and he was out with the tricycle, selling ice-cream with a tricycle.129

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Representations and realities Carmin Sidonio, who grew up in Invergordon with Italian parents, was ‘shocked and horrified’ when his classmates at school began ‘dancing around me saying, “Eyetie, eyetie, Mussolini eyetie.” ’ Until the time of the Ethiopian conflict, Sidonio had always self-identified as Scottish.130 Carmen Demarco also pinpoints the Ethiopian crisis as the first occasion of explicit hostility towards her, linking this to a pre-existent sense of not belonging: In 1937 it must have been ‒ ’37, ’38 I’m not sure about the date - one of the girls in my class had a birthday party and everybody in the class was invited, except me. It was because I was an Italian and the parents didn’t approve of what was happening in [Ethiopia]... so I never went to the party. That was the first time that it suddenly dawned on me that there was something different about me. Also, we used to have pasta on a Sunday and my mother always used to say, ‘You didn’t have pasta today. When anybody asks you at school what you had for your Sunday dinner, you had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or roast chicken or something. You must never tell people that you eat macaroni.’131

Thus, overall, narratives reveal the extent of alienation and marginalisation experienced by Italian Scots growing up in the inter-war period, the ‘golden era’ of myth.132 The pervading sense of displacement displayed in the childhood narratives of Italian Scottish respondents is encapsulated in Mackie’s post-war play Gentle Like a Dove, when the Edinburgh-born Domenico declares: I’ve been a’ my life amang Scotch folk. My pals are a’ Scotch frae the day I first toddled oot on the Leith Walk pavement... But when it comes to the bit I’m still an Italian, a Wop, a Tally, an ice-a-da-cream-a, chips no’ready, come back eight o’clock. I’ve had that flung in my teeth till I was seek-tired since I was that high. These things leave their mark. Ye canna help it.133

The sense of marginalisation embodied within the narratives of secondgeneration Italians inevitably intensified during the war. Cultural representations which attempt to recapture the imaginary world of second-generation Italian children in wartime Britain include Steve Gough’s 1992 Welsh film, Elenya, and Glynn Maxwell’s epic multivocal poem of 2005, Sugar Mile. Both position children of Italian origin as objects of mistrust, isolated and marginalised within their own communities. In Maxwell’s poem, the main protagonist Joey Stone is a teenage witness to ‘Black Saturday’, the daylight air raid which signified the beginning of the London Blitz in September 1940. He silently ~39~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' observes those who have been bombed out of their homes until a neighbour, Robby Pray, spots him: ‘Look who it isn’t. If it isn’t the icecream man!’ This attack triggers a series of unrelenting racist taunts which are sustained throughout the poem whereby Joey, whose mother is Italian, stands accused of masking his ‘real’ identity. He is ‘Giuseppe or Jew-Seppy’, a caustic pun which, by introducing a note of antiSemitism, further emphasises his visual difference and foreignness.134 Similarly, in Elenya, set in a Welsh village in 1940, a daughter of a Welsh carpenter and an absentee Italian mother is ostracised within her local community as a ‘foreigner’. A lone figure in the school playground, Elenya finds solace through befriending a shot-down German pilot, hiding in the woods near her home. In the most significant set piece of the film Elenya is taunted by the local children but manages to reassert her own authority by repeatedly screaming a Nazi war cry at them, frightening them away. Their hostility has quite literally driven her to adopt the mantle of the ‘enemy’. The narrative of Richard Demarco further illustrates how, once war between Italy and Britain broke out, a sense of being an outsider transfigured into a sense of being besieged. As a child of Italian origin living in the seaside district of Portobello, he recalls, ‘I couldn’t walk along the Promenade when Italy declared war for fear of being stoned. Literally. Children on the beach throwing stones at me.’ He also mentions experiencing an assault in the showers of the public baths at this time, underlining his own childhood sense of vulnerability and exposure. Demarco recalled Portobello beach as his own personal ‘theatre of war’ and a childhood self, fearful of becoming ‘the first civilian casualty of the war’.135

‘Sock the wops’ - wartime discourse Despite these years of intermittent, subtle manifestations of hostility, Italians in Scotland were still largely unprepared for the onslaught of violence and aggression which broke out following Mussolini’s declaration of war (which will be addressed in chapter four). The period of the phoney war had been a difficult time for Italians living in Britain but the Fall of France in May 1940 and the emerging discourse of the ‘enemy within’ had devastating and far-reaching consequences for the community. The organisers of a US exhibition, Una Storia Segreta, exploring the wartime experiences of the Italian American community, point out that the prejudice which had long attached to Italianness ‘concentrated its venom’ during the war.136 Historian Gianfranco Cresciani makes the interesting point that in Australia the population ~40~

Representations and realities were more concerned about the activities of the Italian community than those carried out by German migrants because of ‘the suspicion, intolerance and even animosity’ that had characterised their behaviour towards Italians in the inter-war period.137 In Britain, popular wartime songs, ditties, radio shows, parliamentary debates and films both absorbed and projected widespread Italophobia which in turn impacted on audiences of Italian origin. Italian families living in Britain became subject to what Summerfield and Peniston-Bird term ‘a rhetorical “othering”’.138 As Irene Politi summarises: ‘We were Italians and the war was on and we were sort of like traitors.’139 Other interviewees refer sourly to their mothers being relocated ‘in case she was a spy’ or because ‘she could have sent messages over the Forth’.140 Diana Corrieri recalls working in the family shop in the dark days of 1940, stating that ‘people that were frightened to associate with you [...] in case they thought you were a fifth columnist’.141 Her husband Frank agreed that during the war, ‘You found out who your true friends were.’ He grew up in Kelty, Fife, the son of a naturalised Italian: We had one family we were very friendly with and one of the sons used to come to the house. He could come to the house at a mealtime and just pull a chair up and sit down. It was then Italy came into the war and he went into the Army and he was an officer. He came back and he looked in to see [us] and my father said, ‘How are you getting on? Blahblah. Where are you?’ ‘Oh, I can’t tell you that. That’s a military secret’. But his brother had already told me where he was. I said, ‘You’re on a lighthouse. Stationed at Kinghorn in Fife aren’t you?’ He didn’t like that. But that was the kind of thing you got, you know? That was what you thought was a real friend. And his mother always crossed the road and passed the shop on the other side of the road after Italy came into the war.142

During the war, pervasive stereotypes of Italian immigrants as dirty and servile were joined by accusations of cowardice, martial inadequacy and treachery, coalescing to form a dominant image of Italians as racially inferior. A Mass Observation survey undertaken in the four days preceding Italy’s entry into the war found that typical attitudes expressed towards the Italians were ‘Wops’, ‘yellow’, ‘Rotten fighters’ and ‘Lousy scum - not fit even for the dustbin.’143 The riotous crowd depicted in Mackie’s 1953 play about the Edinburgh Campanelli family utilises all these stereotypes: ‘Campanelli! Yellae! Yellae! Come oot o’ yer shellae, ye dirty auld fellae!’144 As Sponza records, when Italy officially became an enemy, ‘most popular papers resorted to the ~41~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

3. 'A neat device for catching wops’ Tatler, 28 August 1940. This wartime cartoon drew upon racialised views of the Italians in Britain as inferior, servile and unmanly.

“monkey” and “Wop” labels with reference to Italians partly because ridiculing the enemy is morale-boosting, and partly because those were conventional expressions to connote the Italians’.145 During a parliamentary debate on enemy submarine losses in July 1940, one MP declared, ‘Is it true that British seamen when out on the water call out ~42~

Representations and realities “Waiter,” an Italian submarine comes to the top?’146 Comic strips of the time also pilloried the Italian enemy, ‘Musso the Wop’.147 Reporting on media campaigns about Gracie Fields and her film director husband, Monty Banks (otherwise Mario Bianchi) taking money out of Britain and leaving the country in the summer of 1940, Mass Observation noted that the virulence of the press response was likely to be linked to the fact that ‘Our Gracie’ was married to an Italian: ‘The newspapers played on it by publishing pictures of Monty Banks touched up to make him look all that a “wop” was supposed to be. This attitude caused many people to say that it was Monty Banks, not Gracie Fields, who was to blame; others perhaps to feel more strongly against her for marrying a “wop”’ 148 Italy’s participation in air raids on London in November 1940 prompted calls for a retaliation on Rome and also provided another opportunity for airing derisory comments.149 Epsom MP, Sir Archibald Southby, remarked, ‘I suggest that under present circumstances the slogan of this country should be: “Sock the Wop.” That is what we should do if we want to beat Germany. I do not believe that the Wop would take very much socking if we went on doing it.’150 This catchphrase, originally coined by an Air Raid Precautions worker, was also incorporated into a popular ditty penned by the right-wing author A. P. Herbert: SOCK THE WOPS, and knock their blocks Sock the Wop, until he crocks; Slosh the Wop because he’s mean; WASH the Wop — he isn’t clean.151

The MP for Leyton West, Reginald Sorensen, expressed his dismay in 1942, at ‘how swiftly piles of humanity are shifted from place to place like piles of muck. The Italians, who were our “Blood brothers” in the last war, are “wops” in this. The Japanese were “our gallant Allies” in the last war, but are “yellow devils” in this.’152 In the same way that US propaganda imagined their Japanese foe as racially subhuman, similar animalistic imagery was employed in relation to the Italians by the British press.153 Mass Observation’s analysis of the Daily Mirror of 11 June 1940 noted how ‘the Italians are referred to as “alligators”, baboons... Most pages of the paper contain such crack, and Victor Emanuel is referred to as a “Regal Peanut” and “a spreading yellow stain”.’154 Articles from the Scottish press also reflect the racial stereotyping prevalent at the outset of the war, the Scotsman referring to captured Bersaglieri troops in Athens as ‘chattering amongst themselves like monkeys’.155 ~43~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Characterisations of Italian cowardice were similarly important in shaping the way in which Britain depicted the Italian immigrant community. As Sponza comments, ‘Drumming on about the poor fighting qualities of Italians was naturally the commonest reaction to Italy’s entrance into the war.’156 Christie Davies highlights how the genesis of popular jokes about cowardly and incompetent Italian troops, which circulated widely in France, Greece and Britain during World War Two, can be traced back as far as the sixteenth century.157 Although the BBC initially issued a ban on mentioning the martial inadequacy of Italian troops, reluctant to foster any complacency over the potential threat, this ban proved unsustainable in light of Italy’s military setbacks. Thus, by January 1941 the forces’ programme Your Company is Requested contained the following exchange between two comedians: Bennet:

Here’s a new riddle, very funny, highly topical. What is it that has feathers on the head but isn’t a bird - has two legs but runs faster than a hare? Moroney: I don’t know, what is it? Bennet: An Italian soldier... We’ll sing the Italian generals’ theme song. Moroney: What’s that? Bennet: If I only had wings Song: These Hard Times Bennet: And tho’ Musso brought the Wop in, from the Aussies he is copping, some real hard times.158

Most famously, the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, made a provocative radio broadcast on 10 June 1940 utilising the Caporetto myth of Italian cowardice: Germany is no more likely to win the war with the assistance of Italy than she was without it. On the contrary, it is more than likely that Italy will prove a liability rather than an asset: as indeed she proved to her Allies in the last war when, after the disgraceful flight of the Italian Army at Caporetto, the British and French had to dispatch troops at great inconvenience to themselves in order to restore the position in Italy and put back some courage in the hearts of the Italians.159

In Canada, Angelo Principe notes, intelligence reports of fears of Italians as saboteurs and bomb throwers exposed Anglo-Saxon prejudices towards Italians as fighters: ‘Italians were not able to face their enemies in a manly fashion and therefore resorted to throwing bombs and running.’160 These representations built upon a traditional ‘myth of Italian military haplessness’ which, Fussell argues, served a useful ~44~

Representations and realities psychological function in the war by ‘helping secretly to define what Allied soldiers wanted the “enemy” universally to be - pacifists, dandies, sensitive and civilized non-ideologues, even clowns’.161 This trend was typified by a Times report of 13 August 1940 which reported that, when an Italian bomber was shot down in the sea, one crew member put on a bathing cap before swimming ashore.162 By December 1940, Mass Observation had canvassed a contradictory response towards the Italians: ‘They are considered a likeable, peace-loving people, whose heart is not in the war against this country... But many interpret this peace-loving as Cowardice, Laziness, and general lack of guts.’163 Norman Longmate refers to the popular wartime dance step The Tuscana, ‘supposedly based on the Italians’ way of fighting, i.e. one step forward, two steps back.’164 Films produced during the war played to this preconception of the Italians as inept fighters. Noel Coward’s 1942 epic In Which We Serve opens with two British sailors watching their enemy counterparts jumping from a torpedoed ship. One comments to the other: Chief Petty Officer Hardy:

Sailor: Hardy:

I’ll lay you 10-1 they’re our Germans. Never get the Macaronis to tackle a dangerous job like that. Not for love nor money. Go on, the Eyeties’ll do anything for money. Anything but fight. That’s why they were so lousy in the last war.

In the same year, Went the Day Well? directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, presents the Lady of the Manor asking a young boy in her care: Mrs Fraser: Do you know what morale is? George Truscott: Yes. Something what the Wops ain’t got.

Mass Observation noted how Duff Cooper’s Caporetto speech, in particular his view that the Italians were a ‘liability’, encouraged a general tendency to diminish Italians, to represent them as a ‘swarm of flees, irritating and a nuisance, but a joke as well’.165 Yellow Caesar, ‘an abusive comedy short’ produced by Cavalcanti in 1940, used edited images of Mussolini to reinforce this view of the Italian dictator as an object of ridicule.166 Indeed, Kushner provides a useful summary of interwar attitudes: ‘the image of the Italian was complex: fascism was of course unBritish and episodes such as the Ethiopian campaign showed what cads foreigners could be, but Mussolini and Italians were a bit of a joke ‒ babies at heart.’167 Whilst Kushner notes that attitudes towards Italians did harden following the declaration of war,168 the ~45~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' characterisation of Italians as buffoons or figures of fun persisted through the war, most obviously in the comical figure of Signor So So in the popular BBC radio show ITMA. So So, a sidekick to Tommy Handley’s Mayor of Foaming-at-the-Mouth, played by the Italian actor Dino Galvani, was originally devised as an Italian version of Funf, the Nazi spy, but with the popularity of his catchphrases such as ‘Notting at all, notting at all’, he remained a core character from his first appearance in September 1941 until the end of the war.169 Ultimately, as Rose notes in relation to wartime anti-Semitism, stereotypes of cowardly and ‘unmanly’ behaviour, which were employed about Jews and Italians, were ‘feminising conceptions’ utilised to reinforce the inherent alienness of immigrant groups and to reaffirm ‘the idea of the British as a manly nation, facing the enemy bravely and with a “stiff upper lip” 170

Conclusion In the play Gentle Like a Dove, Edinburgh-born Domenico declares, ‘I ken fine I was born here in this very stair, and a’ my life I’ve been here and a’ the rest of it. But I’m never really accepted.’171 The sense of difference articulated in Mackie’s script was a key feature of the personal testimonies quoted above and is crucial to a deeper understanding of the impact of the war on second-generation Italians in Scotland. The hostility faced by Italian Scots during the war built upon a sense of not ‘belonging’ which had already been well forged in childhood. Essentially, as Mass Observation records, the scorn poured on the Italians by various opinion makers ‘put a stamp of official approval’ upon already existing contempt.172 The wartime rhetoric of being ‘in it together’ appears to have held little resonance for Italian Scots living in Edinburgh, many of whom, as we will see in the following chapters, experienced the antiItalian riots at first hand and witnessed their parents being removed or evicted from their homes as a result of the government’s policies. Indeed, personal narratives indicate significant levels of dissociation and detachment from wartime constructions of nationhood, even amongst veterans. Inevitably, those interviewed were viewing their childhood through the prism of ferocious wartime antagonism and there is the possibility that narrators conferred incidences of racism retrospectively into accounts of their childhood in light of what happened during the war. However, whilst the war undoubtedly influences recall, even those respondents who could be categorised as having more positive wartime memories (for example, those who remembered the war as a time of ~46~

Representations and realities courtship) included childhood incidences of hostility in their narratives. It is, however, worth acknowledging that the interviews took place at a time of general understanding of the historic mistreatment of immigrant groups in Britain where the discourse of racial discrimination provides a recognised framework through which interviewees can articulate their own experiences. This-increased awareness of racism possibly gave respondents the confidence to relate incidences of verbal and physical abuse in their childhood which in an earlier era they may have suppressed. Fundamentally, evidence from life story narratives suggests that rather than being the first expression of hostility towards the Italian population, the war saw a dramatic heightening of already existing prejudice. It was ‘before, during and after’, as one narrator stated wearily.173

Notes 1

2

3 4

C. Holmes, John Bull’s Island. Immigration and British Society 1871-1971 (London: Macmillan, 1988); C. Holmes, A Tolerant Country? (London: Faber 8c Faber, 1991); T. Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Anti- Semitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); P. Panayi (ed.), Racial Violence in Britain 1840-1950 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993). Fortier points out that many of the leading British Italian texts emerged at a time of wider discourse on the general desirability of different immigrant groups in Britain. Migrant Belongings, pp. 38-9. T. Colpi, ‘Italian migration to Scotland: settlement, employment and the key role of the padrone’, Paper given at the Race, Curriculum and Employment Conference, University of Glasgow, 8 March 1986, p. 1; U. Marin, Italiani in Gran Bretagna (Roma: Centro Studi Emigrazione, 1975), p. 104 (translation by Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 39). S. Pia, ‘The Italian factor. A journalist between Scotland and Italy’, Italia & Italy. The Magazine of the Italian Cultural Institute, 11-12 (2001), 24. F. Hurley, ‘The incomers. They gave us the ice cream vendors’, Edinburgh Evening News (3 February 1973), pp. 87-8. For populist accounts of the Italian presence in Britain see T. Cooke, Little Italy: A History of Liverpool’s Italian Community (Liverpool: Bluecoat Press, 2002); D. Hopwood and M. Dilloway, Bella Brum. A History of Birmingham’s Italian Community (Birmingham: Birmingham City Council, 1996); A. Rea, Manchester’s Little Italy. Memories of the Italian Colony of Ancoats (Manchester: Neil Richardson, 1988); G. Rinaldi, From the Serchio to the Solway (Dumfries: Dumfries and Galloway Council, 1998).

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 5

6

7 8 9

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

28 29

J. Farrell, ‘The Italians who came, saw and conquered’, The Scotsman (10 December 1983); P. Nicol, ‘The Italian mob’, Sunday Times Ecosse (16 January 2000); S. Casci, ‘Now it tallies - I’m Scottish and Italian’, Sunday Times Ecosse (7 November 2004), p. 4. D. Marianacci, ‘Foreword’, in M. Rose and E. Rossini (eds), Italian Scottish Identities and Connections. Notebooks of the Italian Cultural Institute 15 (Edinburgh: Italian Cultural Institute, 2000), p. 5. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 101. See Saeed, Blain and Forbes, ‘New ethnic’, p. 825. D. R. Gabaccia, ‘Italian diaspora’, in M. Ember, C. R. Ember and I. Skoggard (eds), Encyclopaedia of Diasporas. Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Vol. 1: Overviews and Topics (New York: Springer, 2005), p. 144. R. Palmer, ‘The Italians: patterns of migration to London’, in J. L. Watson (ed.), Between Two Cultures. Migrants and Minorities in Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 244-5. Colpi, Italian Factor, pp. 28-31. Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 129. Palmer, ‘The Italians’, p. 254; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 32. Palmer, ‘The Italians’, p. 254; Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 132; ‘General Garibaldi’, Scotsman (14 April 1864), p. 3. Palmer, ‘The Italians’, p. 253; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 28. Gabaccia, ‘Italian diaspora’, p. 145. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 146. G. Cresciani, The Italians in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 66. D. C. Vecchio, Merchants, Wives and Laboring Women. Italian Migrants in Urban America (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006), p. 27. Gabaccia, ‘Italian diaspora’, p. 144. L. Sponza, ‘Italians in Great Britain’, in Ember, Ember and Skoggard (eds), Encyclopaedia of Diasporas, Vol. 2, p. 880. J. Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging. Immigration and the Politics of Demographic Governance in Postwar Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 16-17. Cesarani and Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, p. 7. Webster, ‘Defining boundaries’, p. 259. E. W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 5th edn, 2003), p. 202. F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), p. 16; R. Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (London: Sage, 1997), p. 169. Garner, Whiteness, pp. 64-5. Ibid., pp. 64-5. See R. Knox, Races of Men (London: Savill and Edwards Printers, 1850), pp. 3-4.

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Representations and realities 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49

50

G. Schaffer, Racial Science and British Society 1930-62 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 14. Ibid., p. 7. B. Allen and M. Russo, Revisioning Italy. National Identity and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 6. Garner, Whiteness, p. 66. C. Harzig and D. Hoerder .with D. Gabaccia, What Is Migration History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), p. 37. Garner, Whiteness, p. 71. L. V. Baldassar, ‘Italians in Australia’, in Ember, Ember and Skoggard (eds), Encyclopaedia of Diasporas, Vol. 2, p. 850. S. Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience (London: Pluto Press, 2003), p. 114. A. McClintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 52-3. Ibid., p. 153-4. Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 31. Cited in Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 235. See B. Gainer, The Alien Invasion: The Origins of the Aliens Act of 1905 (London: Heinemann, 1972), p. 62. ‘The organ-grinder’s echo’, Punch (16 January 1864), p. 27. Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 119. Ibid., p. 140. Ibid., pp. 132; 140; 223. SA2002.065, Interview with Diana Corrieri, 21 August 2001. Cesarani, ‘Changing character of citizenship’, p. 62. See also T. M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000 (California: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 67-8. Cesarani, ‘Changing character of citizenship’, p. 62; Holmes, John Bull’s Island, pp. 72; 95; 113. S. Audrey, Multiculturalism in Practice. Irish, Jewish, Italian and Pakistani Migration to Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); B. Braber, Jews in Glasgow 1879-1939: Immigration and Integration (Edgeware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007); T. M. Devine, Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society 17901990 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1991); T. M. Devine (ed.), Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2000); T. Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided. John Cormack and No Popery in the 1930s (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1987); J. Millar, The Lithuanians in Scotland (Argyll: House of Lochar, 1998); M. Rodgers, ‘The Lanarkshire Lithuanians’, in B. Kay (ed.), The Complete Odyssey. Voices from Scotland’s Recent Past (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996), pp. 19-25; M. Rodgers, ‘Glasgow Jewry’, in Kay (ed.), The Complete Odyssey, pp. 227-35. Rodgers, ‘Lanarkshire Lithuanians’, p. 20; M. J. Mitchell, ‘Irish Catholics in the west of Scotland in the nineteenth century: despised by Scottish workers and controlled by the Church?’, in M. J. Mitchell (ed.), New Perspectives on

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

51

52

53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

the Irish in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008), p. 3. Mitchell points out that this relates most accurately to the 1820s-1850s period. M. J. Mitchell, The Irish in the West of Scotland 1797-1848. Trade Unions, Strikes and Political Movements (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998), p. 1; Garner, Racism, p. 118. P. Reilly, ‘You are the people, who are we? - some reflections on the Irish Catholic contribution to Scottish society’, in R. Boyle and P. Lynch (eds), Out of the Ghetto? The Catholic Community in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998), p. 143. Rodgers, ‘Lanarkshire Lithuanians’, p. 22; Millar, Lithuanians, pp. 4; 81. The Italians did not establish their own ethnic church and early attempts to set up ethnic press faltered. See E. A. Millar, ‘La Scozia, 1908’, in E. A. Millar (ed.), Renaissance and Other Studies (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1988). Braber, Jews in Glasgow, p. 4. Ibid., p. 27. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 48. A. Wilkin, ‘Origins and destinations of the early Italo-Scots’, Association of Teachers of Italian Journal, 29 (1979), 54. Colpi, ‘The Italian migration to Scotland: fact, fiction and the future’, p. 31. Gabaccia, ‘Italian diaspora’, p. 146. Colpi, ‘An old migration,’ p. 5. Wilkin, ‘Origins and destinations’, p. 53. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 79. P. Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 122. For more work on Italian national identity see J. Dickie, ‘Imagined Italies’, in D. Forgacs and R. Lumley (eds), Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Allen and Russo Revisioning Italy, G. Bedani and B. Haddock (eds), The Politics of Italian National Identity. A Multidisciplinary Perspective (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000); S. Patriarca, ‘National identity or national character? New vocabularies and old paradigms’, in R. Ascoli and K. von Henneberg (eds), Making and Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (Oxford: Berg, 2001). Gabaccia, ‘Italian diaspora’, pp. 144-5. Allen and Russo (eds), Revisioning Italy, p. 5. J. Cunnison and J. B. S. Gilfillan, The Third Statistical Account of Scotland. Glasgow (Glasgow: Collins, 1958), p. 69; Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 110. L. Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots, June 1940’, in P. Panayi (ed.), Racial Violence in Britain, p. 140. Garner, Racism, p. 119. Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 57; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 60. Gainer, Alien Invasion, pp. 158-9; 193-4.

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Representations and realities 71 D. Keir, The Third Statistical Account of Scotland. The City of Edinburgh (Glasgow: Collins, 1966), p. 123. 72 R. F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of our Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919), p. 204. 73 Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 109. 74 Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 140. 75 J. K. Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class 1870-1940 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), p. 38. 76 Ibid., p. 38. 77 Sponza, Italian Immigrants, pp. 113-15; M. Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozia’, p. 129. 78 Walton, Fish and Chips, p. 85. 79 Cited in Sponza, Italian Immigrants, p. 289. 80 National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS). O. Porchetta, The Transplanted Sunflower, unpublished manuscript (1934), pp. 47-8; 70-2. 81 E. D’Agostino [Anon.], Wandering Minstrel. The Life Story of Cagliardo Coraggioso Written by Himself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 250. 82 SA1998.34, Interview with Renzo Serafini, 7 August 1998. 83 Millar, Lithuanians, p. 83. 84 C. Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1939 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), p. 137. 85 Colpi, ‘The Italian migration to Scotland: fact, fiction and the future’, p. 36. 86 Keir, Third Statistical Account, p. 120; ‘1401 Aliens in Edinburgh’, Edinburgh Evening News (19 April 1940), p. 3. 87 Keir, Third Statistical Account, p. 124. 88 Edinburgh Post Office Directory (1935-36), pp. 1173; 1155. 89 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 192. 90 Ibid., p. 111. 91 L. Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness: an argument’, Journal of British Studies, 31:4 (1992), 317. 92 Ibid., p. 320. 93 Ibid., p. 318. 94 Devine (ed.), Scotland’s Shame; S. Bruce, T. Glendinning, I. Paterson and M. Rosie, Sectarianism in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). 95 NLS. Porchetta, Transplanted Sunflower, p. 46. 96 Ibid., p. 47. 97 Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided, p. 1. 98 Ibid. 99 T. Gallagher, Glasgow, the Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland, 1819-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 160. 100 Bruce, Glendinning, Paterson and Rosie, Sectarianism, p. 53.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 101 Gallagher, Edinburgh Divided, p. 151. For more on the identification of Italians as Fascists, see chapter two. 102 Ibid., p. 152. 103 SA1999.31, Interview with Fiorinta Gallo, 4 May 1999. 104 Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 2006-07, National Life Stories, British Library Sound Archive, reference C466/242/02. 105 A. Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London 1870-1914 (London: Rivers Oram, 1996), p. 200. 106 Ibid., p. 207. 107 SOE 65, Carmen Demarco. 108 J. Farrell, ‘Comitati Culturale in Glasgow and Edinburgh - the experience of 20 years’, in Dutto (ed.), Italians in Scotland, p. 48. 109 Rodgers, ‘Lanarkshire Lithuanians’, p. 22. 110 NLS, Porchetta, Transplanted Sunflower, p. 71. 111 SA1997.101, Interview with Lawrence Boni, 21 June 1997. 112 SA1999.27, Interview with Elizabeth Di Ponio, 6 April 1999. 113 Davin, Growing Up Poor, p. 207. 114 SA 1999.29, Interview with Alex Margiotta, 3 May 1999. 115 SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. 116 SA1997.105, Interview with Dora Harris, 21 October 1997. 117 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 118 SA1999.27, Elizabeth Di Ponio. 119 SA1997.109, Interview with Romeo Ugolini, 25 November 1997. 120 SA1999.29 Alex Margiotta. 121 SA1999.25, Interview with ‘Antonietta Pad’ (pseud.), 9 April 1999. 122 SA2002.058, Interview with ‘Anna Fergusson’ (pseud.), 1 October 2000. 123 SA1999.24, Interview with ‘Rosalina Masterson’ (pseud.), 19 February 1999. 124 SA2002.064, Interview with Dina Togneri, 7 July 2001. 125 SA 1998.35, Renzo Serafini. See also Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, p. 5. 126 SA2002.057, Interview with Irene Politi, 28 March 2000. 127 R. Graves and A. Hodge, The Long Weekend. The Living Story of the Twenties and Thirties (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 322. 128 Pieri, Isle of the Displaced, p. 8. 129 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 130 Imperial War Museum Sound Archive (hereafter IWM), 15738, Carmin Sidonio, 21 August 1995. 131 SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. 132 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 21. 133 Mackie, Gentle Like a Dove, p. 12. 134 G. Maxwell, The Sugar Mile (Basingstoke: Picador, 2005), p. 17. For more on the construction of Italians and Jews as ‘traitors’, see chapter three. 135 Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 2006-07, National Life Stories, British Library Sound Archive, reference C466/242/04. 136 L. Distasi, Una Storia Segreta website. Preface http://www.io.com/~segreta/ about/preface.html, accessed 10 February 2000, pp. 1-3.

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Representations and realities 137 G. Cresciani, ‘The bogey of the Italian fifth column: internment and the making of Italo-Australia’, in R. Bosworth and R. Ugolini (eds), War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo-Australian Experience 1940-1990 (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, 1992), p. 12. 138 Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, p. 32. 139 SA2002.057, Irene Politi. 140 SA1998.45, Interview with Geraldo Cozzi, 21 August 1998; SA1999.24, Rosalina Masterson. 141 SA2002.065, Diana Corrieri. 142 SA2002.065, Interview with Frank Corrieri, 21 August 2001. 143 Mass Observation (hereafter MO), File Report 194, Attitudes to Italy (12 June 1940), p. 2. 144 Mackie, Gentle Like a Dove, p. 22. 145 Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 139. 146 Hansard, vol. 363, col. 1224, 31 July 1940, Mr Davidson. 147 P. Willan, ‘Benito and the Beano’, Guardian G2 Supplement (28 November 2002). 148 MO, File Report 353, Gracie Fields (August 1940). 149 Thirteen Italian Fiat planes were shot down on 11 November 1940 as part of this ‘Brief Italian “Invasion”’. See J. Hammerton, The Second Great War, Vol. 4 (London: Waverley Press, 1941), p. 1343. 150 Hansard, vol. 365, col. 1264, 5 November 1940. 151 Cited in A. Calder, The People’s War. Britain 1939-1945 (London: Pimlico, 6th edn, 1996), p. 489. 152 Hansard, vol. 380, col. 283, 20 May 1942. 153 C. S. Jarvis, The Male Body at War. American Masculinity during World War II (Dekalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2004), p. 128. 154 MO, File Report 194, Attitudes to Italy (12 June 1940), p. 4. 155 ‘Prisoners reach Athens’, Scotsman (14 November 1940), p. 5. 156 Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 141. 157 C. Davies, ‘Humour is not a strategy in war’, Journal of European Studies, 19 (2001), 398. B. Moore and K. Fedorowich point to the unfairness of the enduring image of the Italian soldier as militarily inept, stating that he was ‘no better or worse than his British counterpart, but suffered from obsolescent equipment, poor training, poor victualling and clothing, but above all, from poor leadership’. The British Empire and its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940-1947 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 7. 158 Davies, ‘Humour is not a strategy’, p. 399. 159 ‘Italy declares war on Britain. Caporetto recalled’, Scotsman (11 June 1940), p. 5. 160 Principe, ‘A tangled knot’, p. 42. 161 P. Fussell, Wartime. Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 125. 162 Cited in P. R. Graves, Quarterly Report of the War (London: Hutchinson, 1941), p. 161.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 163 MO. File Report 523B, Attitudes to other nationalities (December 1940), pp. 10-11. 164 N. Longmate, How We Lived Then. A History of Everyday Life during the Second World War (London: Pimlico, 2nd edn, 2002), p. 422. 165 MO, File Report 194, p. 4. 166 ‘Movies in Britain’, Time, 14 April 1941, www.time.com/time/printout/ 0,8816,932263,OO.html, accessed 12 March 2008; R. M. Barsam, NonFiction Film. A Critical History (Bioominaton: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 207. 167 T. Kushner, ‘Clubland, cricket tests and alien internment, 1939-40’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 88. 168 Ibid., p. 99. 169 The ITMA Years (Bristol: The Woburn Press, 1974). 170 Rose, Which People’s War?, p. 98. 171 Mackie, Gentle Like a Dove, p. 12. 172 MO, File Report 194, p. 5. 173 SA1998.27, Interview with Rachele Spinosi (pseud.), 26 January 1998.

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Chapter Two ‘Long live Mussolini and Fascismo’: inter-war fascistisation

In the insightful publication, Enemies Within, exploring wartime internment in Canada, Australia and Britain, historians identify a critical failure within the Italian community, in particular its leadership, to address fully their Fascist past.1 They argue that recent attempts by community leaders in Canada to gain an apology for internment has led to the ‘glossing over’ of the Fascist history of Italian diasporic communities.2 Principe, specifically, argues that the behaviour of the Italian Fascists in the prewar period was highly significant in that the ‘years of Italian-Canadian Fascist propaganda and reckless activities inspired by it’ contributed to the way Italians were perceived in 1940 and was a contributory factor in their subsequent internment.3 An analysis of Italian Scottish wartime experience would be incomplete without addressing the inter-war popularity of Italian Fascism amongst the community elite and its impact on how the war is now represented within communal discourse. British Italian historiography has traditionally asserted that the Fascist clubs set up in the inter-war period were simply social forums which attracted members who were patriotic and nostalgic for their fatherland. Whilst this depiction holds resonance for narrators who attended these clubs as children, by foregrounding the social aspects of the Fasci, these communal representations critically underplay the clubs’ propaganda and controlling function and, in particular, their political nucleus in Italy. Claudia Baldoli’s monograph, examining the role of the Fascist organisation abroad, Fasci all’estero, in Britain, provides an important riposte to the prevailing orthodoxy by firmly placing the Fasci's project within the wider context of Mussolini’s wider totalitarian experiment of the 1930s and focusing on Italy’s attempts to transform its emigrants in Britain into ‘enthusiastic Fascists’.4 As part of this enterprise, ~55~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Italians living abroad had to become conscious of the fatherland and to work for the ‘Fascistisation’ of their communities and to be ready to act if the fatherland needed them.5 In particular, the second-generation sons of Italian emigrants ‘had to take action, in order to become the pioneers of Fascism and of Italian expansion in other countries’.6 Thus, Fascist education in the early 1930s involved the organisation of Italian schools and summer camps for the children of Italian immigrants where the ‘new Italy’ endeavoured to transform them into pioneers of the Fascist revolution outside Italy.7 The work of Federico Finchelstein reiterates how Fascism always considered itself a transnational political movement, albeit with theoretical, national and contextual variations.8 Richard Wright concurs that an attempt to ‘fascistize’ the Italian communities abroad was incorporated into Italian foreign policy and that Mussolini intended to prepare the Italians abroad to support Italy in future struggles.9 Using the Edinburgh Fascio as a case study, this chapter explores the ‘fascistisation’ of Italian communities in inter-war Britain and, drawing on comparative work from North America and Australia, shows how children who attended the Fasci in Scotland, and elsewhere, would be exposed to Fascist propaganda through a sophisticated network of language schools, films and youth organisations. Through the provision of these activities and subsidised trips to Italy, the Italian Fascist Party effectively managed to draw large numbers of ‘ordinary’ Italians in Scodand into Fascism’s web, with devastating consequences.10

‘Italiani, brava gente’ In Italy, in the immediate post-war period, political imperatives encouraged a desire to forget the Fascist dictatorship and to promote what Patrick Finney terms ‘a series of dissociating and exculpatory myths’ which presented Italians as the unwilling victims of Fascism and played on the enduring stereotype of Italians as brava gente, fundamentally good-hearted folk.11 Filippo Focardi argues that from the moment of the Armistice of 8 September 1943, anti-Fascist forces in Italy were delineating a storyline which would ultimately help them avoid signing a punitive peace treaty with the Allies in 1947: a ‘largely selfabsolving collective memory’ was successfully elaborated which laid the responsibility for wartime aggression on Nazi Germany and consequently minimised Italian guilt.12 As part of this process, the Resistance was identified as an expression of ‘the anti-Fascism of all Italians’ and became enshrined as the sign of a harmonious national ~56~

Inter-war fascistisation identity.13 However, by the late 1960s, fractures had begun to appear in national commemoration with the emergence of a ‘divided memory’ founded upon ‘private-local’ resentment against the partisans, who were increasingly held responsible for wartime Nazi reprisals on civilian populations.14 Recent scholarship has also attempted to qualify the powerful concept of ‘italiani, brava gente’ and raise questions of responsibility, culpability and complicity in relation to Italy” s Fascist past.15 A central tenet of the brava gente myth is the distinction between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, which functions in debates surrounding the nature of Fascist anti-Semitism. Here, the myth attributes to Italians ‘an innate humanism that supposedly prevented them from actively participating in the Final Solution’, made more credible by the fact that eighty-three per cent of Jews under Italian jurisdiction survived the Holocaust.16 This enables memories of Italy’s anti-Semitic measures of November 1938, which affected 58,412 Jews and led to the progressive disenfranchisement and persecution of foreign and Italian Jews, to be largely overlooked.17 A ‘very active process of forgetting’18 has also been invested in Fascist Italy’s aggressive foreign policy: the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36; its brutal aerial tactics during the Spanish Civil War; the aggressive war fought by the Italian army in the Balkans between 1940 and 1943; the crimes committed under the aegis of colonial expansionism and its use of repressive concentration camps in both Africa and the Balkans.19 Cultural representations also tend to minimise the aggressive character of the conflict by dwelling on the humanitarian behaviour of the ‘good Italian soldiers’.20 Giovacchini argues that filmmakers of Italian neorealist cinema, in their attempts to make the Resistance become the founding narrative of the Second Republic, were pivotal in perpetuating ‘the rather uncritical inscription of the Italian soldier during World War Two as either a hero or a victim’ but never an aggressor or perpetrator.21 This dominant construction of Italian soldiers as either ‘reluctant warriors’ or ‘womanisers’ is embodied in three Italian war novels: Renzo Biasion’s The Army of Love (1953), Mario Rigoni Stern’s Sergeant in the Snow (1953) and Mario Tobino’s The Deserts of Libya (1955) which present empathetic portrayals of Italian troops in Greece, Russia and North Africa respectively. Biasion’s work focuses heavily on sexual relations with local women whilst Tobino’s novella concludes with this view of Italian soldiers: ‘trampled and oppressed for twenty years by a brutal tyranny, these men could still remain gentle and kind’.22 These motifs continue to be employed in films such as Italiani, brava gente (1965), Mediterraneo (1991) and Le Rose del Deserto (2006), which was based on Tobino’s novel. Yet whilst the ~57~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' award-winning Mediterraneo draws upon the familiar image of peaceloving, football-playing soldiers looking for love on a Greek island, the reality was far starker. In 1945, for example, the Hellenic National Office for War Criminals documented numerous instances of violence against civilians, including the burning of villages, the shooting of hostages and the rape of local women by Italian regular troops.23 Overall, therefore, an ‘exculpatory paradigm’24 could be said to exist which functions to erase histories of Fascist complicity or consensus. In her seminal text, Fascism in Popular Memory, Luisa Passerini refers to her interviews with people who lived under the Fascist regime in Italy and underlines how the identification of Fascism with evil and a source of national shame encourages ‘the consequent desire to keep quiet about it, even among those not actually responsible’.25 Iacovetta and Ventresca agree that, amongst the Italian diaspora, silences regarding their Fascist history denote ‘collective embarrassment’ over events associated, however tenuously, with some of the worst crimes known to humanity: ‘the equation so deeply embedded in post-war popular memory that Fascism equals Nazism equals Auschwitz’.26 Of the forty-four respondents in my research sample, nineteen said that parents or siblings attended Fascio clubs (four referred to Glasgow; fifteen to Edinburgh) and nine stated that they had attended themselves. Of these, all but three were children at the time and within narratives there is an ambiguity surrounding reasons for familial or parental membership. As with the former members of the Ku Klux Klan interviewed by Kathleen Blee, there was perhaps ‘a selfconsciousness’ about Fasci membership that did not exist at the time.27 This sensitivity about discussing the Fasci was also identified by Wright in his study of Italian communities in Manchester, London and Glasgow and Carol Volante’s research on Italians in Birmingham.28 It reflects perhaps a desire amongst interviewees to distance themselves from what Ballinger terms the ‘(possible) taint of fascism’.29

‘I swear to carry out the orders of my Duce’ - inter-war fascistisation Finchelstein notes how, from the very beginning, Italian Fascism proclaimed itself to be a global ideology.30 The 1920s witnessed the emergence of the Fasci all’ estero, which initially ‘sought to regiment Italian emigrants and, ultimately, hoped to disseminate Fascist ideology beyond Italy’s borders’.31 Gabaccia agrees that Mussolini wanted Italians living abroad ‘to feel part of the Italian “stirpe” (tribe or race)’ and, as part of this mission, ‘sought to transform the other Italies into ~58~

Inter-war fascistisation demographic colonies within his fascist empire’.32 The earliest Fasci predated Mussolini’s March on Rome, being established in London and New York in 1921 and their development was achieved essentially from below, with war veterans, intellectuals and journalists organising the first branches.33 In 1925, Camillo-Pellizf, delegate to the Fasci of Great Britain and Ireland, stressed that the activity of the Fasci was mainly directed towards the ‘fascistisation’ of the Italians abroad - to assimilate Italian and Fascist identity.34 In 1927, Mussolini brought the Fasci firmly under the control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the creation of the Direzione Generate degli Italiani all’Estero (DGIE; General Bureau of Italians Abroad) with Piero Parini as its head. This reorganisation was designed to neutralise the political aspirations of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), which viewed the Fasci as the potential springboard for a fascist ‘international’ movement.35 As De Caprariis notes, with respect to European and American nations, Mussolini was well aware that Italian communities could not be used to disrupt the political system of their host countries.36 From this point on, there was a new emphasis on the need ‘to forswear politics for good, in favour of welfare activities, to be performed under the supervision of state officials’.37 As a result of this initiative, each Fascio was directly subordinated to the centre, with membership cards distributed and local secretaries appointed directly by the General Secretary in Rome. Following centralisation, the political role of the Italian consuls also assumed major importance within the Italian communities abroad.38 Throughout 1928 and 1929 Mussolini appointed 120 Fascist consuls, heralding the era of ‘consular Fascism’ in English-speaking countries with a sizeable Italian immigrant presence.39 In January 1928, Mussolini issued the Statuto dei Fasci All’Estero (Constitution of Fascists Abroad), which explained the dominance of the diplomats within Italian communities and outlined the relationship between consular officials and the Italians in their jurisdictions.40 Under Article I, members had to ‘respect the official representatives of Italy abroad, obey their direction and follow their instructions’. Each Fascio Secretary had to keep in touch with the official representative of the Fascist state, cooperate with him in all measures and make an annual report to the General Secretary in Rome.41 In sum, the overall effect was the transformation of the party’s organisation abroad into a generic ‘patriotic’ association which encouraged an influx of new members.42 Fundamentally, however, as Wright’s study of Italian Fascism in Britain shows, it aimed ‘to secure the allegiance of the community to the Fascist movement in Italy’.43 On joining the Fasci, members had to assert their loyalty to Mussolini by ~59~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' swearing an oath of allegiance: ‘In the name of God and of Italy, I swear to carry out the orders of my Duce and to serve with all my strength, and if necessary with my blood, the cause of the Fascist revolution.’44 By the end of the 1930s, there were 487 local Fasci worldwide, including in the United States, Australia and Brazil.45 In 1938, there were 24 Fasci in the United Kingdom with the first Fascio in Scotland established in Glasgow in 1922.46 Fasci were also set up in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Greenock with sections in Ayr and Buckhaven.47 Typically, those involved in the Fasci in Britain would be ‘successful small entrepreneurs’ who represented ‘the tip of the immigrant community’ alongside restaurant owners, hotel managers and shopkeepers.48 De Caprariis believes that ‘the social composition of the organisation was not different from the largely petty and middle bourgeoisie membership of the PNF inside Italy’.49 The committee of the Edinburgh Fascio, established in 1923, initially comprised Luigi Perella as Secretary, Alfonso Crolla as administrator and Giovanni Cimorelli and Federico D’Agostino as advisors. Perella was succeeded in 1926 by Crolla, a shopkeeper, who was joined on the executive by Pietro Cavaroli, Vice Commander of GILE (the Fascist Party youth organisation overseas), Administrative Secretary Giuseppe di Rollo, Propaganda Secretary Serafino Capaldi and Achille Crolla, who was responsible for Sport.50 As Colpi notes, it was ‘the leaders and important people of the Community’ and the ‘well-known family names’ who played a central role in setting up the relevant committees, organising events and actively encouraging other Italians to join.51 From 1929 onwards, the Edinburgh Italian Fascisti appeared in the local post office directory at 20 Picardy Place.52 As dictated by Article III of the 1928 Statute, the Edinburgh Fascio established a youth section, a women’s section and the dopolavoro which ran sporting activities.53 In 1937, the membership of the Edinburgh Fascio was reported at 180 with 143 children in the youth organisations.54 Meetings or classes would begin with a prayer, the Roman salute and a rendition of the Fascist song, ‘Giovinezza’.55 Analysing the limited documentation available, it is striking how the same few names recur, reflecting the relatively narrow band of Edinburgh families involved in prominent positions. For example, Yolanda Coppola, head of the Fascio's Ladies Committee, was the daughter of Paolo Coppola, who sat on the executive of the Fascio’s Italian Association for Light Refreshments.56 Joseph Pia, who was in charge of the dopolavoro, was Crolla’s nephew.57 There is relatively little documentation available concerning the Edinburgh Fascio which makes it impossible to ascertain whether ~60~

Inter-war fascistisation therewas an ideological dimension to its activities.58 In a semifictionalised account, Mary Contini, the wife of Crolla’s grandson, identifies the visit of an Italian functionary, Signor Carlo Lupo, in January 1923, beseeching local Italians to join the Fascist mission as the moment Crolla ‘found his vocation’.-59 She depicts Crolla as a man ‘enthralled by the idea of a strong leader in Italy’ who could control the workers and avert civil war.60 The memoir of another Italian immigrant, Eugenio D’Agostino, who ran the Royal Cafe in Edinburgh, also subscribes to this belief in Mussolini as a political leader: ‘He has lifted Italy out of the gutter and raised it to a first-class nation. Italy and the whole of the Italians should thank God for having sent a man like him “Long live Mussolini and Fascismo”.’61 In the early phase of Fasci development in the 1920s, there was significant popular approval of Mussolini and Fascism with II Duce lauded by British conservative writers and public figures, including Churchill. When Mussolini was honoured by King George V in 1923 this appeared to set the seal on Fascist Italy’s respectability for many observers, as did the regime’s signing of the 1929 Concordat with the Vatican.62 The Italian Vice Consul for Edinburgh and the East of Scotland was a Scottish lawyer, Nicol Bruce, appointed in 1927 ‘in recognition of his services in Italy while serving with the British Army during the war’.63 Bruce, a keen Italophile, was Secretary of the Scoto-Italian Society and he and Crolla regularly presided over cultural events held throughout the city.64 In 1927, the Scotsman reported that ‘the Fascio met at their new headquarters, where the president, Signor Alfonso Crolla, delivered an address on the fifth anniversary of the march on Rome and noted the many remarkable changes for good effected all over Italy by the Fascist regime.’65 Throughout the 1920s, Fascist representatives in Britain were careful to employ language and rhetoric which accentuated close ties between the two countries. In public ceremonial, Italian Fascists in Edinburgh aligned themselves with their host country, drawing on a historical tradition of association, from the honouring of Garibaldi in the nineteenth century through to the First World War when Italy had fought from 1915 alongside the Allied nations.66 At the memorial service for the Italian war hero General Diaz, held at St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, parallels were drawn with the loss of General Haig a few weeks earlier when the streets had been lined with a guard of honour.67 Similarly, at a civic banquet in 1931, Bruce equated the British Prime Minister, Ramsey MacDonald, with Mussolini, characterising both as sons of labourers and journalists who had transformed from firebrand Socialists into patriotic Nationalists.68 ~61~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Who joined the Fasci all’ Estero? In Italy, as Perry Willson shows, there was a clear distinction between ‘Fascists of the first hour’ and the later mass membership of the PNF. Whilst in the 1920s, PNF membership had been limited largely to active supporters of the regime, from December 1931, Party Secretary Achille Starace launched a new policy of ‘going to the people’, leading to a huge recruitment drive. Thus, although Fascism had initially attracted many with true political commitment, ‘after Starace’s reforms, the Party ranks increasingly encompassed many who lacked such deep-rooted loyalties’.69 In her study of peasant women in the Fascist organisation Massaie Rurali, Willson confirms that membership ‘often meant something less than a wholehearted embracing of the Fascist cause’. Indeed, material incentives and the opportunities for leisure and sociability meant that ‘many joined primarily out of opportunism or for reasons only vaguely connected with a grasp of the politics of the organisation’.70 The role and function of Fascist clubs amongst the Italian diaspora remain open to contestation, with one leading authority, Richard Bosworth, conceding that: ‘Historians remain divided about the meaning of these attempts to Fascistize emigrants.’71 Referring to Italians in Australia, Cresciani believes that many accepted Fascism because in the new Italian government ‘they seemed to detect a new determination to defend their economic interests and political rights’. In his opinion, Italians abroad in general ‘fell for the Fascist rhetoric, the ceremonies, speeches and trappings of the regime, and its aggressive and bombastic style’.72 Wright, however, in his study of Italian Fascism in Britain, makes the important point that the professional and more prosperous Italians who made up the membership of the Fasci were as likely to have been motivated by social and economic factors, such as the furtherance of business interests, as by ideological or political influences.73 This leads him to conclude that ‘participation in fascio activities is not a certain indication of any particular political attachment’ and he cautions that ‘membership of the PNF should not automatically be assumed to indicate a commitment to Fascism’.74 Significantly, this view was also expressed by the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, who stated, during a debate on internment in 1941: The great bulk of the Italian cases concern persons who were associated with the Fascio in this country in some form or another. That does not necessarily mean that they were all conscious or dangerous Fascists. Indeed, what has impressed me in regard to a number of the Italian

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Inter-war fascistisation Fascio cases is that many of those persons joined the Fascio for reasons which had nothing to do with Fascism. In many cases it was in order to get contacts for business purposes, in other cases for social reasons.75

The ‘Private Wire’ colummst of the Guardian also reiterated this point at the height of Italian internment, commenting: ‘Some simple shopkeepers who specialised in Italian pastes and cheeses found, years ago, that they could not get their goods from Italy unless they were “Fascists.” They had more business sense than political foresight; they paid their annual subscriptions and smiled to think how simple it was.’76 The Fasci were also successful in restoring a sense of self-respect to Italian immigrants often on the receiving end of racial abuse and negative stereotypes in their host nations. Both Gaetano Salvemini and John P. Diggins identify the ‘inferiority complex’ of Italian immigrants in America as being important in guiding their response to Fascist overtures.77 Membership and support of the Fasci was, Wright acknowledges, in many cases, also ‘a manifestation of status and success in the host community’.78 Some Italians joined in the hope of obtaining financial and social rewards or were seduced by the honours that the Italian government offered supporters of the regime.79 Salvemini remarked that, in 1940, for those who came from backgrounds of considerable poverty, it was ‘the consummation of felicity to be knighted by Mussolini’.80 In Edinburgh, the Fascist Secretary Crolla was awarded the Italian honour Cavaliere in 1934, followed by Cavaliere Ufficiale della Corona d’Italia in 1939 for ‘le attività svolte’ (the work he carried out).81 London-based French journalist Madeleine Henrey, in her wartime journal, mourns the loss of ‘famous London night-life figures’ on board the Arandora Star such as Maggi of the Ritz and Zavattoni of the Savoy but concludes, ‘That many were Fascists I have no doubt at all. The regime swelled them with pride. I used to find them in the early hours of the morning, when the supper rush was over, having a quick meal in a screened-off part of their restaurant discussing politics above the distant rhythmical roar of the dance band.’82 One of the most effective strategies of the Fasci was to emphasise their role as ‘the only representative of Italian patriotism in Britain’.83 Joe Pieri recalls how in Glasgow, the concept of the ‘good Italian’ became increasingly monopolised by the local Fascists: ‘Those who criticised the actions of Mussolini, and there were many, were labelled as anti-Italian by their fellows.’84 Baldoli alludes to the centrality of the concept of the ‘good Italian’ within the rhetoric of the Fasci and shows how, from 1938, Italians were increasingly divided into ‘Good Italians ~63~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' to be defended and recommended; Bad Italians - to be identified and reported to Rome’.85 The security authorities also believed that applicants for Fasci membership were ‘vetted’. In 1936, they cite the example of the Edinburgh Fascio Secretary, who, on receiving an application from a member of the Glasgow Fascio, ‘referred the matter to the D.G.I.E in Rome asking for approval and stating at the same time that the applicant had a good Fascist character’.86 Fundamentally, however, the Edinburgh Fascio appears to have promoted the concept of the ‘good Italian’ largely within the context of informal social control, such as disapproval of those who naturalised, Anglicised their surnames or married ‘out’ of the community.87

‘We were not political in the least’: the myth of the social club The provision of organised social activities, language schools for children and free holidays and welfare assistance from Italy did prove popular amongst a section of the Italian diasporic population.88 However, in his study of the Fasci in France, Mastellone argues that the provision of social assistance ultimately aimed to impose ideological consent upon Italian immigrants: ‘it was not enough to be Italian, it was necessary to be Fascist!’89 Until recently, British Italian historiography has appeared keen to assert that the Fasci were social clubs which simply attracted members who were patriotic about their fatherland. Indeed, this notion that the Fasci were organically home-grown bodies, like St Andrews societies, ‘where expatriates could express nostalgia for their former home’, has generally been accepted at face value.90 The desire to represent the Fasci as both devoid of political function and detached from the Italian Fascist regime is exemplified in Contini’s assertion that in the Edinburgh Fascio ‘None of the Italians were interested in politics, in fact involvement in local politics was expressly forbidden.’91 This desire to de-politicise the role of the Edinburgh Fascio was also apparent in interviews, as if the moniker ‘Fascist’ was almost incidental, one member recalling: ‘Mussolini called it the Fascist Party so we called it the Fascist Party. If Mussolini had called it the Communist Party, we would have said we were a member of the Communist Party. We were not political in the least.’92 Another pointed out, ‘we had a place called the Fascio club which was an unfortunate choice of name because none of them were Fascists.’93 The dopolavoro was frequently mentioned in terms of sporting activities, with reference made to the football team, golf club or hiking club.94 Yet, as De Grazia ~64~

Inter-war fascistisation notes in her classic study, The Culture of Consent, the dopolavoro in Italy functioned as a ‘deceptively apolitical mechanism of leisure-time organising’ by which Fascism managed to penetrate every domain of social life. She argues that the particular effectiveness of the dopolavoro was linked to its detachment from clearly ‘fascist’ activities making it a ‘depoliticised underside of fascism’- which operated efficiently to shore up support for the regime.95 Historians studying Italian communities in other English-speaking countries have identified a similar amnesia regarding any political aspects of Fascio events. Historians of Italian Canadians note that whilst it is acknowledged that many Italians joined groups with ‘Fascist affiliations’ such as the Sons of Italy, these are described as ‘social groups’ that were ‘not actively involved in politics’.96 Michal Bosworth, who undertook oral history research on the Fremantle Fascio in Australia, comments on ‘the failure of anyone to volunteer information about the political aspects of the meetings’.97 Interestingly, in Scotland, those who have emerged as the guardians of communal history are often the families of those most actively involved in the Fasci which, in turn, influences the ways in which they have since been represented. Colpi notes that the post-war Italian community took a long time to recover from the ‘shame, confusion and also embarrassment’ at having so whole-heartedly endorsed Mussolini in the inter-war period. She makes the observation that in many cases those who express the view “‘I had nothing to do with Fascism” or “My father had nothing to do with Fascism’” are ‘the sons of Fasci leaders, often men who were lost on the Arandora Star.98 It has arguably been in the interest of those once most actively involved in the Fasci, the more successful, commercially based members of the Italian community, to reconstruct the past to suit the needs of the present day, where they, in Colpi’s phrase, ‘trade on their ethnicity’.99 In the post-war era, where the entrepreneurial members of the community have ‘often concentrated on selling some aspect of their Italianness’,100 it has been important to construct narratives which avoid discussing the time when the concept of allegiance to Fascist Italy held a strong attraction amongst the community elite. As Colin Hughes points out in his book on the Italian Welsh community, some of those who attended Fasci clubs ‘may not have been fully aware of the political aims behind them, or may not have cared’.101 In relation to the Edinburgh Fascio, the foregrounding of the social aspects of the Fascio is one of the most distinctive features of personal narratives. Those who attended with their parents most commonly mentioned the dances, the Christmas Befana parties and the ~65~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 15 August picnics. All those interviewed who attended the Fascio were adamant that it was not Fascist and that those who participated in its activities were not Fascists. In Edinburgh, where many Italian families were alienated by the Irish dominance of the Catholic church in the city, the provision of gendered activities for Italian children and annual picnics on holy days such as 15 August meant that the Fascio increasingly fulfilled the church’s traditional role of social control.102 Furthermore, as oral historian Kate Fisher stresses, it is important for me, as a researcher, to ‘recognise the truths’ that lay behind statements about the apolitical nature of Fascist clubs.103 For respondents who attended as children the Fascio was essentially a public space where Italians could socialise and engage. This does not, however, preclude the fact that its activities were political in intent. In attempting to adopt a more critical approach towards the meaning of Fascism amongst the Italian diaspora in Britain, particularly in relation to those who held positions of leadership, it is useful to deconstruct the notions of sociability and inclusivity which surround representations of the Fasci. Phrases such as ‘the vast majority of the Italian Community in Britain embraced Fascism in a whole-hearted manner’104 or Sponza’s statement that ‘the bulk of the immigrants’ looked upon Fascism ‘with grateful sympathy and enthusiastic support’ are common.105 In reality, involvement in the Italian Fasci in Britain was a minority experience, a fact even acknowledged at the time by MI5. An intelligence report from 1936 concedes that membership levels were proportionately low, so that the Fasci in Britain ‘have not the control over all Italian nationals resident in this country which they claim to possess’.106 This reflected wider international trends. By October 1925 membership stood at the ‘unimpressive’ figure of 65,000, representing only a tiny fraction of the nine million Italian nationals residing abroad107 and had reached only 150,000 by 1939.108 Using MI5 figures, Wright calculates that only 6-9 per cent of the Italian community in Britain joined the Fascio. Whilst this was a higher proportion of membership than in some areas of Fascist Italy and countries like the USA, this support declined as World War Two approached.109 Whilst the 1933 census of Italians in Scodand, compiled by the Italian consular authorities, suggests that membership levels were considerably higher in Scodand - 44.2 per cent of Italian male ‘heads of family’ being registered members of the Italian Fascist Party this is still less than half of the Italian male population.110 Indeed, the relatively high levels of membership experienced in cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow appear not to have been shared elsewhere in ~66~

Inter-war fascistisation Scotland. A 1938 visit by the Glasgow consul to Aberdeen found that Fascist activities were almost non-existent due to the concentration of Italian families, including children, working late hours in their shops. According to Baldoli, ‘the worst aspect, from a Fascist perspective, was that several Italians had recently acquired British nationality and an entire generation was -growing up- with Scottish mentalities and habits.’ In Dundee, there was ‘an even greater state of neglect and indifference’.111 Paul de Felice’s work on the Manchester Italian community indicates that, here, ‘fascism was never firmly rooted’ and was essentially limited to ‘ “the well-to-do ones”’ 112 Elena Salvoni’s memoir of the London Italian community concurs: ‘As working-class families none of us in the Clerkenwell vicinity had felt the need of Mussolini’s protection; it was more for the elitist professions.’113

The battle for hearts and minds – second-generation experience In relation to Fasci activities aimed at children, in particular the exposure to Italian Fascist propaganda via language schools, film shorts and subsidised ‘Balilla’ trips to Italy, there is a similar trend towards depoliticisation. Whilst historians from North America concur in their view of Italian language schools as vehicles for Fascist ‘indoctrination’ amongst the Italian diaspora, British Italian historiography remains strangely silent on this aspect of their activities.114 Colpi presents the language schools in the following way: ‘Both the Italian authorities and the first generation of immigrants realised the importance of keeping the mother tongue and culture alive within their British-born offspring.’115 Yet, as Baldoli makes clear, the organisation of Fascist ‘education’ in the early 1930s primarily functioned to transform Italian children into pioneers of the Fascist revolution outside Italy.116 For Parini, one of the main roles of the Fasci was to ‘strengthen the moral, national and Fascist education of the younger generation’.117 The General Bureau of Italians Abroad created a worldwide school system, which supplied overseas language schools with a curriculum and textbooks specifically designed for immigrant students.118 In Baldoli’s opinion, the intention of the schools was ‘propagandistic’ rather than educational and was in some respects ‘openly fascist’, with Italian language and grammar taught via the recitation of songs of a patriotic or Fascist nature.119 According to the 1939 Guida Generate, the Edinburgh Fascio’s Italian School held five classes per week with the consular agent Trudu, assisted by Edinburgh-born Yolanda Coppola, giving lessons. Of all the respondents, six said they had attended a language ~67~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' school in Edinburgh and one at the Casa d’ltalia in Glasgow. Some respondents acknowledged that the school was run by the Fascio and that lessons took place at their Picardy Place premises. Others did not make any direct connection between the language school and the Fascio. Indeed, recollections about the school were vague and would often be introduced when we were discussing language prowess rather than the Fascio itself. Within the narratives of those who attended the school, the social rather than the propaganda aspects tended to be privileged, as exemplified by Isabella di Lena: We had a teacher, a lady who came once a week and gave us lessons. In reading and writing. Not any other thing: we got the rest of it, we got our proper schooling at the other school but we were taught to read and write [in Italian] [... ] you went every week, for years. Auch it was just a game! I mean you certainly got reading and writing but I think the teacher was just playing herself as well! You know: it was a social club.120

One respondent who attended the language school in Glasgow recalls that they received books and sang what ‘could have been Fascisti songs’.121 Antonietta Paci was rare in making an explicit link, stating that her father wouldn’t let her attend the language school, ‘because it was really Fascist’: ‘My father wasn’t a Fascist. My uncle was. My uncle was a Fascist. But my father used to say, “No, this is the country that gives me my bread and butter and you’ll obey by the rules of here. I’ll teach you anything you want to know”.’122 In his preface to Italian Fascist Activities in the US, the anti-Fascist exile, Salvemini, wrote that, ‘since the advent of Fascism in Italy citizens and residents of Italian extraction in this country have been subjected to a vast and relentless barrage of propaganda’.123 By October 1926, the Secretary General of the Fasci Abroad had established a comprehensive network of newspapers and magazines, publishing 50 newspapers and magazines and over 600,000 copies of propaganda material.124 The radio was another important medium of communication for the regime to reach Italians overseas, with propaganda broadcasts increasing during the late 1930s.125 The Italian Ministry of Popular Culture also supplied Fasci with films that extolled the grandeur of Fascist Italy to be shown in club premises, church halls and theatres within the Italian colonies.126 Respondent John Costa, although not a member of the ‘Young Fascists’, remembers his father taking him once a month to La Scala cinema in Edinburgh: ‘I remember seeing war films, well, obviously propaganda films of - I think it was the war in Spain.’127 Richard Demarco also recalls, at the age of seven, ~68~

Inter-war fascistisation attending a ‘Young Fascists’ film show at La Scala andbeing ‘ill at ease’ as he watched films about the Ethiopian campaign.128 In a separate interview, he elaborates on his remembered response to this newsreel showing Italian bi-planes attacking the tribesmen of Ethiopia: ‘I said to my father, sitting beside me in the darkened cinema, as these whiterobed, black people were falling off their horses, shot... I said, “This is not a very good idea, Dad. It’s not a good thing.” He said, “No, it isn’t.” And I knew my father was not wanting it.’129

‘Goose-stepping and “Heil Mussolini!” ’ – the role of the Balilla Baldoli highlights the focus within Fasci rhetoric on the role of secondgeneration Italians: whilst Fascist emigrants had to be an example of honesty and morality, ‘their sons, the new generation had to take action in order to become the pioneers of fascism’. Ideally, married female emigrants would return to Italy to give birth, their children would be enrolled in Italian youth organisations and attend summer camps and ultimately would become ‘blackshirts, soldiers of Fascism abroad’.130 A speech on emigration from the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Dino Grandi, made in March 1927, provides an insight into the stance of the Fascist regime: ‘Why must our race continue to be a sort of human reservoir at the disposal of the other countries of the world? Why must our mothers continue to furnish soldiers for other nations?’131 The Balilla, established in Italy in 1926, sought to provide ‘moral and physical education for the young according to the principles and ideals sponsored by Fascism’.132 Incorporating children aged six to eighteen, children were divided into different groups according to age and gender. Pennacchio notes that these youth organisations were ‘structured in a manner which reinforced the concept that its members were a part of militaristic Fascist Italy’.133 In the Edinburgh Fascio, there were 44 Avanguardisti; 29 Giovani Italiane; 28 Balilla and 42 Piccole Italiane, totalling 143 youths.134 As part of the Balilla initiative, in 1928 the Fascist government began to organise summer vacations in Italy for children of Italian parentage living abroad.135 The Italian government bore most of the cost of these trips so that parents paid only £5, an act of perceived generosity on behalf of Mussolini which still resonates through the decades and is mentioned frequently by respondents. In Colpi’s view, ‘Many of these children had never been to Italy and the opportunity was considered by their parents to be generous beyond belief. Indeed, much jockeying for the limited places took place in the ~69~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' various Italian Communities.’136 In reality, however, many of those who travelled from Edinburgh appearto have been from the same narrow pool of ‘important’ families, suggesting a low uptake amongst ‘ordinary’ Italians.137 In her photographic collection, Italians Forward, Colpi perpetuates this misrepresentation of levels of second-generation Fasci engagement. She includes a picture of ‘Young Fascio Members’ depicting three girls and two boys from Edinburgh, the latter dressed in black shirts and fez, and states in the caption below: ‘these young people were typical of the British- born second generation in their attitude to Fascism. For them it meant identification with the land of their forefathers and, at the same time, an acceptable means of socialisation.’138 Yet, Fascio attendance was atypical rather than the norm and more likely to represent elite families. According to Wright’s sample of Glasgow, Manchester and London Italian communities, almost seventy per cent of children, of the appropriate age, were not sent by their parents to the Balilla or the Italian schools.139 Traditionally there has been a tendency to downplay the militaristic and nationalistic aspects of the Balilla by equating them with the contemporaneous scouts’ movement in Britain. Contini describes the Balilla as being ‘fashioned on the principles of Baden Powell’s Scouts and Guides’140 whilst Anthony Rea’s Manchester study depicts it as ‘similar to the scouts and cubs’.141 However, Carmen Demarco’s recollection of her elder siblings going on a Balilla trip did acknowledge its more militaristic aspects: They pestered my father rotten until he said yes. However, unbeknown to them, what it meant was a fortnight under canvas at Anzio with daily processions, goose-stepping and ‘Heil Mussolini!’ or whatever, up to Rome and all the rest of it. It was extremely political and they got uniforms, [...] brown shirts and cravats and armbands. The young Balilla. So of course, they had a good enough time, they had some fun and all the rest of it but they didn’t take much to the political bit at all. When they came home, they were kind of disappointed about the whole thing.142

The prevalence of the Boy Scout analogy assists in the presentation of the Balilla as innocuous whereas, in fact, they were increasingly the site of debate within the security services relating to contested questions of allegiance. Italy’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy and the signing of the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936 meant that the Italian population in Britain was coming under increasing scrutiny.143 From 1936 onwards, MI5 routinely monitored the embarkation of children to the summer camps and produced embarkation lists including the names, ages and ~70~

Inter-war fascistisation addresses of the children involved. In 1936 six children from Edinburgh attended camps in Italy and in August 1937 the embarkation of ‘a party of 218 children’ from across the UK for Italy was recorded leaving Newhaven port. Included in this group were seventeen children from Edinburgh with an average age of thirteen. This was followed by the departure of a further ninety-six ‘Italian juveniles’ later in the month which included thirteen youths from Edinburgh with an average age of eighteen.144 Accompanying the party were five adults including Trudu, the consular agent in Edinburgh. There was much concern expressed by the security services about ‘boys born in the UK of Italian parents’ being sent to Italy for these holidays, the entry of dual nationals into Balilla camps being viewed as a ‘sinister development’.145 In a communication to the Home Office, MI5 commented: Whilst the object of this scheme is to maintain the Italianità of these British born children it is not possible to say to what extent they are affected by the Fascist propaganda to which they are obviously subjected or how far this will be counteracted by their subsequent experiences in this country. There can, however, be little doubt that, combined with the pressure which we know is exerted through the Fascist organisation, the result is to cause a large number of nominally British subjects to retain another allegiance.146

For the Head of MI5, Vernon Kell, those who were British-born members of Fascist youth organisations were automatically categorised as ‘owing allegiance to Mussolini’.147 MI5 was particularly concerned about British-born Italian boys of military age, who in the event of war ‘would be expected to remain here in many cases in order to serve Italy by espionage and sabotage’.148 In the lead-up to the war, the security services repeatedly raised the spectre of potential espionage by dual nationals, suspecting the Fasci could be deliberately using British-born members to infiltrate the armed forces and obtain information of value to the Italian authorities. In light of the subversive potential of these second-generation recruits, MI5 argued, restrictions needed to be placed on Italian dual nationals serving in the armed forces.149 Involvement in the Balilla did, therefore, have massive consequences, both for those who participated in an individual capacity and for the wider community as a whole. Many of the younger Italian Scots arrested in Edinburgh in June 1940 and detained in Saughton Prison under Regulation 18B had attended the summer camps as Balilla. Carmen Demarco refers to ‘that Balilla outing that cost us so dear’150 and links were frequently made ~71~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' within narratives between Balilla membership and subsequent detention. Wright concludes that, at the very least, ‘the Balilla and the Italian classes were designed to encourage children to defend Italianità’ and ‘to inculcate in them a loyalty to Fascism and Mussolini’.151 It is important to recognise the different mechanisms used by the Italian Fascist regime and its representatives in Britain to draw Italian immigrant families into their net, with devastating consequences - a fact which has not been adequately acknowledged in existing accounts.

‘We were spectacular-looking’ - public displays of presence Overall, there has been a critical failure within British Italian historiography to address the elite Fasci leadership and to explore possible links between high-profile Fasci ceremonial and internment. In his influential article, Rodgers contends that, ‘Unlike Mosley’s “blackshirts”, the Italian Fascists made little impact.’152 Fortier’s use of the concept of public ‘displays of presence’153 is highly relevant when analysing the visibility and perception of inter-war Fascio activity amongst the Edinburgh Italians. The years following the establishment of the Edinburgh Fascio witnessed an increasingly public and confident display of italianità by members of the club. As well as the annual picnics and sporting events, there were parades by the Italian Blackshirts on municipal and commemorative occasions. Press reports indicate that the ‘impressive’ Italian Fascist presence was continually acknowledged and reported on, particularly the Italians’ Armistice Day commemorations on 4 November.154 At a requiem mass in 1926 ‘the gathering included a number of Fascists in their black-shirt uniform’;155 in 1927, ‘The Fascio, with standard- bearer, attended in Black Shirt uniform’;156 in 1929, ‘The Edinburgh Fascisti attended in their black shirt uniforms’,157 and in 1931, ‘Fascisti representatives were present in uniform.’158 Reflecting Fascist Italy’s glorification of war heroes, in 1928 a requiem mass was held in Edinburgh in honour of General Diaz, Commander of the Italian troops in 1918 and former Fascist Minister of War. On this occasion, ‘eighty members of the Edinburgh Fascisti wearing their black-shirt uniforms’ attended and a catafalque draped in the Italian flag was ‘surrounded by a guard of honour of the Fascists’.159 The visibility of the Edinburgh Italian ‘Blackshirts’ was remembered by Dora Harris, who grew up in the Grassmarket and witnessed their attendance at the funeral of her friend’s grandfather, a Garibaldian veteran. Her narrative is significant in illuminating class divisions, ~72~

Inter-war fascistisation usually overlooked when discussing the Italian community, with her identification of the Fascists as the ‘posh Italians’: I was very young when this happened but I remember it as clear as yesterday. When he died the whole street was in... well, Victor’s dad, Crolla, he was the head of the Italians. All the rich Italians that didnae want to know us, they all crowded into the Grassmarket. This was for, Mr. Leonardo had died, this was his funeral. And do you know: he was the last survivor of the Garibaldi army? So he had a state funeral, like he was royalty! [...] We were just kids. You know how you watch a funeral when you’re kids? And, this Cavaliere Crolla and all the Italians what we’d never clapped eyes on before! We’d never seen them before.160

Arguably, the main consequence of this inter-war activity, as has been suggested by Australian historians, was that the most public face of the Italian immigrant presence became Fascist.161 In his recollection of attendance at one remembrance ceremony, Joseph Pia’s narrative both acknowledges and downplays the significance of the Italian Fascists’ appearance: ‘We were spectacular-looking. A dozen to twenty of us in black shirts. And we used to always get at the head of the procession because we were guests, you see. But anyhow, they used to get us because it was attractive. A change. Something to look at away from the usual. That’s all.’162 Interestingly, the three respondents I interviewed from the poorer area of Italian settlement, the Grassmarket, all referred to Fascio members as ‘blackshirts’; displaying a significant detachment from the Fascists as if they were a separate entity, removed from their own experience, and providing an insight into what Fraser terms ‘contemporary perceptions’ of the Fascists which are rarely included in popular accounts.163 It is also important to contextualise the activities of the Italian Fascisti in Edinburgh in the highly politicised decade of the 1930s. This was a time of acute social conflicts which the dichotomy of Fascism and antifascism most starkly expressed.164 The rise of the Nazis in Germany, the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War and the growth of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists all contributed to a sharp polarity between the right and left. Evidence from press accounts also suggests that Italian Fascist groups in Scotland were subject to contestation and faced opposition from left-wing groups. In 1924 the Workers’ International Pictorial published a picture of the black-shirted Glasgow contingent of ‘Fascisiti’ on an Armistice Day march and declared in the caption, ‘These are actual Italians, supporters of Mussolini and his ferocious suppression of the working class movement.’165 In 1927, the Scotsman ~73~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

4. The December 1924 cover of Workers’ International Pictorial displayed this image of the Glasgow Italian Fascisti marching on Armistice Day under the ironic sub-title ‘Peace on Earth’.

reported the first appearance in Dundee of ‘the local branch of the Fascisti, attired in the fall uniform and insignia of their order’. At the Armistice ceremony, the local Italian Consul, Luigi Gonnella, acknowledged that ‘such a public avowal of their convictions’ might provoke unfavourable comments from local Trade Unionists. According to the reporter, Gonnella ‘advised the Fascisti not to enter into heated discussions with them on this subject’.166 Following a high-profile rally at Market Stance, Aberdeen in 1937, one councillor said of anti-Fascist campaigners, ‘By an association of ideas they said that the British Fascists, German Fascists and Italian Fascists were all one and the same and were definitely hostile to them.’167 Referring to compensation claims for internment which emerged in the USA and Australia at the close of the twentieth century, Bosworth points out that, ‘such claims do not acknowledge that quite a number of emigrants did look like Fascists in 1939—41’.168 This external identification of Italians as Fascists is a factor which has been completely denied in the key texts on ~74~

Inter-war fascistisation the history of Italian community in Britain, allowing representations of the Fasci as social clubs to remain largely unchallenged.

‘They were taking the rings off them!’ – collections for Ethiopia It is generally agreed that the Ethiopian invasion in October 1935 led to a great deal of popularity for Mussolini’s regime, particularly amongst emigrant communities.169 The invasion and conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-36 succeeded in uniting many Italians against Britain, as the one country which was seriously applying League of Nations’ economic sanctions on Italy.170 When Mussolini initiated a campaign to raise money for his cause, including the donation of gold wedding rings, a fund for contributions from the Italian diaspora was opened; what Diggins regards as yet another example of the Fasti's ‘brazen activities’.171 Mussolini praised the Italians in Britain for ‘loro incrollabile fede Fastista' (their indestructible Fascist faith) after £18,480 was collected from local Fasti.172 Indeed, the collection of gold could be viewed as an intrinsically political act, in the sense of being actively anti-British, rather than the ‘frenzy of patriotism’ suggested by Colpi.173 When discussing the enthusiastic donation of wedding rings in Italy, Sponza asserts that ‘Most Italians in Britain shared the same sentiments’ but, again, a singular elite narrative is generalised to encompass the whole of the Italian community.174 An interview with Dora Harris and her niece Maria Smith, who both lived in the Grassmarket, provides a counter-reading on this activity. Dora recalls the visit of local Italian women to her mother’s home: DH: They were taking the rings off them! MS: Asked them if they wanted gold and she pointed at my granny’s wedding ring. My granny had been widowed for a number of years by then. I must’ve been about nine at the time. DH: Aye but [name]’s wife handed hers over. MS: She pointed to my granny’s wedding ring. She says ‘That ring was put on by my husband and that’s where that ring stays!’... Imagine asking. DH: But they were taking the wedding rings off. To help Mussolini to fight a losing battle!175

It is also significant that at the time of the Ethiopian crisis, a high number of Italians became naturalised British citizens, with 517 naturalisations, in 1936, compared with 145 the following year.176 This further indicates the existence of ‘dissension’ within the Italian community over Fascism which will now be addressed. ~75~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' ‘He didn’t want to be a Fascist’ - narratives of dissension Within existing accounts, the desire to project the idea of sameness means there has been a complete failure to explore the attitudes of those who chose not to become involved in the Italian Fasci. Cresciani comments that, as significant numbers of Italian emigrants to Australia arrived after 1922, they transplanted the political infighting of Fascist Italy to the sugar fields and industrial and mineral centres of Australia with frequent clashes between the anti-Fascist and Fascist Italians.177 Gabaccia outlines the success of anti-Fascist exiles in France in gaining popular support within the Italian diaspora, providing an alternative definition of italianità, based on an international struggle against exploitation and oppression and making Paris ‘the capital of a transnational anti-Fascist movement’.178 In contrast, there was not a significant anti-Fascist presence in Britain; Sponza notes how the few ‘genuine and persevering anti- Fascists’ were ‘generally regarded as a bunch of eccentric ideologues - if they were known at all’. By June 1940 there were only forty-three Italian anti-Fascist activists officially recorded in Britain.179 However, it would be erroneous to assume that, because there was no organised anti-Fascist activity, Fascism was widely accepted. Oral evidence highlights the existence of competing versions over the meaning of Fascism within the inter-war community, illuminating elements of dissension amongst Italians rarely acknowledged within dominant discourse. Personal narratives suggest a range of reasons for non-involvement in the Fasci. One respondent said his father didn’t like the Fascists because he was ‘very pro- British’;180 another said her father ‘just didn’t believe in Mussolini’.181 Mary Ambrose dates her second-generation father’s detachment from the Italian community to the uprising of Fascism, saying he would have been against any ‘pseudo-military approach’.182 Richard Demarco, the seven- year-old child in the cinema watching the Italian newsreels on Ethiopia, sensed they were ‘nonsense’. His father, born in Edinburgh, ‘was not conned into thinking this was a good idea’ and did not become a member.183 Two respondents, whose parents did not attend, referred to the Edinburgh Fascio as a ‘clique’.184 Two brothers from Auchtermuchty remember their father’s response to ‘one prominent Edinburgh person at the head of the Fascist group’ who travelled around the region selling Italian wares: MV: AV:

[...] he used to come once a month. Selling us Italian goods, wine and salami and all that sort of stuff.

~76~

Inter-war fascistisation MV:

And he wanted him to become a member of the Fascist Party. Dad says, ‘If you want to come, you can come and stay here but don’t mention the Fascists to me because if you’re going to do that, stay out of my house.’185

The narrative of Alex Margiotta provides another intriguing insight into the dynamics of community Fascio activity: The first of the Italians in Edinburgh here they had a sort of social club, which my father was involved with. After the advent of Fascism in Italy, it became a political thing. My father was ostracised a bit because he said, ‘I don’t think it’s fair to have a political party in the country that you’ve adopted.’ And, as a consequence of that, he became unpopular. He wouldn’t go and he stopped attending the thing. He didn’t want to be a Fascist ... They had the Fascist Party which used to have social things and then annually they used to have trips to Alva and places like that. Well, one of my sisters -1 was only a nipper at the time - one of my sisters won a race. They gave her a rocking horse. Five minutes after they came and took it off her again: ‘You’re not a Fascist, your father’s not a Fascist.’... They took it off her because my father wasn’t a Fascist [...] They used to have [ceremonies], up at the War memorial in the High Street; they used to parade in their black shirts and the Italian flag. My dad said, ‘Now that’s all wrong. People are going to say, well if it’s such a great system, get back to Italy!’186

Dissension can also express itself in different, more light-hearted ways so that, on occasion, the Fascists are dismissed as figures of ridicule. Geraldo Cozzi put it succinctly: ‘The Fascists? Oh well, the daft Italians here, they were giving their rings and all that.’187 To Margiotta they were ‘silly men who were dressed in black shirts ... They didnae take the trouble to find out what it was all about. They just joined the gang, the red, green and white flag and get in amongst it.’188 In this way, respondents provide what Doumanis terms ‘a subtextual commentary’ on communal social life, revealing aspects of tension and contestation that have rarely been acknowledged.189 Another important aspect of the Italian Fasci movement which has rarely been addressed is the possibility that commercial, economic or other pressures were exerted on people to join. MI5 believed that the Fasci headquarters in Rome aimed to bring Italian immigrants into the Fascist fold ‘equally by an appeal to patriotism and a threat of penalties against property and relatives in Italy’.190 Two narrators confirmed that some Italians joined for reasons of commercial expediency. Carmen Demarco recalls: ~77~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' father was having problems because the Fascisti movement had started up in Edinburgh quite strongly and everybody was being urged to join. But my father was not keen because he wasn’t a joiner. You know some people are? He wasn’t interested in clubs and things so, he didn’t want to join anyway. [...] However, by this time, the factory was well established but in order to make money he had to sell to the Italians, his wafers and cones. And, it was made quite clear to them that either he joined the party or he’d lose business.191

Her view was confirmed by Margiotta, whose father broke away from the Edinburgh Fascio: ‘My father had money when the rest of them had nothing. But he went down when the rest of them went up because he wasn’t in the Fascio. If you wanted to get on - it was like being in the Freemasons - if you wanted to get on you were in the Fascist club. You joined the Fascist Party and you got on a bit better because you would find cooperation in a lot of things.’192 Another important factor which emerges from personal narratives is a sense of resentment of the Fasci and its inter-war activities. One Edinburgh respondent, who lost her father on the Arandora Star, states: ‘See there was definitely a movement here that got a lot of people who had never thought about anything to join and got them into trouble. It was as simple as that... And they were, some of them at the time, they were quite forceful.’193 Irene Politi, a third-generation Italian who lost five relatives on the Arandora Star, provides a similar insight: ‘They just followed everything like sheep in those days. If you couldn’t read and write and a friend came up and says, “Oh this is a very good idea, join this club” the Italian club, they didnae know it was a Fascist club ... They were sucked in.’194 Intelligence files record the example of the Southampton Fascio where the ‘energetic’ Vice Consul D’Anneo, who arrived in 1934, was said to have ‘forced’ people to join the local Fascio by ‘lecturing, continuously, insisting’ so that local Italians were ‘roped in’.195 In her fictionalised account of the Edinburgh Fascists, Contini writes of the Secretary, Alfonso Crolla: ‘Like thousands of others he was hoodwinked by the positive propaganda that Mussolini generated. Innocently he encouraged many others to follow suit.’196 In this portrayal, by June 1940 Crolla is ‘a broken man’ who, in an internment camp, tearfully confesses to a priest, ‘I encouraged so many of them to join the Fascio. It’s my fault they are here.’197 As I carried out my fieldwork I became aware of the fact that, for some, there remains a deep-rooted fear of being ‘signed up’ to something which could have hidden consequences. Indeed, the long-term effects of Fasci involvement can manifest themselves in the most intriguing ~78~

Inter-war fascistisation ways, most specifically in a tangible reluctance amongst older Italians to sign lists. At an Italian Scottish charity event, I witnessed a respondent refusing to sign a visitors’ book. Another respondent, when discussing the visitors’ book held at the prestigious National Library of Scotland exhibition, The Italian Scots (1991), comments: ‘I remember thinking, “Do I want my name linked with the Fascist movement? How do I know it’s not a Fascist movement that’s at the back of it!” I’m always very wary of things.’198 These deep-rooted fears stemming from the pre-war period were also acknowledged in two letters which appeared in the community newspaper Italiani in Scozia at the time of voting for the 1986 Italian Emigration Committees. One correspondent was puzzled by the number of old Italians in Aberdeen who were ‘suspicious’ of signing the forms from the Italian government until one eventually confided, ‘the last time they made us sign they then sent us to the internment camps or on the Arandora Star’. A correspondent from Falkirk reported that when he asked an old lady to sign the forms, she was frightened: ‘She managed, with some difficulty, to tell me the reason for her being upset. She told me that the last time the Italian government made her family sign some forms it was before the war. The result of her having put her faith in the people then was that, due to that signature, on 10th June 1940, some policeman arrived in her house and carried her away to work in an internment camp.’199

The cult of Mussolini In her work on Fascism, Passerini notes how ‘a kind of sympathy for Mussolini, combined with the tendency to exonerate him from the most serious blame,’ emerges from oral interviews in Italy.200 Fogu states that since its inception Fascism presented and organised itself as a political religion which always oscillated between two poles: a cult of Fascism, organised by the party and transmitted through ritual politics, and ‘a largely spontaneous cult of Mussolini’, dependent instead on the imaginary relationship that Mussolini cultivated with the Italian masses. This mutual interdependence was not necessarily ‘a by-product of their fascist faith’, but rather was marked by ‘the imaginary construction of Mussolini as offering to Italians both a refuge from the menace of modernity and the opportunity to acquire collective distinction in the eyes of the world’.201 He makes the insightful point that the overnight transformation of the majority of Italians into ‘an antifascist mass’ at the end of World War Two may have had a lot to do ~79~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' with ‘their psychological ability to remember themselves as Mussolinians rather than as Fascists’.202 Unlike in post-war Italy, a strong anti-Fascist narrative has not emerged amongst the Italian diasporic community in Scotland. During discussion of the wartime period, none of the respondents referred to the ‘war of liberation’ or ‘civil war’ in Italy of 1943-45 or made use of the postwar ‘Resistance Myth’ which reframed Italians as fundamentally anti- Fascist.203 Those who had not attended Italian Fasci (if they mentioned Fascism at all) tended to position themselves in the passive sense as ‘not Fascist’ rather than adopt the pro-active mantle of ‘anti-Fascist’. Indeed, categorisation in relation to Italian Fascism was incredibly fluid - even the children of those who had attended the Fasci reclaimed their parents as ‘not Fascist’. Furthermore, a number of interviewees expressed proMussolini sentiments, supporting US historian Stanislao G. Pugliese’s concept of a ‘culture of nostalgia’ amongst the Italian diaspora which dwells on the fact that Mussolini ‘made the trains run on time’ and neglects the abolition of parliamentary democracy, political assassinations and the ruthless repression of opponents.204 During my fieldwork, eight respondents spontaneously mentioned Mussolini, overwhelmingly in a positive vein: he cleared out the swamps, made the trains run on time, sorted out Italy’s educational system and dealt with the Mafia. His only mistake, constantly reiterated, was his fatal collusion with Hitler when ‘he got above himself’ and ‘too big for his boots’.205 Even those who had no involvement with Fascist clubs as children, including two army veterans, made positive comments about Mussolini and his achievements. This indicates the resilience of what Fogu refers to in relation to Italian society as a ‘submerged and never fully acknowledged mussolinismo’, an emotional attachment to Mussolini that survived well beyond the fall of Fascism.206 It also underscores how amongst the Italian community in Scotland, aspects of diasporic memory appear almost ossified, articulated without reference to the tumultuous and shifting events of the war and post-war era in Italy. This absence of a coherent anti-Fascist narrative has enabled the original Fascist usage of the term ‘good Italians’ to flourish unchecked in the latter half of the twentieth century.207

Conclusion As Richard Bosworth writes, whilst there is ‘plenty of evidence of migrant communities extolling Mussolini as a great leader and of their ~80~

Inter-war fascistisation members donning black shirts, giving Roman salutes and accepting the accoutrements of the Fascist cultural revolution’, doubts remain about ‘the profundity and ubiquity of the conversion’.208 Unfortunately, when Italy declared war on Britain, all those who were named on the membership lists, compiled by the security services by September 1938, would be rounded up because of their Fascist associations, however innocuous.209 The blackshirted attendance at commemorative occasions and indulgence in Fascist pageantry by a minority of Fasci members contributed to the Italians’ external identification as political actors. This challenges the pervasive elite representation which denies, or downplays, the links between internment and Fasci membership. It could be argued that a key function of communal remembrance is to gloss over the challenging question of pre-war allegiances. The tendency within historiography and personal narratives to understate the intended propaganda and political aspects of the Fasci also reflects a reluctance to address the role of the clubs in light of Fascism’s uncomfortable present-day associations.210 The question of Italian Fascist membership is important because it links into crucial questions about citizenship, belonging and allegiance amongst diasporic communities, and the wider question of where loyalties lie, especially amongst the second generation. One of the biggest problems in attempting to analyse inter-war Fascism is the fact that MI5 crudely defined all Fasci members as ‘dangerous’, thus destroying the lives of many who were put on to the Arandora Star. This tragedy has effectively forestalled any critical debate on the meaning of Fascism in the Italian community and smothered expressions or articulations of difference. This chapter highlights the need to differentiate amongst those who adopted leadership positions and those who were simply members of the Fasci. Many attended for business reasons, for socialisation and because it provided a gendered space for their children to meet. A far smaller number dressed in black shirts, embraced Fascist ceremonial and pageantry, engaged in proMussolini rhetoric, collected money for Ethiopia and accepted honours from Mussolini’s regime. At the time of internment, however, no distinctions were made: all members were identified as ‘Fascio’ and, as such, a threat to national security. Michal Bosworth, writing of the Fremantle Italians, identifies the root of the tragedy: ‘Earnestly, men who had attended Fascist ceremonials for years told Australian authorities that they were loyal to the British crown and just as carefully the authorities looked at those activities and decided not to believe them.’211 ~81~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8

9

10 11

12

13

14 15

16 17 18

F. Iacovetta and R. Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory, and the politics of history’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 398. F. Iacovetta and R. Perin, ‘Introduction. Italians and wartime internment: comparative perspectives on public policy, historical memory, and daily life’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 6. For discussion of apology campaigns in Scotland, see chapter eight. Principe, ‘A tangled knot’, p. 27. C. Baldoli, Exporting Fascism. Italian Fascists and Britain’s Italians in the 1930s (Oxford: Berg, 2003), p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 27. F. Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism. Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), pp. 7; 13. R. Wright, ‘Italian Fascism and the British-Italian community, 1928-43: experience and memory’ (PhD dissertation, University of Manchester, 2005), pp. 209, 214. L. G. Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism to Canada: Toronto’s Little Italy’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 66. P. Finney, ‘The stories of defeated aggressors: international history, national identity and collective memory after 1945’, in J. Macleod (ed.), Defeat and Memory. Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modem Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 105. F. Focardi, ‘Reshaping the past; collective memory and the Second World War in Italy’ in D. Geppert (ed.), The Postwar Challenge: Cultural, Social and Political Change in Western Europe, 1945–1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 47. C. Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente. The legacy of Fascist historical culture on Italian politics of memory’, in R. N. Lebow, W. Kansteiner and C. Fogu (eds), The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 151. Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente’, pp. 156-7. R. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy. Life under the Dictatorship 1915-1945 (London: Penguin, 2005); Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini-, J. Walston, ‘History and memory of the Italian concentration camps’, Historical Journal, 40:1 (1997), 169-83; G. Sluga ‘Italian national memory, national identity and Fascism’, in R. J. B. Bosworth and P. Dogliani (eds), Italian Fascism. History, Memory and Representation (London: Macmillan, 1999). Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 120; Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente’, p. 169. Ibid., pp. 168-9. Ibid., p. 150.

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Inter-war fascistisation 19

20 21

22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Ibid., p. 150; P. Palumbo (ed.), A Place in the Sun. Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present (Berkeley; University of California Press, 2003), p. 11; D. Gray, Homage to Caledonia. Scotland and the Spanish Civil War (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2008), p. 96; A. Del Boca, ‘The myths, suppressions, denials, and defaults of Italian colonialism’ in Palumbo (ed.), A Place in the Sun; Walston, ‘History and memory’. Focardi, ‘Reshaping the past’, p. 48. S. Giovacchini, ‘Soccer with the dead: Mediterraneo, the legacy of neorealismo and the myth of Italiani brava gente’, in M. Paris (ed.), Repicturing the Second World War. Representations in Film and Television (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 57-8. I. Favretto, ‘Conference report’, Modem Italy, 1 (2004), 98; M. Tobino, ‘The deserts of Libya’, in The Lost Legions. Three Italian War Novels, trans. A. Colquhoun and A. Cowan (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), p. 301. Giovacchini, ‘Soccer’, p. 63. Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente’, p. 169. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, p. 67. Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 399. K. Blee, ‘Evidence, empathy and ethics’, in R. Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 335. Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 32; C. Volante, ‘Identities and perceptions: gender, generation and ethnicity in the Italian Quarter, Birmingham, cl8911938’ (PhD dissertation, University of Wolverhampton, 2001), pp. 132-4. Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 147. Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism, p. 10. L. De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export: the rise and eclipse of the fasci italiani all’estero’, Journal of Contemporary History, 25:2 (2000), 151-83. D. R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 2000), p. 130. De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 152; Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, p. 145. Cited in Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, p. 9; G. Sluga, ‘Italian national identity and fascism: aliens, allogenes and assimilation on Italy’s north-eastern border’, in Bedani and Haddock (eds), Politics of Italian National Identity, p. 169. De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 167. Ibid., pp. 174-5. Ibid., p. 180. P. Cannistraro and G. Rosoli, ‘Fascist emigration policy in the 1920s: an interpretative framework’, International Migration Review, 13:4 (1979), 687. Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 67; Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 10. Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 67. G. Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities in the US (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1977), p. 57. De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 181.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 150. Cited in Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities, p. 57. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, p. 143. NA, KV, 4/291, Draft letter from Vernon Kell to Chief Constables, September 1938. Glasgow was the base for Cav. Carlo Tronchetti, Italian Vice Consul in Scotland and an enthusiastic Fascist. See ‘Italian Consul Honoured’, Scotsman (23 October 1931), p. 7; J. Farrell, ‘The Italians who came, saw and conquered’, Scotsman (10 December 1983). NA, HO, 144 /21079, ‘Additional notes on the organisation and activities of the Italian Fascist Party’, 28 June 1937, pp. 11-13. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 27. De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 159. Guida Generate degli Italiani in Gran Bretagna (London: E. Ercoli, 3rd edn, 1939), p. 445. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 93. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory (1929-30), p. 949. Guida Generate, p. 445. NA, HO, 144/21079, Additional notes, p. 12. M. Contini, Dear Olivia. An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006), p. 215. Correspondence from interviewee Mary Ambrose, 25 November 2003; Guida Generate, p. 445. SA1998.32, Interview with Joseph Pia, 1 August 1998. Local newspaper reports state that at the Edinburgh Fascio headquarters on 10 June 1940, ‘A number of Italians arrested here were busy burning papers when the police arrived, and a slight outbreak of fire was caused.’ ‘AntiItalian outburst’, Edinburgh Evening News (11 June 1940), p. 5. This also occurred in Australia. See Cresciani, Italians in Australia, p. 97. Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 163. Ibid., pp. 161-2. D’Agostino, Wandering Minstrel, p. 144. Additional information from Leonard D’Agostino. Email communication, 29 June 2005. R. Lamb, Mussolini and the British (London: John Murray, 1997), pp. 39; 76. See also Graves and Hodge, Long Weekend, p. 244 and C. Hibbert, Benito Mussolini. A Biography (London: Longmans, 1962), p. 74; Cresciani, Italians in Australia, p. 91. ‘Italian Vice-Consulship’, Scotsman (16 June 1927), p. 7. Scotsman (30 March 1926), p. 5; Scotsman (19 February 1927), p. 7; Scotsman (26 November 1930), p. 9. Scotsman (5 November 1927), p. 13. ‘General Garibaldi’, Scotsman (14 April 1864), p. 3. ‘Dead Italian General’, Scotsman (29 March 1928), p. 7. ‘Italian Consul honoured’, Scotsman (23 October 1931), p. 7. P. Willson, Peasant Women and Politics in Fascist Italy. The Massaie Rurali (London: Routledge! 2002), p. 80.

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Inter-war fascistisation 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

Ibid., p. 197. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, p. 391. Cresciani, Italians in Australia, p. 81. Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, pp. 69-70. Ibid., pp. 210; 70. Hansard, vol. 370, col. 495, 25 March 1941. Guardian (19 August 1940), p. 4. Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities, p. xxvii; J. P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism. The View From America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 79. Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 215. Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 54. Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities, p. 244. Guida Generate, p. 445. M. Henrey, London Under Fire 1940-45 (London: J. M. Dent 8c Sons Ltd, 1969), pp. 25-7. Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, p. 17; Diggins, Mussolini, p. 116. J. Pieri, The Scots-Italians. Recollections of an Immigrant (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005), p. 67. Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, pp. 25; 136. NA, H0144/21079, Note on the organisation and activities of the Italian Fascist Party, 16 April 1936, p. 9. See Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 193; I. MacDougall, Voices from War. Personal Recollections of War in our Century by Scottish Men and Women (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1995), pp. 313-14. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 45-6. S. Mastellone, ‘Emigration as an ideological problem for the Fascist state’, in Bosworth and Ugolini (eds), War, Internment and Mass Migration, pp. 121-3. Gillman, Collar the Lot, p. 148. See also Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 67. Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 214. SA1998.32, Joseph Pia. SA1998.61, Interview with ‘Isabella di Lena’ (pseud.), 3 November 1998. See SA1998.32, Joseph Pia. V. De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass Organisation of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. vii-viii. Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 394. M. Bosworth, ‘Fremantle interned: the Italian experience’, in Bosworth and Ugolini (eds), War, Internment and Mass Migration, p. 79. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 195. Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 256. C. Hughes, Lime, Lemon and Sarsaparilla. The Italian Community in South Wales 1880-1945 (Bridgend: Seren Books, 1991), p. 89. Colpi, ‘An old migration’, p. 13. K. Fisher, Birth Control, p. 42.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 104 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 88. 105 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 35. 106 NA, HO, 144/21079, Note on the organisation and activities of the Italian Fascist Party, 16 April 1936, p. 9. 107 De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 159. 108 Masteilone, ‘Emigration as an ideological problem’, p. 121. 109 Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, pp. 62; 213. 110 Wilkin, ‘Origins and destinations of the early Italo-Scots’, p. 54. Wilkin’s calculation is based on 1219 male Italian adults enumerated by the Italian authorities in their 1933 census, as opposed to the 5216 Italians recorded in the 1931 British census, and is thus likely to overestimate levels of Fascist Party membership. In email correspondence with the author, Wilkin states that 539 male heads of family declared themselves as members of the PNF, which suggests membership levels of just over ten per cent of the Italian population in Scotland. Wilkin also confirms that in ‘certain designated local fasci’ there were even higher levels of Fascist Party membership. Whilst Wilkin’s article states that 42.2 per cent of male heads of family were recorded as members of the PNF, he has requested that this figure be upgraded to 44.2 per cent. Email correspondence from Andrew Wilkin, University of Strathclyde, 22 March 2000. 111 Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, p. 148. 112 P. de Felice, ‘Reconstructing Manchester’s Little Italy’, Manchester Region History Review, 12 (1998), 61-2. 113 E. Salvoni, Elena: A Life in Soho (London: Quartet Books, 1990), p. 44. 114 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, p. 343. 115 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 95; Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 46. 116 Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, p. 27. 117 Cited in De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 183. 118 Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 60. 119 Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, pp. 13-14. 120 SA1998.061, Isabella di Lena. 121 SA2002.065, Diana Corrieri. 122 SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. 123 Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities, p. li. 124 De Caprariis, ‘Fascism for export’, p. 172. 125 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, p. 96. 126 Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 57. 127 SA1998.30, Interview with John Costa, 7 July 1998. 128 D. Kemp, ‘Scotland’s other immigrants. The inimitableItalians’, Glasgow Herald (12 February 1969). 129 Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 2006–07, National Life Stories, British Library Sound Archive, reference C466/242/02. 130 Baldoli, Exporting Fascism, p. 25. 131 Cited in Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, p. 101.

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Inter-war fascistisation 132 D. S. Piccoli, The Youth Movement in Italy (Roma: SocietaEditrice di Novissima, 1936), p. 9. 133 Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 61. 134 NA, HO, 144/21079, Additional notes, p. 12. 135 Salvemini, Italian Fascist Activities, p. 132. 136 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 89. 137 NA, HO, 144/21079, Immigration Officers’ Report from the port of Newhaven on ‘Parties of Italian Fascist Children’, 6 August and 20 August 1937. The Crolla and Coppola names appear frequently in the Edinburgh lists. 138 T. Colpi, Italians Forward. A Visual History of the Italian Community in Great Britain (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1991), p. 76. 139 Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 213. 140 Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 239. 141 Rea, Manchester’s Little Italy, p. 37. 142 SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. 143 M. Knox, Common Destiny. Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 142-7. 144 NA, HO, 144/21079, Additional Notes, p. 12; Immigration Officers’ Reports, 6 August and 20 August 1937. 145 NA, HO, 144/21079, Handwritten note on file, 24 June 1936. 146 NA, HO, 144/21079, Letter from Harker to Newsam, 20 August 1936. 147 NA, KV, 4/292, Circular from Kell to Chief Constables, 27 January 1939. 148 NA, HO, 144/21079, Additional Notes, p. 3. 149 NA, KV, 4/290, June 1937 note. 150 SOE 64, Carmen Demarco. 151 Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 212. 152 Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozia’, p. 132. 153 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 134. 154 Scotsman (5 November 1926), p. 10; Scotsman (5 November 1927), p. 13. 155 ‘Italian Armistice Day’, Scotsman (5 November 1926), p. 10. 156 ‘Italy’s Armistice Day. Scottish celebrations. Fascism and labour’, Scotsman (5 November 1927), p. 13. 157 ‘Italy’s Armistice Day’, Scotsman (5 November 1929), p. 11. 158 ‘Italian Armistice Day’, Scotsman (5 November 1931), p. 7. 159 ‘Dead Italian General’, Scotsman (29 March 1928), p. 7. 160 SA1997.105, Dora Harris. 161 Bosworth, ‘The internment of Italians in Australia’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 233. 162 SA1998.32, Joseph Pia. 163 R. Fraser, Blood of Spain. An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War (London: Pimlico, 3rd edn, 1994), p. 31. 164 T. Kirk and A. McElligott (eds), Opposing Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 3.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 165 Workers’ International Pictorial, December 1924, Front Cover. 166 ‘Italy’s Armistice Day’, Scotsman (5 November 1927), p. 13. 167 L. Kibblewhite and A. Rigby, Fascism in Aberdeen. Street Politics in the 1930s (Aberdeen: Aberdeen People’s Press, 1978), p. 8. 168 Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, p. 392. 169 Principe, ‘A tangled knot’, p. 32. 170 Morgan, Fall of Mussolini, p. 43. 171 Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism, p. 104. 172 Guida Generale, pp. 118-19. 173 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 97. 174 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 48. 175 SA1997.105, Dora Harris. 176 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 55. 177 Cresciani, Italians in Australia, p. 78. 178 Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, p. 149. 179 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 30; 101. 180 SA2002.052, Interview with ‘Domenico Natale’ (pseud.), 19 August 1999. 181 SA2002.056, Interview with Maria Angelosanto, 7 March 2000. 182 SA2002.062, Interview with Mary Ambrose, 9 June 2001. 183 Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 2006-07, National Life Stories, British Library Sound Archive, reference C466/242/04. 184 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta; SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. 185 SA2002.055, Interview with Marco and Angelo Valente, 11 February 2000. 186 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 187 SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi. 188 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 189 N. Doumanis, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean. Remembering Fascism’s Empire (London: Macmillan, 1997), p. 171. 190 NA, KV, 4/290, Memorandum on the possibilities of sabotage by the organizations set up in British countries by the totalitarian governments of Germany and Italy, p. 7. 191 SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. 192 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 193 SA1998.63, Rachele Spinosi. 194 SA2002.057, Irene Politi. 195 NA, HO, 45/25088, BOTTACHI: Orazio, transcript of HO Advisory Committee, p. 8. 196 Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 206. 197 Ibid., pp. 292; 321. 198 SA1998.26, Lola Corrieri. 199 ‘Paura di firmare’ (Fear of signing) and 'Non sard come nel 1940? (Will it be like 1940?), Italiani in Scozia, 12:2 (1986). 200 Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, p. 111. See also Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 124, regarding the views of Italian esuli interviewees. 201 Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente’, p. 160.

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Inter-war fascistisation 202 Ibid., p. 160. 203 Morgan, Fall of Mussolini, p. 6. 204 S. G. Pugliese, ‘The culture of nostalgia: Fascism in the memory of ItalianAmericans’, H-Net List on Italian-American history and culture, 30 July 1997, available at [email protected]. 205 SA2002.065, Diana Corrieri; SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. 206 Fogu, ‘Italiani brava gente’, p. 168. 207 As registered by Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 100. 208 Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, pp. 391-2. 209 See NA, KV, 4/291, Draft letter from Vernon Kell to Chief Constables, September 1938; NA, KV, 4/292, Circular from Kell to Chief Constables, 27 January 1939. 210 Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 399. 211 Bosworth, ‘Fremande interned’, p. 87.

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Chapter Three ‘Collar the lot!’: the historiographical legacy of internment

Following Italy’s declaration of war on Britain, 4300 Italians were interned, including 17 females, out of an Italian population of ‘approximately 20,000’.1 An analysis of the internment record card index held in the National Archives indicates that at least 1074 Italian nationals, nearly all male, were arrested in Scotland out of an immigrant population of over 5000.2 Internment had major social and human costs: Italian nationals lost their freedom, suffered immense emotional distress through enforced separation from their wives and children, and also suffered substantial economic losses. Some suffered from depressive illnesses and long-term mental and physical health problems as a result of their incarceration.3 These aspects of internment, whilst important, have been addressed in internment literature in Britain4 and elsewhere,5 and will not form the main focus of this chapter. Instead, this chapter considers the comparative experiences of ethnic groups treated as ‘enemies’ during World War Two in Britain and other English-speaking countries, and the different ways in which these groups were racialised.6 This chapter will also look more closely at the internment of Italian civilians in North America, Australia and Britain. International scholars writing in the collection Enemies Within suggest that attempts by postwar Italian community leaders to gain ‘redress’ for internment have led to a widespread depiction of Italian internees as ‘politically unsophisticated people from “all walks of life” ’. In their view, this provides a ‘laundered version of history’ which draws on selective evidence, ignores contrary views and glosses over the Fascist history of Italian immigrant communities.7 Indeed, several contributors argue for the ‘reasonableness’ of wartime internment policies intended to suppress suspected Fascist activists.8 This chapter also presents a critical ~90~

The historiographical legacy of internment overview of current representations of Italian internment in Britain, in particular the ways in which the rhetorical device of ‘Collar the lot!’ is utilised to give the misleading impression that ‘all’ Italians were interned. It also explores how the notion of the ‘good Italian’ functions to present 1944, after the Italian Armistice, as the key date of release for Italian internees when, in fact, large numbers were released in the first few months of internment, having signified a willingness to support the British war effort. The flawed policy of Italian internment pursued by the government, where the failure to classify Italian nationals via a tribunal system led to a fatal over-reliance on the judgement of the security authorities, has overshadowed different internment experiences on the grounds of generation and gender as well as obscuring complex questions of loyalties and allegiances, particularly amongst secondgeneration internees born in Britain. Internment amongst secondgeneration Italians was statistically low and usually a result of them having made declarations of alienage (opting for Italian citizenship at the age of majority) or if there was ‘evidence of Fascist associations’.9

Internment as a global phenomenon The decision to start interning Italian nationals in World War Two was part of a wider global tradition of alien internment. Stibbe points to the emerging nineteenth-century idea that internment or other restrictive measures against alien populations throughout Europe could be justified on the grounds of ‘military necessity’ or ‘national security’.10 It was during World War One that civilian internment became a universal phenomenon: between 1914 and 1918 at least 400,000 civilians were imprisoned as ‘enemy aliens’, not only in Europe but also in Africa, India, Australia and North and South America.11 Around 32,000 enemy nationals were held in Britain and up to 60,000 in France; in Germany, the official total was 111,879.12 Stibbe notes that whilst First World War internment is also often viewed in relation to earlier colonial episodes, most famously the use of ‘concentration camps’ by the British during the Boer War of 1899—1902, this perspective ignores its ‘situational peculiarities and cultural distinctiveness’.13 Essentially, internment was adopted by all belligerents and, with the expansion of rail and steam travel, on a technologically more sophisticated scale. Within modem nation states, an increasing emphasis was placed on the link between citizenship and military service, so that those who were ‘enemy civilians’ were not only resented as non-participants in a national ~91~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' endeavour, but ‘also came under suspicion as spies or potential recruits in the opposing army’.14 In Britain, during World War One, the government initially pursued a policy of selective arrest and internment of Germans and Austrians of military age. However, when the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine in May 1915 provoked a wave of anti-German violence in British cities, the official response shifted to a policy of wholesale internment and repatriation.15 As a result, the German population in Britain was reduced from around 60,000 to 22,254 by 1919.16 Panikos Panayi argues that not only does this internment policy reflect the growth of intolerance during the war, but it also points to the existence of Germanophobia in the immediate pre-war period.17 In the opening months of the conflict, ‘spy-fever’, a belief that all Germans acted as agents on behalf of their homeland, became widespread; public figures with German connections were constantly vilified in the press, German employees lost their positions and trading organisations expelled individuals of enemy alien origin.18 In the prevailing atmosphere, the British government’s policy of internment seemed justifiable, and was not widely questioned.19 As the Second World War approached, the Home Office was not inclined to pursue any policy resembling general internment.20 With the influx of 90,000 Jewish refugees, there was a general recognition that most ‘enemy’ nationals living in Britain were people who had fled Hitler’s regime and, as such, were not likely to pose a threat to the state.21 Local tribunals were set up across the country, charged with assessing the loyalties of German and Austrian ‘aliens’ and with registering them according to the risk they posed to British security.22 Category A was reserved for those with known sympathy for enemy regimes whilst those in Category C were deemed to pose little or no security risk. Of the aliens considered by the tribunals, 66,002 were classified in this bottom category, 6782 in Category B and only 569 in Category A.23 Despite this classification, however, confusion about the process and local prejudices led to the misclassification of many ‘friendly aliens’. This had massive implications for the Jewish refugee population when the dramatic Nazi invasions of Norway, Holland, Belgium and France raised anxieties about an imminent invasion and also stoked fears that German success had been fuelled by ‘fifth column’ activities within the invaded countries.24 This belief resonated through much of the press, with the Daily Mail and The Times fostering antiforeign feeling with inflammatory articles and misleading news items.25 David Cesarani and Tony Kushner characterise this period as a time when ‘public opinion inevitably focused on questions of identity and ~92~

The historiographical legacy of internment loyalty: the unthinkable failure in battle was attributed to enemies within’.26 The War Cabinet felt that immediate action must be taken ‘even if it involved the internment of persons who were well-disposed to this country’, arguing that ‘the process of combing out’ could be carried out at a later stage.27 On 11 May 1940, disastrous developments in Norway provoked the internment of 3000 male enemy aliens between 16 and 70 years of age residing in the ‘coastal strip’ of southern and eastern Britain, and subsequent waves of internment meant that, by the end of June 1940, over 25,000 ‘aliens’, of whom the great majority were Jewish refugees, had been placed in internment camps around the UK.28 It is likely that long-held and ingrained ‘racial’ stereotypes asserted an influence on government policy towards both Jewish and Italian immigrants living in Britain. The comment by the British Ambassador to the Netherlands, Neville Bland, that betrayal could come from ‘the paltriest of servant maids’ could not have been made without recognition that the overwhelming majority of ‘aliens’ in domestic service in Britain were refugee Jews, whose right to remain in the UK had been made conditional on their agreeing to take on this work.29 Indeed, Schaffer argues that, as Europe seemingly crumbled in the face of Nazi aggression, the specific manifestation of betrayal concerns ‘indicates a widespread acceptance of racial stereotypes within the government imagination’.30 The notion that Jews panicked easily and evaded any dangerous responsibility in wartime had been prevalent in the First World War and soon found popular currency as the new war began.31 Similarly, Sponza notes how, in June 1940, a Foreign Office official supported proposals to repatriate Italian nationals on the grounds that Italian women and children were ‘potential spreaders of panic in air raids etc. from the Latin temperament’.32

Italian internment in Britain Iacovetta and Perin acknowledge how the prevalence of ‘Italophobia’ in the English-speaking world meant that unflattering stereotypes of Italians ‘shaped the views of even the more sympathetic wartime officials’. As Italian immigrants often occupied the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder ‘they were treated at best with condescension and at worst hostility’.33 In Australia, Cresciani notes how the security service considered naturalised Italians as a grave threat, on the grounds that the Italian temperament was ‘volatile’ and that, in invasion conditions, they would be ‘a source of uneasiness and possible menace unless firmly ~93~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' controlled’.34 In Britain, the traitor within could take the most unlikely forms, as indicated in parliamentary debates about ‘fifth column activities’ where anxieties were raised about ‘Italian ice-cream vendors, who are not favourably disposed towards us’,35 the Savoy Hotel being ‘staffed with antiBritish Italians’, ‘foreign waiters employed in restaurants and road houses in the vicinity of important aerodromes and aircraft factories’,36 and ‘Class C Italians’ employed in expensive London hotels.37 It was announced that persons of German, Austrian or Italian nationality could not be employed in any circumstance by military personnel38 and Home Guard officers were banned from employing persons of Italian, German or Austrian nationality in their households.39 This latter policy was, Summerfield and PenistonBird note, indicative of ‘an anxiety that spies would penetrate the very homes that the Home Guard had been created to defend’.40 Since 1936, the security services had been proactively monitoring the Fasci and their German counterpart, Auslands Organisation, the latter acquiring 300 members and some 2000 contacts by 1937.41 In a 1936 Memorandum, the Deputy Director of MI5, Eric Holt-Wilson, expressed concerns about the creation of these associations in Britain ‘with the object of securing that Germans and Italians living in or settling in such countries shall not be lost to the nation from which they are sprung, but shall retain their original nationality and allegiance’. At a time when an intense aerial bombing campaign was widely anticipated, Holt-Wilson sounded alarms that these organisations could become ‘a decisive factor in the military situation’ through espionage and sabotage.42 In September 1938, Vernon Kell, Head of MI5, drafted a circular outlining security arrangements in the event of a declaration of war by Italy. He reported that MI5 had the names of ‘over 1000 members’ of the Fasci in the United Kingdom, resident in the jurisdictions of 80 different Chief Constables and indicated that cards giving these names would shortly be circulated. A telegram would be sent stating ‘ “Stand by ARRITFAS” = “Stand by Arrest Italian Fascists” ’ and a second telegram reading ‘ARRITFAS immediately’ would be the Chief Constables’ authority to initiate the arrests and ‘to search the premises of the Fasci in order to obtain any evidence that may be available as regards hostile intentions’.43 As discussed in chapter two, the existence of Fascist clubs both fuelled the xenophobic suspicions of the security services and facilitated the depiction of the Italians as the ‘biggest “Fifth Column” in the world’.44 The War Illustrated reported during the 1940 Blitz that ‘Italian medallions and other emblems which were recently scattered over London during air-raids appear to have been thrown by Italian pilots as an encouragement to the Italian Fifth Column!’45 The most infamous diatribe was launched by the Daily Mirror: ‘every Italian colony in Great Britain ~94~

The historiographical legacy of internment and America is a seething cauldron of smoking Italian politics. Black fascism. Hot as hell... We are nicely honeycombed with little cells of potential betrayal.’46 The rhetoric of Mussolini’s ‘stab in the back’ also fed into prejudices about the inherent treachery of Italians and their capacity for betrayal. This followed on from Roosevelt’s 10 June speech in which, ignoring advice that he would alienate the Italian American vote, the US President denounced Italy’s actions: ‘the hand that held the dagger has stuck it into the back of its neighbour.’47 Duff Cooper saw Italy’s declaration of war as ‘one of the vilest acts in history’ whilst, on the other side of the political fence, George Orwell recorded in his ‘War-time Diary’ that ‘the low-down, cold-blooded meanness’ of Mussolini’s declaration of war had made an impression even on people who barely read the newspapers.48 In Robert Douglas’ memoir of his Glasgow childhood, he recalls how a crowd gathered round an Italian cafe, taunting, ‘Hey, Eyeties! We’re here tae put yer windaes in. You’re no’ gonny get stabbed in the back like Mussolini would dae it. We’re gonny fuckin’ dae it right in front of ye!’49 In April 1940, the Home Office sent instructions to local police forces to prepare to arrest male Italian nationals between the ages of 16 and 70 who had been resident in Britain for less than 20 years and 1500 Fasci members characterised as ‘desperate characters’ by MI5. At a War Cabinet meeting on 15 May to discuss the perceived danger, ‘Italians and British subjects of Italian origin’ were at the top of a list of potential fifth columnists.50 Throughout the month of May 1940, the War Cabinet met to deliberate over what to do if Italy entered the war against Britain, concluding at a 29 May meeting that ‘Italians in large numbers would have to be interned; but at the moment there could be no question of wholesale internment of Italians’.51 At a War Cabinet meeting the following day, it was agreed that ‘a suitable ship’ should be made available for the deportation of all Italians in Britain in exchange for British subjects in Italy ‘as soon as practicable’.52 Ultimately, however, only 629 Italians left Britain on board the Monarch of Bermuda as part of a reciprocal evacuation of the diplomatic and consular staffs from the two countries.53 Thus, as Pennacchio notes in relation to Canada, where similar arrangements were carried out, Fascist diplomats ‘paid a very small price’ for importing Fascism to Italian diasporic communities.54 On 30 May, the Home Secretary, John Anderson, confirmed that the number of ‘desperate, characters’ whom he would wish to intern was 1500 Italians plus 300 British subjects.55 In Simpson’s opinion, MI5 fatally managed to give the ‘quite false’ impression that it was well informed on the Italian communities, and knew who had joined the Fascio.56 Thus, in ~95~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' advance of the war, as well as a failure to classify Italian residents by tribunal, there was also a crucial failure on behalf of the authorities to differentiate between nominal members of the Fasci and the elite who had enthusiastically taken up leadership roles on the Fasci Directive Councils and other committees. Instead, all those who had signed up to membership of the Fasci were classified by MI5 as ‘desperate characters’. At a War Cabinet meeting on 11 June, following Italy’s declaration of war on Britain, it was agreed that those identified by MI5 as ‘the most dangerous’ German and Italian internees would be deported to Canada.57 MI5 had also indicated that they could identify 330 ‘ “bad hats” ’ who would be specially marked within the list.58 However, ultimately, the security authorities managed to trace less than 750 of the names on their list.59 Within a few weeks, MI5’s incompetence was thoroughly exposed, in particular their characterisation of the 1500 ‘Fascio Italians’ as the equivalent of Category ‘A’ Germans and Austrian internees.60 Matters were brought to a head when, on 2 July 1940, the Arandora Star, transporting Italian, German and Austrian internees to Canada, was torpedoed with the loss of over 800 lives.61 A report by Lord Snell into the sinking criticised the fact that, for the Italian internees, membership of the Fascist Party was ‘the only evidence against many of these persons’.62 Moreover, Snell identified the central flaw of M15’s notorious list: ‘Apparently the view was taken that those who had been only nominal members of the Fascist Party, and those who were ardently Fascist, were equally dangerous. The result was that, among those deported, were a number of men whose sympathies were totally with this country.’ The report concluded that this ‘lack of discrimination’ could not be regarded as satisfactory and held that ‘the security authorities must bear some of the responsibility for the results which followed’.63 Snell also pointed out that none of the Italians on the list had any opportunity of appealing to a tribunal.64 In August 1940, Anderson admitted that there had been ‘no classification at all of the Italians’ and he announced the establishment of an Advisory Committee, chaired by Sir Percy Loraine, to consider the cases of Italians’ eligibility for release and to provide assistance ‘to determine on which side lie the sympathies and loyalties of individual Italian internees’.65

‘Collar the lot!’ In Enemies Within, which provides a comparative account of Italian internment in English-speaking countries during World War Two, Bruti ~96~

The historiographical legacy of internment Liberati repeats the common misapprehension that in Britain ‘all Italians were rounded up and either interned or deported, regardless of whether or not they were Fascists, anti-Fascists or apolitical’.66 A strong trend has developed which provides the misleading impression that ‘all’ Italians in Britain were interned.-A Foreign Office memorandum of June 1940 states that, ‘A few hours after the declaration of war [by Italy] the Prime Minister in person issued instructions to the Ministry of Home Security to “collar the lot” and the following morning informed the War Cabinet that he had given orders for a general internment of male Italians.’67 This phrase, ‘Collar the lot’, immortalised in the eponymous book by Peter and Leni Gillman, has been used exhaustively within historiography to imply that all Italian nationals shared the same fate.68 Pietro Zorza reiterates that Churchill, ‘li prese tutti senza distinzione, emanando quell’ instruzione brutale: “Collar the Lot!”’ (seized everyone without distinction, issuing the brutal instruction: ‘Collar the Lot!’).69 Colpi typifies this, stating, ‘Churchill didn’t bother about the complicated detail that the Cabinet had been considering for over a month, and previous government vacillation now coupled with panic produced the circumstances for this across- the-board interment.’70 Yet, a closer analysis of War Cabinet papers illustrates that, despite Churchill’s famous edict on 10 June, the next day the government proceeded to implement ‘the measures indicated in April to police stations’.71 At the War Cabinet meeting of 11 June, Anderson confirmed that ‘steps were being taken, in the first instance, to take into custody the desperate characters on the special list. As soon as this had been done, steps were being taken to take into custody all male Italians between the ages of 16 and 70 who had been resident in this country less than twenty years.’ It was recorded that the Prime Minister ‘agreed with the policy outlined, but thought that, as a general principle, we should endeavour to round up all enemy aliens as quickly as possible, so as to place them out of harm’s way’.72 Thus, in spite of the injunction to ‘Collar the lot!’, the two distinct groups previously identified by the War Cabinet were, in fact, the ones arrested (however flawed the thinking behind the policy may have been). As indicated above, MI5 could only locate 750 names from their list of ‘Fascio’ members, which suggests that over 3000 Italian nationals were interned under different criteria. Some would have fallen within the ‘less than twenty years’ residence’ category, although as the anti-Fascist campaigner, Sylvia Pankhurst, pointed out, this rule was completely ‘ill-conceived’ as it encompassed all those who had fled Italy since the establishment of Mussolini’s regime in 1922, including Jewish ~97~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' refugees.73 It also meant that a significant number of Italian-born men who had arrived in Scotland as infants in the final peak of 1920-21 immigration, and had been raised and educated in Scotland, were also interned. Anderson later insisted that ‘Italians who have been resident here for more than twenty years have been interned only if in the particular cases there was some specific reason for that course’.74 However, Sponza’s assessment that the rounding up of male Italians was carried out ‘with unequal zeal and some confusion throughout the country’ is probably a fair one.75 Colpi also notes that a Home Office commissioner sent to Canada to review internees’ cases concluded that the Scottish police had interpreted their instructions more vigorously than in England.76 There is also the possibility that the police utilised the Fascist publication, the Guida Generate, which helpfully contained a directory of the majority of Italians’ addresses in Britain.77 Fundamentally, however, whilst security records indicate that there was a plan to follow up the arrest of the ‘dangerous’ Italians by interning a further 8000 Italians, these arrangements were never put into effect.78 The crucial point, conceded by the Gillmans, is that the number of Italians interned was ‘fewer than some had predicted’.79 Simpson, referring to the general policy of mass internment of enemy aliens, also comments, ‘When Italy entered the war Anglo-Italians fell within the new policy, which was mercifully never fully implemented.’80 In effect, therefore, ‘the lot’ were not ‘collared’. The predominant idea within communal representations that ‘most’ Italians remained interned until after Italy’s Armistice in 1943 is also flawed. A substantial proportion of Italian internees were released within seventeen months of their initial arrest, corresponding with Cesarani and Kushner’s point that alien internment was, for the majority, ‘a short-lived experience’.81 In the wake of the Arandora Star disaster, policy and procedure for the release of internees began to be implemented with the publication of a White Paper in July 1940, in which eighteen categories for release were envisaged, applying to German and Austrian refugees. Two more White Papers followed in August and October 1940, adding new categories for release and extending their application to Italians.82 According to Sponza, Italians were mainly released under Category 3, which dealt with the ‘invalid and infirm’, Category 12, applying to those who were accepted into the Pioneer Corps and - above all — Category 22, ‘referring to those who had been living in Britain “since [their] early childhood, or for at least twenty years” and were friendly towards their adopted country’.83 In ~98~

The historiographical legacy of internment addition, Category 15 addressed those who had ‘British-born or naturalised sons serving in His Majesty’s Forces’ and was later extended to cover those who had already lost sons on active service.84 Referring to Italians who had belonged to the Fasci, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison acknowledged, ‘There was no conscious harm in many of these people and I have been able to liberate a good many of them.’85 By November 1941, the number of Italian internees being held had almost halved to 2421.86 However, in Rodgers’ influential Odyssey article, the author states, ‘Most of the Scottish Italians had returned home by 1944.’87 A Sunday Mail article on Italian internment similarly concludes, ‘By 1944... most were allowed to return to Scotland.’88 Even a scholarly overview of internment asserts, ‘While most Germans and Austrians had been released by the end of 1941, many Italians were interned until Italy’s surrender in 1943.’89 Significantly, the assertion that most Italians left internment camps in 1944 situates the releases firmly after the Italian surrender in September 1943 when Italy switched to ‘co-belligerent’ status. ‘Good Italians’, it is implied, would not have been released prior to this date. It is also worth noting that, by 1944, approximately 10,600 Italians, who were not interned or prisoners of war, had registered under the International Labour Force (Registration of Germans, Austrians and Italians) Order, 1941 which gave the government the power to direct foreigners to undertake civilian employment to help the war effort.90 The Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged that the majority of the registered Italians had been resident in Britain before the war ‘for a considerable number of years’.91 The silence surrounding the early releases amongst Italian internees and involvement in the International Labour Force highlights the inherent tensions within the community during the war which persist to the present day.92 It could be argued that the experiences of those who were willing to express loyalty to Britain have since been written out of the story because they do not fit in with the concept of the ‘good Italian’ which predominates within elite memory. The notion of 1944 releases reflects the experiences of pro-Fascist Italy internees rather than those who opted to be released in 1940-41 as ‘opponents of the Fascist system’.93 The oft-cited memoirs of an Italian priest who was interned on the Isle of Man, Gaetano Rossi, for example, promote the idea that the ‘largest number’ of the internees opted to remain interned: They were asked if they were prepared to collaborate with the British authorities. Some of them agreed, but they did not say so openly because such a declaration could have caused problems for them in the camp; many internees were not disposed to go against their own

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' country to help Britain. It was not a question of being Fascist or antiFascist, it was a question that we were Italians.94

The use of the imagery-laden word ‘collaborate’, most strongly associated with traitorous acts amongst the populations of the Nazioccupied countries of north-western Europe, is significant here, implying that support for the British war effort was an act of treachery.95 Stibbe points out that, during the First World War, the idea of civilian prisoners as war victims, Opfer, who were making a sacrifice for the common good gradually took root in Britain and Germany. In both cases it was claimed that civilian internees, by remaining interned, were performing an equivalent of military service by ‘holding out’ against enemy propaganda.96 Colpi appears to collude in the idea of the ‘good Italian’ when she defines the tribunals as providing the opportunity ‘to assess the willingness of the internees to disown Italy and help the British war effort’.97 Yet counter-readings are available. Writing in 1974, the journalist Bruno Sereni points out that the ‘more intelligent’ amongst the Italian internees ‘decided to separate the image of their beloved Motherland from that of the Government which ruled it’ and ‘realised that they had a moral obligation towards the country which had welcomed them as poor immigrants and had given them the opportunity to improve their status in life’. Overall, however, it is the notion of the long-term internee as the ‘good Italian’ which has been steadily absorbed and promoted within the existing literature.

A war on ethnicity? Contributors to Enemies Within set out to counter the widespread idea that the internment of Canada’s ethnic minorities during World War Two constituted a ‘war against ethnicity’, an argument which was successfully employed in Japanese redress campaigns seeking compensation for wartime internment and which has been adopted by other ethnic groups since. According to this view, the Canadian government caved in to wartime xenophobia by arbitrarily incarcerating immigrants on the basis of incomplete information hastily gathered together. However, Reg Whitaker and Gregory S. Kealey observe that, in Canada, the internments were more remarkable for their relative selectivity than for putting ‘ethnicity on trial’. They point out that only 847 ‘pro-Germans’ were interned out of a potential population base of more than half a million and conclude that internment policy was ‘striking not at the ethnic communities in general but at the ~100~

The historiographical legacy of internment ideologically suspect minority’.99 Similarly, the 600 Italians interned formed only a small proportion of the Italian Canadian population of 112,000100 and it could be argued that the internments were directed ‘solely against those who were genuinely compromised by. their-support for fascism’.101 However, 17,000 Italian Canadians were also placed on enemy-alien lists102 and Principe believes that it was this wholesale labelling of Italian Canadians as ‘enemy aliens’ which was ultimately more damaging to the group’s self-perception than the interning of a tiny fraction of its members.103 He accepts that Canada’s internment of Italian Fascists was ‘politically sound and necessary’ but argues that internment should also have been selective and aimed at Fascist leaders.104 Indeed, the implicit categorisation of the wider Italian community as the ‘enemy within’ is the tragedy at the heart of Italian internment across the globe. In the United States, which had the largest Italian population in the English-speaking world, only 257 Italians were interned out of a population of 600,000.105 Of these internees, Scherini points out that nearly all fell under the aegis of one or more ‘pro-Fascist’ groupings: members of the Federation of Italian War Veterans, those involved in Italian-language media and Italian- language school instructors.106 However, regulations also required the 600,000 Italian ‘resident aliens’ to carry photo-identity cards and their freedom of movement was restricted. Furthermore, in February 1942, for reasons of ‘military necessity’, approximately 10,000 Italians along the west coast were forced to relocate and were prohibited residence and work in, or travel to, specified restricted zones.107 The devastating impact of this relocation has been well documented by historians such as Lawrence DiStasi and Stephen Fox.108 However, four months later, the US government reversed its decision and permitted Italian aliens to return to their homes and jobs109 and, in October 1942, Italians were removed from the category of enemy aliens. It was acknowledged that there had been ‘an unprecedented expression of loyalty’ to the United States from within the Italian community.110 In her study of the Sicilian fishing community in California, for example, Carol Lynn McKibben shows how Sicilians both utilised constructions of whiteness to position themselves favourably in comparison to the Japanese and engaged in public displays of loyalty, such as making large financial contributions to the war effort or sending telegrams to Roosevelt declaring, ‘We are all behind you!’111 There was also an acknowledgement on the part of the US government of the large numbers of Italian Americans enlisted in the armed forces, the potentially damaging impact of relocation on war production and an awareness of second-generation Italians as a powerful ~101~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' post-war electoral constituency.112 In stark contrast, the mass incarceration of the Japanese community in the United States was the culmination of historical traditions of anti-Asian prejudice; in Reed Ueda’s opinion, ‘the most radical expression of the legal and ideological tendencies to exclude Asians from American citizenship’.113 On signing Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942, Roosevelt had authorised the detention of all those of Japanese descent on the west coast and their evacuation to internment camps in northern California, Arizona and elsewhere. As a result, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned in 1942, two-thirds of whom were American-born. The Canadian government followed this example and in the summer of 1942 22,000 Japanese Canadians living along the Pacific coast were interned.114 Historically, Asians in America were categorised as ‘ineligible for citizenship’ and, as such, could not become naturalised. In California, Japanese immigrants (Issei) were not allowed to own their own land, to become citizens or to marry white Americans, although their children born in the United States were citizens by birth (Nisei).115 During the war, American popular culture racialised the Japanese enemy as subhuman, depicting them in animalistic forms, as monkeys, gorillas, rats, cockroaches and other vermin116 or as ‘little men ... collectively primitive, childish, and mad’.117 As Christina S. Jarvis notes, this ‘intense, racially inscribed hatred’ of the Japanese enemy contributed to the divergent treatment of Italian, German and Japanese resident aliens in the US during the war.118 For example, in 1942 the Attorney General of California, Earl Warren, argued that the loyalty of Germans and Italians could be ascertained but because of the alien character of the Japanese race no loyalty tests administered to them could be reliable. Warren cautioned, ‘we believe that we can, in dealing with the Germans and Italians, arrive at some fairly sound conclusions because of our knowledge of the way they live in the community and have lived for many years. But when we deal with the Japanese we are in an entirely different field and we cannot form any opinion.’119 Fundamentally, as Garner notes, immigrant groups such as the Italians and Irish in America were always ‘salvageable for whiteness’ in a way that black and Asian Americans were not.120 In Australia, the number of Italian migrants interned reached a wartime maximum of 4727, out of 14,904 registered Italian aliens,121 figures which most closely resemble the British position. Indeed, Cresciani highlights how the federal government in Australia repeatedly asked Britain for information in order to draft its own internment regulations, since it was considered desirable to have a uniform ~102~

The historiographical legacy of internment legislation throughout the Empire. All Allied countries therefore favoured the general idea of ‘limited and selective’ internment of those Italians who, whether naturalised or not, were considered to represent a security risk.122 Cresciani comments that the political and military establishment in Australia knew so little about the Italians that almost every decision they made was based on ‘generalities’ rather than specific information or indisputable evidence. Furthermore, in the absence of any evidence, the adoption of measures aimed at preventing possible acts of sabotage and espionage became of paramount importance to the security authorities.123 The treatment of German and Italian ‘aliens’ in Australia was again in stark contrast to the Japanese national population, who were interned at a rate of ninety- eight per cent, with more than 1100 people incarcerated. All Japanese women were interned, a policy that did not apply to other alien women, and whereas Germans and Italians who had resided in Australia for twenty years or more were not subject to internment, this rule did not apply to the Japanese. Peta Stephenson concludes that the wholesale internment of Japanese immigrants was, again, racially motivated: ‘it was common knowledge within white Australia that one’s “Japaneseness” ruled out any possibility of loyalty or allegiance to Australia.’124 The British government interned 114 Japanese men, who constituted fewer than ten per cent of the total Japanese population and consisted primarily of government officials, journalists, seamen and persons against whom MI5 stated they had a case.125 Most were released within a year but, as with the German population in the First World War, wartime events were directly responsible for the ‘dissolution’ of the Japanese community in Britain, with many members of the Japanese community opting to leave Britain or being repatriated following internment.126

‘They were Italians and proud of being so’ – internment amongst British-born Italians Within the Italian population in Britain, the younger men who were interned were made up of two key groups: those born in Italy and raised from infanthood in Britain, who were interned as Italian nationals, and those born in Britain who were arrested under Defence Regulation 18B which allowed for the detention of those believed to be ‘of hostile origin or associations’.127 As a result of this order, 600 British-born or naturalised Italians were detained; a third of whom were from Scotland.128 As discussed in chapter two, many second-generation ~103~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Italians were detained as a result of their childhood involvement in the Balilla and their Fasci-subsidised trips to Italy. Thus, in August 1940, the Home Defence (Security) Executive took a policy decision to release, without a hearing, all British Italian detainees aged under eighteen, of whom there were sixty- seven.129 Significantly, within published oral accounts of the wartime experiences of Edinburgh Italians, the voices which predominate are those of the internees who formed a small, and unrepresentative, proportion of second-generation Italians.130 One of my interviewees, Joseph Pia, who was born in Edinburgh in 1910 and interned in June 1940, has been repeatedly interviewed about his wartime experiences.131 Accounts by Dominic Crolla and Toni Capaldi of their internment in Canada have also been published.132 A further example is the obituary of Victor Crolla, the son of the Edinburgh Fascio Secretary, which mentions the internment of Victor and his brother Dominic in the following way: ‘Like thousands of other UK-born men of Italian descent, Dominic was sent to Canada while Victor was dispatched to camp on the Isle of Man.’133 Internment amongst this second generation was atypical, numbering around 200 detainees in Scotland overall, but within public representations is consistently presented as the norm. Those arrested in Scotland were initially detained in Barlinnie and Saughton prisons and by August 1940, 137 British Italians from Scotland were awaiting appeal against their original detention to the Scottish Advisory Committee (Italian), headed by J. L. Clyde KC.134 At this point in the detention process, some opted to be released by joining the Pioneer Corps whilst others were transferred to internment camps on the Isle of Man. However, the fact that different choices were available to this cohort of second-generation detainees is largely neglected within existing accounts of Italian internment. Simpson believes that probably after December 1940 ‘MI5 did not oppose the release of many Anglo- Italians’, highlighting the extent to which those who were interned until 1943 and beyond chose to remain interned.135 Indeed, in October 1944 one intelligence officer commented: ‘The Anglo-Italian section are all young and do not wish for release purely because they wish to avoid helping the war effort. In my opinion they would be no danger at large.’136 Rossi’s memoir exposes the motivations of the core of British-born Italians who remained in internment until 1945: ‘The largest number of those who were left behind were young people who could not entertain the idea of collaborating with the British authorities. It was not simply a question of them being anti-British; many of them were born and brought up in Britain, but they knew only too well (it had happened before) that the ~104~

The historiographical legacy of internment occasion might come when they would have to fight people of their own land.’137 In 1945, Herbert Morrison stated that of the forty-five British subjects still detained in the Isle of Man, ‘many of them at their own request have for a long time been accommodated in the camps set apart for aliens of enemy nationality’.138 Thus, whilst the actions of the British government no doubt contributed to the sense of disaffection amongst this cohort of second-generation internees, it could also be argued that, from the outset, a minority identified with Italy rather than their country of birth. Indeed, even after Italy switched to co-belligerent status in 1943, those who considered this a dishonourable act opted to remain interned. Empathetic accounts of internment serve to camouflage ‘the divided personal, political, and national loyalties’ expressed by different members of the Italian community both during the war and earlier.139 In his autobiography, businessman Charles Forte, born in Italy in 1908 and raised in Scotland from the age of five, writes of his internment, ‘Although close members of my family were still living in Italy, I knew perfectly well whom I wanted to win the war.’140 Yet within texts addressing Italian internment, this unambiguous assertion of pro-British feeling is quite rare. An Italian refugee, Livio Zeno-Zencovich, who was released from internment in Canada in 1941, claimed that amongst his fellow internees, only 30 were openly pro-British. The remaining 370 were in his opinion ‘either Fascist or silent sympathisers with them’.141 In his ‘Brief Report’, Zeno-Zencovich writes: ‘It is hard to say how painful an impression it produced to hear these people cursing Britain and everything British in that very language they had learnt in a country which had offered them hospitality, opportunity to earn and a standard of life absolutely unknown in their poor regions of Italy they or their fathers have left to seek fortune abroad ... Only a few, when questioned about their hatred against the only country they had ever known answered that “they felt to be Italians”’ 142 This reflects a similar stance adopted by around 500 German and Austrian women held in Rushen camp on the Isle of Man, who acknowledged allegiance to the German government and who remained in internment throughout the greater part of the war. Collectively termed ‘Reichstreue’, they included members of the resident German community in Britain who defined themselves as German rather than British, though not necessarily as National Socialists.143 The existence of a similar expression of pro-Italian sentiment amongst second-generation internees is found in the memoirs of Rossi. Referring to internees who had either arrived in Britain after 1924 or were the children of first-generation immigrants, he writes, ‘They were conscious of another thing, they realised that they had an identity, and therefore ~105~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' they were not ashamed to be known as “Italians”. They were no longer simply the “Tallies” or “Dagos” of the past years, now they were Italians and proud of being so.’144 In his book, Rossi humorously recounts a series of acts of defiance by his fellow internees. These include a concert in the main hall of the Palace Camp where ‘At the end of it the British officer in charge had a brilliant idea of asking the Italian group to play “God save the King”; the members of the group looked at each other and at once they began playing “Giovinezza” (one of the Fascist songs) and those present began to sing the words. There was a moment of over-reaction, the officer shouted: “Fascists,” and some soldiers charged and it finished up with some chairs flying around.’145 He also mentions a threatened assault on an internee who drew a caricature of Mussolini because ‘Some of the internees interpreted it as an expression of disloyalty towards Italy’ and finally he refers to one ‘quick-witted’ internee who defaced the sign on a farmer’s delivery van to read “‘Farm - pro - duce” (the farm of the Duce)’.146 However, these acts of resistance may not be as innocent as Rossi appears to suggest. Canadian historian Gabriele Scardellato has analysed the iconography and images surrounding the internment of Italians in Canada, including photographic images of internees displaying Fascist slogans such as 'Me ne frego’ (What do I care?). Scardellato argues that rather than all being the ‘apolitical victims’ promoted in Italian Canadian redress campaigns, ‘The evidence of Fascist mottos and other paraphernalia’ in the camps ‘suggests that some of the internees were less than naive in their embrace and support of the political ideology of the Fascist homeland.’147 Rossi also presents the forming of the ‘Banda Nera’ (Black Gang) group in the Isle of Man by British-born internee Renzo Serafini and Italian-born Doddoli as expressing ‘a feeling of loyalty to Italy’: ‘To be a member of the band or not was not a sign of any special feeling except that we were Italians and we wanted to be acknowledged and respected as Italians, who had feelings for their land.’148 Sponza disputes this interpretation, baldly stating that Serafini was ‘the leader of the “Fascist” group at Metropole Camp’.149 Thus, Rossi’s memoirs tend to depict a particular strand of experience and belief. This rather narrow interpretation is compounded by the fact that information on the loyalties of second-generation Italians as a whole is often generalised from the limited information available on two dual national internees, Lorenzo Ogni and Nicodemo Vanucci, both of whom appear to have been unusually explicit in their support for Fascist Italy. They were detained in August 1942 after attempting to escape to Nazioccupied France from Folkestone in an open boat and remained interned until November 1944 and April 1945 respectively. Although born in ~106~

The historiographical legacy of internment Paisley in 1922, Ogni had spent the first sixteen years of his life in Italy and his family were living in Italy. According to intelligence reports, in his correspondence from August" 1943 onwards, he asserts his allegiance to Mussolini, ‘the true Condottiere’, and signs his letters ‘Saluti fascisti’.150 It was reported that Vannucci, born in County Down in 1924, had taken to wearing the badge of the Unione Nazionale Protezione Antiaerea, the Italian Air Raid Precautions organisation, and was considered ‘fanatically pro-Hitler, pro-Mussolini and anti-British in sentiment’.151 Like Ogni and Vanucci, one of my internee respondents, Renzo Serafini, had spent a considerable amount of his youth in Italy and identified strongly with Italy. Although born in Hawick in 1915, Serafini had renounced his British nationality two years before the war. During our interview he proudly showed me his ‘honorary tessera’, an Italian Fascist Party membership card, which he had received during a boxing tournament in Italy in 1932. Interned on the Isle of Man in 1940, he grew a beard as a gesture of defiance and ‘didn’t shave until Italy capitulated’. He was candid about his internment, stating, ‘I felt that I should have been in there’ and he chose to remain interned until 1945.152 Overall, the wartime narratives of second-generation Italian internees foreground positive memories, focusing on friendships forged, sporting activities and the opportunities for educational advancement, so that, as Fortier points out, internment camps are primarily remembered ‘as unique terrains of encounter between diverse sections of the Italian population’.153 Fortier cites the example of one Isle of Man internee who viewed the period of internment as rather comfortable: “‘we had everything we wanted: sports grounds, canteen, swimming, walks, pictures once a week at the local cinema.’”154 This emphasis was also present in the narratives of the two second-generation internees I interviewed.155 Indeed, as Stibbe points out, one of the central paradoxes of internment amongst the younger generation was that ‘although they typically spent very long periods in captivity... these men of military age were “freed” from the threat of a violent and painful death on the battlefield’.156

Gendering internment In sharp contrast to the willingness of some male Italian Scottish internees to take centre-stage in later life, there is a conspicuous silence surrounding the internment of Italian women in Scotland, including a ~107~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' handful of second-generation women detained under Defence Regulation 18B. Italian Canadian historians make the astute comment that in relation to contemporary redress campaigns, ‘Given the potential emotional appeal of their stories, the lack of attention to the women detained or interned is surprising’.157 Whilst dominant discourse emphasises internment as a male experience, at least seventeen Italian women in Britain were interned.158 It would seem that for decades silence has been adopted by many within the community as a form of ‘protective cover’, especially amongst this small group of women for whom imprisonment was a source of deep embarrassment.159 The first Fascio Femminile (FF) was founded in Italy in 1920 and by 1932 the new PNF regulations stipulated that one should exist in every single Fascio.160 As Willson has shown, the FF in Italy were assigned an essentially subordinate position to the male organisation, with women confined to support roles, welfare and propaganda.161 Luigi Pautasso’s research on the FF in Toronto confirms that the male section administratively controlled the activities of the women’s section, with the latter primarily involved in fund-raising activities.162 Even MI5’s report on the women’s section of the London Fascio acknowledges that its activities appeared to be ‘less strictly political than those of the men’, limited to hospital visiting.163 The Guida Generate records that the women’s section of the Edinburgh Fascio had sixty-two members. The FF was headed by Yolanda Coppola, who was assisted by a committee comprising Ersilia Mancini, Carmela Coppola, Pasqua Capaldi and Elvira Scappaticcio.164 In oral testimonies, the activities most commonly ascribed to the women’s section of the Edinburgh Fascio were handicraft skills such as sewing and knitting; in Isabella di Lena’s words, it was ‘where ladies met just to do their knitting, their embroidery and have a blether’.165 However, as a result of their Fasci involvement, these women were arrested and detained as part of the police round-up in June 1940. In his Saughton Prison diary, held at the National Library Scotland, 18B detainee Benedetto Jannetta records on 24 September 1940: ‘We learn that a lady has been detained, seemingly she was the head of the women fascists.’166 Former internee, Pia mentions three Edinburgh women who were detained in Saughton corresponding closely to those listed as committee members of the women’s section of the Edinburgh Fascio.167 He also mentions two married Italian women who were interned ‘with their husbands’ on the Isle of Man,168 which corresponds with Carmela Coppola and Pasqua Capaldi. According to Home Office files, Carmela Coppola, an Italian national aged forty-five at time of arrest, was interned on the Isle of Man. Listed as ‘housewife’ from Edinburgh, it appears that she was released in ~108~

The historiographical legacy of internment November 1943.169 In a published interview, internee Toni Capaldi mentions that his mother was first detained in Saughton and then interned on the Isle of Man; she is likely to be Pasqua Capaldi.170- Yet within historiography there is a complete silence over women’s involvement in Fasci femminili and the related detention of first- and second-generation Italian women. In contrast to the high-profile British Union of Fascists female detainees, personified by the controversial figure of Diana Mosley, there has been no attention paid to British Italian female detainees.171 Of the three 18B detainees from Edinburgh it is only possible to find information about the head of the Ladies Committee, Yolanda Coppola, and this is via handwritten notes within the file on another female detainee. It appears that Coppola remained imprisoned in Saughton until at least 1943, correspondence within government files suggesting that a key factor concerning her release was Italy’s surrender and transition to ‘co-belligerent’ status.172 Gilda Camillo, a detainee from Glasgow whose file is available, was accused of inciting dual nationals to evade military service due to her ‘pro-Italian’ sympathies (see chapter five).173 In July 1943, Camillo’s file records that the Scottish Division of the Advisory Committee (Italian) has refused to re-examine the case of Coppola, ‘a much less strong case for detention’.174 However, a later minute in September 1943, when Italy was about to surrender, states that: On the 7 August, Mr J L Clyde wrote in reply to Sir Frank Newsam’s letter of 4 August in the case of Yolanda Maria Coppola... ‘I may say, however, that the events of the last week or two have very materially altered the situation, and you may take it that my Committee’s attitude is now very considerably modified. Under present conditions we should not resist her release.’175

I was unable to interview any of the surviving members of the Edinburgh Fascio Ladies Committee. The sense of shamed silence which surrounds the detention of Italian Scottish women is suggested by Pia’s narrative when addressing the imprisonment of his sister’s friend, Ercilia Mancini (sic): ‘I remember my sister was walking along Princes Street once long afterwards with Ercilia and a woman passing said, “Oh, hallo, Ercilia”. And Ercilia says, “Oh, the shame, the disgust! She was a prostitute in prison. Oh, to think of it!” Well, quite a few of the prostitutes knew Ercilia, having seen her in prison, you see. But Ercilia was mortified, to think of a prostitute recognising her in the street.’176 ~109~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Conclusion From the end of the nineteenth century onwards there was a willingness to identify and target alien populations as the ‘enemy within’, potential traitors, spies or saboteurs. This, linked with the tendency of modem nation states to racialise different immigrant groups, facilitated the internment of ‘enemy’ civilians at times of conflict. However, when addressing the global phenomenon of internment there is a clear need within historical analysis to differentiate between countries and between the experiences of different ethnic groups. In North America and Australia, for example, the Japanese were imprisoned collectively on the basis of their race.177 Furthermore, in Britain the internment of German and Austrian Jewish refugees was crass, misguided and thoughtless. However, the case of Italian internment in Englishspeaking countries was complicated by other factors, including interwar support for Fascism amongst sections of the Italian diaspora. In Britain, it is clear that hundreds of Italian nationals were wrongly interned and that many of those who were denied the opportunity of a tribunal to assess their loyalties lost their lives on the Arandora Star. Overall, therefore, there needs to be a more ‘textured’ analysis of wartime Italian internment178 which also explores difference based on the grounds of generation and gender. By analysing popular representations of the war, this chapter has highlighted the ways in which misleading and distorted accounts of Italian internment in Britain have predominated within communal discourse. Firstly, the almost ritualistic use of the term ‘Collar the lot!’ provides the erroneous impression that all Italians shared the same fate. Secondly, the tendency to suggest that Italian internees were not released until after the 1943 Italian Armistice means that the stance of the pro- Fascist Italy internees - the ‘good Italians’ - has been generalised to encompass all internees. The recovery of oral testimony is crucial in introducing fresh perspectives which can contest and challenge existing accounts. In relation to Australia, Richard Bosworth acknowledges that the internment policy pursued by government officials was frequently absurd and tyrannous: ‘It was not, however, beyond the bounds of all reason.’179

Notes 1 2

Hansard, vol. 400, col. 1064, 26 May 1944. Wilkin, ‘Origins and destinations’, p. 54. The National Archives holds a

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3

4

5 6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20

record card index of all those interned. As some of the cards are incomplete, it isimpossible to ascertain where every internee listed was arrested. My analysis suggests that 85 Italians were arrested in Edinburgh, 381 in Glasgow, 38 from Fife and 570 from other parts of Scotland. NA, HO, 396/284-294 List of Italians interned in UK 1939. See the case of Falaschi of Dundee in Italiani in Scozia, 11 (1986), p. 2. Stibbe refers to the phenomenon of ‘barbed-wire-disease’ amongst those interned for long periods of time. ‘Civilian internment and civilian internees in Europe, 1914-20’, Immigrants & Minorities, 26:1/2 (2008), 57. Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens; Gillman, ‘Collar the Lot!’; F. Lafitte, The Internment of Aliens (London: Libris, 1988); Stent, a Bespattered Page?; Kochan, Britain’s Internees; R. Dove (ed.), Totally UnEnglish? Britain’s Internment of‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 95-8. Also Colpi, Italian Factor, pp. 99-105. Bosworth and Ugolini (eds), War, Internment and Mass Migration; Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within; Fox, Uncivil Liberties. K. Itoh, The Japanese Community in Pre-War Britain: From Integration to Disintegration (London: Routledge, 2001); T. Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Anti-Semitism in British Society During the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989); P. Panayi, The Enemy in our Midst. Germans in Britain during the First World War (Oxford: Berg, 1991). F. Iacovetta and R. Perin, ‘Introduction. Italians and Wartime Internment: Comparative Perspectives on Public Policy, Historical Memory, and Daily Life’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 6. For more on redress campaigns, see chapter eight. Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 5. NA, HO, 213/1662, Memorandum, 18 February 1942. Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment and civilian internees in Europe, 1914-20’, 55. T. C. Dowling, World War 1, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005), pp. 259-60. M. Stibbe, British Civilian Internees in Germany. The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 184. Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment’, p. 54. Ibid., p. 51. See Panayi, Enemy in Our Midst. Ibid., p. 97. P. Panayi, ‘An intolerant act by an intolerant society, the internment of Germans in Britain during the First World War’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 71. Ibid., pp. 55-6. Dove, Totally Un-English, pp. 11-12. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, pp. 112-13; G. Schaffer, ‘Re-thinking the history of blame: Britain and minorities during the Second World War’, National Identities, 8:4 (2006), 401-20.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Stent, Bespattered Page?, pp. 23-9. Ibid., pp. 30-42. Ibid., p. 37. See G. Schaffer and W. Ugolini, ‘Victims or enemies? Italians, refugee Jews and the reworking of internment narratives in postwar Britain’, in M. Riera and G. Schaffer (eds), The Lasting War. Society and Identity in Britain, France and Germany after 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 207-25. Lafitte, Internment of Aliens, p. 27. D. Cesarani and T. Kushner, ‘Alien internment in Britain during the twentieth century: an introduction’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 13. NA, KV, 4/337, Draft of memorandum on aliens, p. 1. Hansard, vol. 364, col. 1543, 22 August 1940; Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 5. Germany interned 1800 British civilians when the war broke out. A further 6000 were interned in occupied France from December 1940 but were mostly exchanged in 1943-44. In the Far East 130,000 British, Dutch, French and American civilians, including 41,895 women and 40,260 children, were held in camps in areas under Japanese military control. See Stibbe, British Civilian Internees, p. 188. Italy operated two types of internment camps: one for ‘the purposes of protection’, which included non-Italian Jews, and those for ‘the purpose of repression’, which held Slovenes, Croatians, Montenegrins, Albanians and Greeks. In the latter case, the internment of civilians was a normal part of the Italian fight against Yugoslav partisans whereby civilians were perceived as potential ‘terrorists’. By 1943 50,000 civilians were interned in Italian camps. See Walston, ‘History and memory of the Italian concentration camps’, pp. 176- 80. Schaffer and Ugolini, ‘Victims or enemies?’, p. 210. Schaffer, Racial Science, p. 81. Schaffer and Ugolini, ‘Victims or enemies?’, p. 212. NA, FO, 371/25192/110. Cited in L. Sponza, ‘The British government and the internment of Italians’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 142. Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 8. Cresciani, ‘The bogey of the Italian fifth column’, pp. 15-16. Hansard, vol. 116, col. 416, 23 May 1940, Viscount Elibank Hansard, vol. 361, col. 650, 30 May 1940, Mr Thurtle and Major Sir Jocelyn Lucas. Hansard, vol. 372, cols. 307-8, 12 June 1941, Earl Winterton. Hansard, vol. 369, col. 1132, 11 March 1941. Hansard, vol. 370, col. 311, 20 March 1941. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, p. 33. F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Security and Counter-intelligence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 14.

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44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

NA, KV, 4/290, Memorandum on the possibilities of sabotage by the organisations set up in British countries by the totalitarian governments of Germany and Italy’, August 1936. NA, KV, 4/291, Draft circular from Kell to Chief Constables, September 1938. The cards had been sent by January 1939. See KV, 4/292, Circular from Kell to Chief Constables, 27 January 1939. H. Hopkins, ‘Italians in every country’, Edinburgh Evening News (8 May 1940), p. 4. ‘Items of war interest from far and near’, The War Illustrated (27 September 1940), p. iii. Daily Mirror (27 April 1940) cited in Gillman, Collar the Lot!, pp. 149- 50. W. Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 696. G. Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: Volume 2 (London: Penguin, 1970), p. 394. R. Douglas, Night Song of the Last Tram: A Glasgow Childhood (London: Hodder, 2005), p. 14. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 95. NA, FO, 371/25193, Extract from War Cabinet conclusions, 29 May 1940. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 96. Ibid., pp. 99-100. Pennacchio, ‘Exporting Fascism’, p. 66. NA, FO, 371/25193, Extract from War Cabinet conclusions, 30 May 1940. Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 193. Twelve out of a recorded forty-three anti-Fascists were interned. It has been argued that MI5 pursued Italian ‘subversives’ indicated to them by Mussolini’s secret service. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 101-2. NA, FO, 371/25193, Extract from War Cabinet conclusions, 11 June 1940. NA, KV, 4/337, Minutes of ‘Conference on move of Prisoners of War and Internees to Canada held at the War Office’, 17 June 1940. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 181. NA, KV, 4/337, Summary of the Arandora Star Inquiry conducted by Lord Snell, 1940, p. 4. D. Williams, Wartime Disasters at Sea (Yeovil: Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1997), p. 107. NA, KV, 4/337, Summary of the Arandora Star Inquiry, p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 3. Hansard, vol. 364, col. 1555, 22 August 1940. Bruti Liberati, ‘The internment of Italian Canadians’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 83. NA, FO, 371/25193, Disposal of Italians on the outbreak of war, 22 June 1940. See also Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 98. Gillman, Collar the Lot! Zorza, Arandora Star, p. 14.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

Colpi, Italian Factor, pp. 104-5. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 95-7. NA, FO, 371/25193, Extract from War Cabinet conclusions, 11 June 1940. ‘Letters to the Editor’, Guardian (20 July 1940), p. 4. Hansard, vol. 365, col. 184, 19 September 1940. Sponza, ‘British Government’, p. 127. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 124. Colpi, ‘The impact of the Second World War on the British Italian community’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 171. NA, KV, 4/337, Draft of memorandum on aliens, p. 2. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 156. Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 163. Cesarani and Kushner, ‘Alien internment in Britain’, p. 5. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 113. Ibid., p. 153. Hansard, vol. 364, col. 1550, 22 August 1940. Hansard, vol. 370, col. 495, 25 March 1941. Hansard, vol. 374, cols. 2072-3, 11 November 1941. Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozia’, p. 133. T. Steel, ‘“Our ain folk”. The story of Scotland’, Sunday Mail, 4:44(1988), 1231. Dove, Totally Un-English, p. 14. Hansard, vol. 374, col. 861, 7 October 1941. Hansard, vol. 396, cols. 342-3, 20 January 1944. See Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 126. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 113. Rossi, Memories, p. 59. Rossi was bom in Palestrina in 1916, arrived in Scotland in 1937 and was ordained in 1939. S. G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), pp. 400-23. Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment’, p. 68. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 126. B. Sereni, They Took the Low Road, A Brief History of the Emigration of the Barghigiani to Scotland (Glasgow: Casa d’ltalia, 1974), pp. 37-8. R. Whitaker and G. S. Kealey, ‘ “A war on ethnicity?” The RCMP and internment’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 137. Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 11. North American population figures appear to include those of Italian origin as well as Italian nationals. Liberati, ‘The internment of Italian Canadians’, p. 87. Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 386. Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 4. Principe, ‘A tangled knot’, pp. 36-7. L. Distasi, Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2001), pp. 3; 304.

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The historiographical legacy of internment 106 R. D. Scherini, ‘When Italian Americans were “enemy aliens” ’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, pp. 281-2. 107 Ibid., p. 280. 108 DiStasi, Storia Segreta; Fox, Uncivil Liberties. 109 Fox, Uncivil Liberties, p. xiii. 110 Ibid., p. 148. 111 C. L. McKibben, Beyond Cannery Row. Sicilian Women, Immigration, and Community in Monterey, California 1915-99 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006), pp. 87-8. 112 Fox, Uncivil Liberties, pp. 153; 259-60. 113 Ueda, ‘Changing path to citizenship’, p. 213. 114 M. Paris, ‘“What happened was wrong”: Come See theParadise and the Japanese-American experience in the Second World War’, in Paris (ed.), Repicturing the Second World War, p. 108. 115 Ibid., p. 107. 116 Jarvis, Male Body at War, p. 128. 117 J. W. Dower, ‘Race, language, and war in two cultures: World War II in Asia’, in Erenberg and Hirsch (eds), The War in American Culture, p. 173. 118 Jarvis, Male Body at War, p. 140. 119 Cited in Ueda, ‘Changing path to citizenship’, p. 207. 120 Garner, Whiteness, pp. 66-7. 121 Cresciani, Italians in Australia, p. 105. 122 Ibid., p. 98. 123 Cresciani, ‘The bogey of the Italian fifth column’, pp. 15-16. 124 P. Stephenson, The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia’s Indigenous-Asian Story (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), p. 114. 125 Itoh, The Japanese Community, p. 185. 126 Ibid., p. 5. Itoh argues that the small Japanese community in Britain had always been distinct from other ethnic groups in Britain in that it was largely composed of an ‘elite’ who adopted a cosmopolitan lifestyle, mixed socially with their English counterparts and were well integrated in the British economy through their international business activities. The Japanese Community, p. 8. 127 Cited in Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 65. 128 Ibid., p. 194. 129 Ibid., pp. 287-8. 130 ‘Joseph Pia’, in MacDougall, Voices from War, pp. 294-337; ‘Collar the Lot!’ in S. Robertson and L. Wilson, Scotland’s War (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1995), pp. 45-51; Rodgers, ‘Italiani in Scozia’, pp. 127-35. 131 See S. Pia, ‘The shame of “Bella Scozia”’, Scotsman, S2 (9 June 2001). 132 ‘Dominic Crolla’, in MacDougall, Voices from War, pp. 291-3; ‘Toni: “The trouble was we were behind barbed wire” ’, in T. Edensor and M. Kelly (eds), Moving Worlds: Personal Recollections of Twenty One Immigrants to Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1989), pp. 187-97. Both men were bom in Italy and raised from infanthood in Scotland.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 133 J. Patience, ‘Victor Crolla obituary’, The Herald (2 December 2005), http:// www.theherald.co.uk/features/51813-print.shtml, accessed 4 December 2005. 134 Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 264. 135 Ibid., p. 287. 136 NA, HO, 45/25761, OGNI: Lorenzo, review of case, 18 October 1944. 137 Rossi, Memories, p. 64. 138 Hansard, vol. 408, col. 2208, 8 March 1945. 139 Morgan, Fall of Mussolini, p. 5. 140 C. Forte, Forte. The Autobiography of Charles Forte (London: Pan Books, 1997), p. 43. 141 Sponza, ‘British government’, p. 139. 142 Ibid., p. 141. 143 C. Brinson, ‘ “Loyal to the Reich”: National Socialists and others in the Rusheti women’s internment camp’ in Dove (ed.), Totally Un-English, p. 101. This group of women were repatriated at the end of the war in contrast to Italian internees who, having asserted their pro-Italianness throughout the conflict, remained in Britain after the war. 144 Rossi, Memories, p. 9. 145 Ibid., p. 58. 146 Ibid., p. 60. On 1 November 1940, the cartoonist Aldo Cosomati was beaten up by two ‘Fascist’ internees when one of his anti-Mussolini cartoons was re-published in the English press. The two assailants were sentenced to twenty- one days’ detention. Guardian (29 November 1940), p. 7. On 11 June 1941, during anniversary ‘celebrations’ of Italy’s entry into the war, Antonio Castellini was assaulted by Italian Fascists ‘on account of his pro-British sympathies’. Hansard, vol. 372, col. 804, 19 June 1941. 147 G. Scardellato, ‘Images of internment’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 351. 148 Rossi, Memories, pp. 59-60. 149 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 128. 150 NA, HO, 45/25761, OGNI: Lorenzo, confidential report to Major Woolf, 25 August 1944. 151 NA, HO, 45/25760, VANUCCI: Nicodemo, confidential report to Major Woolf, 15 July 1944. 152 SA 1998.35, Renzo Serafini, 7 August 1998. 153 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 55; Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 126-8. 154 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 56. 155 The narrative of the third internee interviewed, who was first-generation Italian, older and married, was far less positive, emphasising his loss of liberty. 156 Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment’, p. 57. 157 Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 389. 158 Hansard, vol. 400, col. 1064, 26 May 1944.

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The historiographical legacy of internment 159 L. Distasi, Una Storia Segreta website. Preface http://www.io.com/~segreta/ about/preface.html, accessed 10 February 2000, p. 4. 160 Willson, Peasant Women, pp. 21-2. 161 Ibid., p. 21. 162 L. Pautasso, ‘La donna Italiana durante il periodo Fascista in Toronto, 193040’, in C. B. Boyd, R. F. Harney and L. F. Tomasi (eds), The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America, Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Conference of the American Italian Historical Association, (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1978), p. 182. 163 NA, HO, 144/21079, Note on the organisation and activities of the Italian Fascist Party, 16 April 1936, p. 14. 164 Guida Generate, p. 445. 165 SA1998.61, Isabella di Lena. 166 NLS, Acc. No. 12029/3.3, Diary of Benedetto Jannetta. 167 MacDougall, Voices from War, p. 310. Pia refers to Coppola, Scappatacci and Mancini. 168 Ibid., p. 314. 169 NA, HO, 396/213-15, Italian internees released in UK. Women. 170 Edensor and Kelly, Moving Worlds, p. 193. 171 See J. V. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism. Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003). 172 NA, HO, 45/25759, CAMILLO: Gilda. Also Simpson, In the Highest Degree, p. 247. 173 NA, HO, 45/25759, Detention order, 10 April 1942, p. 5. 174 Ibid., Handwritten note on minutes, 30 July 1943. 175 Ibid., Minute by de la Cour, 7 September 1943. 176 MacDougall, Voices from War, p. 314. 177 R. Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993), p. 27. 178 R. Bosworth, ‘Internment of Italians in Australia’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 230. 179 Ibid., p. 236.

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Chapter Four ‘They’re going to kill us!’: restrictions, riots and relocation

This chapter addresses the traumatic events of June 1940; the police arrests, the anti-Italian riots and enforced relocation, which served to dramatically reinforce the outsider status of Italian families in Scodand. Using Edinburgh as a case study and drawing on personal testimonies, autobiographies and contemporary police reports, this chapter challenges the current literature which downplays the xenophobic aspects of the riots and dismisses them as an outburst of hooliganism. Instead, it reveals how it was often friends, customers and neighbours who attacked the Italians’ shops and businesses, fundamentally undermining their sense of belonging within the wider community. Historians such as Holmes, Kushner and Panayi have been instrumental in demonstrating how hostility towards immigrant groups ‘sleeps lightly’ ready to be ignited at a time of war.1 The outbreak of war can bring into focus the often vulnerable position of ethnic minorities in Britain with the unification of the majority under patriotism making the minority group even more vulnerable to attacks on nationalistic grounds.2 Due to their ferocity, the anti-Italian riots which broke out across Britain are remembered as ‘signalling the beginning of a distinct period in Italian historicity’.3 Curiously, however, dominant discourse glides over full discussion of the riots and their impact on Italian immigrant families. Relying exclusively on newspaper sources, Sponza asserts that, ‘The nasty experience some shopkeepers had on 10 and 11 June left only few traces on the collective memory of the Italians in Britain, and virtually all - understandably - in Scotland. This is partly because that memory was overshadowed by the more widespread and dislocating trauma of internment, and the connected tragedy of the ~118~

Restrictions, riots and relocation sinking of the Arandora Star.’4 This conclusion, following the usual emphasis of communal discourse, is flawed on a number of counts. Most fundamentally, Sponza understates the xenophobic nature of the riots and neglects their long-lasting psychological impact on those who lived through them. This chapter also looks at the impact of the government’s policy of relocating Italian women from coastal regions and highlights the isolation and problems Italian Scottish children felt in their new surroundings, including the effects of disrupted education and exposure to racial and religious hostility.

‘You realised there was something up’ - alien restrictions Even before the outbreak of war between Italy and Britain, Italian nationals, as aliens, were faced with a range of restrictions and regulations. From 12 May 1940, under Article 11 of the Aliens Order 1920, all male aliens in Edinburgh (and elsewhere) were subject to a curfew, had to report daily to the police and could not make use of any private motor vehicle or bicycle.5 As the local newspaper noted, ‘The “curfew” will no doubt affect a number of Italian shopkeepers in the city and elsewhere, and it is stated by the police that such shopkeepers will require to be at their homes between the curfew hours - eight at night and six in the morning. It does not mean that they can close at eight and then go home for any alien seen in the street after that hour will be arrested.’6 For the thirteen-year-old Rachele Spinosi, the imposition of the curfew and other restrictions were the first signs that something ominous was about to happen to her family: ‘We weren’t allowed to have a radio in the house ... And my father had to be in, there was a curfew for him. He had to be in the house at eight o’clock. So, bits and pieces... a few bits and pieces leading up to it, you realised there was something up.’7 When Italian nationals graduated from alien to ‘enemy alien’ status, the Edinburgh Evening News helpfully reminded them that, ‘They should report immediately to the nearest police station of the district in which they are registered’.8 The extant Aliens Order 1920 covered numerous transgressions such as failure to produce an Aliens Registration certificate or failure to notify a change of address, with additional regulations introduced such as the Aliens (Wireless Apparatus Restriction) Order 1940 which made it illegal for aliens to have a wireless. There was even a Home Office Order requiring aliens of all nationalities to surrender all maps and guidebooks by 9 July 1940.9

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' ‘That was the last we saw of him’ - narratives of absence In Edinburgh, on the night of 10 June 1940, as the Evening News records: ‘As soon as instructions for the round up were received at Edinburgh Police Headquarters nearly 100 motor cars were brought into service and over 200 police officers combed the city.’10 In personal recollections, traumatic accounts of fathers being removed by the police are intertwined with memories of their shops and businesses being under attack. The fathers of twenty-five respondents were interned and many, especially women, gave vivid accounts of their arrests. One of the ways in which female narrators transmitted their sense of shock at the arrests was to focus on the humiliating treatment meted out by the arresting CID officers, in particular their search for arms, underlining their parents’ status as potential traitors and spies. As Isabella di Lena recalls, she hurriedly packed her father some Victory lozenges for his cough: ‘I remember filling a little tin with them and handing them to my father to take away with him and I spoke to him in Italian which was a habit. And I remember the detective saying, “Speak English if you don’t mind!” I said, “Good God, I’m only telling him that I’m giving him his cough sweets”.’11 Antonietta Paci broke down into tears when recalling the arrest of her father and the interview had to be temporarily suspended. She became upset when she remembered that ‘the CID came for him with the revolver in their hand. And of course, I was screaming you know.’ Later on in the interview, she returned to the arrest and, in particular, the behaviour of the police: It wasn’t that they beat me up or anything or that. They just... I didn’t want to leave my father. I threw myself at my dad and of course naturally they pointed the gun at me and told me to move back. But I don’t think they would have used it on me. At the time I maybe thought they would but now when I think about it, they had to do their job.12

Stibbe’s work highlights an important, but often neglected, dimension of second-generation wartime experience: the ways in which internment functioned as an ‘imagined experience’, not just for internees, but also for their wives and children left to fend for themselves in a hostile environment.13 As Kate Darian-Smith notes in her work on Australian women during the Second World War, despite their physical displacement, it was men who ‘provided the emotional focus for the women’s memories, and men’s actions during the war usually served as the catalyst and rationale for, as well as the resolution to, women’s behaviour and psychological dilemmas’.14 Within my ~120~

Restrictions, riots and relocation research sample, the fathers of six women drowned on the Arandora Star and another drowned when his boat returning from internment in Australia was torpedoed. The last time most of these respondents saw their fathers was when they were removed by the police, and in their interviews they commonly utilised the narrative trope of the men being ‘taken away’ from their lives. Some employed the poignant image of their father disappearing downstairs or out of their shop to symbolise their irrevocable loss. For example, Diana Corrieri of Uphall recalls: I was in my second year of High School when my father was arrested. They just came. He was in the chip shop frying fish and chips and they took him away in the dirty clothes he had on. The police came into the house; they searched the house, they even went under the linoleum. Lifted the linoleum to see if there was anything. They probably were looking for... thinking he was a spy or something, you know. Anyway, we didn’t see him again after that night. We just saw him going down the stairs in our house and that was the last we saw of him.15

Rina Valente’s father drowned on the Arandora Star. Her recall of the night of his arrest emphasises the permanency of her father’s absence: What I remember distinctly about that night, you see, the men had to be in. There was a curfew. The men had to be in their homes by a certain time and in those days the shops were open quite late at night. So, I remember being in the shop in Lochend and the policemen came there to arrest my father. Of course, my mother says, ‘He’s at home.’ And my aunt used to help, she was in the shop. So the police brought my mother home and my aunt locked up the shop and we walked down. So that, by the time I got home, of course, my father had gone. I didn’t even see him.16

The filmmaker Enrico Cocozza, who grew up in Wishaw, makes the astute observation that whilst the tragedy of the Arandora Star made widows of many Italian women, it was difficult for them to be reconciled to their loss ‘in the strangely embarrassing atmosphere of subjection in which they found themselves as enemy aliens’.17 It was the same for their children. Indeed, the devastation caused by these swift arrests, the Arandora Star deaths and the need to internalise their grief had a particularly traumatic effect on this age cohort, as Colpi identifies.18 Responding to questions at the close of the twentieth century, some female interviewees were still unable or unwilling to discuss these events. Their recollections would often become stilted or monosyllabic and it was sometimes too painful for respondents to address the removal of their fathers in any detail: ~121~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' WU: Can I ask you about 1940? And the 10th of June... can you remember what happened that night? RS: [Pause] Yes, I remember two detectives came up and took my father away. WU: Really? RS: Yes. Never, never saw him again ... WU: Because, [name] told me you lost him on the Arandora Star? RS: Yes.19

‘I got the biggest smash up in all of Edinburgh’ - the anti-Italian riots Panayi highlights the history of racial violence in modern Britain, pointing out that during the period 1840-1950, ‘no immigrant grouping in Britain has escaped attacks upon its persons and property’.20 Nicoletta Gullace’s insightful dissection of the anti-German riots of 1915 provoked by the sinking of the Lusitania, highlights the ways in which, at moments of crisis, previously accepted ethnic neighbours can rapidly be recast and defined as the ‘enemy’.21 She points out how interpersonal relationships which have developed between minority ethnic groups and the wider community - ‘the living bonds of neighbourliness’ - are dramatically undercut by notions of Active kinship, based on an imagined community of blood ties and racial stock where more emotive concepts of belonging override a liberal notion of inclusion based on law and individual rights.22 In The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport provides a useful theoretical framework outlining how negative attitudes towards ethnic groups may be expressed in five ‘gradations of rejection’.23 These range from derisive jokes or name-calling through to avoidance and discrimination. Allport’s fourth category of ‘physical attack’ recognises that, under conditions of heightened emotion, prejudice may lead to acts of violence such as riots. He was keen to stress the enormous range of activities that may issue from prejudiced attitudes and beliefs and, in particular, to emphasise how ‘activity on one level makes transition to a more intense level easier’.24 His emphasis on ‘the interconnectedness of different expressions of prejudice’25 is highly relevant when addressing the experiences of Italian Scots and helps to illustrate the extent to which British Italian historiography has failed to critically examine the multifaceted nature of anti-Italian prejudice in the twentieth century. The anti-Italian riots which broke out on 10 June 1940 in major cities across the country are perceived as having been ‘particularly vicious’ in Scotland, with Edinburgh and Glasgow as the two main epicentres.26 In ~122~

Restrictions, riots and relocation Glasgow, the riotous crowds surrounded one Italian shop shouting ‘Down with the dirty Italians’, highlighting the persistence of the iconography of dirt into the twentieth century.27 Religious bigotry, specifically the antiCatholic sentiment stirred up by Cormack’s Protestant Action Society, is acknowledged as being partly responsible for the particular viciousness of the attacks in Edinburgh.28 Edinburgh City Archives holds documentation relating to the riots, mainly in the form of legal writs served against the Town Clerk of Edinburgh Corporation, which show that most attacks were concentrated in Leith where the Italian presence was most visible.29 The Edinburgh Evening News reports that the main thoroughfares of Leith ‘looked in places as if a series of heavy bombs had fallen. In Italian premises not a scrap of glass remaining in single or double windows: furniture broken; window frames and dressings destroyed and, in a number of cases, the cigarette machines at the entrances damaged beyond repair.’ Hostile crowds of up to 2000 people were said to have gathered and the Chief Constable reported that 103 shops and 2 houses were damaged and at least 18 shops looted.30 The press highlighted the extensive looting of goods as well as the destruction of fixtures and fittings - in one fish restaurant, the counter was overturned and ‘the frying stove considerably damaged’. Around sixteen people were treated in hospital for minor injuries sustained during the demonstrations, including three women who received treatment for head injuries caused by stones.31 The Scotsman was keen to point out that, ‘The occupants of some of the shops were British subjects. The proprietor of one well-known restaurant whose premises were among the most seriously damaged in the city, fought throughout the last war in the ranks of a Scottish regiment. Another man, whose premises were subjected to considerable damage, is understood to have two sons at present on active service in the Black Watch.’32 The apparently indiscriminate nature of the attacks is confirmed by legal correspondence with Edinburgh Corporation which shows that a number of claimants with targeted shops were naturalised33 and some British-born.34 In Mackie’s play, Gentle Like a Dove, depicting the anti-Italian riots, the Italian shopkeeper Luigi Campanelli reveals to his neighbour, Mrs MacGregor, he is ‘Breeteesh’ and has the naturalisation papers to prove it. Ultimately however, his makeshift placard, with the words ‘British’ scrawled upon it in black crayon, hurriedly placed in his shop window, offers no protection from the rioters.35 As Rose stresses in relation to wartime anti-Semitism and attitudes towards Jews, at times of conflict, formal citizenship matters far less than national identity: ‘race signalled by visual signs meant ~123~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' unalterable, un- assimilable cultural difference’.36 When war with Italy broke out, Italiansin Edinburgh, regardless of their status and years of residency, were shown to be irrevocably the ‘other’. As Gullace makes clear, once alien neighbours become ‘displaced symbols of the enemy nation’37 their ability to define themselves as part of the wider ‘imagined community’ through residence or law is eroded: ‘narratives of crisis reorient intimate communities, undercutting legal and personal identities that have come to seem counter-intuitive to much of the public’.38 Under Section 10 of the Riotous Assemblies (Scotland) Act 1822 local authorities were liable for loss and damages caused by the acts of ‘any unlawful, riotous or tumultuous assembly of persons’ and individual claimants could raise actions against the Town Clerk. However, applicants had to claim within one month of the date of the damage, as prescribed under sec. 15 of the Act, and, as a result of this loophole, Edinburgh Corporation was able to dismiss many genuine claims.39 Due to the devastating nature of successive events surrounding the night of 10 June, numerous people were either too traumatised to sort out their business affairs in time or were physically absent from Edinburgh and unable to institute proceedings against the Town Clerk. Following the police round-up, the remaining Italian nationals were ordered to remove themselves from the ‘protected area’ of Edinburgh. Circumstances were further complicated by the Arandora Star disaster; the legal process becoming stalled as grieving widows struggled to establish proof of death. Antonietta Delicato wrote poignantly to the Town Clerk about the damage done to her shop: ‘I have no one to fight for me now as my husband went down in the Arandora Star.’40 Ultimately, although the police reported 125 cases of attack on Italian shops in Edinburgh, by January 1941 only 51 actions had been raised against Edinburgh Corporation.41 It would appear from correspondence held in Edinburgh City Archives that those families who had financial access to legal assistance made the most successful claims; others clearly struggled to initiate proceedings. Documentation held at the National Archives Scotland also includes letters from victims of the riots seeking help or compensation from the Scottish Home and Health Department. One widow, Edinburgh-born Frances Valente, maintained a stream of correspondence over the course of two years. Valente had lost her British nationality on marriage to an Italian subject and found herself in dire financial straits due to the destruction of her shop during the riots, her relocation and her husband’s death on the Arandora Star.42 In 1941, she wrote to her MP, Ernest Brown, ‘My solicitor tells me that there will be ~124~

Restrictions, riots and relocation very little left for me and my children. Apart from all this my shop which was left all smashed up never opened again, and as things went I received no compensation ... With payments, rates, taxes all still running liable on the shop, but with no income, I am somewhat in a dilemma as to what to do.’43 By 1943 she is writing to the Scottish Home and Health Department: ‘I am absolutely ruined through losing my business, my only livelihood, and also losing my husband through no fault of my own, I am sure we didn’t want war ... I got the biggest smash up in all of Edinburgh, the police estimated the damage at £2,500. The shop has been closed ever since, and yet there’s no compensation. I was told my husband should have put in a claim within that month, how could he do it, when he didn’t get a chance to live?’44 The Valente case supports Stibbe’s contention that at a time of internment the worst affected were often native-born women who had lost their citizenship upon marriage to an alien and were reconfigured as ‘enemy aliens’ within their own country, often becoming destitute and having to rely on private charity following the internment or death of their husbands.45 In this context, secondgeneration women were made painfully aware of ‘the interconnections between gender and race that adversely affected citizenship’.46

‘My best friend with a clothes basket, taking all the sweeties out my window’ – the myth of the mob The destruction of Italian shops was a terrifying experience for Italian families; ten of those interviewed witnessed the riots at first hand as they lived above or next door to their business premises. In many cases the shops were vandalised beyond recognition with premises soiled and stock looted or destroyed. What emerges most strikingly from narratives is the sheer terror of events - the fact that women and children were often left alone to face the rioters, their husbands or fathers having been arrested and taken away. Yet amazingly these riots have been downplayed in British Italian historiography and dealt with rather summarily. For example, Farrell implies that the anti-Italian riots in Greenock were just one of the wartime’s ‘unpleasant incidents’.47 In similar vein, former internee Monsignor Rossi makes the spectacular claim in his memoirs: ‘the number of shops attacked was not anything like what [it] could have been if the Italians had been really unpopular; there were cases of smashing windows, but as usual in this event the rowdy elements took advantage of the situation, not because they were really anti-Italian, but as a good opportunity to give vent to their ~125~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' vandalistic and unsocial feelings.’48 Both Sponza and Colpi’s accounts rely heavily on contemporary Scottish newspaper reports, leading to a detached, and somewhat flawed, interpretation of the riots. This misinterpretation functions on three key levels: it asserts that the riots did not actually reflect anti-Italian xenophobia, that they were carried out by a hooligan ‘mob’ and that they were usually of only one or two nights’ duration. Sponza argues that the rioting was primarily carried out by youths in socially deprived areas, pointing out that Leith was an area of severe unemployment. This line of argument leads him to deduce that ‘the intensity of the violence was less related to the number of Italian shops, and Italian presence generally, than it was to the economic and socially depressed conditions’.49 Overall, he stresses, the anti-Italian disturbances should be viewed as part of the ‘serious social difficulties’ experienced by wartime Britain such as post-air raid looting, and he draws the surprising conclusion that ‘its xenophobic connotations appear to have been rather restrained’.50 This conclusion fundamentally misses the point, made by Allport, that riots are rarely isolated events but are invariably preceded by a period of prolonged and verbal hostility.51 As Cesarani argues when discussing the 1919 antiBlack riots in Cardiff and Liverpool, while each incident ‘had its own aetiology’, it would be wrong to localise these occurrences and thus foreclose an understanding of the riots as a part of the universal phenomenon of anti-alienism.52 This desire to downplay or understate the xenophobia of the rioters leads to a tendency to misinterpret the cultural significance of the riots and to negate the long-term psychological impact on those who lived through them.53 One of the most enduring aspects of communal myth is that the riots were carried out by a faceless ‘hooligan’ mob. MP Thomas Johnston, the Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence in Scotland, issued a statement in which he strongly deprecated the ‘mob violence’ witnessed in Edinburgh.54 This phraseology has been absorbed and repeated both in contemporary press reports and subsequently in historiography; Sponza, for example, employs the term ‘mob rage’ when analysing the riots.55 In his interview with MacDougall, Pia stresses, ‘It was not patriotism or anti-Italianism. It was - pinch what you can: hooligans and looters, but nothing national about it.’56 Ultimately, these continual references to hooliganism serve to depersonalise the events of June 1940 by portraying the Italians as victims of an indefinable, faceless ‘mob’. Here communal discourse functions to offer a reassuring interpretation of events, negating the personal and profoundly unsettling nature of the attacks. The personal testimony of second~126~

Restrictions, riots and relocation generation women, such as Rosalina Masterson, is important in countering this interpretation and exposing the fact that it was often customers, neighbours and friends involved in the rioting: One night I was in the shop and I heard an awful noise - people shouting and bawling. I thought, ‘What the Dickens is going on?’... I went to the front shop and stood there and the next minute all these people surrounded the shop. Italy had declared war. And the next minute, there was a brick through my window... and my best friend with a clothes basket, taking all the sweeties out my window. Yes! And a week previous to that she’d borrowed a dress from me for a dance. I always remember that dress - I know it to this day.

At a later stage in the interview, Rosalina returns again to this memory, still attempting to make sense of what happened to her seven decades earlier: ‘I mean I went to school with these girls, I went to church with them, they were my friends! And yet, in a crisis like that, they stood and took all my sweeties and cigarettes out of the window. I couldn’t understand it and to this day, I can see them.’57 One of the most destabilising aspects of the riots for respondents was that their families were being attacked by those with whom they interacted on a daily basis, had built up relations with over decades and upon whom they depended for their livelihood. One respondent who experienced the riots in Irvine recalled the shock she felt hearing her neighbours ‘rampaging downstairs’ in the family shop. The hugely dislocating impact of the riots, which reverberated long after the night itself, was evident as she recalled an incident that occurred when she returned to the family shop after a year’s relocation: I remember a wee girl coming into the shop to buy fish and chips and she was wearing a jumper of mine ... I knew it was mine because my mother made up her own patterns and it was green and white. It was pale green and white with a wee green collar, a hand knitted jumper. I just thought to myself, that child is wearing my jumper. Up until then, I’d never realised that maybe it had been her father or her brother or something that was one of the [looters]. Because when they smashed the shop, we had some living quarters in the back. The house where we slept and everything was upstairs but we had a sort of second room, our kitchen, downstairs and this jumper had been in the washing obviously and had been among the things that they had broken into and stolen. And I knew that that was my jumper. That really was something else. It wasn’t the child’s fault because the child didn’t know where the jumper had come from but I knew it was mine because it had been hand knitted and made to my mother’s own pattern [...] That was quite disturbing.58

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' It is perhaps significant that Dina structures her story around an item of clothing to symbolise the extremely personal nature of the assaults upon her own sense of being or belonging. Indeed, the sense of trauma and bewilderment evident in Dina’s testimony - responding to the violation of a family working and living space - is a common feature amongst narratives. Another female respondent reluctantly confirmed that customers had been involved in looting her father’s shop, destroying sacks of foodstuffs and doing ‘dreadful things’ on the premises.59 As Gullace’s analysis of the 1915 anti-German riots highlights, an ethnic community which considers itself integrated can rapidly find itself cast outside the boundaries of the wider community. What changes overnight is ‘the ability of a personal history of friendship to withstand a new narrative of war’.60 Enrico Cocozza’s account of his childhood in Wishaw records his father’s shock that a man to whom he ‘had done many good deeds, often lending him money when he was in need’ was the ringleader in the attack on their shop shouting, “Whit are ye waitin’ fur? Smash the windaes. That shop is stowed wi’ fags”.’61 Similarly, an eyewitness of the anti-Italian attacks in Ayr recalls how he ‘stared in horror as large jars of sweets and bulky packs of cigarettes were handed out to accomplices, who made off with guilty haste. My heart was sick as I saw onetime neighbours, and even friends, sneaking off into the growing darkness of a summer night.’62

‘I thought they were going to take my mother and kill her’ – narratives of terror Colpi and Sponza’s insistence that the anti-Italian violence was focused against property rather than individuals neglects the fact that many Italian families were trapped in their homes above or next to the shop under attack.63 Indeed, the key to understanding the riots and how they are remembered within narratives is Portelli’s work stressing how oral testimony ‘offers less a grid of standard experiences than a horizon of shared possibilities, real or imagined’.64 He believes that the representative quality of life histories and their content ‘is measured less by the reconstruction of the average experience, than by the subjective projection of imaginable experience: less by what materially happens to people, than by what people imagine or know might happen’.65 During the riots, respondents lived with the terrifying possibility of attacks on their homes, families or businesses. For example, whilst Fiorinta states that her father’s shop was not attacked, her narrative is still suffused with the terror she felt that night: ‘It was ~128~

Restrictions, riots and relocation devastating and it was very frightening [...] Because I thought they were going to take my mother and kill her there and then. Put her out in the street and kill her.’ She continues: My mother and I were hanging out because the house was above the shop: noise, screaming, shouting coming along Junction Street. Mobs of people coming along. I thought, my mother of course, panic stations: ‘We’re going to get killed, they’re going to kill us.’ Anyway, they got to our shop and my father’s shop in Leith was the only one that hadn’t been broken into and stripped of everything. Even telephones and jars of [sweets] — Junction Street was just a mass of goods, cigarettes, everything you could imagine coming out the ice cream shops and the chippy like grease, chips, everything, everywhere. Potatoes. That’s what they did. Broke every window they could get their hands on.66

Another significant feature of personal testimonies, reconstructing the riots at the close of the twentieth century, was the way in which some respondents foregrounded a sense of anger and defiance. This could reflect the fact that memories were being told in the present day when the discourse of race relations is more widely understood, possibly giving narrators the confidence to address these issues and articulate their feelings of outrage. For example, John Costa recalls: My brother who was seventeen at the time, he was in the shop. He was busy because during the war fish and chips were a valuable food and we heard a - my mother was upstairs. She put me to bed, we were near the window and I heard a howl going up and a crash of glass and that. And they started smashing up the shop. My brother was very lucky. He managed to shut the doors so they didn’t get in although someone threw a dart at him and just missed him. He still kept it as a souvenir and we kept the stones that came through the windows. He, and all the customers, managed to get out of the back window and climb up a drainpipe and into the house and that’s where they stayed. Now, they tried to get in the shop, they smashed all the front, couldn’t get in. Then they tried to come upstairs to get us because they knew we were upstairs and, I must admit - it’s a funny thing to say for a child of nine years old - I was not all that frightened. I was very angry. In fact all I wanted to do - I’ve told you about the gun for the ghosts - I wanted to have a gun. I’d have sorted them with a gun.67

Isabella di Lena, following her father’s arrest in their shop, adopts a similar theme of defiance: They started yelling at me, ‘Get inside there or I’ll throw something at you.’ I was so angry I couldn’t feel even any fear. I was so angry... And I’m glaring at them, you know? Glaring back at them. To the point that the person we employed just dived into the shop. And one woman

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' picked up a shoe and hurled it at the window. She hadn’t the courage to hurl it at me... And the two nice policemen, proper policemen not the CID, insisted on me locking up and walking me home. They walked me up Lauriston Street to my door... because mother was in there crying her eyes out [...] Anyway they accompanied me up the road. I remember, later on, one of the priests, Father Warneken saying he had heard that I had been very brave and stood up to the crowd. ‘Father,’ I says, ‘all I could feel was rage!’68

Contrary to received wisdom, the attacks on Italian businesses, certainly in Edinburgh, endured beyond the one or two nights of intense rioting.69 One respondent said her father’s business had to be permanently closed down when his shop was repeatedly vandalised over an extended period of time.70 The long-term duration of attacks on some Italian shops was confirmed by another respondent, who recalled her aunt’s shop in Leith: ‘They used to come in with bars. Big iron bars and smash all the shop window and come in and smash the till and take the money out of the till. That was cruel, absolutely cruel and it just didn’t happen once. It happened many times to a lot of people.’71 Arguably, the repeated emphasis in existing accounts on the short timescale of the riots serves to imply that the riots had no long-term impact, negating the pain and suffering of those caught up in events. Yet, as Linda Hunt emphasises, a traumatic event can turn a person’s world into ‘a much more insecure and unpredictable place than before the traumatising experience’, one where they are left nursing ‘a secret pain’.72 This insight is deeply relevant when considering the experiences of those who endured the anti-Italian onslaught in their home towns and were left feeling vulnerable and exposed, uncertain of their status within their local neighbourhoods. One female respondent, for example, hasn’t stepped inside the premises of the family shop since June 1940. Furthermore, contrary to Colpi’s hypothesis on ‘negative enemy status’, one of the most significant features of narratives is the extent to which respondents articulated a heightened sense of being Italian. For Dina Togneri of Irvine, wartime events led to an increased identification of herself as Italian: It was a great trauma for me because when the war broke out they did smash up our shop and we had nothing. Absolutely nothing. I remember the morning after it. We were upstairs in the house, locked in the house with some very good Scottish neighbours that were looking after us but the other ones were rampaging downstairs, bashing. Crashing and bashing about and knocking the shop and stealing all the stuff, the stuff that was there. It was a terrible trauma. I mean I had, first of all I hadn’t yet got over my father dying and then this thing happening ... But, prior to that, I had never wanted to be Italian.73

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Restrictions, riots and relocation ‘Take immediate steps to remove from this area’ - the enforced removal of Italian nationals The Nazi occupation of France and Belgium, and their possession of ports close to Britain, .engendered -a situation whereby it was agreed ‘on military grounds’ that the coastal belt on the east and south-east coasts be made into a protected area.74 All Italian nationals designated ‘enemy aliens’ and perceived as a security risk were ordered to leave coastal areas and relocate twenty miles inland within three days under Aliens (Protected Areas) Orders. Under (No. 5) Order 1940, Scotland was divided into five geographic Protected Areas, Edinburgh and Fife coming under the jurisdiction of the Firth of Forth.75 These orders stipulated that ‘no foreigner can enter into, or reside in, any area declared to be a Protected Area without the written permission of the Chief Constable’ and, as a result, Italian nationals who had not been arrested, mainly women and older Italians, were issued with relocation notices ordering them to remove themselves and their families from coastal areas within seventy- two hours. One respondent has retained the letter sent to her Edinburgh- born mother, an Italian national through marriage, from the Edinburgh Police Aliens Department. Dated 28 June 1940 it states that she was ‘required to take immediate steps to remove from this area, and that if you are found in this area after the expiry of three days from the date of this notice, steps will be taken to enforce the Order against you’. It continued, ‘You will be allowed to make your own arrangements for leaving the Protected Area, but you must not go to any other aliens Protected Area, nor to any place within 20 miles of the East or South coasts of Great Britain’. Italians were now literally as well as figuratively pushed to the boundaries of belonging. The rhetoric of the Scotsman encapsulates this new mood of intimidation with its declaration that all protected areas were to be ‘cleared’ of enemy aliens.76 Significantly, in interviews respondents adopted this vocabulary of exclusion, remembering their parents being ‘bunged out’ or having ‘to clear out’ of Edinburgh.77 A significant number of respondents said that the authorities ‘took’ their mothers. Alex Margiotta, who served in the British Army, refers to his elderly parents’ relocation to Carfin as them being ‘shunted out of the town’.78 The most common destination areas for Edinburgh Italians appear to have been Peebles, Pitlochry and, further west, the conurbations surrounding Glasgow. Relocation caused major upheaval and dislocation in the lives of Italian immigrant families in Edinburgh yet has largely been neglected within historiography.79 Of those interviewed, nine women ~131~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' and five men were young enough to have been relocated with their mothers in 1940, from periods ranging from seven months to three years. Thirteen members of this group were the children of internees and five of the women lost their fathers through drowning.80 Personal testimonies highlight feelings of bewilderment, dislocation and a sense of being at the whim of bureaucratic cruelty. In contrast to the government- sponsored evacuation of schoolchildren in September 1939, the authorities did not provide any official support or guidance to Italians subject to relocation orders.81 Whilst the government’s official evacuation scheme intended ‘to disperse school children who live in congested, closely-built areas where the effect of air raids would be serious’82 many Italian women from Edinburgh were often forced to relocate with their children to areas with greater exposure to bombing; indeed some were subjected to the air raids as a direct consequence of relocation. Anita Boni endured the bombing in Manchester when her mother took her to stay with her maternal grandmother; Rina Valente, relocated to family in Coatbridge, recalls her horror at being in the air raid shelter during the ‘big raid in Glasgow’ whilst Carmen Demarco remembers being ‘incarcerated every night in a Clydebank tenement basement’.83 At such short notice, Italian women struggled to find new tenants to take over their businesses and to organise new accommodation and schooling for their children. Italian families faced liability for rent and rates on businesses in protected areas which they were forced to abandon and, in addition, had to pay supplementary rent for temporary lodgings in relocation areas. The Brazilian Embassy, acting on behalf of Italian residents in Britain, approached the Lord Advocate’s Chambers in response to enquiries from ‘Italian residents of old standing in Scotland’ as to whether those required to leave their houses in protected areas were released from liability to pay rent. The Embassy official, de Sousa-Leao, pointed out that the ‘compulsory’ nature of the residency change meant that many Italians found themselves ‘unable to meet their liabilities, having been deprived of their only source of income’. However, the official response was that those subject to Article 9 of the Aliens Order 1920 were not released from the obligations of their tenancy agreements, on the grounds that ‘the tenant’s inability to exercise his rights under the lease is due to causes personal to himself’.84 An announcement was also made in July 1940 by the President of the Board of Trade that Italian property would be subject to the Trading with the Enemy (Custodian) Order 1939, which meant that assets were legally frozen.85 As a result of internment and relocation, therefore, ~132~

Restrictions, riots and relocation many Italian families found themselves increasingly in debt. Rothesay Sheriff Court in June 1940 recorded that several actions for debt had been called against Italians who had been interned or deported and anticipated that many Italian properties would go into receivership.86 Relocated Italian women whose children were too young to stay and work in Edinburgh and keep their business operating particularly struggled. The Italian Internees’ Aid Committee, established in London, expressed its concerns over the hardships suffered by ‘these isolated and friendless women’ but the standard advice given to internees’ wives was simply to ‘apply to the Assistance Board for assistance under the scheme for the prevention and relief of Distress’.87 John Costa mentions his mother’s recourse to the ‘Parish’ on her return from relocation as she struggled to buy him clothes and boots for school.88 According to the letter issued from the Edinburgh Police Aliens Department: ‘After removal from the Protected Area you should, if you desire employment, register with the nearest employment exchange in the district in which you take up your residence.’ As most women had always worked within the confines of family business it was, as Rachele Spinosi points out, ‘alien’ for them to look for work elsewhere and many were forced on to the labour market for the first time.89 Respondents’ mothers tended to find work with other Italian women whose husbands had been interned or whose sons were away or would take on menial jobs such as cleaning. Italian women subject to relocation orders sought refuge with other Italians, moving into rooms with either relatives, family friends or business contacts and clustering together in central Scottish towns such as Peebles and Pitlochry. In the face of overt wartime prejudice, spontaneous support networks developed amongst Italian women. Carmen Demarco remembers how Italian women relied on each other to help find accommodation: ‘My mother got in touch with Aunt Connie, she says, “Look Conchetta, I’ve got to get out of here.” She said, “You’ve got to find me somewhere. Most of the women are going to Peebles. Can you not find me somewhere in Peebles?” “Well,” she said, “I’m going down to Peebles and I’ll certainly look out for a place for you as well”.’90 Indeed, during this period of unprecedented hostility, it became commonplace for several Italian families to share the same limited accommodation. There was a large element of both sticking together in a time of adversity and of ‘keeping their heads down’. Lola Corrieri remembers the impact of Italians moving inland from Glasgow: ‘Every possible house in Callander that my auntie knew was filled with people who were Italians [...] I think there was about eight rooms in my ~133~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' auntie’s house and they were all chock-a-block with, each room went to a family. And the people next door to her, they were the same.’91 Once in the place of relocation, Italian women were also controlled by a number of complex rules and regulations ranging from basic Aliens Orders, which required women to register their movements with the police, to legislative clauses such as the Contraventions of the Caledonian Railway Act 1898 which made it illegal for Italian aliens to travel on the railways without permission. In 1943, for example, two Italian women in Dumfries were each fined £2 with the option of fifteen days’ imprisonment for travelling beyond a five-mile radius without a travel permit.92 These wartime restrictions created geographical estrangement amongst Italian families and left Italian women essentially trapped in the areas of relocation powerless to deal in person with any business or legal matters arising in Edinburgh. Secondgeneration Italians who had been relocated with their mothers were the only ones permitted to travel back freely to the ‘Protected Area’ of Edinburgh on behalf of their families. One respondent recalled returning regularly to Edinburgh, as a child of thirteen, to supervise the family business and to visit her seventeen- year-old brother detained in Saughton Prison. Elizabeth Di Ponio, who remained in Edinburgh with her children, received few visits from her mother, relocated in Glasgow, because the latter ‘was afraid of getting into trouble’.93

‘Overnight your whole world collapses’ - experiencing relocation as a child Davies addresses the phenomenon of ‘civilian war trauma’, noting how severe disruption in psychological functioning amongst some separated and orphaned children was recorded during the war, as well as the traumatic effects of various wartime experiences on children.94 In the immediate aftermath of the arrests and the riots and before relocation, those who were children recall being too scared to leave their homes or open their mouths at school. As one respondent understates, ‘we were rather frightened to go out because people were shouting at you in the street.’95 In her narrative, Rina alternates between her own perspective as a ten-year-old onlooker and that of her mother, transmitting a sense of the latter’s fear and anxiety: ‘My mother’s in the shop with my aunt, my father’s in the house, policemen come - the CID or something, the plain clothes ones - come and take him away and it’s just overnight your whole world collapses. You’ve lost your business... you lost your ~134~

Restrictions, riots and relocation husband as well, you know, really. Because that was the last time you saw him. So, everything happened, it was overnight you lost... you lost everything.’96 The experience of relocation, under the cloud of external identification as the enemy ‘other’, served to dramatically reinforce feelings of not ‘belonging’ amongst those who were children and adolescents. Fiorinta’s memories of her relocation to Peebles focus on both the specific restrictions faced and a wider sense of exclusion: I don’t think the Italians were allowed to walk about the streets at night after eight o’clock Even my sister and the rest of the Italian girls, we were never allowed to go out and play in the streets or anything like that. We were kept indoors. Because we were getting a lot of verbal abuse even in Peebles, of course. Some of the Italians made us welcome in Peebles because they knew our situation but at the same time there were a lot of people still prejudiced against us being Italians.97

Another respondent recounts how her family were ‘put out’ from their lodgings in Blair Atholl when the local landowner discovered they were staying, linking this ejection to the visible ‘otherness’ of an Italian relative: This nice lady gave us her cottage. She always rented it for the summer anyway and it was summertime. She had a wee place at the back she used to stay in herself and she rented us this lovely little cottage. We had people visiting us who were already in Pitlochry, relatives. Because it wasn’t only my mother and myself and young brother. It was my aunt too and some of her children in this cottage, you see. And they were visiting and he was obviously Italian, well, they didn’t know at the time but it was a son- in-law. The daughter that night and this fellow got married [...] He was standing outside the door and he looked Italian ... and the Laird passed and got onto this little lady and told her that if she didn’t get rid of these foreigners she would lose the tenancy of her house. So the poor soul was upset, we had to move.98

This sense of being physically ejected from a chosen living space was repeated in the testimony of Richard Demarco, the son of secondgeneration Italians. His family had moved from Edinburgh to Largs, where his father worked as a dance hall manager and his mother had found accommodation for her three sons with a landlady. Once Italy declared war, ‘I do remember, that woman said, “Out you go; I cannot have you people in my house.” So, we were thrown into the street and I remember sitting with my mother sobbing for, it seemed, an hour or two, with her family around her and our luggage in a public park in Largs.’ ~135~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Demarco states that one of his brothers never forgot this ‘moment of truth’.99 Whilst John Costa’s narrative is imbued with positive memories of his stay in Newbigging, he recalls one incident which forcefully reminded him of his precarious status within the local community: They had a Home Guard up there of five [farmers] and they used to meet in the Post Office, maybe after six when they met. I was very friendly with the son of the Post Office and I used to go into the house and play. And here were these five men with their rifles and their uniforms sitting in the Post Office, probably from six o’clock till ten o’clock, drinking beer. [...] But there was one of them who - poor man, I can’t remember his name but he was a man of about forty or fifty then who obviously was the village idiot, let’s say that - and he had this rifle and that. Now he never bothered me, I must be honest, but one day we were in the fields and there he was with his rifle. I don’t know what he was doing in the field with his rifle - and there were some Italian prisoners either passing or working. I think they were working down there. And I remember - as I said he had this rifle, I don’t know if it was loaded but he certainly had ammunition. He said ‘See these bastard Italians. I’d shoot them!’ And I was standing there looking, thinking ‘Oh my God!’ But, as I said, he never referred to me in that way.100

The act of relocation also served to reinforce pronounced feelings of religious difference amongst many Italian Scots, the government failing to ensure the continuation of Roman Catholic education for those relocated. As Fiorinta Gallo recalls: It was a mixed school that I went to. There wasn’t a Catholic school in Peebles - that was difficult... You got classed as being different. ‘Oh she’s Catholic, she’s RC. She’s of Italians.’ So walking along in Peebles, people would: ‘Oh that’s the Italian family down at Northgate.’ You heard them, you tried to ignore them. A kid at twelve, thirteen, what do you do? You tried to ignore [them] and sometimes it goes past you and other times it sticks.101

Dina Togneri returned to her school in Irvine in February 1941 but ‘felt that it was never the same... All your friends had made new friends and it was different.’ When relocated, she attended St Pat’s secondary school in Coatbridge: You left a cosy school where everybody knew you and you knew all the teachers and you knew all the children that went there. And to go to this strange school... oh I had bother. I had a lot of bother with that as well. I was in the corridor one day and I saw a man that I recognised. He had been a maths teacher at my old school in Irvine. And this poor man, he must have wondered what had hit him because I just threw myself at

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Restrictions, riots and relocation himwith tears pouring down my face. A Mr McMillan. He was a very nice man and he sort of took me under his wing and spoke to the headmaster and told him all that had happened to us and that and they were very nice and understanding. But at the beginning... I was a nutcase I think [laughs], A psychiatrist would have had a field day with me because I really was emotionally mixed up ... about the whole thing.102

Many expressed frustration at the constant changes of school as they moved between lodgings or moved back to their original hometown and regretted the overall negative impact relocation had on their education. In the opinion of John Costa, the fact of having to move from school to school ‘ruined me completely’.103 Ultimately, the enforced relocation of Italian women and their children further contributed to a sense of marginalisation amongst Italian immigrant families during the wartime period. Yet, paradoxically, as Italian women and their British-born children congregated in the same few areas and worked alongside other Italians, relocation also had the effect of reinforcing the second generation’s own sense of ‘being’ Italian. In the most literal sense, both Remo Catignani and Carmen Demarco remembered Pitlochry and Peebles respectively as ‘Little Italy’. In their attempts to control the Italian presence in Britain, government policies often assisted in strengthening immigrant families’ sense of ‘otherness’. Indeed, for those British-born children relocated with their mothers, the national rhetoric of unity struck a particularly discordant note, as illustrated in the following extract from Carmen Demarco, who relocated to Peebles: Eventually we found digs with a Special Constable who was also an arch poacher and to this day I think twice before I can eat grilled salmon because we lived on salmon, salmon, salmon. Every time you turned it was a big lump of salmon! Anyway, we lived with them and the funny thing was that, whenever the National Anthem came on the wireless, he used to make his family stand to attention and we used to have to do the same! But we didn’t feel - we didn’t feel very British at the time, after what we’d been through. We didn’t feel we deserved all this.104

‘She had to start from nothing’ - narratives of return A government review, undertaken in December 1940, reiterated the general principle that enemy aliens were not allowed to enter or remain in Protected Areas. However, the circular also outlined a number of categories where exceptions could be made, including those ‘whose interests and associations are British and who are friendly towards this ~137~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' country’. Within the latter category, ‘the fact that an alien of enemy nationality has a son serving in His Majesty’s Forces should count in his favour’. In every case discretion was left to the local Chief Constable and there could be no appeal from his decision.105 Within my research sample, most estimated that they returned home after one to two years of relocation; some returned as early as January 1941, others as late as 1943. Return appears to have depended on a whole set of variables. Fiorinta connected her family’s return to Edinburgh from Peebles to her detained brother’s decision to join the Pioneer Corps.106 In a written communication, another respondent stated that ‘the police spoke up for my mother because they knew her so well and also she had three sons and sons-in-law in the army, two grandsons in the RAF, one in the army and another in the Navy.’107 Conversely, Isabella di Lena acknowledged that as her aunt was married to the head of the Edinburgh Fascio ‘[she] never got back till the war was over’.108 Those who had left behind rented premises and had entrusted their businesses to non-family members often found themselves ousted, on their return, by the new tenants. Anita Boni said that the enforced relocation of her mother, and her father’s death on the Arandora Star, meant their business had to be closed down, dragging her mother into debt. On her return to Edinburgh, ‘She had to start from nothing.’109 Fiorinta Gallo recalled how when her mother returned from relocation to Edinburgh the ‘so-called friends’ who had run their Junction Street shop had taken all the stock and run up a lot of debt; essentially ‘they ran it into the ground’.110

Conclusion Relations between members of different groups will vary according to the attitudes and needs of the individual people involved, as well as the specific circumstances in which interaction takes place.111 The draconian policies of internment and relocation, what Fortier terms ‘the violences of the British state’,112 and the ferocity of the anti-Italian riots were a massive shock to Italian families, as were the levels of abuse and antagonism faced in the wider community. Alien regulations which cumulatively restricted freedom of movement and effectively placed Italian nationals under police supervision pushed Italian families to the boundaries of belonging; the riots of June 1940 and relocation rammed this message home. However, as Allport stresses, the origins of a riot lie in the prior existence of prejudice ‘strengthened and released’ by a particular chain of circumstances.113 Kushner agrees that the speed with ~138~

Restrictions, riots and relocation which the animosity against the Italians gathered revealed ‘a tradition of antipathy in which even those born in Britain of Italian origin were, through a process of racialisation, treated as suspect and deemed not to be “one of us” ’.114 Whilst there is a tendency within communal discourse to focus on internment, personal narratives reveal how the attacks of June 1940 are equally important in revealing both the multilayered nature of prejudice faced by Italian families and the traumatic impact of the riots on Italian Scots. For second-generation Italians in Scotland, the events of 1940 were a watershed in reinforcing their status as outsiders and undermining their sense of security within the wider community. For the women and men who were relocated as children the shock of being ordered to leave their homes and being placed in unfamiliar, and somewhat hostile, surroundings reverberates through the years. Amongst my research sample, the women respondents were more likely than the men to provide detailed accounts of the anti-Italian riots, highlighting its personal significance within their life stories.115 Indeed, within women’s narratives overall there was also an admission of psychological fragility that was absent from men’s recollections. Women were more willing to volunteer information on the emotional and psychological impact of being treated as the ‘other’ during their formative years and to address episodes of personal vulnerability in their testimony. Women interviewed described themselves as ‘timid’, not wanting to ‘draw attention’, ‘very withdrawn’ and ‘hyper-sensitive’.116 One female respondent repeatedly described her wartime self as ‘touchy’117 and three female narrators employed the term ‘breakdown’ in relation to their younger selves, including one who had received professional psychiatric help during her adult life. Remembering relocation and her trips back to Edinburgh to sort out her family’s affairs, Fiorinta comments: The chippy was still open so the people used to give me a fish supper to take up to the house to eat by myself. And I’d lock myself and stay there at night. I blame that for sometimes the nightmares that I get even today ... Because the fear sometimes wakes me up during the night. I still get them. And the loneliness and that sort of thing, it comes back Do you know what I mean?118

Notes 1

Holmes, A Tolerant Country?, p. 95. See T. Kushner, We Europeans? MassObservation, ‘Race’ and British Identity in the Twentieth Century

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); P. Panayi, Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain 1815-1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994). Kushner, Persistence of Prejudice, p. 8. Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 55. Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 146. ‘Edinburgh city police important notice’, Edinburgh Evening News (13 May 1940), p. 1. ‘Police round up enemy aliens’, Edinburgh Evening News (13 May 1940), p. 4. SA 1998.27, Rachele Spinosi. ‘Difficult Scottish problem’, Edinburgh Evening News (12 June 1940), p. 3. ‘Surrender maps warning to aliens’, Edinburgh Evening News (9 July 1940), p. 5. ‘Anti-Italian outburst’, Edinburgh Evening News (11 June 1940), p. 5. SA1998.061, Isabella di Lena. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment’, p. 50. K. Darian-Smith, ‘Remembrance, romance, and nation: memories of wartime Australia’, in S. Leydesdorff, L. Passerini and P. Thompson (eds), Gender and Memory. International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories Volume IV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 159. SA2002.065, Diana Corrieri. SA 1998.63, Rina Valente. E. Cocozza, Assunta - The Story of Mrs Joe (New York: Vantage Press, 1987), p. 238. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 110. SA1998.27, Rachele Spinosi. Panayi, Racial Violence, p. ix. N. Gullace, ‘Friends, aliens, and enemies: Active communities and the Lusitania Riots of 1915’, Journal of Social History, 39:2 (2005), 347. Ibid., p. 345. G. W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley, 3rd edn, 1955), p. 49. Ibid., pp. 14-15. G. P. T. Finn, ‘A culture of prejudice: promoting pluralism in education for a change’, in Devine (ed.), Scotland’s Shame?, p. 61. Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 130. ‘Damage to shop’, Scotsman (5 June 1941), p. 3. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 105; Sponza, Divided Loyalties, pp. 86-7. Edinburgh City Archives (hereafter ECA), D136, Anti-Italian Demonstrations 1940. ‘Anti-Italian outburst’, Edinburgh Evening News (11 June 1940), p. 5; ECA, D136, letter to Lord Provost from Chief Constable, Edinburgh, 11 June 1940. ‘Italians detained’, Scotsman (11 June 1940), p. 6. ‘Big round up’, Scotsman (12 June 1940), p. 5.

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Restrictions, riots and relocation 32

33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58

ECA, D136. In a letter to the Town Clerk, G. Campanile of Broughton Street states that he had been a British subject since 1913 and was an ex-soldier of the 4th Dragoon Guards; 23 April 1942. ECA, D136. A letter to the Town Clerk from lawyers acting for the Pompa Trustees states that both Albert and George Pompa of Leith, whose shops were attacked, ‘are British-born subjects and served in the British Army throughout the last War. Their Father came over to this country about 1880’; 26 June 1940. Mackie, Gentle Like a Dove, p. 19. Rose, Which People’s War?, p. 103. Gullace, ‘Friends, aliens, and enemies’, p. 351. Ibid., p. 346. See hereafter NAS, HH, 55/5. Riots’: representations and general papers concerning the operation of the Riotous Assemblies Act (S), 1822, particularly compensation claims arising from anti-Italian disturbances 1940-1943. ECA, D136, Letter from A. Delicato, 11 November 1941. ECA, D136, Minutes of meeting of the Lord Provost’s Committee, 29 January 1941. Under British nationality laws, a British woman who married an alien became an alien herself, losing the rights and privileges accorded to British nationality. See M. Page Baldwin, ‘Subject to Empire: married women and the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act’, Journal of British Studies, 40:4 (2001), 522-56. NAS, HH, 55/5, Letter to Ernest Brown MP, 11 September 1941. Ibid., Letter from Frances Valente, 4 June 1943. Stibbe, ‘Civilian internment’, p. 60. McKibben, Beyond Cannery Row, p. 87. J. Farrell, ‘The Italians who came, saw and conquered’, Scotsman (10 December 1983). Rossi, Memories of 1940, p. 67. Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 137. Ibid., p. 145. Allport, Nature of Prejudice, p. 60. D. Cesarani, ‘An alien concept? The continuity of anti-alienism in British society before 1940’, in Cesarani and Kushner (eds), Internment of Aliens, p. 38. Colpi does acknowledge the terrifying nature of the attacks. Italian Factor, p. 107. ‘Big round up’, Scotsman (12 June 1940), p. 5. Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 143; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 108. MacDougall, Voices from War, p. 337. SA 1999.24, Rosalina Masterson. SA2002.064, Dina Togneri. At least ten Italian shops in Irvine were attacked and looted. NAS, HH55/5, Letter from Chief Constable of Ayrshire, 13 November 1940.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89

SA1998.63, Rina Valente. Gullace, ‘Friends, aliens, and enemies’, p. 353. Cocozza, Assunta, p. 236. P. Tognini, A Mind at War: An Autobiography (New York: Vantage Press, 1990), p. 17. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 108; Sponza, ‘The anti-Italian riots’, p. 136. A. Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 88. Ibid., p. 86. SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo. SA1998.30, John Costa. SA1998.061, Isabella di Lena. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 105; Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 92. SA1998.63, Rachele Spinosi. SA2002.057, Irene Politi. L. Hunt, ‘The past in the present. An introduction to trauma (re-)emerg- ing in old age’, in Hunt, Marshall and Rowlings (eds), Past Trauma in Late Life, p. 5. SA2002.064, Dina Togneri. Hansard, vol. 362, col. 1237, 10 July 1940. NA, HO, 213/1750. The other areas were Tay, Clyde, North Scotland, Orkney and Shetland. ‘Enemy aliens to be removed’, Scotsman (14 June 1940), p. 4. SOE 63, Carmen Demarco; SA1998.30, John Costa. SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. Colpi deals with it in just one sentence in The Italian Factor, pp. 126-7. One respondent’s father died before the war. This contrasts with the case of the 225 Tyneham valley dwellers who were forcibly evacuated from their homes by the military authorities during the war but were paid compensation and helped to find new accommodation. P. Wright, The Village that Died for England. The Strange Story of Tyneham (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), p. 207. ‘Evacuation scheme’, Scotsman (3 June 1940), p. 3. SA1997.100, Interview with Anita Boni, 21 June 1997; SA1998.27, Rina Valente; SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. NAS, AD57/22, Note from Millar Craig to Lord Advocate, 18 November 1940. Hansard, vol. 362, col. 1029, 4 July 1940. See E. Carlson Cumbo, ‘ “Uneasy neighbours”: internment and Hamilton’s Italians’, in Iacovetta, Perin and Principe (eds), Enemies Within, p. 105. ‘Rothesay Sheriff Court’, Scotsman (26 June 1940), p. 5. NA, HO, 215/367, Letter from Bishop Matthew on behalf of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster; Hansard, vol. 365, col. 213,19 September 1940. SA1998.30, John Costa. SA1998.27, Rachele Spinosi.

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Restrictions, riots and relocation 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. SA1998.24, Lola Corrieri. NAS, HH, 55/57, Special Branch report, December 1943. SA 1999.27, Elizabeth Di Ponio. Davies, ‘We’ll meet again’, p. 189. SA1998.63, Rina Valente. SA1998.27, Rina Valente. SA1999.31, Fiorinta Gallo. SA1997.106, Interview with ‘Camelia Gatti’ (pseud.), 16 August 1997. Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 2006—07, National Life Stories, British Library Sound Archive, reference C466/242/02. SA1998.30, John Costa. SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo. SA2002.064, Dina Togneri. SA1998.30, John Costa. SOE 63, Carmen Demarco. NA, HO, 213/1750, Circular to Chief Constables, 14 December 1940. SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo. Letter to author from Elizabeth Di Ponio, 25 March 1999. SA1998.061, Isabella di Lena. SA1997.100, Anita Boni. SA1999.32, Fiorinta Gallo. A. Nocon, ‘A reluctant welcome? Poles in Britain in the 1940s’, Oral History, 24:1 (1996), 84. Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 93. Allport, Nature of Prejudice, p. 60. Kushner, We Europeans?, p. 35. It could also reflect the fact that the average age of female respondents was substantially younger than that of the men. I have not included references here to protect the women in question. SA2002.064, Dina Togneri. SA1999.32, Fiorinta Gallo.

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Chapter Five ‘I don’t want to fight against my uncles’: military service in Britain

Officially, statistics are not held centrally on the numbers of British Italians who served in the British forces during World War Two because, as British subjects, they were not tabulated independently1 However, through a systematic analysis of the 166,894 names contained within the British Army’s World War Two Roll of Honour, it is possible to provide a hypothetical estimate of the number of men of Italian origin who died serving in the British Army during World War Two.2 According to this analysis, 331 men of Italian origin died: 245 who were born in England; 46 in Scotland; 27 in Wales; 6 in Northern Ireland and Eire, and 7 in Italy. Based on the accepted formula which holds that for every 22 members of the forces there was 1 death, this provides a provisional estimate which suggests that at least 7282 men of Italian origin served in the British Army.3 Actual levels of service in the British armed forces are likely to be significantly higher as this analysis does not include those serving in the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force and does not include those who had Italian antecedents but British surnames. Any attempts to address ethnicity within the British armed forces during World War Two tend to focus on ‘visible’ immigrant groups,4 thus reinforcing the dominance of what Walter defines as ‘the Black/White “racial binary” ’ which neglects ‘the longstanding plurality within the “diaspora space” of Britain’.5 Yet, the narratives of Italian Scots who served in the British Army provide rare insights into the fluidity of ethnicity at a time of national conflict. As with the American Jewish veterans studied by Deborah Dash Moore, the outbreak of war forced second-generation Italians to ‘consider self-consciously their identity... and to prioritise their loyalties’.6 By examining the complex responses of ~144~

Military service in Britain second-generation Italians to call-up, the following two chapters bring into the spotlight the neglected question of contested allegiances amongst second-generation Italians in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain. Narratives reveal the multiple and shifting ways in which men of Italian origin negotiated their identities during their war service and demonstrate how a different sense of self could assert itself at particular stages in their service career - at call-up, at the point of receiving an overseas posting or when offered the opportunity for promotion. External factors such as the entry of Italy into the war, the influx of Italian American troops into all theatres of war and Italy’s switch to ‘co-belligerent status’ in 1943 could all, in turn, influence the shifting identity of this unique set of recruits. I interviewed nine men who served in the British armed forces, including two who switched from other army units to the Pioneer Corps. Of these, six were dual nationals and three the sons of naturalised Italians. A combination of documentary evidence and personal testimony reveals how Italian Scots tended to divide into three main groups in response to call-up: resisters, negotiators and consenters. This chapter explores ‘resistance’ to call-up, by examining declarations of alienage and conscientious objection amongst dual national Italians, and also addresses the experiences of the ‘negotiators’. It focuses in particular on those who served in 270 (Italian) Company of the Pioneer Corps, an army unit which was partly established to accommodate second-generation Italians who were unwilling to fight Italian troops. The next chapter will address the experiences of the ‘consenters’, second-generation Italians who served in active fighting units overseas.

‘Italian boys fought against their own brothers’ the discourse of treachery To date, British Italian veterans have been ill served by historiography where their experiences are rarely represented. Both Colpi and Sponza’s influential publications completely fail to address the military service of British-born Italians.7 An underlying assumption of existing accounts, particularly Colpi’s work, is that those second-generation Italians who served in the British forces were more assimilated into British society and thus can be discounted from representations of Italian experience; a belief linked to contested ideas over what it meant to be a ‘good Italian’ in Britain during the war. Colpi asserts that men ‘who served in the fiercely anti- Italian British Armed Forces during the war, perhaps more than any other sector of the Italian population, were forced to throw off ~145~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' their heritage, shake themselves adrift of their roots and pretend to be something they were not’.8 In sharp contrast, the smaller group of second-generation Italians who were interned, usually a result of them having either opted for Italian citizenship or belonging to a Fascist organisation, are extolled in the following terms: ‘There were ... many British-born Italians who were determined to go with “the Italians” and to remain united with their roots and their Community.’9 As in (mis)representations of internment, the father/ son paradigm is continually emphasised: these men ‘were interned with their fathers’.10 The sub-text here represents service in the British forces as an act of betrayal by Italian Scots, a disavowal of their Italian heritage. Yet Colpi goes further, essentially presenting service in the British forces by second-generation sons as an act of disloyalty to their own families. She implies that the fact that a son would be serving in the British forces where a father was interned meant that ‘every family was placed in a situation which began to weaken the entire family-based structure’.11 Sponza also makes flawed assumptions when he contrasts the refusal of 18B detainee Lorenzo Ogni to ‘fight my own people’ with the suggestion that ‘some British bom Italians had no particular attachment; their family assimilated’.12 Overall, Sponza’s failure to address the experiences of British Italian servicemen within a book entitled Divided Loyalties reflects the pervasive notion that those who served in the armed forces should not be included in wartime representations of British Italian experience. This exclusion testifies to deeply suppressed divisions within the community relating to contested issues of loyalty and allegiance and narrative undercurrents which equate army service with treachery. One Scots-born internee I interviewed provided a glimpse of some of the tensions surrounding the act of enlistment when he referred to Italian Scots who fought in the British Army in the following way: ‘A lot of them died: Tobruk. Italian boys fought against their own brothers.’13 Gilda Camillo, a Glaswegian hairdresser born in 1916, was detained in 1942 under Defence Regulation 18B and accused of having discouraged British Italians from war service. Camillo was reported as having referred in private correspondence to relations and friends who had joined the British forces as a ‘dirty shower of bastards’ and called her cousin in British uniform a ‘traitor’.14 The overall assertion of the internee as the ‘good Italian’ within historiography leads to a general failure to address the fluidity and complexity of ethnic identity at a time of conflict and to acknowledge the ways in which service in the British forces could further heighten a sense of ‘otherness’ amongst this particular ethnic group. ~146~

Military service in Britain Negotiating boundaries There was already a tradition of Italian service in the British Army within the Italian community in Scotland. During the First World War, when Britain and Italy fought as Allies, Italian citizens had the option of returning to Italy to fight in the Italian Army or serving in a British regiment. Two respondents reported that their Italian fathers had joined the Royal Scots and one woman said that three of her second-generation brothers had served in the British Army. During World War One, notions of duty, loyalty and Britishness gained increasing authority within the national imaginary.15 Indeed, Gullace defines the conflict as a time when government propaganda, advertising and popular entertainment coalesced to create a cultural environment which reconfigured the way Britons understood the rights and obligations of citizenship within a modern state. As a result, military service increasingly became ‘the litmus test of loyalty, citizenship and manhood itself’.16 In September 1939, the National Service (Armed Forces) Act made all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one liable for military conscription. As Britishborn subjects, Italian Scots would be subjected to the hegemonic discourse of masculinity underlining the role of men as ‘soldiers, fighting and dying for their country’.17 Yet, this intertwined discourse of militarism and masculinity was one largely eschewed by male Italian Scottish veterans when articulating their wartime identities six decades on, reflecting the fundamental ambivalence at the heart of their response to call-up. For this particular ethnic group, there was an internalised conflict between their roles as soldiers and their identities as the sons of ‘enemy aliens’ or naturalised Italians. A major stumbling block for many veterans was that they had to succumb to the manpower demands of the very state that had interned their fathers or relocated their mothers and siblings from their homes. The fact of conscription essentially removed the decision of whether or not to join up from many Italian Scots of military age, although some volunteered ahead of call-up whilst, at the other extreme, others took the option of declaring Italian citizenship at the age of majority to avoid military service in Britain. However, the requirement to register under the National Service (Armed Forces) Acts would be the first instance in which second-generation Italians were called upon to make a fundamental decision regarding their own personal allegiances. Three of the veterans I interviewed were the sons of naturalised Italians which, on a superficial level, suggests that, on call-up, they comfortably self-identified as British. What is fascinating therefore is ~147~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' the extent to which their narratives are permeated with instances of negotiation, compromise and accommodation and a strong sense of their Italianness. Their testimonies suggest that, rather than destroying the father/son bond, as implied by Colpi, fathers of those facing call-up could control the situation or collude with sons in an attempt to establish acceptable boundaries of involvement. For second-generation Italians, there were clearly tensions between their obligations as British citizens and their Italian heritage and familial associations. Decisions would therefore be made within the context of paternal consent, enabling veteran sons to reconcile their contradictory identities. Domenico Natale remembers: DN:

WU: DN: WU: DN:

I got my call-up, I had to go for my medical. Get call-up papers. Father put his hand on my shoulder and he says, ‘Son, you’ll have to go, you’re the oldest. But the other two are not going.’ So that was it - I was off to war. And you said your brother applied for the RAF? Oh aye, Peter. He passed for the RAF but my father threw his stuff in the fire. Aye, he wasflae allowed to go ... So your dad saw it as, if you went... ? That was enough. One son went. See what I mean?18

Addressing the ways in which Italians remembered the Fascist period, Passerini comments that testimonies ‘reveal a world of mediations’ that allowed the Fascist authorities’ domination to be simultaneously accepted and modified. She notes how the family is ‘a key site and agent in such processes’. Italian Scottish veterans, as with Passerini’s informants, often had to ‘accept the inevitable’ but at the same time one sees ‘the interaction at work between oppositional identity and a form of pragmatic acceptance’.19 The tensions between a desire to serve and parental wishes are most acutely expressed in the correspondence of Gunner Alexander Jaconelli of the Royal Artillery, who applied, in August 1940, to be transferred to a non-combatant corps on the grounds that he was of Italian parentage and, most significantly, his brother was serving as a pilot in the Italian Air Force. Jaconelli had previously worked as a shop assistant in Newcastle before enlisting, aged twenty-four, in April 1940. A letter from his father indicates the nature of the parental pressure he faced: Tell your Captain of this, you can serve just the same in the Army do anything but [it has to be] non-combatant, you must say to your Captain apologising your brother is in the aeroplane you shoot your Battery bring him down. Then where are we. This would be a terrible

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Military service in Britain thing. Therefore this is my worry. The quicker you do this the better it will be for us all. Tell your Captain that your parents are very depressed about this ... You must satisfy me on this special occasion, [sic]

In the next section, his father attempts to address concerns clearly raised by his son, specifically the idea that he will be letting the British Army down: ‘I know it is hard for you, they think you are a traitor to refuse to fight, but you are not because you went in April before Italy entered the war. Therefore you are not a traitor.’20

‘They didn’t trust me either’ - confronting ‘difference’ Before being conscripted, a number of Italian dual nationals decided to volunteer, either for military service to obtain their first preference or for civil defence duties, but they were often excluded on account of their nationality. In 1941, an Aberdonian shop assistant and son of an Italian subject, Amadeo Meconi, volunteered under the government industrial scheme for training war workers but was rejected on account of his father’s nationality. In June 1940, he had also received a visit from police officers who warned him to keep clear of all military objectives, thus effectively prohibiting him from making the visits to the harbour fish market upon which his livelihood depended. As a British subject Meconi objected to being treated as ‘a friendly alien’ and, in protest, failed to submit himself for medical examination under the National Service Act. Appearing in court, he highlighted the hypocrisy of the government’s position, stating that ‘when he wished to volunteer for anything he was treated as a person of dual nationality, but when it came to the Forces Act he was treated as a British subject’.21 Interviewee Arlo Valente, who was born in Coatbridge in 1914 and worked in his family fish and chip shop, applied to join the Merchant Navy after being turned down by the RAF. In his narrative, he also positions himself as an object of official distrust: This friend and I, we went into Glasgow to learn how to do radio telegraphy for the Merchant Navy. We went into this college together and we had an interview with the gentleman there in charge and he says, ‘Oh we’ll take your money Mr Valente, but they won’t employ you because of your dual nationality.’ So they didn’t trust me either.22

In July 1940 it was announced that applicants could not be enrolled in the Local Defence Volunteers (subsequently the Home Guard) if, ‘in addition to British nationality, [they possess] German, Austrian or Italian nationality’.23 A revised policy of 1941 by which any male British ~149~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' subject was eligible for enrolment in the Home Guard, irrespective of his parents’ nationality, ‘provided that he does not also possess German, Austrian or Italian nationality, or is not married to a woman of German, Austrian or Italian birth’ still ruled out participation in home defence by dual national Italians.24 Referring to this contested recruitment, Summerfield and Peniston-Bird note how the exclusion of such groups was ‘not due to essentialist assumptions about suitability, competence and aptitude’ but, rather, was caused by uncertainty about the individual’s identification with Britain.25 Like Jack White, the British son of a Russian Jew whose exclusion from the LDV became a cause célèbre, Italian dual nationals ‘occupied a position at the boundary of the official confidence in national unity’.26

‘I would rather go to prison’ - declarations of alienage and narratives of resistance Edinburgh-born internee Joseph Pia comments that ‘many chaps like me were of dual nationality. Quite a few renounced their British nationality, so as not to be called up.’27 Sponza notes that the Italian consulate ‘strongly recommended’ that dual nationals state their intention to opt for Italian citizenship upon reaching their majority to exonerate themselves from service.28 A declaration of alienage was the process by which dual nationals could, at the age of majority, renounce their British nationality before a Justice of the Peace or a Commissioner of Oaths. In a time of war, however, a British subject could not divest himself of British nationality in favour of an enemy nationality. Under Paragraph 74 of the 1939 National Service Act, if a man stated that he had dual nationality his paper would be tabbed ‘Dual Nationality’ with the second nationality recorded.29 In accordance with the Articles of the international Hague Protocol of 1930 relating to ‘Military Obligations in certain cases of Double Nationality’, which Britain had ratified in 1937, when sending out their early National Service notices, the Ministry of Labour informed ‘dual minors’ that they were entitled to renounce their British nationality by making a declaration of alienage before the age of majority.30 However, as a Home Office official subsequently pointed out, when Italy entered the war this rather gentlemanly policy ‘involved the commission of treason by British Italians’ and was discontinued.31 Overall, 199 Italian dual nationals made declarations of alienage under the 1914 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act in the period from 1939-40 before hostilities with Italy commenced.32 A legal opinion provided by D. R. ~150~

Military service in Britain Seaborne Davies reveals how those who alienated were perceived as deliberately taking steps to avoid military service. Seaborne Davies comments that whilst it was important, in the tradition of a liberal nation, to allow the assertion of claims of blood and national associations, there was always the possibility that ‘many persons who owe everything to this country may use that cloak to escape their obligations’.33 It was also felt that the relatively small number who renounced their British nationality in 1939 and 1940 were ‘obviously of Fascist sympathies’.34 Fundamentally, it was felt that those Italian dual nationals who made declarations of alienage when Britain was at war with Germany had ‘disclosed their calibre’.35 Two decades later, when the Home Office was addressing the question of whether to grant naturalisation to those who had alienated during the war, there was resistance to the idea of naturalising those who ‘deliberately cast off British nationality’ in 1940: ‘They took positive steps to establish their disloyalty at the very moment when this country was in great peril.’36 The perception that some dual nationals in Edinburgh were renouncing their British nationality at this time also attracted some opprobrium in the local press. The Edinburgh Evening News remarked on the ‘resentment’ being caused: by the number of young British subjects of foreign parentage who have given up their British birthright and adopted the nationality of their parents in order to avoid being conscripted for service with the British Forces. Italians, in particular, are understood to be adopting this practice. Resentment is felt because such persons are shirking their responsibility after enjoying the benefits of British nationality over a long period of years.37

Another correspondent, the self-styled ‘Scoto-Italian’, rebutted this charge three days later, pointing out that ‘not more than two’ Edinburghborn Italians had renounced their nationality. Rather, many British subjects of Italian origin were serving with the British forces, including ‘many such from Edinburgh’. This correspondent insisted that a man of Italian parentage ‘is not unmindful of his duty, and is, in fact, like most other young men of his age and time. He is, after all the product of British institutions, touched, it may be, with livelier imagination, but in all other respects the counterpart of his “longer-established” British Brother.’38 His view is supported by the Italian internees’ card index held at the National Archives which includes just three internees who had been born in Edinburgh but had opted for Italian nationality.39 However, there also appears to have been a very small contingent within Scotland of dual nationals who refused to register for military ~151~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' service as a form of protest. Gilda Camillo, from Glasgow, was detained under Regulation 18B, accused in 1942 of having ‘done her best to persuade the young men in her large circle of Italian-dual acquaintances to register either as Conscientious Objectors or to refuse to register for military or any other form of war service’.40 One of her brothers declared alienage and was interned in Canada whilst another, Attanasio Camillo, was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment in 1941 for refusing to register under the National Service Acts and to submit to medical examination. It was argued by the security authorities that a ‘ “gang” of four or five’ was forming ‘to present a solid front of opposition to military service’ and that Gilda Camillo had assisted them in filling in their papers applying for release.41 In October 1941, an assistant restaurateur from Troon, Bruno Rossi, was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment by Ayr Sheriff Court for having refused to submit himself to medical examination. Rossi, the British-born son of Italian parents, asserted that ‘his sympathies lay with the Italians and that he had been unable to change his nationality as, during the period of the war, there was no Consul in the country’.42 In March 1944, a twenty-year-old of Italian parentage Enrico Caira, received four months’ imprisonment for refusing to be medically examined at his army medical board. Caira ‘considered that his work in the Blood Transfusion Service was of more importance than service in the Forces which he refused to join’.43

‘This war that had nothing to do with one’ conscientious objection During my preliminary fieldwork in Fife, a discussion amongst potential interviewees hinted at the fact that some Italian Scots had utilised conscientious objection as a way of rejecting or avoiding military service. Whilst a number of men and women of Italian origin would have made a conscientious objection on religious or pacifist grounds, it is also possible that some utilised this option as a form of protest against this particular war, on the grounds of ethnicity. In Wright’s doctoral research on Fascism, three interviewees who had been members of the Balilla registered as conscientious objectors. Whilst they made their appeals on religious grounds, their testimonies also indicate a sense of resistance to the idea of military service rooted in a conflicted sense of nationality, one stating ‘I would never have gone against Italy’ whilst another, Flavio Saccone, from London, recalled:

~152~

Military service in Britain Well, I was a conscientious objector, not because I didn’t like the army or anything like that, I had people in the Italian quarter you had the goodies and the baddies you know, and when some of your friends would say, ‘Nah, tell them to stick it’, you know, tell ’em to stick the army, and all that business, etc., etc., but when Italy came into the war we had cause to argue, because you can’t come and take us prisoners and have the audacity to call us up. 44

In a Lords debate in 1943, the evangelical Christian and pacifist, the Duke of Bedford called for appellate tribunals to recognise those who held ‘equally sincere conscientious objection’ on political or ethical as well as religious grounds. Pointing to the example of someone who was ‘technically a British subject but be of German or Italian parentage’, or married to an Italian wife, he called for all within this category to receive conditional exemption, as ‘almost always these classes of objectors are perfectly willing to take up some alternative service’.45 In her research on British female conscientious objectors, Hazel Nicholson illustrates that as well as pacifist beliefs, there were a range of reasons why women did not wish to participate in the war effort, including Italian dual nationals who refused to fight ‘for nationalistic reasons’ (see chapter seven).46 The Imperial War Museum holds written papers and sound archive recordings relating to three World War Two conscientious objectors of Italian origin. Although the interviews of two of the men, Reginald Bottini and Carmin Sidonio, are thematically grouped under the heading ‘Anti-War Movement’, suggesting that their conscientious objection was asserted on political or religious grounds, a sense of unease at opposing Italy is also apparent within their narratives. In his interview, Carmin Sidonio, born in Invergordon in 1926, makes a direct connection with his older brother’s internment and the position he adopted on response to call-up. Unlike the other members of the large Sidonio family, his brother Luigi had been born in Italy and was interned as an Italian national: ‘We were all flattened by it, absolutely.’ Although his eldest brother, a Territorial, went into the army, Carmin decided to follow the example of another brother, a conscientious objector who was employed as a land worker in Jersey: I’d no intention or no desire to go into the forces. I was still not happy with ... you know I wasn’t that patriotic I suppose to want to take part, you know. I’d listened to my brothers telling me about the way things were and how Luigi was treated and that and I think it still rankled and I didn’t want to go in the services.

~153~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Sidonio also goes on to acknowledge that he ‘did not want to fight Italy’, as he had Italian relations living there.47 In another interview, trade unionist Reg Bottini, born in London in 1916, foregrounds his antiimperialist political beliefs and active engagement in the Labour Party in explaining his opposition to the war, but underlying his narrative there is also an acknowledgement of the significance of his Irish and Italian ethnicity.48 Having lost his second-generation Italian father during the First World War, Bottini grew up under the influence of his Italian grandfather. Over the course of the interview, he creates a vivid image of himself as a marginalised child of ‘mixed origins’ who ‘felt a little bit alien from the surroundings’. In Bottini’s selfrepresentation, his own political ambiguity regarding the war rested upon his ‘split’ identity, which fractured his sense of himself as British. At one point he comments, ‘My grandfather of course was quite pleased that his grandson wasn’t fighting against his own country.’49 Recalling his tribunal in Fulham in June 1940, Bottini’s rather contorted explanation of his success at the CO tribunal demonstrates the complex ways in which his identification as an Italian interacted with his political identity: It happened to be a day or two after the Italians had entered the war and Reg Groves as I recall was nothing but an adept and adroit politician, he made no reference to socialist objections to war or to pacifism or to anything of the kind. He merely said to the tribunal, ‘The tribunal members will have noticed the name of this applicant. He visited Italy twice in 1938 and 1939. And we in the party of which he has been a member since he left school were very interested to learn when he came back from his first trip that his great uncle in Italy had been a victim of the Fascists and had been dosed with castor oil and drummed out of his customs job. And that I think explains a great deal about the applicant’s ambivalent approach to this war.’ And I complained to Reg Groves bitterly afterwards that he’d introduced emotional matter which was not for the hearing. And he said, ‘But it worked didn’t it?’50

Bottini accepts that his ethnicity was a key factor in the way he was perceived during his tribunal, stating that when he received a conditional registration: I reached the conclusion, cynical as I was for a youngster, that it wasn’t on the basis of conscience at all but that here - and I had some hair in those days - they saw a red-haired trouble maker of Irish descent and of Italian origin that might be difficult for Army discipline; the Italians of course not being so well disciplined as the northern races.51

~154~

Military service in Britain Bottini worked on land drainage schemes as a CO in the villages of Yaxley and Stilton until he became ill in November 1943. Overall, his narrative expresses significant disengagement from the war - ‘this war that had nothing to do with one’ - and portrays himself as largely disinterested in the war’s progress. However, he also comments: ‘in the broader sphere, apart from an academic interest in the movement of armies, there wasn’t a sense of identification. After all I had cousins in Italy.’52 Thus, when reflecting on his own ambivalence towards the war, Bottini again makes a connection with his ethnic roots and associations. This sense of disengagement was also evident in the private letters of conscientious objector, Corrado Ruffoni to his Land Girl fiancee, Pamela Moore.53 Born in London in 1925, Ruffoni had lost his father on the Arandora Star and his brother was interned. From July 1943, he was based doing agricultural work at a hostel in Winslow, Buckinghamshire and in letters to Pamela he describes Britain as ‘a pretty lousy’ country, ‘governed by a lot of capitalists and hypocrites, who would take your last shirt from your back but wouldn’t give you “two hapennies for a penny” ’.54 On hearing that Italy had declared war on Germany, he writes in October 1943, ‘I don’t know what my position is now, but I know one thing, that I am keeping out of it, let people fight their own wars, nobody will help me if I have to fight one.’55 Ruffoni identifies with the Italian Prisoners of War who work alongside him and often, in his correspondence, refers to ‘the English’ as a separate entity, although born in England himself.56 In his correspondence, he says of the fighting in Italy, ‘How I prayed that Rome would be spared, partly because it is my capital but also because having been there and seen its beautiful art, that I couldn’t have forgiven anyone English or German if most of it had been destroyed.’57 His general air of alienation is also reinforced by his own sense of exclusion whilst working on the land. He is sacked for hitting a farmer who calls him a filthy ‘wop’ and, on another occasion, is removed from a farm for speaking in Italian with an Italian Prisoner of War: ‘I was told that I was being changed because I could speak Italian, therefore nobody else knew what I was speaking to the P.O.W. about.’58 He also antagonises a Land Girl by declaring ‘Hail Churchill’, which, in turn, provokes the response from his girlfriend: ‘But my dear, old dear, to be able to support a wife after the war, you may be very glad to stay in England, and when in England do as England does. If you insist in your childlike policy of politics I strongly advise you to go back to Italy and stay there.’59 In response, Ruffoni sums up his attitude thus:

~155~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' I won’t start all over again and I haven’t got childish views on politics, I never said England was no good to live in, England like all over [sic] countries is just land which God made when He made the world and as you know I don’t accept anybody to rule me as others, the trouble is that people still can’t see when they are being used for other people’s commercial interest in all countries. I admit that someday I may be glad to settle down here but I am afraid that my opinion of kings and politicians will never alter, no one will fight my wars, so I certainly don’t see why I should fight theres [sic].60

The detachment from the British war effort evident in the selfconstructions of Sidonio, Bottini and Ruffoni indicates the complex ways in which ethnicity interacted with and complicated their sense of allegiance. For those facing call-up who had lost their fathers on the Arandora Star, their ‘sense of duty’ was at risk of being fatally undermined. In a parliamentary debate in July 1940, the MP Graham White quoted the following correspondence of a British-born man with a British mother and Italian father who was ‘missing’ following the Arandora Star disaster: ‘Up to the present we have not had any news from the authorities at all. I am an only son and will soon be twenty. I applied to join the LDV but was turned down because my father was Italian. I managed to join the Auxiliary Fire Service. You can imagine the state of mind of my mother, who has long been in delicate health.’ The correspondent, stated White, was due to be called up for army service and queried ‘whether his experience can help to fight for this country’.61 Another insight into the internalised conflict experienced by second-generation Italians facing call-up is evidenced in letters held at National Archives Scotland from the British subject, Leonello Biagi, whose shop and home were wrecked and looted during the anti-Italian riots in Irvine, resulting in £900 of debt. Biagi already had two brothers serving in the army but writes in December 1940 to the Scottish Home Department, ‘I have registered and passed my medical, but I will refuse to join the army when I’m called for.’ By February 1941 Biagi was serving as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery and still demanding some form of recognition for his plight. ‘Must I lose everything I have worked hard for? And at the same time fight for that which I myself am being deprived of?’62 In intelligence reports relating to British Italian soldiers there is some discussion of those who attempted to make a conscientious objection to military service, articulated as an objection to fighting ‘my own people’. Again, this willingness to assert the concept of Italians as ‘my people’ suggests a level of detachment from Britain amongst a small number of second-generation Italians, a ~156~

Military service in Britain contested allegiance. A nineteen-year-old tailor from Inverness, Fottario Celli, unsuccessfully applied for conscientious objection on the grounds that, although he was born in Britain, he did not wish to fight against the Italians, ‘his own flesh and blood’.63 Furthermore, a letter by a dual national Italian soldier, written in July 1942 and intercepted by the military censor, records another failure to make a successful application for conscientious objection: It’s rather amazing how these Tribunals can only seem to recognise the consciences of Englishmen who refuse to fight for their own country, and fail to understand the conscience of an Italian who refuses to fight against his own people. Nearly all English COs who serve imprisonment are recommended their discharge and given land work etc. Would it not be just as fair to give the Italian land work than make him take part in the struggle against his own people?64

Press coverage of conscientious objectors of Italian origin in Scotland who appeared before tribunals or appellate tribunals suggests that there was a willingness to recognise and respond to the legitimacy of some claims, particularly, it would appear, if the CO had been educated in Italy, had parents or children currently resident in Italy or close relatives serving in the Italian forces. An expressed willingness to serve the British war effort in some capacity (such as agricultural or forestry work) also encouraged a more sympathetic hearing. For example, Bruno G. Mariani of Kirkcaldy was registered for noncombatant duties when he explained that he was subject to conscription by both the Italian and British Armies. Mariani had been originally called to the Italian colours in 1927, had a brother- in-law and several cousins fighting in the Italian Army and his daughter and parents lived in Italy. Mariani stated that ‘it was impossible for him to put on the British uniform because if, in the event of invasion of this country, he was found in uniform he would be automatically shot as a traitor to Italy’.65 The examples cited above indicate that a small number of second- and third-generation Italians were successful in establishing their ethnicity as a valid source of conscientious objection and point to the viability of the thesis that some British subjects of Italian origin utilised, or attempted to utilise, conscientious objection as an avoidance strategy or as a form of protest. Whilst the registration of conscientious objection amongst second-generation Italians would often be motivated by sincerely held political or religious views, or as a result of familial circumstances, there is also the possibility that it was accessed in more cynical ways. ~157~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' ‘You could hear the accordions playing’ — service in the Pioneer Corps Amongst my research sample of army veterans, narratives tended to split between the ‘negotiators’, usually the sons of internees who focus on their family’s personal circumstances, and the ‘consenters’, largely, but not exclusively, the sons of naturalised fathers who express more willingness to accommodate the idea of military service. All narratives, however, were deeply imbued with a sense of negotiation and there is fluidity within these categories. The ‘negotiators’ tend to foreground their personal family circumstances when explaining their response to military call-up, constructing their narratives as a refusal to serve until interned fathers were released or relocated mothers returned to their homes. For some, their anger and bewilderment at the treatment of their parents remain resonant today. As a member of the Balilla, Ronnie Boni had been briefly detained in Saughton Prison. On his release, he received call-up papers and attended an army medical. In his narrative, Boni directly links his father’s release from internment to his agreement to serve in the army; There was a desk: an eye doctor, all different doctors for different parts of the body and we had all to march round there, four hundred and fifty of us, stark naked, to all of these doctors and be examined for the particular thing. Eyes, throat, whatever. Then I was interviewed by a major as to what would happen to me in the forces. I wasn’t allowed the RAF, I wasn’t allowed the Navy. I’d only be able to go into the army, which I promptly refused to do anything until they released my father. I said, ‘If you want me in the army I’ll go but you take my father out of the Isle of Man and I’ll come into the army.’ So, my father was out for Christmas! 1942, he was out for Christmas ... and I was in the army two months after.66

Geraldo Cozzi, whose mother was relocated, places similar emphasis on his negotiation with the authorities: At first they put my mother, in 1939, said she could be a spy! Now can you imagine? She couldn’t speak English; she couldn’t speak Italian properly. So they sent her to a place called Motherwell. She had to be so many miles away from Edinburgh, being next to the sea like, in case she was a spy. And she was there - with other Italians - and had to live there. In 1941 I got calling up papers and my brother got calling up papers: join the British Army. First of all, I had to get a medical. That was alright. Then they sent me another one: Al. You’re to go to the British Army. I said, ‘No, no, no, no!’ See? I went, ‘No, no, no, no.’ I says, ‘As long as my mother’s in the Grassmarket. Bring her back from Motherwell, into her

~158~

Military service in Britain own house. You’ve taken her as a foreigner and you’re wanting me to fight against the Italians? Oh no, no!’ I says, ‘When she comes back, then I’ll join the army.’ And this is what happened. After three months they got her back and in 1941 I had to join up with my brother.67

At the prompting of a fellow soldier, Arlo Valente of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) composed a letter to the Home Secretary Osbert Peake to obtain the release of his Italian stepfather.68 Tony Ventilla was serving in the Cameron Highlanders when his Italian parents were arrested as enemy aliens: ‘When I heard all this I went to my commanding officer and he wrote to the War Office to get them released, given the circumstance of me being a soldier.’ Tragically for Ventilla, his parents were returned to their Clydebank home and were killed during the Blitz, along with his wife and brother.69 It is clearly important to ‘negotiators’ that they are perceived as having put their families first. Significantly, these respondents also tend to project themselves as reluctant warriors who found the identity of a soldier ill-fitting. Ugolini said he was ‘disgusted’ to receive call-up papers when his father was interned and recounted how he ‘hated’ various aspects of army life.70 Another respondent drew upon the stereotypical imagery of the cowardly Italian soldier when depicting his wartime self: ‘I was in Normandy, D + 6 and oh, I was a terrible soldier. I was frightened). I was more frightened than the Germans!’71 This reluctance, in self-representations, to embody the masculine ideal of the ‘soldier hero’ perhaps reflects the burden placed upon second-generation Italians by the tangled web of family obligations and the conflicting demands of the state. One of the most significant groupings amongst the ‘negotiators’ were those who transferred into the Pioneer Corps from other army units.72 The 270 (Italian) Company, formed at Ilfracombe in December 1940, was a mixed army unit of Italian internees and dual national Italians who objected to service overseas. The function of the Pioneer Corps was summarised in the following way: ‘We are now at war with Italy, and it is now possible for these dual nationals to join the British Army either in an active fighting force or in the Pioneer Corps under a guarantee that they will in no circumstances be sent to fight on an Italian front.’73 270 Company, stationed in Slough from 194146, was initially made up of over one hundred Italian volunteers from internment camps but it was brought up to a full eleven-section company strength by the posting of dual nationals from British units.74 Bob Moore and Kent Fedorowich record how in January 1941, LieutenantCommander George Martelli RN of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) made several visits to the Pioneer Corps training centre at Ilfracombe to explore the availability of possible agents for sabotage work ~159~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' overseas. The pioneers, according to Martelli, were the ‘pick’ of Italians in Britain from the point of view of fitness, political reliability and ‘willingness to serve our cause’. However, after fifty potential candidates were interviewed at Ilfracombe, it was found that most of the pioneers could not speak fluent Italian, having been born or bred in Britain.751 interviewed two veterans who switched from other army training units into the Pioneer Corps as well as two internees who turned down the opportunity to serve in the Pioneers in exchange for release from internment. Within communal discourse, service in the Pioneer Corps has been consistently represented either as a personal affront or an act of treachery. Yet interviews with veterans who actually served in the Corps suggest a radically different perspective and offer a fresh insight into the fluidity and dynamism of ethnic identity within the British forces.

‘You’re a pioneer, which means you’re a traitor to your country’ the internee perspective Amongst the narratives of internees, the Pioneer Corps has been consistently represented in a negative light, with the overall emphasis resting on the image of the pioneers as ‘scavengers’ who dug latrines.76 As the Gillmans note, ‘The Pioneer Corps enjoyed a sad reputation as the dumping ground of the British army; all human dross, it was once unkindly said, was there.’77 The original badge of the Corps, depicting a rifle, pick and shovel piled and surmounted by a whole laurel wreath with the motto ‘Work conquers all’, further encourages the widespread perception of the Corps as ‘labourers’. Concerns were raised about low levels of enlistment amongst Italian internees into the Pioneer Corps with only 288 Italians having applied to enlist by the beginning of 1941.78 Sir Percy Loraine, Chair of the Home Office Advisory Committee (Italian), suspected that the Italians might be deterred by the fear of reprisals from Italy after the end of hostilities.79 This cohort of Italian civilian internees also faced accusations of treachery. In Parliament in November 1940, Lambeth North MP, George Strauss, highlighted the existence of a ‘Fascist’ contingent which had ‘appointed themselves to all posts of responsibility, threatened those who had volunteered for the Auxiliary Pioneer Corps and intimidated those who had not got Fascist sympathies’.80 Both second-generation internees I interviewed turned down the chance to serve the British war effort through the channel of the Pioneer Corps although they articulated their reasons in different ways. Renzo Serafini draws on the discourse of treachery in his testimony: ~160~

Military service in Britain When you were interned they used to give you a tribunal - and the British used to say, first of all they started saying, ‘Will you join the Pioneer Corps?’ They wanted a Pioneer army but nobody wanted that. The first five or six that went as pioneers they were shot right away when they landed in Italy because they’re traitors... They wouldn’t give you a ticket round your neck that you’re a soldier. You’re a pioneer, which means you’re a traitor to your country.81

In an interview for the documentary series, Scotland’s War, Serafini elaborates on this theme, referring to those who were released into the Allied forces as ‘collaborators’.82 Joseph Pia, who ran the dopolavoro in Edinburgh and was interned in 1940, similarly utilises the negative imagery surrounding the Pioneer Corps to explain his refusal to serve. However, his testimony also alludes to more complicated issues relating to pro-Italian feeling, or disaffection from the British war effort, amongst a cohort of second-generation internees: The Anglo-Italians were told ‘Go one at a time in front of Captain Crastor.’ We queued up and went in one at a time and this question, ‘Are you willing to join the Pioneer Corps?’ Now, they were all asked this but I speak about me of course: ‘Are you willing to join?’ ‘No... why the Pioneer Corps?’ I said, ‘I’ve been put into prison and that sort of thing. All my friends might think I’m a criminal or a spy or a traitor or something. I’ve done nothing at all! So, release me. Let me be like any other fellow. Let me volunteer for any regiment. I’m quite willing to join the Royal Scots, the Highland Light Infantry, any regiment you like just like any other fellow. But not just the Pioneer Corps.’ So, whilst I was speaking there a Major comes in. He was inspecting all kinds of military camps, not just us you know. Soldiers’ camps. So he comes in and Captain Crastor says, ‘Major Veitch. A very interesting case here.’ [...] ‘Mr Pia here refuses to join the Pioneer Corps although he would join any other Scottish regiment.’ So the Major turned to me: ‘And what’s wrong with the Pioneer Corps?’ So I said to him, ‘Well I consider... I’m not a military man at all but I consider they are the scrapings of the British Army. To me the Pioneer Corps are people who dig roads and build latrines and that.’ Anyhow, I refused to join the Pioneer Corps. I wanted to be released, treated like any other fellow and then join. I guess - and I’m sure my guess is very good - the big majority of Anglo-Italians said, ‘Yes, we’ll join the Pioneer Corps’ and they were released to go to it. Whereas me, my brother, cousin, we’ll say a dozen or two who were thick with me but many who were not pals of mine or anything had refused to join the Pioneer Corps and we were kept in. Until the end of the war. But if we had said, ‘Yes’, we would have got out.83

It is interesting that amongst this small group of internees, service in the Pioneer Corps is represented as degrading, humiliating or ~161~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' dishonourable. The emphasis embodied in Pia’s testimony sidesteps the issue that other options had been available to these men prior to internment and ignores the fact that Britain had been at war with Germany for nine months before Italy declared war, numerous British Italians having already volunteered or enlisted into the British Army. Indeed, Pia acknowledges this in his testimony when he discusses the initial detention of second- generation Italians in an Edinburgh prison and how the different routes taken by this group of men were visually indicated: a dozen of us at least were already in the army, in the forces and they had to go and hunt for them. Find out where they were, like, and then arrest them and then they brought them to Saughton Prison. Now, when we were brought to Saughton Prison we were dressed like this [civilian clothes] but they couldn’t have a military man in uniform going in prison. So they were the only ones that wore prison uniform ... So, when we went on parade, the ones in prison uniform, you knew they’d been in the forces'. But the ones in civvies, we had not been in the forces.84

5. The football team of 270 (Italian) Company, Pioneer Corps in Slough, 1945. Respondent Romeo Ugolini is third from the left on the back row.

~162~

Military service in Britain ‘Dancing at the Hammersmith Palais’ - the Pioneer perspective Both of the veterans I interviewed who went into the Pioneer Corps had attended the Fasci as youths. One had been to Italy in the Balilla and had been briefly detained under Regulation 18B. Again, these two men articulated slightly different reasons for why they were transferred to 270 Company. Romeo Ugolini, bom in 1923, served initially with the Black Watch and utilises the motif of resistance and refusal highlighted above in explaining his transfer: They wanted to send us abroad at first and I refused to go abroad. [The Adjutant] says, ‘Why’s that?’ I says, ‘Well, I don’t want to fight against my uncles. You never know I might meet them on the battlefield.’ That was in Africa. [...] The regiments were being sent to Africa and I said, ‘No, I don’t want’ - I said, ‘I’ll stay here and defend the country. If anything should happen I’ll defend the country while I’m here but I’m not going abroad’... He says, ‘You must be a coward!’ I said, ‘You can call me what you like, I’m not going.’ So, they relented and let me go to Slough.85

Significantly, Ugolini’s recollections about his army training days in Perth also highlight the existence of a particular cohort of Italian Scots conscripts who were unwilling to serve overseas but who responded positively to the setting up of 270 (Italian) Company: We slept in these tents anyway and, as I said before, we heard the whistling of the Fascisti [song]. We says, ‘It must be an Italian.’ So we went to see him and it was Valente. His name was Valente and he says ‘Hello.’ I says, ‘I’m Ugolini from Armadale’, you know, introduced each other and he says, ‘What’s happening to you?’ I says, ‘We don’t know yet. We were down here for getting dispersed on different detachments, different patrols.’ He says, ‘Why don’t you put in for Slough?’ He says, ‘That’s an Italian non- combatant group under the Pioneer Corps.’ I says, ‘Well, I’ll try!’ So we asked to get down there and it was okay!86

Ronnie Boni, also born in 1923, focuses on the fact of his dual nationality to explain his move to the Pioneer Corps: ‘They couldn’t post me overseas because I was dual national and if the Germans or the Italians or the Japanese had got hold of me, I would have been shot. Because I was in the British forces and I’m really an Italian ... until I was twenty-one I was classed as an Italian ... which I didn’t mind!’87 Yet, it was the ways in which both the Pioneer Corps veterans conveyed overwhelmingly positive memories of their time in Slough that is most significant, Ugolini repeatedly stating that it was ‘marvellous’. For these two respondents, service in 270 Company not only provided a welcome ~163~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' alternative to the dilemma of service overseas but also offered an officially condoned space in which they were able to acknowledge and reaffirm the Italian side of their identity. When he begins to recall his service in the Company, Ugolini’s narrative exudes a sense of finally being ‘at home’ in an all- Italian unit: ‘So, we got sent to Slough and when we arrived there it was wonderful! First thing we got was a big plate of minestrone and you could hear the accordions and the guitars playing and ... we settled in. It was great. It was all Italians.’88 This view is confirmed by the diary of Dorio Melfi, from Kent, who enlisted in the Pioneer Corps in 1941. He mentions receiving dance lessons from the Italian headwaiter at the Cafi de Paris, playing the accordion and having music evenings.89 In stark contrast to his depiction of his unhappy time in the Black Watch, Ugolini dwells on his service in the Corps as a period of enjoyment, focusing on escapades with fellow privates, relationships with local women and ATS recruits, and friendships with other Italians, including internees and Prisoners of War. Not only would second-generation Italians based in Slough be mixing with Italian internees, most often depicted as tailors, barbers and cooks, but they also had the opportunity to socialise amongst large Italian communities nearby. Ugolini, who came from the West Lothian village of Armadale, which accommodated only two Italian families, recalls: ‘At night we went out to the dances and we went to the pubs... We were allowed out every night. And at the weekends we went to London to Soho... We had great times in Soho. Italian cafes again ... Italian food... and dancing at the Hammersmith Palais.’90 This strong sense of Italian identification and socialisation was confirmed by Carmen Demarco, a child onlooker of her brother’s experiences in the Corps: all the Italians, all the London Italians, everybody who was young enough to be in the army was in this Pioneer Corps stationed at Slough. It must have been a hoot of a regiment because before we knew where we were, Ronnie was having nice pleats in his trousers and fancy jackets tailored and his hair cut the way he liked it by a barber in Soho. And you name it, they were having the life of Larry and he had a great time in the Pioneer Corps, you see. He met all the Bertorellis and so on who had all the big restaurants in Soho.91

A further opportunity for ethnic identification occurred through the physical closeness with Italian Prisoners of War whom the pioneers were guarding; Ugolini mentions playing football with the POWs and Melfi’s diary shows that he took a police job involving their supervision. Lanarkshire-born filmmaker Enrico Cocozza, who served in the Pioneer ~164~

Military service in Britain Corps from 1944-46, records how he was posted as an interpreter to an Italian Prisoner of War camp in Manchester where he was happy ‘making many friends among the Italians’.92 Overall, the officially sanctioned mixing of Italians - POWs, internees and men of Italian origin - provided fertile ground for ethnic identification and appears to have con- tributed to a heightened sense of Italianness amongst the two pioneer respondents. At the close of his interview, in response to a question on his ‘sense of identity’, Ronnie Boni picked up a photograph of himself in 270 Company: I can identify with that: 450 men there who were all Italian, or at least born Italian. I mean in that company, that was in the British Army and yet we were eating Italian food. I mean you would get risotto! Risotto one day for a meal, you’d get pasta, you’d get cotoletta alia milanese, things that were unheard of! The Commanding Officer used to invite the hierarchy of the British Army and our groups down for meals because we had chefs from London cooking our meals. Chefs from the Paradise Club, from Pollari’s, all the lovely big restaurants. And the meals, I mean, they were fantastic! You know, I mean, the old porridge sort of thing, and cabbage and mutton in the British Army, it was ... They’d never even heard of this stuff, really! And then we had dances... The cooks were very good, they used to make chocolate eclairs with fresh cream - during the war! We had a farewell company do, which was, we had £5000 to spend ... and it was in the Astro Hall in the Slough area, and an American band. There were about two thousand people there... husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends. It was a fantastic do! But it was all Italian food.93

Conclusion The fact that many Scots-born Italians were of dual nationality, deriving Italian citizenship from their father and British citizenship from their place of birth, compounded their sense of conflicting loyalties and made the act of serving in the armed forces a complex and symbolic act. A small number of second-generation Italians decided to ‘resist’ military service either by making use of the mechanism of declarations of alienage or by serving prison sentences. Another group articulated their opposition by registering as conscientious objectors. Some respondents found the persona of the ‘soldier hero’ to be ill-fitting, resting precariously as it did upon a morass of complicated and conflicting duties - to family, nation or country of origin. In stark contrast to the views which pervade existing literature based on the perspective and ~165~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' accounts of internees, interviews with Italian Scots who actually served in the Pioneer Corps suggest a radically different perspective and offer a fresh insight into the fluidity and dynamism of ethnic identity within the British forces. For the negotiators who foregrounded the dilemma of competing familial and state obligations, the establishment of 270 (Italian) Company was broadly welcomed. The congregation of secondgeneration male Italians within the Pioneer Corps had the effect of reinforcing their own sense of ‘being’ Italian as pioneers socialised within the wider London Italian community and worked in close contact with Italian internees and Italian POWs. It would appear that the Company functioned as a site of positive ethnic identification for second-generation Italians, its ‘common unit identity’ being both comfortable and affirming for those interviewed. 94 Indeed, the Pioneer Corps arguably provided an alternative site of Italianness in Britain during the war. This suggests that the general negativity surrounding the pioneers is linked again to the concept of the ‘good Italian’, whereby those who helped support the British war effort in any form have since been criticised or diminished within dominant discourse.

Notes 1

2

3

Correspondence with author from S. A. Dickinson, Air Historical Branch (RAF) Ministry of Defence, 4 August 2005 and from C. F. Harper, Naval Historical Branch, 7 December 2005. This calculation is based on systematically going through each individual record listed in the British Army Roll of Honour and identifying those with an Italian surname. For Scotland, the name, age, rank, date of death, place of death and country of birth were tabulated and the information cross-checked with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) online Debt of Honour Register to furnish more information about the parentage of each identified soldier where possible. Surnames were cross-checked with genealogical and Italian surname websites and those which could not be definitively verified as Italian were discounted. As all those tabulated were British-born it cannot be stated categorically whether they were second-, third-, fourth- or even fifth-generation Italian but, given the specific Italian settlement patterns in Britain, it is likely that most were second and third generation. Unfortunately, those of Italian origin with an Anglicised surname and those with an Italian mother but British father could not be identified in this process. See B. Girvan, The Emergency. Neutral Ireland 1939-45 (London: Pan Books, 2007), p. 274. Girvan discusses the work of Yvonne McEwen, who has undertaken a similar analysis to ascertain levels of Irish participation in the

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Military service in Britain

4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

British forces. See Y. McEwen, ‘Deaths in Irish regiments 1939-1945 and the extent of Irish volunteering in the British Army’, The Irish Sword - The Journal of The Military History Society of Ireland, 24:95 (2004), 81-99. M. Sherwood, Many Struggles: West Indian Workers and Service Personnel in Britain, 1939-1945 (London: Karia Press, 1985); R. Lambo, ‘Achtung! The Black Prince: West Africans in the Royal Air Force, 1939-46’, in D. Killingray, Africans in Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1994); N. A. Wynn, ‘“Race war”: Black American GIs and West Indians in Britain during the Second World War’, Immigrants and Minorities, 24:3 (2006), 324–46. B. M. Walter, ‘English/Irish hybridity: second generation diasporic identities’, International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 5:7 (2006), 17-24, accessed via www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk, March 2009. D. Dash Moore, GI Jews. How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 35. Colpi, Italian Factor, Sponza, Divided Loyalties. [My italics.] Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 193. Ibid., pp. 111-12. Ibid., p. 112. See chapter eight. [My italics.). Ibid., p. 112. Fortier introduces the useful concept of the ‘good son’ in Migrant Belongings, p. 90. Unpublished paper presented at the Centre for Migration and Ethnicity Research, University of Sheffield, 2 June 1998. SA1998.35, Renzo Serafini. NA, HO, 45/25759, CAMILLO, Gilda, detention order, 10 April 1942, p. 3. A letter from the Scottish Division of the Advisory Committee (Italian), 5 August 1942, stated that ‘her attitude and sympathies were definitely antiBritish and strongly pro-Italian’ but this view was later revised. N. Gullace, 'The Blood of Our Sons’. Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 10. Ibid., pp. 2; 105. Noakes, War and the British, p. 14. SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory, pp. 139-41. NA, WO, 32/4545, Letter from Albert Jaconelli to Alexander Jaconelli, 2 August 1940. ‘Alleged failure to submit to medical examination’, Glasgow Herald (23 December 1941). SA1998.28, Arlo Valente [pseud.], 4 May 1998. Hansard, vol. 363, col. 1007, 25 July 1940. Hansard, vol. 369, col. 1130, 11 March 1941. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, p. 30. Ibid., p. 32. MacDougall, Voices from War, p. 308.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 59. See also NA, FO, 372/3344, minute from Ingram, 17 May 1939. NA, LAB, 29/179, Ministry of Labour and National Service circular, January 1941. NA, HO, 213/375, 1942 Memo on declarations of alienage by Seaborne Davies, p. 7. NA, HO, 213/1662, Minute by Rumbelow, 13 March 1941. NA, HO, 213/375, Declarations of Alienage made since 3 September 1939, registered up to 28 April 1942. Ibid., p. 10. NA, HO, 213/1662, Minute, 20 June 1940. NA, HO, 213/375, Memo by Seaborne Davies, p. 10. NA, HO, 213/2559, Report on ‘Naturalisation of Italian ex-Fascists and Renouncers of British Nationality’, 25 February 1960. ‘1401 aliens in Edinburgh’, Edinburgh Evening News (19 April 1940), p. 3. ‘Letters’, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch (22 April 1940). NA, HO, 396/284-294, Italians interned in UK, 1939. NA, HO, 45/25759, CAMILLO, Gilda, Detention Order,10April 1942,p. 3. It was later acknowledged that ‘there is now a considerable body of evidence tending to show that she did not, as alleged, endeavour to suborne her young men friends from their duty to serve’. Minute by de la Cour, 7 September 1943. NA, HO, 45/25759, CAMILLO, Gilda, Detention Order, 10 April 1942, pp. 3-4. ‘Where his sympathies la/, Scotsman (4 October 1941), p. 6. NAS, HH55/58, Police war duties. Special Branch report, March 1944. Wright, ‘Italian Fascism’, p. 192. Hansard (Lords), vol. 126, col. 368, 2 March 1943. H. Nicholson, ‘A disputed identity: women conscientious objectors in Second World War Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 18:4 (2007), 427. IWM, 15738, Carmin Sidonio, 21 August 1995. T. Dalyell, ‘Obituary: Reg Bottini’, Independent (12 May 1999), www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-reg-bottini1093050.html, accessed 17 June 2008. IWM, 4660, Reginald Bottini, 15 July 1980, Transcript, p. 53. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 50. Personal correspondence from Peter Ruffoni, 4 April 2008. IWM, 88/35/1, C. RUFFONI, letter from Corrado Ruffoni to Pamela Moore, 8 October 1943. Ibid., 14 October 1943. Ibid., 8 November 1943. Ibid., 7 June 1944.

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Military service in Britain 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

Ibid., 10 January 1944; 24 January 1944. Ibid., 1 March 1944; Letter from Moore to Ruffoni, 3 March 1944. Letter from Ruffoni to Moore, 6 March 1944. Hansard, vol. 362, cols. 1229-30, 10 July 1940. NAS, HH, 55/5, Letter.from L. Biagi, February 1941. ‘CO tribunal at Inverness’, Scotsman (13 August 1943), p. 3. NA, WO, 32/4545, MI5 intelligence reports. ‘Called to British and Italian Armies’, Scotsman (25 July 1941), p. 3. See also ‘C.O.’s brothers in Italian Army’, Scotsman (24 July 1941), p. 3; ‘Pacifist brothers’, Scotsman (1 August 1941), p. 6; ‘Parents in Italy’, Scotsman (23 October 1942), p. 3. SA1997.106, Interview with Ronnie Boni, 16 August 1997. SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi. Conversely, respondent Dora Harris alludes to the fact that some believed consenting to relocation would prevent their sons from being called up. Referring to a woman relocated with her mother in Motherwell she says, ‘She’d stay there forever she said as long as her sons didn’t have to join the army.’ SA1997.105, Dora Harris. SA1998.28/29, Interview with Arlo Valente. Cited in Robertson and Wilson, Scotland’s War, pp. 55-8. SA1997.109, Interview with Romeo Ugolini, 25 November 1997. SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi, 21 August 1998. The Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps was raised on 17 October 1939, becoming the Pioneer Corps in November 1940. NA, HO, 213/1662, Minute, 6 May 1941. NA, WO, 253/9, Monograph of 270 (A) ‘Italian’ Company, 23 May 1945. Moore and Fedorowich, British Empire, p. 107. This derogatory term is employed by Pia in his interview with MacDougall, Voices from War, p. 319. Its origin stems from the fact that alien recruits helped to clear away the rubble of bomb sites. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 257. Hansard, vol. 368, col. 1067, 6 February 1941. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 118. ‘Some Fascists to be released’, Guardian (29 November 1940), p. 7. SA1998.34, Renzo Serafini. Broadcast on 6 September 1990. See Robertson and Wilson, Scotland’s War, p. 50. SA1998.32, Joseph Pia. Ibid. SA1997.109, Romeo Ugolini. Ibid. SA1997.106, Ronnie Boni. SA1997.109, Romeo Ugolini. Kindly loaned by the Pioneer Corps archivist, Lieutenant Colonel John Starling. SA1997.109, Romeo Ugolini.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 91 92

93 94

SOE 64, Carmen Demarco. Cocozza, Assunta, p. 249. Ultimately 270 Company supplied over sixty men for transfer to Intelligence Corps and POW units as interpreters. NA, WO, 253/9, Monograph, 23 May 1945. SA1997.107, Ronnie Boni. Thomson, Anzac Memories, p. 80.

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Chapter Six ‘He was shot by the Italians’: confronting military service overseas

As the previous chapter showed, thousands of men of Italian origin were enlisted into the British Army during World War Two. This chapter tracks the War Office’s response to the recruitment of men of ‘enemy’ origin and the ways in which its policy of exemption from liability for overseas service for those who had ‘family connections with the enemy’ shifted and evolved throughout the course of the war.1 The original policy of exempting Italians from the possibility of fighting Italian troops overseas became increasingly contested as the war progressed and was ultimately overthrown when the United States entered the war, bringing an influx of Italian American troops into all theatres of war. This chapter also recovers the memories of the ‘consenters’, secondgeneration Italians who served overseas with the British Army, highlighting the complex, and often contradictory, ways in which they confronted the prospect of overseas service, the ways in which their ethnicity interacted with their identities as soldiers, and the extent to which the British Army was willing to utilise their Italianness in different operational contexts.

‘Signing on the dotted line’ - a policy of accommodation and protection When Italy declared war on Britain in June 1940, the Army Council had already been deliberating for some months on the conditions of service for recruits who were British subjects with either dual nationality or alien parentage. On the outbreak of war, in September 1939, the Army Council issued instructions that all those with German parentage were to be removed from their field units and returned to base or training ~171~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' units. Policy on liability for service overseas of those with ‘enemy connections or nationality’ was predicated on the assumption that, if captured, a dual national soldier might, due to the operation of nationality laws making him eligible for service in the German or Italian Armies, be treated as a ‘traitor’ with the possibility of reprisals against relatives.2 This led to the implementation of a protective policy framed around the idea of consent which was formalised in Army Council instructions issued to Commanders on 25 January 1940: ‘British subjects who possess dual nationality or alien parentage or other alien relationship rendering them or their relations liable to German or other enemy reprisals will not be employed in any fighting unit opposed to the enemy until their written consent has been obtained after the risks involved have been clearly explained to them.’3 This policy was subsequently defended on the grounds that personnel of German or Italian origin might be exposed to a ‘grave’ and ‘exceptional’ risk to which other serving personnel were not liable: ‘one which cannot be regarded as a normal risk of warfare between civilised countries’.4 Following the dramatic evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, there was an increasing sense that, in the likelihood of a German invasion of Britain, everyone was now ‘in the fighting line’. In light of this new national emergency, it was stressed that the provisions of the 25 January letter did not apply to dual nationals serving in the UK. Indeed, all soldiers based in Britain were required to fulfil their military duty ‘without consideration of the special risks which might arise if they should fall into enemy hands’. Adhering to the original spirit of the instructions, a new War Office letter of 4 July 1940 added that no soldier with Italian connections or nationality would be included in units or drafts despatched for service in Egypt and Palestine ‘owing to serious fighting breaking out in the Middle East with the Italians’.5 However, when instructions of 18 October 1941 gave authority to Army Commanders to grant exemption from all service overseas, not just the Middle East, the rationale behind this ‘gentlemanly’ policy began to be challenged within the army and by the security services.6 There were complaints that dual nationals of enemy origin were effectively receiving ‘privileged’ or ‘specially favourable’ treatment. Opposition centred around the difficulty in defining the ‘degree of relationship which would justify exemption’ from service overseas, with commanding officers questioning how they could credibly ascertain the closeness of associations with relatives such as uncles, aunts and cousins.7 The implementation of the policy was further complicated by the fact that claims were being made by ~172~

Confronting military service overseas personnel with Polish or Russian connections, and even by British subjects with families on the Channel Islands.8 It was pointed out that the ‘gentlemanly spirit’ of the original policy meant that, in effect, by October 1941 ‘we treated practically every friend and relation of our enemies as privileged’.-9 The generous policy of protection was also perceived as undermining traditional notions of duty; the underlying belief that as a British-born subject, a dual national should undertake his obligations to his country. The Commander-in-Chief, Scottish Command articulated this view that dual national soldiers ‘must accept the responsibilities as well as the benefits of British citizenship’.10 The question of parity of sacrifice was also raised, with the Army Council policy seen as contributing to ‘the fantastic result’ that ‘whilst all the sons of a family of alien origin ... may be exempted from service overseas because they have an aunt living in an enemy-occupied country, we are drafting overseas thousands of only sons of British parents or the only sons of widows’. This latter statement contains a hint of racialised assumptions that, as Catholics, Italian families would consist of large broods rather than the British ‘only son’.11 Fundamentally, therefore, resistance to the policy was rooted in the perception that those of ‘alien blood’ were being protected, articulated most clearly by the army’s Director of Organisation: ‘Why should men of our own race be sent overseas to enable these semi-aliens ... to soldier safely at home?’12 By early 1942, in the context of the ever-increasing demand for manpower, the Army Council rules were said to ‘smack of sentimentality out of place at this stage of war’,13 and on 8 May 1942 the Executive Committee of the Army Council (ECAC) held a meeting to reconsider its policy of exemption from overseas service. There was an acknowledgement that since the controversial instructions issued in October 1941, the situation had been changed materially by the extension of the war to the Far East: ‘there appears to be no good reason why personnel with connections with European countries should not be required to serve in that theatre, but owing to the wide terms of the letter, exemption if granted applies to all theatres.’14 The need to direct troops to the Far East was hampered by the ‘impossibility’ in practice of distinguishing between liability to serve in different theatres of war. Most specifically, it was not considered possible to make a distinction between India and the Middle East because it was not known to what theatre of operations any particular unit or draft was to be sent. Another key factor was the entry of the United States, a multi-ethnic fighting force, into the conflict in December 1941: ~173~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' It is felt that a high percentage of the soldiers of the US Army will have ' connections directly or indirectly with most of the countries with which ; we are at war, and that it is anomalous that soldiers of the British Army, ,, whatever their nationality or connections may be, should now be accorded these exceptional privileges.15

Fundamentally, therefore, it was felt to be anomalous that those in British uniform with relatives in occupied territory ‘can only fight if they sign on the dotted line’.16 This sea change in the government’s position was also acknowledged by one of my interviewees, Arlo Valente of the RAMC, who said that whilst he was originally asked whether he was willing to fight overseas against Italian troops, ‘shortly after that, America came into the war and they’re all bloody foreigners! Aren’t they, when you think about it? So that all went by the board.’ Indeed for Domenico Natale, ending the war as a Sergeant Major in the Garrison Police, Milan, the presence of Italian American troops in Italy helped him to reconcile his own identity as a soldier of Italian origin both during the war and since: ‘there was a hell of a lot of American Italians. I found that when I got to Rome. When you looked at the list of the Fallen, there were Demarcos and all sorts of things there, fighting with the American forces.’17 The ECAC also acknowledged that implementation of the policy had often been confused, contradictory and administratively difficult to implement, citing the case of four Scottish brothers, named Scarramuza (sic), who had all been called up.18 Exemption had been granted to two of the brothers, another had been refused exemption by his formation, and the fourth had gone overseas to India - and ultimately died •»- without any action being taken.19 Furthermore, many men of German and Italian origin had already been serving overseas before the October 1941 rules were issued and the ECAC argued that there was no evidence that these dual nationals had, indeed, been subject to reprisals: ‘no suggestion has ever been made, so far as is known, that they are being treated by the Germans or Italians as other than normal prisoners of war.’ Thus, the ECAC concluded that in light of changed circumstances, and the pressing need for manpower, the ‘special privileges’ being accorded to dual nationals presented ‘an anomaly which is entirely inconsistent with the conception of “all-out” war’.20 Perhaps mindful of the need to retain some level of ‘protection’ for its dual national troops, the ECAC proposed a new policy, stating that those whose names or place of birth ‘showed them to have connections with enemy countries may adopt other names and be issued with new A.B.64, which in many cases will give them a fair measure of protection if they are captured’.21 As a result, new ~174~

Confronting military service overseas instructions were issued on 10 June 1942 whereby the policy of granting exemptions was cancelled, signalling a shift to the exercise of discretionary powers. In August 1942, the Air Ministry also announced that exemption of RAF personnel from overseas service on the grounds of nationality was cancelled.22

‘Soldiers of doubtful loyalty’ - racialised views of British Italian recruits In the lead-up to the war, the security services had been developing a system by which they could identify and monitor the recruitment of persons of dual nationality into the British Army. If the parents or wife of the recruit was not a British subject, Army Form B.203 would be dealt with by the War Office and submitted to MI5 for a decision ‘as to the eligibility of the applicant from a nationality and security point of view’. A card index was also maintained in MI5 of ‘all persons of foreign blood or connection serving or having served in British Armed Forces’.23 Work by Sherwood, Bousquet and Douglas has highlighted what Marika Sherwood views as ‘the long history’ of racism within the British Services and, in particular, the racist policies implemented by the British state towards black recruits during World War Two.24 Sherwood argues that whilst appearing to campaign successfully for the raising of the colour bar within the services, the Colonial Office colluded with the de facto policy of retaining it; it was essentially a ‘public relations exercise’ intended to protect Britain against accusations of racist practices.25 In particular, she highlights the ‘speciousness’ of joint announcements made in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords in October 1939 that ‘During the present emergency, Indians, Anglo-Indians, Burmans, British subjects from the Colonies and British protected persons who are in this country, including those who are not of pure European descent, are to be on the same footing as British subjects of pure European descent as regards voluntary enlistment in the armed forces.’ By not lifting the specific requirement that recruits must be British-born subjects of British-born parents, Sherwood argues, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the army officer corps hoped to avoid having to actually accept any black recruits, as they ‘obviously presumed that there would be no Black British subjects with British-born parents’. This example of ‘the armed services’ sophistry’ effectively operated to exclude many of those the government had publicly intimated it would accept.26 It is highly possible that similar calculations would have been ~175~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' made in relation to nationality rules regarding second-generation Italians, with many second- generation Italians of military age having Italian parents rather than naturalised British parents. In contrast to the Army Council’s acceptance of men of dual nationality, the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy adhered to more restrictive nationality rules for entrants. Regarding RAF personnel, under the 1917 Air Force (Constitution) Act, regulations required that entrants to the air force be both British nationals and the sons of parents both of whom were British subjects. Para. 18 of Recruiting Instructions, issued in September 1938, stated that ‘Applicants who possess foreign as well as British nationality are not to be enlisted without reference to the Inspector of Recruiting.’27 Significantly, although new regulations under the Emergency Powers Act in September 1939 provided that aliens could be accepted into the air force, recruiting instructions issued a month later stated that ‘Specific attention was to be paid to the security aspect in regard to volunteers who were of enemy alien origin’.28 In his work on the recruitment of Jews into the army, Royal Navy and RAF, Kushner suggests that ‘the degree of snobbery was stronger in the last two’, which he believes was reflected in a greater hostility to Jews.29 In a contemporaneous polemic, the British-born son of a German national, T. A. Ende, refers to the existence of ‘an organised and officially approved system of racial discrimination’ in the armed forces whereby dual nationals had to overcome the ‘prejudice’ of their immediate officers and NCOs misled by documents labelled ‘treat as suspect’. Again, Ende believed that dual nationals were being rejected for enlistment in the RAF on the grounds of their parentage.30 Alex Margiotta’s memory of his encounter with the RAF Selection Board is significant in exposing the double standards at play within a wartime state which was prepared to use Italian Scots for its own manpower purposes but still treated applicants as second-class citizens: I volunteered for the Royal Air Force four times. Four times I volunteered and they wouldn’t take me on because I was Italian. The fifth time when I got my papers for call-up, I had to state a preference. I stated preference for the air force and I got taken and sent up to the Aircrew Selection Board in Hanover Street. You were up there doing tests for three days. I got through all that okay except for the fact that there were three bloody Group Captains or something on the Board. And there was a bloke sitting on a chair there taking the minutes of the interview. The bloke says, ‘Well Margiotta,’ he says, ‘I want to ask you a question. How would you feel if you were in a bomber over Rome?’

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Confronting military service overseas A right dirty, under-the-belt one. I said, ‘Well that’s a difficult question to answer but I can only reply and say, how would any Italian pilots feel if they were in a bomber over Edinburgh. Would they be considering my family?’ ‘Oh!’ The bloke that was sitting there started laughing to himself! Pat answer that... The bloke went ‘huh’. He didn’t like it but anyway, he says, ‘I’ll have to make a decision. I’ll have to go back to the Air Ministry.’ And I knew what would happen. Seven or eight days afterwards I got a letter from the Air Ministry: I was ineligible for enlistment in the Royal Air Force.31

The Scotsman also reports the case of Raymond Giordano, a thirdgeneration Italian from Edinburgh who, appearing before an Appellate Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors, outlines his frustrated attempts to serve in the air force: I volunteered for the RAF some time ago. I am a trained mechanic but I have been unemployed for three years. I have tried to get work, but no one will take an Italian. I was born in this country, and so were my father and my mother. I have never been out of Leith. My father fought in the British Navy in the last war, but when I went to volunteer for the RAF I was told that I could not join because I was an Italian ... The greatest war in history is being fought and they won’t take me.32

The Royal Navy operated the most restrictive policies of the three arms of services. Initially resistant to the idea of relaxing their nationality rules, on the grounds that there would be ‘no lack of candidates’, in November 1939, the naval authorities announced that for ‘Hostilities Only’ engagements, approval would be given to candidates who were ‘British born and whose parent or parents were naturalised British subjects at the time of the candidate’s birth’; a slight modification of the rule that parents should be ‘British-born’.33 The justification for this reluctantly conceded relaxation of nationality rules was explained by the Admiralty civil servant, I. G. Lang, in the following manner: ‘it is not too easy to explain why “the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children” when the parents have a long record of life in England, and there is nothing known to the detriment of their characters.’34 He also noted that, in light of the recent changes making non-European British subjects eligible for entry into the naval service,35 ‘it seems anomalous to refuse to employ an Englishman, one of whose parents is naturalised, when the Admiralty is prepared to employ an Indian or a Cypriot’.36 This comment hints at a hierarchy of acceptance, with British-born subjects being acknowledged as ~177~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' requiring equal status to the more ‘visibly’ different. In 1942, as the need for naval manpower increased, provision was made for the entry of children of enemy aliens if they had a special qualification, and the following year this rule was modified to allow the entry of those with enemy alien parents irrespective of their qualifications but subject to security rules.37 The subtle nuances of eligibility on which these nationality rules were based link into wider questions of citizenship and belonging in early twentieth-century Britain. Cesarani points out that in the inter-war period the British-born children of non-British-born parents, even if the parents were naturalised, were barred from employment in the civil service and from educational and housing entitlements. This abrogated the principle of jus soli (nationality derived from birth), one of the planks on which the British concept of citizenship was based. As Cesarani writes, this ‘systematic discrimination’ against British-born subjects of non-British-born parentage was ‘underpinned by the common racist assumptions that these groups did not or could not fully belong to the nation. British nationality was conceptualised and constructed in legal terms so as to exclude a racialised Other.’38 As discussed in earlier chapters, the security services had been agitating since 1936 for a ban on the recruitment of dual nationals of German and Italian nationality for all three armed forces. During the war, the subversive potential of dual national soldiers was constantly foregrounded, compounded by the idea of dual nationality itself. As American law professor Peter J. Spiro notes, ‘The very idea of dual nationality seems antithetical to the traditional conception dominated by notions of indivisible allegiance, which leave little room for multiple attachments.’39 It is clear from the limited number of intelligence reports held at the National Archives that racialised views of secondgeneration Italians and Germans permeated the security services who monitored the correspondence of dual national recruits. The security authorities defined German and Italian dual nationals as ‘owing allegiance to the enemy by parentage’40 and consistently raised doubts over their ‘reliability’ in the field.41 The very fact of dual allegiance allowed the security services to construct second-generation Italians as soldiers ‘whose loyalty is more than doubtful’.42 Military intelligence pointed to the supposed ‘discontent’ amongst British Italian recruits over the 1942 reversal of War Office policy on overseas service and asserted that there was ample evidence to show that these soldiers regarded the cancellation of Home Service as a ‘breach of faith’.43 Harry Allen of MI5 argued that this had led to ‘considerable anxiety in the minds of some Commanding Officers, who perhaps rightly feel very ~178~

Confronting military service overseas doubtful as to the reliability which can be placed on such men in the field’.44 He pointed to the potential of ‘such men’ to undermine the morale of ‘their British comrades in battle’ if they were to desert at critical periods.45 Not only were soldiers of Italian origin positioned as distinct from their ‘British’ peers, this characterisation-of British Italian servicemen as somehow inherently duplicitous built upon widely held notions of the Italian soldier as both cowardly and treacherous. The capacity for cowardly behaviour was, in this case, enhanced by the soldiers’ sense of split allegiance. Within the context of this racialisation of British Italian soldiers, desertion was to be anticipated. Intelligence reports on dual national Italians raise the idea that once serving overseas they would ‘fight for the other side’,46

6. Paratrooper Italo Grumoli, from Campbeltown, who died during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944 and is buried in Holland.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' question ‘whether they would stand up to the strain at a critical moment in batde’47 and conclude that ‘such soldiers ... may, in the stress of battle conditions, desert to the enemy and attempt to earn their freedom by giving information’.48 Fundamentally, MI5 argued, the existence of ‘several hundreds or even thousands of doubtful soldiers in the ranks of the Field Army’ would add to the burden of intelligence operations following the planned invasion of mainland Europe.49 In the words of the Commander-in-Chief, Scottish Command, they could prove to be ‘more of a liability than an asset’.50 Throughout the conflict there was a tension between MI5’s racialised assumptions about British Italian soldiers and their potential for treachery in the field and the War Office’s more measured approach, underpinned by notions that all British subjects should undertake their military duty and a pragmatic recognition of the need for manpower.

‘You’re just an effing Italian so-and-so’ - experiences in the army Amongst my research sample, two respondents served in both North Africa and Italy, three served in Western Europe, following D-Day, one served in the Far East and the other remained in the United Kingdom (three if we include the Pioneer Corps), a pattern of service overseas which generally reflects the experiences of other British servicemen.51 It was not uncommon for whole Italian families to be involved in the British war effort. In Campbeltown, for example, the children of Italian internee Leo Grumoli included three sons serving in the army, two daughters in the Land Army and another in the WAAF.52 Amongst the Porchetta siblings, born in Dunoon to an Irish mother and Italian father, one brother, Belriso, served in the RAMC, another, Diletto, in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, one sister was in the ATS and another in the Land Army.53 An increasingly high-profile British Italian soldier is Fusilier Dennis Donnini, the son of an Italian confectioner and English mother from County Durham, who was awarded a posthumous VC for his ‘gallantry and self sacrifice’ on the battlefield between the rivers Roer and Maas, Holland, in January 1945. Serving with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, Donnini was only nineteen when he was killed whilst rescuing a wounded companion and drawing enemy fire away from his comrades; an ‘outstanding example’ of great personal bravery.54 In addition to Donnini’s service, one of his brothers died of war wounds,55 another was a Prisoner of War in Germany, whilst his two sisters served in the ATS.56 ~180~

Confronting military service overseas The Italian Scottish army veterans I interviewed who served in active fighting units can best be termed ‘consenters’. Not only did they express more willingness to serve within their narratives but they also incorporated more conventional features of war memories — adventure, excitement and camaraderie — into their accounts of their military service. Indeed, a number of veteran interviewees asserted a traditional masculine pride in their military identities; Domenico Natale stated, ‘I took to the army like a duck takes to water’ whilst Angelo Valente enthusiastically recounted the rigours of his ‘Commando training’.57 Yet amongst veterans, traditional army narratives of regimental honour and camaraderie co-exist alongside recollections of racism and hostility. As with the American Jewish servicemen interviewed by Dash Moore, the army was a site of integration but also a place where they could be reminded sharply of their difference.58 Domenico Natale expresses resignation at being ‘called an Italian B-’ when he was issuing orders as a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, seeing it as ‘all part and parcel of the thing’.59 Peter Togneri, who served in the Seaforth Highlanders, said he occasionally met with ‘animosity’; one of the ‘little prejudices’ he experienced being the sergeant deliberately mispronouncing his Italian surname at every morning roll-call.60 Clearly, all those I interviewed were immediately singled out as ‘different’ by their surname and it would be interesting to recover the experience of those who were the sons of Italian mothers and did not have an Italian surname to provide such a fundamental marker of difference. In spite of the War Office deliberations regarding liability for overseas service, an analysis of narratives reveals that treatment of men of Italian origin in fighting units was often confused, arbitrary and contradictory, with a lot depending on the personal relations formed between Italian Scots and their superior officers. Angelo Valente’s recollection of racist abuse whilst serving with the army in France, following the D-Day invasion, forms part of a wider narrative about a lifetime’s experience of racism: In the army, front line, I was a sergeant. The Regimental Sergeant Major came up to me and he said, ‘You’ve moved these troops from that dug- out to this one and we can’t make an approach.’ I said, ‘I’m only doing what the officer told me to do. Go and ask him.’ He said, ‘See you - you’re just an effing Italian so-and-so!’ I said, ‘Is that a fact?’ Well there was a wee bit of rum. We all get a wee bit of rum and I was kind of high. So, I just smacked him. Down he went. He went to the Commanding Officer. The Commanding Officer came up and said, ‘Hey, what’s this Sergeant Valente? What’s going on here?’ And I told him. I said, ‘And I’ll tell you something else. If you have him here and

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' he’s in the front line with me, there’s something going to happen. That man will not be able to get up because I’m going to effing shoot him.’61

In his interview, Arlo Valente of the RAMC states that he did not have any problems in the army being of Italian origin but mentions his younger brother’s experiences: Tony was in the [Royal Army] Service Corps and when Italy came into the war, he was taken out of circulation. Put in the guardroom for his own protection! And they took his rifle away from him. They didn’t know what to do—it was panic stations. It just depended on the officer in charge, how to go about this problem. He’d no problem except one of the sergeants - I don’t know the guy or anything - he came in and he called Tony an Italian bastard! And Tony went [mimics punch]. Biffed him. And that was a crime for a rookie to punch a Non-Commissioned Officer, NCO. Normally he’d have been sent to prison for that but the Commanding Officer knew what to do. He did nothing about it. Because he deserved that! Because there’s Tony in there parading up and down, doing his work for the army and this man to come and insult him!62

Geraldo Cozzi’s only reference to racism during his interview was when he related his wartime service in the Royal Army Service Corps and the sense of victimisation he felt due to his Italian origin. He uses a more picaresque comic narrative to address the themes of racism and abuse highlighted by other respondents: When I went abroad in the Royal Army Service Corps there was a bloody, rotten swine of a bloody officer. He hated me because my name was Cozzi and he was trying to get rid of me. So ... every time the King’s Own Scottish Borderers went into action, I was attached to them. Do you know what I mean? I was amongst always the fighting! And this lieutenant -I don’t know what but he hated the sight of me. He was wanting me to get killed but I come back every time! And the Royal Scots, they come in. See they’d only done three or four days but I got attached to them. And when the other one, the KOSBs, went in, I was attached to them! And then there was another regiment. I was never out o’ the front line! And I was getting thin wi’ fear ... Anyway, I survived it all.63

The complexities surrounding the service of Italian Scots in the army crystallised at the point where the recruit faced the prospect of being posted overseas. LaGumina’s text on Italian American servicemen recognises that, for some, the question of service overseas potentially fighting Italian troops posed ‘a profound moral dilemma’.64 When faced ~182~

Confronting military service overseas with postings overseas to the Middle East, North Africa or Italy for example, individuals of Italian origin would face a delicate balancing act of different loyalties and allegiances based on family background. The news that he would be posted overseas provoked Domenico Natale of the Royal Artillery into attempting to re-‘claim’ dual -nationality, an option unavailable to him because his father had naturalised British status. Initially threatened with being stripped of his rank of sergeant, Natale was sent to Nottingham to guard an old World War One gun emplacement. He believes ‘they beat me in the end’ when he was transferred to the Royal Artillery Headquarters; his ethnicity conflicted with, and was finally defeated by, a strong sense of regimental pride and pressure to conform: DN:

WU: DN:

I get to Woolwich and to see this, it’s amazing. It’s all red brick buildings and it’s just houses. Hundreds and hundreds. It was the headquarters of the R.A., you see: ‘You’re in charge of 400 men.’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘You’re in charge of 400 men.’ [...] So, anyway, ye ken, they did the usual thing, parading by numbers and da-da-da. ‘Right. Da-da-da-da-da. First Army.’ You see? They had me. They had me. I was frightened to open my mouth down there, the headquarters. So I said, ‘I’ll just go!’ Why was that? Why was it different? Well, I mean, you’re at the headquarters of the barracks and that.And you’ve a wee bit of pride too in your regiment, I suppose. Different things. You say to yourself, I’d better not open my mouth here or they’ll put me in the clink right enough! Oh yes! You’re kind of frightened. So, I went off to North Africa as a First Army replacement. I just went.65

Arlo Valente reconciled his sense of conflicting loyalties by serving in the RAMC. Posted to Algeria in November 1942, he presents himself as a resigned hostage to fortune and recounts his story in a humorous fashion. He recalls how he was originally sent for by a sympathetic Commanding Officer when on ‘rookie training’ in Leeds: AV:

He said, ‘Valente. It’s an open secret. We’re packing, getting ready to go overseas’ [...] He said, ‘We’re going abroad, our unit, same as so many more. There’s a possibility, Italy being in the war ... We don’t know where ...’ He knew quite well where we were going! Everybody knew where we were going. He says, ‘There’s a distinct possibility that we’re going to fight against the Italian troops. What do you think?’ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve to go where I’m sent. And I’m doing medical work so we’re doing something useful, you know what I mean. We’re not destroying

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

WU: AV:

life,we’re trying to help the people that are in danger of losing their lives.’ r You’d nothing much to say. He says, ‘It’s a possibility that, if you’re caught by the Italian troops, you might be considered a traitor or a deserter or a spy. You never know how they might treat you. That’s whatever theatre of war we’re going to.’ He just spoke along those lines and then he said, ‘Would you be prepared to go overseas?’ I said, ‘Not in view of what you’re telling me Sir.’ So, that was all. So you went anyway then? I went anyway, yes. Och aye... I wasn’t going to do anything about it but the question never came up. I just went. They bundled everyone on, ‘Right on you go!’ They used to say when you were going for your medical, ‘If you’re warm, you’re in!’66

Whilst Natale’s attempts to reassert dual nationality were thwarted due to his father’s naturalised status, dual nationals within my research sample, such as Arlo Valente, Margiotta and Cozzi, were consulted over their preferences. Geraldo Cozzi was initially placed in the Light Infantry but objected and threatened to desert. Whilst earlier in his testimony he recognises that military service required him ‘to fight against the Italians’, in this section of his narrative he avoids directly addressing this issue and instead identifies his resistance to service as being on the grounds of his advanced years: They put me in the Light Infantry, so I says, ‘Look. I can’t do this here. You need a young man.’ I was thirty-four years of age. I was young but I mean not for the Light Infantry. You want young laddies. So, they put me down to England in the South Staffordshire and that was for the Light Infantry. I said, ‘Look. You put me in there I’ll desert.’ I said, ‘I’ve told them already.’ So that I was more in army detention for weeks and they sort of brought me up to ... the officers like, you know, the major. ‘But why?’ They couldn’t make any sense of me at all. So I says, when they brought me up, two officers brought me up to three men, brigadiers, you know, these big shots. [...] Then I told them all about the story. I said, ‘Now, can you imagine me at thirty-four years of age fighting in the infantry? I can hardly bloody walk let alone bloody kill soldiers!’ I said, ‘They’ve done nothing to me!’ So, anyway, they said, ‘Well, what would you like?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve been driving a car for years. I would like to be in the’... So they put me in the Royal Army Service Corps.67

Margiotta recognises that the events of 1940 ‘created the difficulty’ for servicemen of Italian origin but says that when he was asked about different theatres of war, he replied, ‘Well don’t send me to Italy, that’s all I want you to do. I’ll go anywhere but not to Italy’, a demand which his officers complied with.68 Testimonies suggest that, for individual ~184~

Confronting military service overseas recruits of Italian origin, a lot could depend on whether they had developed an understanding with their superior officer. Within this constant process of negotiation and re-negotiation, a sense of place was also important. Natale, for exam+ple, attributes the resolution of his dilemma to ‘a bargain’ struck with his -colonel when based with the Royal Artillery near Mers-el-Kebir in North Africa: I gets wakened up with shots. So I rushes out the tent - because being a NCO I had a tent to myself - and I rushed out and here’s this officer firing and blasting... He’s drunk as a lord. So I took this thing and said, ‘Come on, where’s your tent?’ ‘Blah-blah-blah.’ So, I gets him over anyway and I says to a boy at headquarters, ‘Who’s that?’ He says, ‘Oh that’s the Colonel!’ I said, ‘I’ll bloody colonel him if he doesn’t get into his bloody tent!’ So, I put him to bed! But you see, how things happen? He sent for me the next morning. ‘I must thank you very much Sergeant Natale for what you done last night.’ And, ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘That’s a strange name.’ He says, ‘Italian extraction?’ I says, ‘Yes. My parents are Italian.’ ‘Oh aye,’ he says, ‘Well, it’ll not be very long now before Italy capitulates. But until that day comes, you won’t go up the front line.’ I said, ‘Thanks very much, Sir.’ I said, ‘That’s been a bone of contention with me for a long time now.’ And I thought a lot of him for that.69

‘Me, the coward’ – veterans’ self-representations In Peter Belmonte’s publication on Italian American veterans, infantryman Armand Castelli recounts his sensitivity to the fact that ‘the others in the company kept on making remarks about the Italians being lousy soldiers’. Whilst insulted, Castelli felt that he successfully silenced his denigrators by qualifying as a marksman.70 Interestingly, in the obituary of VC Dennis Donnini, which appeared in the journal of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers in May 1945, the Northern District Secretary, John Yarwood, notes that the diminutive junior packer with the Durham Cable Company did not look like a hero. Yet, Yarwood advances his own theory to account for ‘the heroic spirit and the astonishing fortitude’ that this ‘smooth-faced kid’ revealed in battle: We made unkind jokes about the fighting qualities of Italians in 1940,1941, 1942 and 1943. Dennis, conscious of his blood while rather more British in sentiment than the rest of us, would feel, I think, an implied slight. I may be wholly wrong; but I suspect that, from the first, he had resolved grimly to stultify all casual assumptions and thoughtless generalisations on the subject. With only a few months’ military service behind him, and only a few weeks in the batde zone, he did it completely.71

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Whilst the stereotype of the cowardly and incompetent Italian soldier was certainly prevalent in the wartime period, it was an image largely shunned in the self-representations of Italian Scottish veterans six decades on. However, the fact that a couple of interviewees referred to this imagery obliquely suggests that they were not immune to these wider discourses and had perhaps internalised wartime beliefs about the propensity for cowardly behaviour amongst Italian troops. As seen in the previous chapter, Romeo Ugolini recalled how he was accused of cowardice by his Adjutant when he refused to be posted with his regiment to North Africa. In his testimony, Cozzi both subscribes to the stereotype and subverts it: I was in Germany, across the Rhine see? We got there — this is in 1944 - we got across the Rhine and another river in Germany, and the Germans had got thingummy there. But I remember one place there when we went in: there was a wee lassie and she was kind of abandoned. Me, the coward, I went and picked that bairn up from there and brought her into the sort of shelter there... And one day I was in a trench there and - the Germans were surrounding us. There was a big battle; I forget the name of the wee village in Germany - and a big German come into my trench because I was in the trench. I wasnae fighting. The infantry was fighting. I told you I was a thingummy. And he says, ‘Comrade, comrade, comrade!’ I says, ‘Get the hell oot o’ it!’ I was more feared o’ them! [laughs] And I sent him away!72

‘We had relations fighting against us’ - split identities None of the veteran interviewees made any specific reference to the switch in status of Italian soldiers into ‘co-belligerents’ following the 1943 Italian Armistice nor to the implications of the ‘civil war’ in Italy between 1943 and 1945. Rather, in narratives, they most commonly foregrounded their identification with Italian American soldiers whom they perceived as sharing their experience of duality. In America, between 500,000 and 1.5 million Italian Americans, mostly secondgeneration men and women, served in World War Two.73 There is a general consensus amongst historians that, by providing Italian Americans with the opportunity to show how loyal they were, the war became ‘the fuel of the melting pot’.74 Indeed, in Belmonte’s Italian Americans in World War II veterans overwhelmingly assert the American side of their identity: A1 Miletta, an aircraft armourer with the 81st Fighter Group, typically recalls: ‘we were American soldiers doing a nasty job, and we did it proudly.’75 LaGumina’s work on Italian ~186~

Confronting military service overseas American troops argues that they ‘subordinated the anguish of violence against ancestral obligation to an unabashed identity that they were unequivocally Americans’.76 Furthermore, Jarvis notes the significance in America of wartime combat films, such as The Purple Heart (1944) and A Walk in the Sun (1945), which consistently presented multicultural platoons, including Italian characters, so that the idea of an increasingly diverse America became firmly entrenched in the American imagination.77 Significantly, whilst the figure of the Italian American serviceman has been readily incorporated into popular British representations of American wartime troops, from the character of Lieutenant Joe Friselli in The Way to the Stars (1945) to the pilot Mario Bottone in the 1982 TV Show We’ll Meet Again, a British Italian serviceman has never been utilised in a similar way to denote Britishness in cinematic or TV portrayals of the British at war. It is also worth noting that, during the war, the American film censor ‘took exception’ to anti-Italian dialogue contained within the hugely popular British naval film In Which We Serve (1942) and requested alteration of ‘certain expressions put in the mouths of sailors in this film’ (see chapter one). This was felt to be on the grounds that ‘Italian susceptibilities in the United States might be offended’, a factor which had been entirely disregarded in relation to Italian audiences in Britain.78 Overall, the positivist sentiment foregrounded in Italian American histories is rarely apparent in the narratives of Italian Scottish veterans. The latter did not readily employ the language of patriotism when interviewed; instead, their narratives were imbued with a sense of ambivalence and conflicting loyalties. Ultimately, to paraphrase Thomson, the fact of ethnicity amongst Italian Scottish recruits made for ‘contrasting experiences of war and different identities as soldiers’.79 It is clear from narratives that there was a very real fear amongst Italian immigrant families that their sons serving overseas in the British Army would face reprisals if caught by Italian troops. It appears to have been a commonly held belief, both at the time and repeated in interviews, that soldiers of Italian origin were shot on capture. Natale highlights the existence of this anxiety amongst troops of Italian origin rooted in the fear of reprisals: As long as Italy was in the war, there was always that danger right enough. I mean, I’m not saying it could happen but you could be shooting at your cousins!... Do you understand what I mean? You’d be shooting your relatives. Not that they were ... they were close cousins in name because they were there and we were here. And I’d never been to Italy but we had relations fighting against us.80

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other'

7.

The 1945 film The Way to the Stars included the Italian American character, Lieutenant Joe Friselli, played by Bonar Colleano.

John Costa recalled that his family were in a ‘panic’ because his older brother, serving in the RAMC, was sent to North Africa: ‘we didn’t know what had happened to him because, you know, it did happen to American Italians {...} some were captured by Italian troops and shot. Especially Fascist troops, if they saw an Italian name.’81 An MI5 minute from September 1942 records receipt of information alleging that ‘among a certain batch of prisoners captured by the enemy in Libya, those of Italian connection were separated and shot in the back on instructions received from Roma. Whether this story is true or not, it is no doubt known and would be accepted as a possibility by British-Italian duals serving in our forces.’82 A letter from one British Italian soldier to his commanding officer, on notification of the cancellation of Home Service, states: ‘if I am taken prisoner of war, I would be classed as a traitor, and probably shot.’83 The legend of VC winner and Royal Scots Fusilier Dennis Donnini was utilised by two respondents, helping to rationalise or explain their particular response as an Italian Scottish recruit. His death had symbolic ~188~

Confronting military service overseas importance for these servicemen, serving as a useful shorthand for highlighting some of the problems they faced when confronting the prospect of service overseas. For example, Domenico Natale uses an inaccurate version of the Donnini myth, in which the VC winner is killed in Rome rather than in Holland, to validate his concerns about potential reprisals: DN:

WU: DN:

One of the first VCs of the war was Donnini from Newcastle. And he had been in the paratroops when they did that little thing at the Bridge in Rome. That was before we got there and he was shot... I think that’s what sort of brought all this on to start with. Because they found out that his parents were Italian and he was shot. Now he should never have been shot, Donnini, but he was the first VC. And he’d come from Newcastle. Donnini. He was Italian. Was he shot by? He was shot by the Italians. A lot of people said that he should never have been, that wasnae right. Because they found out he was Italian, that would be with whatever he had round his neck I suppose...84

‘I belonged to an enemy nation’ - dual identification Respondent Peter Togneri, who served in the Far East with the Seaforth Highlanders, was rare in identifying Italy as the enemy although his statement still reflects the complexity of dual identification: when Italy came into the war, they were the enemies. I was British and the Germans and the Italians were classed the same - they were the enemy. Because my way of thinking, everything was British. Not that I was ashamed of being Italian or anything like that, I mean my name was Togneri, I had to be Italian. But my oudook, my way of thinking and my sentiments, were British.85

LaGumina characterises the attitude adopted by Italian American troops as being ‘whoever was an enemy of the United States, perforce was their enemy’.86 Contemporary US newspaper accounts enthusiastically reported on the invasion of Sicily: ‘There are thousands of doughboys of Italian descent who are eager and willing to knock Italy out of the war as quickly as possible.’87 Whilst most of my interview sample served in mainland Europe following the D-Day landings, some did serve in North Africa and Italy. Those involved in the Sicily landings may well have been exposed to the oratory of General Montgomery, who told the troops preparing to invade: ‘Someone said to me a few days ago that the Italians are really decent people and that if we treat them properly they will ~189~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' come over to us. I disagree with him. Our job is to kill them... Oncewe have killed them we can see if they are good fellows or not.’88 The diaries of Scots-bom medical officer Lieutenant Belriso Porchetta, who was stationed in North Africa in the lead-up to the Sicily landings, reflect his belief that Fascist Italy needed to be defeated. He observes in a diary entry for August 1943: ‘We see hundreds of planes go north towards Italy every day. A big flight has just passed over. They must be having a battering. They are now getting what has been long overdue — a lesson they shall never forget.’89 Later in his diary he writes: ‘War news still keeps good although these twisted fascists are not even sensible enough to give in when they are beaten. They must be slaughtered without mercy until they realise it is their end.’90 Porchetta was born in Dunoon to an Irish mother and an Italian father who was a self-proclaimed ‘international socialist’.91 As such, he may have developed a political consciousness where the defeat of Fascism overrode any sense of Italian identification. His brother, Diletto Porchetta, serving as a corporal with the 7th battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at the battle of Wadi Akarit in April 1943, quite literally confronted an Italian soldier as the enemy and similarly presents a level of detachment: Our platoon was running as hard as we could towards the Wadi and we came under fire from an Italian firing a Breda machine gun. He seemed to be firing directly at me and the platoon, the range being only about thirty yards to the other side of the wadi. At this point I didn’t think I would come through my first major battle but an Argyll who must have scaled the wadi before us and was ahead on the right came charging in at an angle from right to left and with no hesitation coolly bayoneted this Italian machine gunner, who couldn’t see him coming from the side. I had seen this Argyll about and remember his face to this day.92

One of the most fascinating aspects of veteran narratives was the articulation of a dual identification with both Britain and Italy, illustrating the extent to which they appeared to inhabit ‘two worlds’93 and, most importantiy, contradicting Colpi’s arguments about British Italian soldiers being more assimilated. Indeed, their unconscious references to themselves as Italian within their texts literally signify ‘a split’ in their self-identity.94 The narrative of Arlo Valente, referring to one Christmas spent in Italy, illustrates this complex sense of dual identification: We came into Brindisi, a big port down in the heel of Italy and they just put us in a transit camp to wait to see where we were to be distributed to and get the hospital equipment over. So we had a nice wee spell. That was Christmas Eve. The following day was traditional; you’d get

~190~

Confronting military service overseas your Christmas dinner: turkey and plum duff and all that. It’s traditional that the officers serve the troops, and the nurses. So we were out in the open. Christmas Eve and beautiful sunshine and there was this little group of musicians came up from the town to give us a wee concert while we were having our dinner. They played nice music and one of them was ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’. Do you know that? [sings] ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’. And the Company Officer, he was sitting near me and he says, ‘Imagine them knowing that.’ I say, ‘That’s a traditional Italian tune! That’s Viene sul marel’ Which it was! [laughs] So, I wasn’t going to let him away with it! That’s our ... that’s our music! ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ was a parody on it.95

Another revealing anecdote was provided by Peter Togneri of the Seaforth Highlanders who was hospitalised with impetigo whilst serving in India. Togneri was born in Stirling in 1924: When I reached this hospital, the doctor in charge was taking down my particulars - but by this time, Italy was out of the war and the Italians were our co-belligerents. Now, in this hospital the clerk, the cook, the orderlies, everybody was Italian Prisoners of War, you see? So, I mean, in the battalion where I’d just come from I was [dismissive] ‘Peter Togneri’ you know? But when I reached this place and I saw this fellow in an Italian uniform. He was the clerk taking down my particulars, you see? So I thought, I’m going to have this fellow on. So then, the doctor was taking down my particulars, ‘Where am I from? Where am I going?’ So I said in my best - now, my real name is Pietro Togneri. So, he said, ‘What’s your name?’ So, I said in my good Italian accent, 'Pietro Togneri.’ This clerk’s head shot up and we looked each other in the eye, you know, obviously Italian. Because you can tell Italians can’t you? [...] Anyway, before I got out that office, it was round the whole camp that an Italian had come in.

Peter then went on to explain how he was taken ‘under the wing’ of the Italians and acted as a ‘go-between’ between the prisoners and the medical staff. At his wife’s prompting, he also revealed a further dimension to his identification with the Italians: I hadn’t had Italian food since I left home but the Italians invited me out one Sunday for lunch. They were getting exactly the same rations as us: the tin of beans and all the rest of it. They were making Italian food with the same rations that we got! We were getting mince and tatties [laughs] and they were making pasta, you know! Minestrone and all that. Things I hadn’t tasted since I’d left home.96

For Del Porchetta, captured in Italy, this sense of dualism could provide the occasional moment of disorientation. He recounts his experiences as a Prisoner of War: ~191~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Over a period of months we were transferred to Capua, near Naples, only a few miles from San Cosmo Damiano which was the birthplace village of my father! Here there was an amazing coincidence. A young Italian officer who was in the unit guarding us saw my name on a list and called me up - I feared that I had been singled out with my Italian name. However, he asked in good English where I came from and I then discovered that he came from the village of San Cosmo and knew the Porchettas there. Later on I found out he was actually a cousin of mine.97

Even though Alex Margiotta presented himself as someone detached from the Edinburgh Italian ‘community’, his testimony still incorporated self-identification with Italy when referring to his service in Holland as an NCO in the Royal Scots Fusiliers: ‘I have to say... you consider these chaps knowing that I belonged to an enemy nation, they still did what they were told without any arguments. I always feel a wee bit chuffed about that.’ Another important aspect of Margiotta’s testimony, in that it counters the prevailing notion of ‘assimilated’ veterans, was that he refused to ‘divest’ himself of Italian nationality. Here Margiotta recalls how he had to turn down the opportunity of promotion in his regiment, asserting his Italian sense of self: I did my primary training with the Black Watch up in the Queen’s Barracks in Perth and about a week before the training period finished I was sent for. They were going to give me a commission if I would change my nationality and be British. They would bring out naturalisation papers. The Company Commander said, ‘We’ll do all the necessary paperwork.’ I said, ‘Now look, my father would shoot me!’ From that point of view, I wouldn’t; I thought it was being traitorous to change my nationality. Because at that time we were dual nationality till we were twenty-one. [...] You had to declare, you had to decide whatever nationality you wanted to be. Whether it be British or Italian. [...] Anyway, I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I said no.98

The willingness of the army hierarchy to utilise Italian Scots within its ranks to liaise with the local population when based in Italy and with Italian POWs or displaced persons provided further opportunities for encouraging identification amongst second-generation veterans with the Italian aspects of their identity. Whilst stationed in India, Peter Togneri was asked by the Military Police to enter an Italian camp as a Prisoner of War and report back to them on ‘troublemakers’. He turned down the job on the grounds that he felt uncomfortable with the idea of spying and also because he felt ‘even if they put me in an Italian Prisoner of War uniform and put me in there, they’d twig that I wasn’t a ~192~

Confronting military service overseas real Italian’.99 At the end of the war, Margiotta was based near a camp of displaced persons close to Bremen and was sent to talk with the Italians housed there. He could speak Italian, was greeted like an old friend and fed chicken and Chianti.100 Army service in Italy also provided some respondents with the opportunity to either improve their Italian or, like Elizabeth Di Ponio’s brother, to ‘pick up a wee bit of Italian’ for the first time.101 In North Africa, working at a requisitioned hospital in Tunisia, Arlo Valente’s unit received fifty Italian POWs as volunteers: They had difficulty making the guys understand what to do and I learnt later that the Commanding Officer, a nice old chap, Colonel Downes, sent for the Sergeant Major. He says, ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking about. You’ve two Italians on your unit. Get them to interpret for these chaps.’ So, I got a good job out of that! [...] I spoke Italian all the time and I used to say to this nice man ‘Sergente Maggiore, Cristofero Faiolo’ - Christopher Faiolo was his name - ‘tu mi corregge quando ho fatto sbaglio con la lingua.’ ‘You correct me when I make mistakes with the language.’ And he used to do that. He was a jolly fella. They were all nice.102

The diaries of Lieutenant Belriso Porchetta of the RAMC show how, through his responsibilities caring for Italian patients and being in charge of Italians POWs in army hospitals in North Africa and Italy, he was ‘Picking up Italian quick’.103 In November 1943, when based in Sicily, he notes that his Italian was improving and that he had ‘commenced lessons from a woman teacher’.104 Service in the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) in Italy, a world immortalised in Norman Lewis’s novel Naples ’44, provided another opportunity for Italian Scots veterans to identify with Italians and Italy.105 Angelo Valente, of the Royal Artillery, recalls that whilst he was based in Reichlin Hossen Zutt ‘an order went out for all soldiers who had attachments to the Italian origin who would like to volunteer and go out to be an interpreter in Italy’. Ironically, he and his older brother Marco, who was serving with the Royal Artillery in Northern Ireland, were both turned down for AMGOT when they volunteered but their younger brother Albert, serving in the Royal Navy, was recalled from the Far East on the strength of his surname, the authorities unaware that he could not speak Italian.106 Meanwhile, Natale, having served with the First Army in Italy, opted to train in police work at the end of the war and became a Sergeant Major in the Garrison Police in Milan for a year. This experience led to a heightened sense of Italianness, as evidenced in his narrative: ~193~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' We did a police course at Ottaviano. [...] I was made Sergeant Major and I was in charge of a station at Milan. Did police work for the station and different things like that [...] It was great! Absolutely great! But then, I’m a lover of Italy, Italian ... you were getting the chance to practise the lingo and you sort of... you know. A lot of people when you were serving your time in Italy, they seemed to ... a lot of them they seem to have an affinity with you. ‘Italiano?’ They’d see right away. It was funny but fundamentally I think I’m more Italian than anything. To be quite honest with you.107

Conclusion Following Gellner, Fortier comments that the ultimate image of national allegiance is men’s willingness to fight and die for their country.108 By looking specifically at the question of military service abroad by second-generation Italians, this chapter is useful in illuminating the question of whether the children of Italian immigrants ‘sought to identify themselves as British in the sense of an allegiance rather than just through the act of residence’.109 Most British Italian men assumed the obligation as British subjects to defend their country.110 They were not overt in stating their aims and motivations but Angelo Valente puts it most succincdy: WU: AV:

Were you called up? Yes. Conscription ... We didn’t resent going. We went and that was it. You understand? An awful lot of Italian origin didn’t, you understand?111

However, as this chapter has shown, it is erroneous to assume that service in the British armed forces by second-generation Italians acts as an indication of greater ‘assimilation’ into British society. Colpi’s analysis, which dismisses the experiences of those who served in the British Army, fails to allow for the plurality of the Italian diaspora space in Britain. Interviews with those who served in the British forces and who would superficially appear to have ‘integrated’ or seen themselves as more British than Italian reveal a far more complex picture. Most importantly, the majority of veterans displayed a dual identification with both Britain and Italy throughout their wartime narratives. The personal reminiscences of Italian Scottish veterans reveal the range of different factors at work within the army where negative prejudice and stereotyping could exist alongside a more positive recognition of the potential of ethnic recruits. This accommodation of difference within a ~194~

Confronting military service overseas military setting encouraged the formulation of a distinctive dual identity that rested on identification with both Britain and Italy, a dimension to military service which has been completely overlooked in the existing historiography. Fundamentally, these veteran narratives make an important contribution to debates on the relationships between ethnicity and Britishness by highlighting the ‘fluidity of hybrid identities’ and the ways in which a sense of Italianness could assert itself at different times and in different contexts.112 Ultimately, whatever their experience, Italian Scots in the British services were rarely allowed to forget their ‘otherness’, and because of their confusing and contra dictory experiences veterans often emerged with an increased sense of themselves as Italian.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

This was defined as ‘British subjects who possess dual nationality, British/ Enemy, or enemy parentage or close relationship or British subjects (100% British) who may have a very near relative resident in enemy or enemy occupied territory.’ NA, WO, 32/4545, letter to General Officers (GO) Commanding-in-Chiefs (C-in-C) Home Commands, 8 July 1941. NA, WO, 32/4545, Letter, 13 September 1939; letter, 3 October 1939. Ibid., Letter, 25 January 1940. Ibid., Letter, 18 October 1941. Ibid., Note to Vice-Chief of Imperial General Staff, 24 June 1940; letter 100/Gen/9173, 4 July 1940; Director of Organisation to C-in-C, Eastern Command, 21 September 1940; Note to Deputy Adjutant General (B), 26 April 1941. Ibid., Director of Organisation to DAG (B), 24 April 1942. Ibid., Letter, 18 October 1941. Ibid., Memorandum by Adjutant General for consideration by the ECAC, 6 May 1942. Ibid., Minute by Director of Organisation, 24 April 1942. Ibid., Letter from GO, C-in-C, Scottish Command, 30 September 1942. Ibid., Memorandum by Adjutant General, 6 May 1942. Ibid., Minute of exchange between Hare and Allen, 23 October 1942; minute by Director of Organisation, 24 April 1942. Ibid., Cipher telegram from Mideast Command, 13 April 1942. Ibid., Memorandum by Adjutant General, 6 May 1942. Ibid., Memorandum by Adjutant General, 6 May 1942. Ibid., Minute by Director of Organisation, 24 April 1942. SA1998.29, Arlo Valente; SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. NA, WO, 32/4545, Memorandum by Adjutant General, 6 May 1942.

~195~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

The CWGC Debt of Honour confirms that Sigmn Peter Scaramuzza, of Aberdeenshire, died in Burma in February 1942. NA, WO, 32/4545, Memorandum by Adjutant General, 6 May 1942. Ibid. Ibid., Air Ministry letter, 14 August 1942. NA, KV, 4/290, ‘The Recruitment of persons of dual nationality, British and another, into the army’. See also T. A. Ende, Racial Discrimination in the Armed Forces (London: London Caledonian Press, 1944), p. 1. Sherwood, Many Struggles, Publisher’s Note; B. Bousquet and C. Douglas, West Indian Women at War. British Racism in World War II (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1991). Sherwood, Many Struggles, pp. 3-5. Ibid., pp. 7-8. NA, AIR, 2/8513, RAF recruiting instructions, September 1938. J. E. Shirley, The Second World War 1939-1945: Royal Air Force - Manning Plans and Policy (Air Ministry: Air Historical Branch, 1958), p. 229. Kushner, Persistence of Prejudice, p. 125. Ende, Racial Discrimination, pp. 6-8. SA 1999.29, Alex Margiotta. ‘Conscientious objectors’, Scotsman (25 May 1940), p. 10. The tribunal decided that Giordano be placed in the military service register with a ‘strong recommendation’ that he be employed in the RAF. NA, ADM, 1/10386, Memo from J. G. Lang, 2 October 1939; Relaxation of parents’ nationality qualification in respect of candidates for entry in the RN or RM, 24 November 1939. Ibid., Memo from Lang, 3 November 1939. See Sherwood, Many Struggles, p. 5. NA, ADM, 1/10386, Memo from Lang, 3 November 1939. Ibid., Memo from Dunn, 21 November 1942. Cesarani, ‘Changing character of citizenship’, p. 63. P. J. Spiro, ‘Embracing dual nationality’, Carnegie Endowment website, www. ceip.org/files/publications/dualnationality.asp, accessed 18 January 2003. NA, WO, 32/4545, Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. Ibid., Minute of exchange between Hare and Allen, 23 October 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 26 August 1942 and 1 September 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. Ibid., MI5 secret intelligence reports. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 26 August 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. Ibid., Minute from Allen, 26 August 1942 and 1 September 1942. Ibid., Letter from C-in-C, Scottish Command, 30 September 1942.

~196~

Confronting military service overseas 51

52

53

54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

For much of the war more than 1.5 million troops, which represented well over half of the British Army, were stationed in Britain It was not until after D-Day that the majority of the army was serving overseas and even in the spring of 1945 about a million were still serving at home. J. Crang, The British Army and the People’s War 1939-45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 2. D. Kennedy, ‘The Italian community in Campbeltown’, The Kintyre Antiquarian and Natural History Society Magazine, 48 (2000), 10-11. Italo Grumoli, a paratrooper, lost his life at Arnhem and is buried in a war cemetery in Holland. NLS Ref. No. GB233/Acc.l0343, Papers relating to the ‘Italian Scots’ Exhibition 1566-1996 (now held in NLS Archive). Personal correspondence from Patricia Girard, Dunoon. Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, accessed 4 August 1999; J. Laffin, British VCs of World War 2. A Study in Heroism (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997), pp. 163-4; J. C. Kemp, The History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers 1919-1959 (Glasgow: Robert Maclehose 8c Co., 1963). Lewis Dino Donnini, RASC, died 1 May 1944, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Debt of Honour Register, www.cwgc.org/search/ casualty_details.aspx?casualty=2838002, accessed 27 May 2000. ‘Died in winning VC at 19’, Guardian (21 March 1945), p. 5. For more on Donnini, see chapter eight. SA2002.052, Domenico Natale; SA2002.054, Angelo Valente. D. Dash Moore, GI Jews, p. 63. SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. SA2002.064, Interview with Peter Togneri, 7 July 2001. SA2002.054, Angelo Valente. SA1998.28, Arlo Valente. SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi. LaGumina, Humble and the Heroic, p. 239. SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. SA 1998.29, Arlo Valente. SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi. SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. SA2002.052 Domenico Natale. P. Belmonte, Italian Americans in World War II (Chicago: Arcadia, 2001), p. 102. J. Yarwood, ‘Our first VC’, Journal of National Union of General and Municipal Workers (May 1945), p. 131. SA1998.45, Geraldo Cozzi. Belmonte, Italian Americans, p. 6. Diggins, Mussolini, p. 352; Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy, p. 392. Belmonte, Italian Americans, p. 101. LaGumina, Humble and the Heroic, p. 242. Jarvis, Male Body, p. 138.

~197~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 78 Hansard, vol. 385, col. 155, 9 December 1942, Brendan Bracken and Sir Archibald Southby. 79 Thomson, Anzac Memories, p. 101. 80 SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. 81 SA1998.30, John Costa. 82 NA, WO, 32/4545, Minute from Allen, 1 September 1942. 83 Ibid., MI5 censorship intercepts. 84 SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. 85 SA2002.064, Peter Togneri. 86 LaGumina, Humble and the Heroic, p. 242. 87 Ibid. 88 Cited in Fussell, Wartime, pp. 125-6. 89 IWM 12229, Private papers of B. O. Porchetta, Diary, 22-24 August 1943. 90 Ibid., 22-25 August 1943. 91 See NLS, Porchetta, Transplanted Sunflower. 92 D. Porchetta, ‘“Up the Blue” With the Seventh Argylls’, unpublished memoir in private hands. 93 D. Daiches, Two Worlds. An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood (London: Macmillan, 1957). 94 Roper, ‘Re-remembering the Soldier Hero’, p. 194. 95 SA1998.28, Arlo Valente. 96 SA2002.064, Peter Togneri. 97 Porchetta, ‘“Up the Blue”’. 98 SA1999.29, Alex Margiotta. 99 SA2002.064, Peter Togneri. 100 Post-interview conversation with Alex Margiotta, 3 May 1999. 101 SA1999.27, Elizabeth Di Ponio. 102 SA1998.29, Arlo Valente. 103 IWM 12229, Diary, 19 June 1943. 104 Ibid., 1 November 1943. 105 N. Lewis, Naples ’44. An Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth (London: Eland, 1983). 106 SA2002.054, Marco and Angelo Valente. 107 SA2002.052, Domenico Natale. 108 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 91. 109 Ward, Britishness, p. 113. 110 Ende, Racial Discrimination, p. 10. 111 SA2002.054, Angelo Valente. 112 Ward, Britishness, p. 115; Walter, Morgan, Hickman and Bradley, ‘Family stories’, p. 208.

~198~

Chapter Seven ‘My life wasn’t very great’: women on the home front and in the services

This chapter recovers the narratives of two groups of second-generation Italian women: those who bore the brunt of racial hostility on the ‘home front’ after taking over the responsibility for running family businesses in protected areas and the slightly older age cohort who were called up into the auxiliary services or war work. The government’s policy of relocating Italian women away from the ‘protected’ coastal strip, discussed in chapter four, meant that in cities such as Edinburgh only second- generation women, as British subjects, were permitted to stay in their homes. They took on the burden of familial responsibilities at a very young age, running shops and cafes and attempting to keep businesses operating as viable concerns, at a time when many premises had been severely damaged during the riots. They faced these new pressures within the context of a hostile climate, being continually exposed to xenophobic comment and threatening behaviour in the public arenas of the shop and street. This was a period of intense anxiety, loneliness and isolation for many women, some of whom were physically abused, and one which they now struggle to articulate in interviews. This chapter addresses the ways in which women remember, or forget, the wartime period and shows how women who endured the war as the enemy ethnic ‘other’ remain in the shadows, ‘muted’ by both national and communal discourse.1 It also addresses, for the first time, the experiences of second-generation women who were called up to the auxiliary services, analysing narratives of resistance, consent and self-constructions as the Italian ‘other’. ~199~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' ‘It was just hard work and survival’ - running family businesses It was common within Italian immigrant families in Scotland for children to help out in the family business from a very early age, by helping to prepare food Or to serve customers. The war, however, necessitated a far more prominent and public role for the female members of Italian families and, specifically, second-generation women. As most second- generation men of military age were called up to in the British forces, this effectively meant that women often took on the burden of familial responsibilities. A female presence entered traditionally male spheres as young women found themselves dealing with suppliers, coping with the rationing of vital foodstuffs or attending the fish market in the mornings to buy their stock. For this group, the months immediately following June 1940 are remembered primarily as a time of great anxiety and isolation which they are reluctant to dwell on or discuss at any length. In the words of one respondent, ‘it was just hard work and survival’.2 Eighteen-year-old Maria Angelosanto remained in Edinburgh when her father was interned and her mother relocated to Glasgow and found taking on new tasks such as going to the fish market by herself ‘really traumatic’. Her mother’s friend helped her in the shop but her recollection of this ‘terrible’ time remains stilted: ‘We had to manage the shop, open it. We just barely kept it open and that was it. The business wasn’t very good at that time because this girl who looked after the shop for us she wasn’t very good either and I was too young.’3 Dora Kennedy, of Campbeltown, and six of her siblings were serving in the British forces. She recalls that her sister, Neli, who remained to run the family cafe, found the period ‘very stressful’.4 As well as struggling with the vagaries of rationing and the day-to-day affairs of their business, second-generation women were also constantly subjected to chauvinistic comment. Female respondents repeatedly refer to being ‘frightened’ or ‘terrified’ during this intense period of their lives. For second-generation women who remained in Edinburgh, their employment in the catering trade made them particularly vulnerable to verbal insults and, occasionally, physical assaults, especially from drunken and aggressive customers. As Fiorinta Gallo remembers: ‘the abuse that we had to stand off some of the people in Leith, it was unbelievable. Unbelievable!... The verbal abuse that they called you, they swore at you, they made you feel as if you were nothing.’ The same respondent expanded upon this theme in a revealing anecdote, touching upon the themes of identity and not belonging: ~200~

Women on the home front and in the services At the time the blackout was on, we were frightened to go out at night but I was never accosted once in the streets. Where we got an awful lot of abuse was standing at the back of the counter. One night in particular, a man came in. He was a wicked man; he had one leg. He asked for a fish supper but he got it in the face by the time I was finished. I think I told you, I had a tartan skirt on. He called me all the Italian so-and-sos: ‘Get back to Italy, take that tartan skirt off. You’re not entitled to put a British skirt on. You’re not a Scots person.’ He went on till I could stand it no longer. My mother said, ‘Fiorinta, please. Don’t start.’ She was frightened; she was scared. But I lost my temper and he got the supper in his eye.5

Female respondents recall incidences of being hit by stones, being spat at or simply being shunned in communal areas on account of their national origin. The following extract is typical of many women’s narratives in recalling a deep sense of isolation: ‘I had to do the washing and things like that. I used to get up at six o’ clock in the morning. The washhouse opened up and I would go to the washhouse and nobody would help me and tell me what to do or anything. They all kept away from me because I was Italian. I even burnt all my arm because I didn’t know that the steam was coming out the boiler... But I learnt the hard way.’6 Some of the women interviewed were relatively young when left alone to run family shops when their parents were removed from their homes and their narratives reflect both a sense of shock and of deep isolation at being left to confront both the racist abuse and any potential business problems alone. Antonietta Paci’s whole life story was punctuated with recollections of personal assaults or the threat of physical violence, a trend which was accentuated when recalling the wartime period. The following extract exposes her profound sense of aloneness: AP:

WU:

I was sixteen and my brother was twelve and I had to take him away from school. For one thing he would have got beaten up if he’d have stayed at school. I had to be a mother to him. I had to look after him; I had to do everything for him. And I kept the business going. I was the only girl in Edinburgh that was on her own, that had no parents behind her, that kept the shop open ... I couldn’t get any money that my father had in the bank, it was all... frozen they called it then. With him being an alien and all that, [I] couldn’t get his money. And I was under-age, nobody would give me credit. And I had to work hard to have the money up front to buy things and... at that age, I mean, it was dreadful what I went through. I was beaten and everything in the shop. Really?

~201~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' AP: WU: AP: WU: AP:

Yes. When you were on your own? [quietly]Yes. By customers? Yes. Spat on. It was dreadful. It was really... And ones that you thought were your real good friends. I was brought up with them: [-] and all them. [-] was alright but her parents they forbid her to speak to me anymore, you know and things like that. At that age that really hurt. I was on my own. On my own.7

Rosalina Masterson’s father was interned and, two days later, her mother was ordered to leave Edinburgh. Her recollection of the night a crowd attacked the family shop echoes Antonietta’s sense of loneliness and fear: A soldier and a sailor came forward and said, ‘Are you on your own?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ They said, ‘Well, look. You go inside at the back and we’ll stay here to make sure that they don’t get in’... They were scared in case they would attack me but they weren’t interested in that. They were only interested in what was in [the window]: the cigarettes and the sweeties and everything and they cleared me out! They stayed until the crowd went further down into the next ice cream shop. They said, ‘Look, we’ll close the door, we’ll lock up. Where do you [stay]?’ I said, ‘I just stay up above the shop.’ They said, ‘That’s fine. We’ll see you up there and just stay there’ and that’s it. They couldn’t do anymore, naturally. I mean, I was confused, I thanked them but I wasn’t aware of what had happened. So, I went upstairs, crying of course and I thought, ‘Oh my Goodness, what am I going to do?’ However, I went to bed, got up and the next morning, I’m walking down the stairs intending to open the shop. I stood at the staircase and I looked up and down and I thought, ‘Oh I’m frightened.’ I went towards the shop and I just went to the padlock and this lady came over and she spat in my face, she said, ‘You Italian b-’ - can I swear? - ‘you Italian bastard’, she says ... And the tears and the spit were running down my face.8

Irene Politi, the daughter of second-generation Italians, uses a wartime act of aggression towards her family to open a narrative dominated by the idea of herself as an outsider in the community of Loanhead where she grew up: My mother, poor soul, she and I suffered. Sometimes we had to pick up our bags and go down and stay in Portsmouth where she originally came from. I remember once she’d washed all her sheets [...] We had a washhouse and she did all the washing in the washhouse. She was absolutely spotless; white sheets putting them up on the line. This old lady, very Catholic, holy, religious old lady - my dad had just been interned

~202~

Women on the home front and in the services and we had the shop and she just hated [us] because we were Italians - she hated us, really. It was Mussolini in those days and there was the war was going on. Poormum went to hang out her washing and I can still see it happening. I went down, I said, ‘Where’s all the washing Mum?’ It was all lying on the floor. This old biddy had taken the stretcher out and [the washing] was all lying in the mud. She was a wicked old so-and-so. She did some terrible things to my mum and to myself.9 -

As well as these specific incidences of physical and verbal aggression Italian Scottish women also laboured under a more subtle but palpable form of hostility. As in chapter four, where narratives exposed levels of hostility from those previously considered friends or customers, this chapter provides further evidence of the phenomenon of secondgeneration Italians being shunned by former acquaintances. For respondents, one of the most destabilising aspects of this time, neglected in official histories, was the fact that it was people that they knew who turned against them. Irene Politi says that Italians were treated badly ‘by the people living with us’.10 Antonietta Pad said she could ‘count on one hand’ those who had helped her during these difficult months. Six decades on she expressed disbelief at the ‘nastiness of people’: ‘When you’ve been brought up with someone and you’ve played with them and they’ve been at your home and that. And then, all of a sudden because the country that your parents were born in go with another country to fight the war, then all of a sudden you’re scum and you’re dirt.’11 Diana Corrieri, who took over responsibility for her family’s shop in Uphall, echoes these sentiments: ‘You really knew who your friends were [...] And they were few and far between.’12 As Cocozza eloquently observes of his mother’s experiences in Wishaw, their regular customers gradually began to drift back to their shop: ‘But Assunta was on her guard, feeling she had lost the special intimacy she had once enjoyed with them. It was as if an invisible veil of distrust had risen between them, which it would take much time to rend.’13 The multiple layers of conflicting demands and responsibilities faced by second-generation women are apparent in Fiorinta Gallo’s account. She lost her father on the Arandora Star and, on return to Edinburgh following relocation, was expected to help run the family business whilst still attending school: I would go down the market in the morning for my mother with a bicycle, get my fish - you got it delivered - make sure that nobody was pinching it off you. I was ‘E. Gallo’ because we still kept my father’s name. E. Gallo, Emilio Gallo - we used to have tickets to stick on the fish boxes. We used to have to bid for them. And at that time things were so scarce at the time - we were on rations at the

~203~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' time - and we served every kind of fish we could get our hands on. And we worked, and we worked and we workedand it was purely hard work. Standing up to here [indicates] in dirty, muddy water, doing fish and chips. It was not funny and it was not easy. But - my mother kept saying, ‘It’s a family business. Dad would like you to do this, you’ll have to help.’ My mother was not well, she took sugar diabetes and she only lasted seven years after my Dad. She died of a stroke. She took a cerebral haemorrhage. So it was all due to stress ... anxiety perhaps.14

Overall, for women who remained in Edinburgh working in the family businesses, their experiences confirmed their pre-war suspicions that they were ‘outsiders’ and, in turn, this sense of difference often contributed to a heightened sense of Italianness. Monsignor Rossi, who worked intimately amongst the wives and children of Italian internees in Scotland during the war, notes how the experience of keeping the family businesses going at a time of ‘humiliations’: ‘rather than lessen the ties with their land of origin, had strengthened their attachment to Italy... Some of these women had never been in Italy, they were born and brought up in Scotland, still they felt that they were fully Italians.’15 In their work on the Home Guard, Summerfield and Peniston-Bird note how the relative invisibility of women amongst cultural representations of wartime home defence meant that there was a dearth of constructions available to women upon which they could draw in the 1990s, in composing narratives of their own experiences.16 Summerfield notes how a ‘particular terrain of memory’ can produce discomposure, expressed, perhaps, through personal disequilibrium or difficulties in sustaining a narrative.17 This dilemma appears to be magnified tenfold when addressing the wartime experiences of the female ethnic ‘other’. Michal Bosworth, who interviewed elderly Italians in Fremantle in the 1980s about their wartime experiences, argues that because questions on women’s experiences are non-threatening you receive more detailed information on this than on internment.18 This dynamic was not apparent within my research sample. Indeed, it could be argued that whilst to some degree the ‘story’ of internment has become processed and can now be safely told, in contrast, the experiences of those dark and ‘terrible’ days on the domestic front remain largely undigested. For this cohort of women, there is no readily available framework through which to filter their more troubling and disquieting memories.

Women in the services The two main groups marginalised within communal discourse about World War Two are Italian Scots who served in the British forces and ~204~

Women on the home front and in the services women. As an extension of this, women who were in the British services are doubly excluded from representations of Italian wartime experience. The service of Italian Scottish women in essential industries or the women’s auxiliary services is also overlooked in national discourse. Summerfield’s masterful account of women’s wartime subjectivities includes the narratives of West Indian women but neglects the experiences of the less visible ‘other’ in Britain.19 I interviewed four women who were involved in some form of war service: Antonietta Paci in the Land Army, Maria Angelosanto in factory work, Norma Ventisei in the ATS and Anna Fergusson in the shipyards.201 also managed to communicate with two other Italian Scottish women who had served in the Land Army, one on the telephone and another, Dora Kennedy, via a written questionnaire. The small number of available interviewees again reflects the reluctance or unwillingness of second-generation women, in this case ‘war workers’, to talk publicly about their experiences. Indeed, one former Land Girl, who felt she had been physically maltreated during her medical on account of her nationality, ultimately declined to be interviewed.

‘I’m an alien for the RAF but I’m not an alien for munitions!’ – responses to call-up From March 1941 all women between the ages of nineteen and forty had to register at an employment exchange. The National Service (No. 2) Act of December 1941 made unmarried women aged between twenty and thirty years old eligible for call-up, and by 1943 the age limit had been reduced to nineteen. In theory, women conscripted under the Act had a choice between industry, the services, civil defence and the Land Army but in practice they were usually directed into the ATS and munitions factories because of shortages in these areas.21 Women of Italian origin also faced the same obstacles at enlistment as faced by their male peers they were often made to feel they were objects of distrust and their recruitment was prescribed by nationality rules. For example, a candidate for the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) had to be a British subject and the daughter of British parents on both sides or of parents who were naturalised British subjects at the time of the candidate’s birth. Candidates were also vetted ‘from a security point of view’ before entering any branch of the WRNS and other services.22 The memoir of Italian-born Nella Voss-Del Mar, a Jewish refugee who arrived from Italy in 1939 and enrolled in the alien platoon of the ATS in April 1941, shares ~205~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' some commonalities with the experiences of British Italian recruits.23 During her recruitment interview, Voss-Del Mar is informed that her options are restricted to jobs of a domestic nature such as a cook or an orderly.24 A well-educated linguist, she is placed on menial, often demeaning tasks, her role as supervisor of the cleaning of the camp lavatories earning her the sobriquet, ‘Saint Nella of the Latrines’.25 Summerfield believes that women who were most detached from, or even alienated by, ‘the contradictory discourse of wartime feminine identity’ - for example, women who did not relish the opportunities for the new roles offered by war work - are unlikely to offer their memories of the war for public consumption: ‘If the discourse of the heroic woman war worker is muted in today’s society, that of the woman who did not really want a role in war at all, but was made to have one, is doubly so.’26 Inevitably, those women who endured the war as the enemy ethnic ‘other’ remain in the shadows, marginalised by both national and communal discourse. In the United States, Italian Americans embraced war work to such an extent that the iconic symbol of the female war effort, Rosie the Riveter, is said to have been based on an Italian American aircraft worker, Rosina B. Bonavita, who reportedly put 3345 rivets on the wing of a fighter plane in 6 hours.27 In sharp contrast, the official wartime discourse of ‘doing your bit’, a phrase frequently employed by Summerfield’s respondents,28 appears to have held little resonance for women of Italian origin who were confronting the devastating fragmentation of their families as a direct consequence of the government’s policies of internment and relocation. Of the four ‘war workers’ interviewed, three were the daughters of internees and their mothers were either relocated or subject to alien restrictions. Within this emotional context, they could feel somewhat dissociated from, and perhaps more resistant to, the key messages of government propaganda aimed at mobilising the female population for the ‘common good’. Active service being ‘the major differentiator of the roles between the two sexes’, essentially Italian Scottish women didn’t share the same dilemma as their male counterparts relating to service overseas.29 Rather, women faced their own particular set of cultural pressures primarily revolving around their position in the family as ‘dutiful daughters’ and the fact that they were often shouldering the burden of running the family business. In Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives, Summerfield explores the areas of conflict and overlap between the obligations of the young women to the wartime state and ‘older understandings of the familial duties of daughters’.30 This is highly relevant when addressing the responses of Italian Scottish women to call-up. As Judith Smith has concluded in ~206~

Women on the home front and in the services relation to Italian immigrant groups in America, families were strategies for economic survival with every member of the family expected to put the family good above individual indulgence or personal mobility.31 Within my interview sample, many bemoaned the long working day from around eight in the morning until midnight; two male respondents likened conditions in Italian shops to slavery.32 Both men and women would be expected to contribute to the family income before they married, and most left school at fourteen to work full time in the family business. Family life was claustrophobically centred around the business, with meals taken in the back shop and children expected to help out in some capacity, whether serving or cleaning. In the inter-war period, Italian Scottish women would be closely supervised by their parents and were allowed limited freedom. This traditional acquiescence to parental authority was accentuated in wartime when the family itself was facing an array of external threats. Yet, at the same time the war offered the possibility of new experiences and opportunities outwith the confines of the family. In her work addressing women’s lives in France during the war, Diamond highlights ‘the complex ways in which choices could be determined, or prevented, or helped or hindered by family and everyday circumstances’.33 All of the respondents were deeply wedded to family responsibilities at a time of acute distress and responded to the state’s demands within the context of their family’s emotional and practical needs and, in particular, the survival of the family’s livelihood. Under the National Service Acts of 1939 and 1941, any person liable to be called up for service was allowed to apply to the Minister of Labour for a ‘postponement certificate’ on the grounds that ‘exceptional hardship would ensue if they were called up for service’.34 Only one male veteran mentioned the fact that he initially postponed his service but it is likely that this was the main route via which a considerable number of Italian Scottish women avoided or delayed liability for call-up. Others made use of the option of postponing or ‘deferring’ their service until there was someone else available to manage the family business. Significantly, three of the women interviewed obtained ‘essential’ work available in their local area, thus allowing them to juggle the demands of the state and their own families. In her testimony, Antonietta highlights how her war service had to accommodate the reality of her parents’ prescribed lives: Then there was the curfew. They had to be out of the shop by eight o’clock at night. I got permission to stay in Edinburgh when I was in the Land Army. For the simple reason that I could go into the shop when I left. When I’d leave my work in the Land Army and that was

~207~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' getting up at five in themorning and not getting home until about

six o’ clock at night. From six o’ clock at night I’d get my dinner and then in the shop until twelve o’ clock at night... Because my mum and dad had to go up the stairs and I had to look after the business. So my life wasn’t very great.35

Maria Angelosanto said that she was exempt from service until her parents’ return from relocation in Glasgow and then ‘I did have to do a wee bit of war-work.’ From 1942 to 1944, she worked day shifts in a local rubber mill canteen and then returned to the family fish shop where she worked with her mother until around midnight.36 From the narratives of these two women there was no hint of the ‘heroic’ narrators of Summerfield’s work who carved out a new feminine identity from their war work. Instead they were more like the ‘reluctant conscripts’ she identifies who presented ‘stoic’ narratives of ‘just getting on with it’.37 Ultimately it is difficult to draw any general conclusions from the personal testimonies of just four women, whose narratives range from angry disaffection to more conventional celebrations of wartime opportunities. For example, within this small sample there are varying degrees of identification with the national war effort. One respondent, Antonietta Pad, expressed outright resentment towards the British state, focusing on the perceived hypocrisy of the government in treating her parents so harshly as ‘enemy aliens’ yet requiring her to serve: ‘I was an alien for one thing, like this ... but I’m British now if I’m to go in and serve the country.’ Here, Antonietta elaborates on this theme: I was called up and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll go into the WAAFs.’ Just because I liked the uniform, that was all. So I went for my interview and everything and that. And then I was even told what I could do and all that and I wanted to be in the kitchen because I’ve always liked cooking and things like that. Or a waitress, you know. Whatever. So it was all settled that I was going into the WAAFs. Then I got called again: no, I was an alien. I couldn’t go into the WAAFs because, with me being Italian. They wanted to put me into munitions and I said, ‘No you can put me in jail but I’m not going into munitions.’ I says, ‘Oh I’m an alien for the RAF but I’m not an alien for munitions!’ I said, ‘I could cause sabotage’... I said, ‘So it’s just because I’m an Italian?’ And ‘Yes.’ So, anyway, it [went on] for a bit and then they said that I could go into the Land Army. And I thought, well, my father had said to me, ‘Don’t do anything. Don’t let me go back to the Isle of Man.’ Because he knew that I’ve got a bit of a temper... And being left on my own I’d learnt to fight and I’d learnt to look after myself... So, I says, oh well ‘Alright’ and I thought the uniform, I thought, ‘It’s not too bad. Alright then I’ll go into the Land Army.’38

~208~

Women on the home front and in the services

8.

Iole Grumoli, who served alongside her cousin Dora Grumoli Kennedy, in the Land Army.

~209~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Antonietta’s narrative touches upon some of the key features identifiable in ‘war worker’ narratives - the sense of being treated as second-class citizens and the need to balance their own families’ wishes with the demands of the state. Apparent within her testimony, as with the male veteran narratives discussed in previous chapters, is the familial equation of enlistment with loyalty and the perceived link between the service of the child and the freedom of the parent. As with men, narratives of women highlight the ways in which Italian Scottish families internally and privately negotiated the acceptable boundaries of involvement in war work. Overall, Anna Fergusson presents the most positive and untroubled account of her wartime service. Born in 1925 in Alloa to an Italian father and Scottish mother, she volunteered aged sixteen to join her two sisters in the local shipyards via Harland’s Engineering. Yet even within her narrative, the problems faced by Italian families in Scodand are subdy indicated: It was so easy to get a job then because of the war and men being taken away. And my mum always said, ‘Well, they’ve taken my sons but they’re not taking my daughters.’ Because they wanted the girls to go away to munitions outwith Alloa when there was loads of work in Alloa for girls. So they got their papers to go to such-and-such a place, she said, ‘No, I’ll go up.’ So, she went up to the office or whatever, and she said, ‘No, you’re not having my girls. You can have my girls for Alloa, but they will not go outwith.’ And again, you see, during the war, my mum couldn’t go any more than a ten-mile radius out of the town and rather than do that, well she was kept as a sort of prisoner thing. She just didn’t go out of Alloa at all. She just stayed there. And she wanted her family to be there all the time, as we were.39

Norma Ventisei states that her younger sister in Glasgow managed to avoid call-up by constantly moving digs and ignoring all the ‘buff coloured envelopes’. Echoing Domenico Natale in the previous chapter, her comment was that, ‘One in the family was enough.’40

‘I fought a court case and I won’ - narratives of resistance As discussed in chapter five, the work of Nicholson highlights how a small number of women of Italian origin attempted to register as conscientious objectors on the grounds of nationality, adopting the position that they ‘did not want to be involved’ in a war against Italy. She cites the case of Margherita Pelliza who, at a Cardiff tribunal, ~210~

Women on the home front and in the services explained her objection to war service ‘on the grounds of dual nationality and because she had relatives serving in the Italian Army’. Nicholson suggests that, in being granted unconditional exemption, Pelliza’s case was in marked contrast to the treatment of others in the same position whose names were usually removed from the register, making them liable for military service.41 This was certainly the case with Sylvia Tartaglia, an Edinburgh girl of Italian descent, whose case came before the Edinburgh Appellate CO Tribunal in 1942. Her Italian grandfather and British-born father had both been interned and both had subsequently died following their release. Tartaglia made her appeal on the grounds that war was futile, stating, ‘I have no feeling towards the war at all.’ Questioned by the tribunal Chair, Lord Elphinstone, on whether it was futile to ‘try to restore civilisation to countries which have been trampled underfoot?’, Tartaglia made explicit the root of her objection: ‘This war has not done me any good. It caused the death of my grandfather and father.’ However, Tartaglia’s insistence that Britain had failed to ‘protect’ her father appears to have fallen on deaf ears and she was removed from the list of objectors and made liable for service.42 In the same year, Yolanda Pia, resident in Glasgow, appeared before the same tribunal, stating that ‘she had a grudge against the Government owing to the treatment her father had received’. Having partly based her case on the grounds of hardship, Pia was advised to appeal to the military hardship committee. However, it is significant that both these women positioned themselves as ‘daughters’, prepared to articulate their conscientious objection as a direct response to the perceived illtreatment of their Italian relatives in Britain, as well as a wider ethnic identification with an ‘imagined community’ of Italians.43 Significantly, two short interviews with second-generation women published in the community newspaper Italiani in Scozia also touch upon the concept of resistance to call-up, with the women stating that they ‘refused’ to serve on the grounds that they were running the family business and constructing their stories as acts of defiance against the British state. Deferments for some women could occur automatically due to their occupational position yet the interesting thing here is how the women retrospectively represent their decision. The first interview is with ‘Dora’ who was born in Edinburgh in 1916 and worked at Waterloo Place with one of her siblings during the war. She states: Everyone had to do a job for the British government, but I was the daughter of Italians and they wanted to send me to the barracks to wash dishes for the soldiers. I refused saying that my brother was fighting in France with the English and my parents were interned. I wasn’t able to

~211~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' close the business; I had to keep it open for my brothers ... for when they returned from the war. I fought a court case and I won. Other Italians were instead forced to close their business.44

Ancella Roissi in Chiocconi, also born in 1916, had a shop in Glasgow which she ran with her older sister. Her published interview contains both a sense of resistance and a significant detachment from the war effort: ‘I remember that some days after the declaration of war by the Italian government the Defence Services sent for me. But I showed my opposition by doing the contrary of what they told me, so that, when they tired of my behaviour, they left me in peace in my shop. Instead, they took my two brothers. They put one of them Rizieri in the fire service whilst Oliviero was sent off on the merchant ships.’45 It is significant how, in these narratives, Italian Scottish women locate themselves as outside the exigencies of official wartime discourse. An apocryphal tale by one male respondent, Renzo Serafini, is also worth noting as it shares the theme of resistance and avoidance: In London, there was an Italian and he had a shop, a wee sort of restaurant where all the prostitutes used to hang around. And they were very well known. So, the husband was interned, the brother was interned and who was running this shop here [but] the mother and the daughter. They were still under the bombardment open. And this day [...] the oldest girl of the shop got calling up papers. She was sort of down the dumps and she was crying and one of these prostitutes comes in, she says, ‘Maria, what’s wrong?’ ‘Well,’ she says, ‘You know my father’s interned, my brother’s interned and I’ve got to appear like that.’ She says, ‘If they take me why should I go and fight with my father and brother interned? I don’t know what to do.’ ‘When you go in you just tell them you’re a prostitute. “What’s your job?” “A prostitute.” That’s you out!’ And she looked and the mother says, ‘Well it’s as good an idea as any’, see? And she said she was a prostitute and she didn’t have to go into the army.46

Within my research sample, however, this ‘narrative of resistance’ was evident in only one interview with female respondents, one woman stating she refused to help the war effort following her father’s death on the Arandora Star.

‘Get back to Mussolini’ - undertaking war work as the enemy ‘other’ As with the previous chapters, the interviews undertaken with secondgeneration Italian women indicate the importance of oral testimony in ~212~

Women on the home front and in the services illuminating how service in the British forces during the war could quite dramatically reinforce a sense of difference. As the testimony of Antonietta Paci illustrates, within the context of the ‘wartime polarity of Allied/enemy’, Italian Scottish women were constantly reminded of their identification with the latter.47 Antonietta’s father was interned and her mother relocated to Glasgow and she joined the Land Army following their return to Edinburgh. Having imbibed a rather romanticised idea of the Land Army and its affectionate space within the wartime national imaginary,48 approached the interview with Antonietta armed with a list of questions to do with milking, tractordriving and scything, only to feel rather naive as her more disturbing narrative unfolded. Her recollection of her wartime service forms part of a powerful narrative outlining the abuses she faced as an Italian Scot since childhood, culminating in this memory dating from the war: I was very lucky; most of the places were alright to me except in D[-]. That’s where they ganged up on me, the men. They called me ‘The Holy Virgin’ because I didn’t understand the jokes that they were telling. And then I was a ‘Pape’ because I was a Catholic ... They used to say to me, ‘Get back to Mussolini’, ‘You’re a Pape’ and this and that. Then one day I just couldn’t take it anymore and I just answered back. What it was, one of them had started - they were always cursing and swearing - well, I wasn’t brought up like that and in my parents’ home, mabbe my father did swear but I never, ever heard him. It was never, ever done in front of any of the children and I said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t use that language when I’m about.’ I said, ‘I just don’t like it.’ I wish I had never opened my mouth. Because they ganged up on me. And they battered me to pulp. They got me on the ground and they used me like a football.49

Antonietta’s recollection of her time market gardening in the Land Army is deeply imbued with a sense of isolation and exclusion as she confronted the racial and religious prejudice of some of her co-workers and employers. Whilst insisting that most people were nice to her, she singled out two workplaces where she suffered severe discrimination and felt that she was mistreated purely on the grounds of her national origin. Significantly, her account oscillates between the themes of acceptance/difference or inclusion/exclusion as she recalls her encounters with one particular female employer. It is also significant that she presents herself as an ‘Italian’ within the Land Army context, highlighting the degree to which her experiences heightened her sense of difference. Here she focuses on her relationship with a female employer: ~213~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' I got it the whole time: ‘See what your Mussolini’s done’ and this and that. One day I got hold of her and I says like, ‘If you were a civilian ... You and me before the war, you wouldn’t have been fit to lick my boots!’ Oh I really... she got a fright. I didn’t hit her because I know that I would have been jailed if I had of because I was Italian and she was Scottish. And that give her a bit of a fright. [...] She just hated Italians and that was it. [...] You’ll know how much [-] hated me and tried to break me. Tried to break my spirit but she couldn’t... her father stopped her after that though. She sent me out to work with a pick and shovel with the men ... Honestly. The men when I went up, you know, sent here to work, they said, ‘You can’t do this!’ They said, ‘It’ll kill you’. And I said, ‘Well I’ve been sent out to do it.’ So, I went to lift up the [laughs], I couldn’t lift it up. What a weight! But then I got it going and I kept up with the men! Kept up with the men ... And I could saw the big trees and everything, could do it all. But then when the father found me working with the pick and shovel... I mean, he ... he must have given her hell. Because then I was put back onto doing ... all the dirty work, you know. In the rain and everything. I was the one that was always sent out to collect things in the rain. Not the rest, just me. Because she was in charge, you see.50

Significantly, when she reached the point in her narrative where she found satisfactory employment with a Mr Bruce in Edinburgh, her delight centres on the fact that at this workplace she was accepted as an equal: ‘nobody said anything about me being a Catholic or about being an Italian. They treated me as one of them.’ Of course, the appalling abuse recalled by Antonietta Paci is only one individual memory and more interviews with Italian Scottish war workers need to be carried out to identify more collective themes. Norma Ventisei, the daughter of Italian parents, was born in Glasgow in 1921 and enlisted in the Medical Corps of the ATS in 1942, employed in the administration of military convalescent hospitals. Of all the women interviewed, her narrative was the most complex in that it combined positive recollections of friendship and job fulfilment with more underlying discordant memories. For example, in the following extract she addresses the discrimination she faced as a conscript of Italian origin but turns it into a positive story emphasising the fact that she was trusted: The Adjutant called me - he was very nice - and said, ‘Look.’ There was my Army Form 103 with the red of ‘Of Enemy Alien Origin’. ‘Yes! I’ve no doubt about that.’ He said, ‘We’ve been very pleased with you but you’ve been doing something that’s of an extremely confidential nature.’ So they sent me to the Royal Corps of Signals at Mitton Hall.

~214~

Women on the home front and in the services Not far away. That was Whalley, near Clitheroe. [...] And of course, I got all this ciphering under lock and key and I thought, ‘Now, what’s this? I’d better point out.’ And the Adjutant just said, ‘No, no. Just you do what we ask you to do and it’ll be alright. Don’t worry.’ So, I just carried on daily like that. But I was only there a matter of months before they sent me back to the Convalescent Depot. So, that kind of pleased me because it meant that they must have had enough trust in me to give me the job I was doing before.

Ventisei reached the rank of ‘More Substantive Corporal’ within the ATS and was clearly an enthusiastic and able recruit. Yet she presents the fact that she was effectively barred from promotion in the following way, focusing again on the themes of acceptance and accommodation: You’d start at the very bottom. I don’t know how you’d do it because I mean, I got on quite well. I made Grade - naturally did trade tests. You see you went through [reads her ATS documents] ‘upgraded’. So, considering I was of ‘enemy alien origin’ - because somebody said to me once, ‘You know, you’re officer quality’ and I said, ‘Well I wouldn’t mind having a pip or two on my shoulder.’ But, because of that, I mean, you were really... and I accepted that.51

9.

Norma Ventisei, sixth from the front on the left, participating in the ATS ‘Salute the Soldier’ parade, Blackburn 1944.

~215~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' The aura of distrust surrounding Italian Scottish recruits is also highlighted in the case of Triesta Margiotta, a war worker in Edinburgh. In February 1944 twenty-five-year-old Margiotta, a cafe manageress, was reported to the Sheriff Court for contravention of Regulation 2B (1) of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939. Margiotta had been placed in employment by the Ministry of Labour with Coastal Radio Ltd of Edinburgh and was accused of having ‘wilfully damaged 21 iron dust core half rings, the property of the Admiralty in order that she be released from this employment’. Although the Special Branch report admits that ‘It is not considered that the damage caused was done in any way to assist the enemy’,52 the mere fact that ‘Miss Margiotta is of British nationality but of Italian origin’ was clearly enough to arouse suspicion. In March Margiotta appeared at the Sheriff Court on a reduced charge of Malicious Mischief which was found ‘not proven’.53 However, the fact that she was arrested as late as 1944 underlines the persistence of suspicion and hostility towards Italians within the auxiliary services and industry. Interestingly, the two respondents who had generally positive recollections of their service, Norma and Anna, identify religion as the key site where they experienced a sense of ‘difference’. The former recalls being excluded, as a Catholic, from the church service which followed the Church Parade on a Sunday: ‘I really shivered and I wished I was inside that building and I never got [in].’54 Anna felt there was only ‘one incident’ in the Harland and Wolff shipyards where she came up against prejudice and that drew on localised traditions of sectarianism. It was only during her recruitment interview, facing specific questions about her religious denomination, that she realised ‘if you were a Catholic that it was difficult to get into this place’.55

‘They asked me why I spoke Italian’ - mixing with Italians As discussed in the previous chapters, the war often provided secondgeneration Italians with the opportunity to meet and interact with Italians who were Prisoners of War, presenting a fresh opportunity to identify and re-connect with their Italian roots. Dora Kennedy, who served in the Land Army, encountered Italian POWs during her service in Bridge of Allan and Kintyre.56 In Blackburn, Norma Ventisei used the presence of POWs in nearby barracks to attempt to ‘get word through’ to her mother back in Italy: We used to go to Fulwood Barracks and there used to be prisoners, Italian boys, unloading, loading. I used to say to the Sergeant Major,

~216~

Women on the home front and in the services ‘Can I say hello to them?’ We weren’t able to fraternise. Of course, they wondered who and what the heck I was doing if 1 could speak Italian but I was just wondering if anybody came from Tuscany. My Italian couldn’t have been all that good because when they asked me why I spoke Italian, I said, ‘E miei parenti erano italiani.’ That’s wrong because ‘My parents are Italian’ in Italian you’d say, ‘Miei genitori sono italiani1 because parenti just means relations. So, anyway, you learn as you go. Anyway, one boy apparently told somebody that he had been to school with me. I says, ‘Auch that’s - no.’ So I said, ‘Ask him where and when.’ So he came back and said ‘Ponte A Moriano?’ which was right but the dates didn’t coincide. But I said, ‘Maybe he’s been to school with another Ventisei’ because I had a lot of cousins. So I asked again if I could - he was being repatriated - and I said could I give him a wee note because I was desperate to get news of my mother. And I wrote and said, you know 'Cara mamma. Spero che stai bene.' Just a few lines, I mean and gave him the exact village. Do you know that I got a letter back?57

Ventisei states that she spoke to POWs primarily to get contact through to her mother in Italy; ‘I didn’t particularly want to date them’, and to buoy their spirits up. Yet later on in her narrative, in relation to the prospect of service overseas, she indicates that her contact with the POWs was not as straightforward or unproblematic as first presented, illuminating the complexity of dual identity for recruits of Italian origin: They must have at one stage needed personnel who maybe were bilingual so I was quite pleased to attend the medical and whatever and was endorsed ‘fit for overseas’. So I thought, in a way I thought, oh that would be nice if I was able to go but in another way, I think with the war ending, it was a blessing in disguise because ... not that the Prisoners of War ever but they were puzzled that I should be wearing [British uniform] and I think somebody in my mother’s village who had heard that I was in the [British forces] one of them said, ‘Oh she’s never going to put her foot in [my door].’ There was that kind of -1 never encountered it though but I knew it existed. [...] You don’t know what people, how people can react. Sometimes unwisely but never the less you could be at the receiving end of things. So, I never got that. So, it was a disappointment in one way and a relief in [another].58

‘I am glad to have been a part of the war effort’ – narratives of identification Of the four women, Anna most strongly asserted a sense of identification with the British war effort. Her Italian father was not ~217~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' interned, her sisters worked alongside her in the shipyards and her brothers were in the forces. In a positively glowing recollection of her time in the shipyards, Anna depicts herself as confident and popular, relishing the opportunity to learn the masculine tasks of drilling, soldering and fitting which the shipyard afforded her. The fact that she ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ her work is clearly reflected throughout the comedic account she provides of her wartime service, gleefully recounting the ‘tricks’ she got up to. She recalls this period primarily as a time of laughter and involvement, personified by her taking part in the shipyard concert parties which visited local hospitals for wounded soldiers. Significantly, Anna had addressed incidences of harassment and abuse as a child in her narrative but these were totally absent when recollecting her war work. Her total identification with the British war effort also comes through when she mentions how she met her Scottish husband at a dancehall: ‘He was in the navy for five years. I said, “So there was me making ships for you John and there were you sitting in them” you know. We always had laughs about this.’59 Dora Grumoli Kennedy, who was born in 1922 to Italian parents in Campbeltown, responded to a written questionnaire about her time in the Land Army. Whilst her father was interned and her mother relocated to Callander, she served alongside her sister Geni, cousin Iole and friend Rosa Casci on general fieldwork in Perthshire and fruit-picking in Dunblane. Dora states that she had no problems being of Italian background and ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ her time working in Perthshire, concluding, ‘I am glad to have been a part of the war effort, I would have hated not to be involved.’60 Maria Angelosanto also asserts that she ‘enjoyed’ her work in the rubber mill canteen.61 These texts indicate the possibility of a range of different meanings of wartime service amongst this group.

Conclusion Whilst I had been keen to recover what I perceived as the neglected perspective of women’s wartime experiences, analysis of the life stories presented to me by narrators underlines the difficulties involved in attempting to recover female experience. Although some women could provide vivid and powerful vignettes of certain incidences which occurred whilst they were running businesses in the protected area of Edinburgh, overall there was an inability to provide much detailed information about day-to-day existence during this traumatic period. The desire to blank out memories from this time appears quite ~218~

Women on the home front and in the services widespread amongst this group and there was a frequent tendency to condense the year-long period into one sentence. Perhaps here we are witnessing the ‘wounds in the tissue of memory’ identified by Passerini in her work on Fascist Italy.62 To adopt Summerfield’s analysis, which provides a cultural explanation for the difficulties of narrative composition, the memories of Italian Scottish women did not ‘form part of a past that could be composed into a coherent whole... culture and memory did not mutually inform each other’.63 Summerfield refers to those who cannot draw on appropriate public accounts as having ‘memories-outsidediscourse’.64 Significantly, the tone of women’s narratives contrasts sharply with the male narratives of internment which predominate within communal discourse and tend to foreground positive memories (see chapter three). Female respondents often appeared hesitant and reticent when discussing this intense period of their lives. The fact that it is often difficult for women who were children and young adults during the war to address their traumatic memories of that period means that some utilise the public discourse of male experience, internment and the Arandora Star tragedy as a starting point for telling their own stories and in some cases to delay addressing more personal and painful events. As Portelli suggests, ‘dwelling on an episode may be a way of stressing its importance, but also a strategy to distract attentions from other more delicate points’.65 One of the respondents quoted in this chapter was willing to talk at length about her father’s arrest and his death on the Arandora Star and the devastating impact that had on her family. However, when I returned for a second interview with the intention of addressing her memories of the ‘home front’ she became far less articulate and seemed uncomfortable with the focus on her own experiences. This, again, ties in with the concept of the cultural circuit, defined by Summerfield and Peniston- Bird as the process by which individual stories of experience are given form and, as a result, certain stories are perpetuated in popular memory. Such public accounts both facilitate and constrain recall.66 To date, no publication has attempted to address the unique, complex and fascinating situation of male and female recruits of Italian origin in the British forces during World War Two. Whilst women’s narratives overlapped in some areas with the experiences of their male counterparts there were also significant differences. For many Italian Scottish women there was a rupture between the official wartime discourse of‘doing your bit’ and the complex reality of their distressing family circumstances. The ways in which women reacted to call-up ~219~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' would depend on a number of inter-linked factors - such as whether or not a father was interned or their position within the household. To paraphrase Diamond on women in France, ‘war offered them a complex combination of both opportunities and constraints, and brought numerous changes, negative as well as positive.’67 What personal narratives of ex-servicemen and women reveal, in all their rich complexity, is that internees did not have the monopoly on ‘being Italian’ in Britain during the war. Both male and female veterans would often identify themselves as Italian in their self-representations. Indeed, many felt more ‘Italian’ as a consequence of their wartime service. Of the two Land Army veterans, one proudly told me how she had been awarded the honour of Cavaliere for her subsequent work for Italy, and Dora Kennedy, who presents herself as completely comfortable with her war work, concludes, ‘I feel as much Italian as I do Scottish.’68 Norma Ventisei, who served in the ATS, worked for the whole of her post-war career with Italian companies in Scotland, Olivetti and Alitalia, strengthening her links with Italy. Again ‘war worker’ narratives contradict Colpi’s assertions about ‘negative enemy status’ and, in particular, the argument that those who served in the British forces denied their Italian roots.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

K. Anderson and D. C. Jack, ‘Learning to listen: interview techniques and analyses’, in Berger, Gluck and Patai (eds), Women’s Words, p. 11. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. SA2002.056, Maria Angelosanto. Dora Kennedy, Written questionnaire, 3 June 2001. SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. Ibid. SA1999.24, Rosalina Masterson. SA2002.057, Irene Politi. Ibid. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. SA2002.065, Diana Corrieri. Cocozza, Assunta, p. 237. SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo. Rossi, Memories of 1940, p. 63. P. Summerfield and C. Peniston-Bird, ‘Women in the firing line: the Home Guard and the defence of gender boundaries in Britain in the Second World War’, Women’s History Review, 9:2 (2000), 245.

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Women on the home front and in the services 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43

44 45 46

Summerfield, ‘Culture and composure’, pp. 69-70. Bosworth, -Fremantle interned’, p. 86. Summerfield, Reconstructing. The others were either too young, married with small children or received exemption. Bousquet and Douglas, West Indian Women, p. 26. NA, ADM, 1/10386, Memo from Dunn, 21 November 1942. N. Voss-Del Mar, The Italian in the ATS (Ilfracombe: Arthur Stockwell, 2001), p. 22; the alien platoons of the ATS were confined to enemy aliens of German, Austrian or Italian nationality. Hansard, vol. 372, col. 19, 10 June 1941. Voss-Del Mar, Italian in the ATS, p. 10. Ibid., p. 47. Summerfield, Reconstructing, pp. 104—5. J. McGeehan and M. Gall, Let’s Review: US History and Government (New York: Barron’s Educational Series, 2007), p. 380. Summerfield, Reconstructing, p. 83. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, p. 58. Summerfield, Reconstructing, p. 78. Cited in S. H. Strom, ‘Italian-American women and their daughters in Rhode Island: the adolescence of two generations 1900-1950’, in Boyd, Harney and Tomasi (eds), Italian Immigrant Women, pp. 193-4. SA2002.054, Angelo Valente; SA1998.35, Renzo Serafini. Diamond, Women and the Second World War, p. 16. House of Lords, HL/PO/PU/l/1939/28t3G6c81, National Service (Armed Forces) Act, c.81. HL/PO/PU/l/1941/5&6G6c4 National Service (No. (2)) Act, c.4. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. SA2002.056, Maria Angelosanto. Summerfield, Reconstructing, p. 97. SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. SA2002.058, Anna Fergusson. SA2002.060, Norma Ventisei. Nicholson, ‘A disputed identity’, 421-2. ‘Girl “C.O.s”’, Edinburgh Evening Dispatch (19 November 1942), p. 6. In a press interview in 2010, the appellant explained that her grandfather suffered a heart attack whilst her father died of tuberculosis, aggravated by his detention. ‘I had to fight to stay out of Land Army’, Edinburgh Evening News (15 April 2010), p. 20. ‘Women C.O.s’, Scotsman (27 August 1942), p. 3. See also ‘“I’d rather go to jail” says Miss Fascea’, Daily Express (24 October 1942); ‘“Sorry I’m British”. Candid Amelia’, Daily Mail (29 October 1942). S. Chistolini, ‘Storia d’emigrazione’, Italiani in Scozia, 2 (1984), p. 2. P. Zorza, ‘Quel 10 giugno di 46 anni fa’, Italiani in Scozia, 11 (1986), p. 2. SA1998.34, Renzo Serafini.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68

A. Lant, Blackout. Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 90. See N. Tyrer, They Fought in the Fields. The Women’s Land Army: The Story of a Forgotten Victory (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996). SA1999.25, Antonietta Paci. Ibid. SA2002.060, Norma Ventisei. NAS, HH, 55/58, Special Branch reports, February 1944. Ibid., Special Branch report, March 1944. SA2002.060, Norma Ventisei. SA2002.058, Anna Fergusson. D. Kennedy, Written questionnaire, 3 June 2001. SA2002.060, Norma Ventisei. Ibid. SA2002.059, Anna Fergusson. Dora Kennedy, Written questionnaire sent to author, 3 June 2001. SA2002.056, Maria Angelosanto. L. Passerini, ‘Introduction’, in L. Passerini (ed.), Memory and Totalitarianism. International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 13. Summerfield, ‘Culture and composure’, p. 87. Ibid., p. 93. A. Portelli, ‘What makes oral history different’, in Perks and Thomson (eds), Oral History Reader, p. 66. Summerfield and Peniston-Bird, Contesting Home Defence, p. 253. Diamond, Women and the Second World War, p. 125. Dora Kennedy, Written questionnaire sent to author, 3 June 2001.

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Chapter Eight ‘Non vi scorderemo mai’: commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star

Addressing remembrance of war within the twentieth century, Jay Winter identifies two distinct ‘generations of memory’, the first an immediate, almost contemporaneous focus on the Fallen Soldier of the Great War; the second linked in large part to remembrance of the Second World War and the Holocaust.1 He sees the most significant aspect of the second ‘memory boom’ being that there was a ‘time lag’ of three decades before it fully emerged.2 This ties in with British trends, observed by Nick Hewitt, who sees, since the mid-1990s, ‘a desire to memorialise’ and commemorate amongst a war generation which had previously rejected such notions.3 Winter also acknowledges how ethnic identities in particular can be defined by narratives of the past, and in part by the narratives of suffering and survival. The demand for ethnic groups to be heard, he notes, almost always entails the construction of their own stories, their ‘own usable past’.4 In recent decades, as part of a wider trend towards ‘rememoration’ of the Second World War, Italians in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain have begun to claim their own sites of memory, most notably in memorial sculptures and plaques but also with the emergence of apology campaigns, demanding compensation for wartime internment. This chapter analyses campaigns which attempt to gain some form of recognition for internees, including an initiative by the community newspaper Italiani in Scozia in the 1980s seeking Italian civic honours for survivors of the Arandora Star disaster and a web-based forum demanding monetary compensation and an apology from the British government. Whilst not seeking to minimise the tragedy of the Arandora Star, this chapter explores the ways in which, with these moves towards recognition and redress, narratives of ~223~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' victimhood have been embraced. It will look at the ways in which the Arandora Star internees, a small number of whom held prominent positions in the Fasci, are all reconstructed as ‘vittime innocenti’ (innocent victims) and the utilisation of the emotive, and misleading, imagery of 'capi famiglia coi loro figli maschi? (fathers and sons) to represent those on board the Arandora Star. This chapter will argue that the privileging of the internment narrative within ‘rememoration’ of the war detaches the tragedy from its historical and political context, suppressing debate about the role and function of the inter-war Italian Fasci clubs. As Bill Niven notes in relation to the work of historians who attempt to relativise the suffering and impact of the Allied bombing of Germany with that of the Holocaust, the strategy employed is one of ‘historical decontextualisation’.5 The announcements made from 2008 to 2009 in the cities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Middlesbrough and Cardiff that they have created, or intend to erect, memorials to the Arandora Star point to the increasing resonance of the story and its increasingly empathetic reception within the wider British community. Yet these announcements also underline how belated memorialisation of the maritime disaster threatens to displace or overshadow different aspects of British Italian experience.

‘This shocking affair’ - the sinking of the Arandora Star The Arandora Star, the fifth worst British maritime disaster in World War Two, was described by Compton Mackenzie as ‘this detestable crime which burdens the nation’s soul’.6 Numerous texts have been produced focusing on the disaster and drawing attention to the dubious methods of selection, the composition of those on board and the inadequate safety provisions.7 As discussed in chapter three, the War Cabinet had made a decision to deport the most ‘dangerous’ Italian internees based on MI5’s flawed intelligence assessment.8 Between 21 June and 10 July 1940 four ships left Britain for Canada and one for Australia. The 15,501-ton Blue Star Liner Arandora Star, a converted troopship, sailed without escort and was torpedoed and sunk in the Adantic, seventy-five miles west of County Donegal, by the German submarine U47 on 2 July.9 Between 446 and 486 Italians drowned.10 The deportation provoked a major outcry, in both press and Parliament, exemplified by Francois Lafitte’s excoriating polemic, The Internment of Aliens.11 MPs such as William Glenvil Hall demanded an inquiry into ‘this shocking affair’12 whilst Mrs Douglas Woodruff, of the Italian ~224~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star Internees’ Aid Committee, expressed her disbelief that the government had deported ‘unclassified people’.13 Yet, even within this context, the racial stereotypes and jibes persisted, press coverage of the disaster filled with the traditional stereotypes of Italian cowardice and treachery. Under the headline ‘Arandora Star panic’, the Edinburgh Evening News reports how a surviving crew member, ‘said the behaviour of the Germans and Italians was frightful... “If they had not panicked so completely many more would have been saved, particularly Englishmen.”’14 Similarly, the Scotsman's report included the by-line ‘Aliens’ wild rush for boats’ and incorporated the following survivor account: “‘The Italians and Germans behaved,” said one Londoner, “just as you would expect them to behave. They thought of their own skins first”.’15 As Stent indicates, the core of the tragedy was that many internees had switched or substituted places; ‘nobody knew exactly who had been shipped, who had been lost and who saved... The only roll of internees had gone down with the ship, and that had been inaccurate anyhow.’16 Distressed and bereaved relatives of ‘the missing’ had to rely on the Brazilian Consulate for information as well as more informal lines of communication. Zorza recounts how an Arandora Star survivor in a Scottish hospital smuggled out a list of casualties on toilet paper.17 During a Commons debate on 22 August 1940 the Home Secretary, Anderson admitted that the ‘most regrettable and deplorable things’ had occurred: ‘They have been due partly to the inevitable haste with which the policy of internment... had to be carried out. They have been due in some cases to the mistakes of individuals and to stupidity and muddle.’18 His successor Herbert Morrison admitted in October 1940 that the government still had no accurate record of who had been aboard the ship.19 As discussed in chapter three, the Cabinet commissioned Lord Snell to undertake an inquiry into the ‘method of selection of aliens to be sent overseas in the Arandora Star'. In his summary report, as well as highlighting the security authorities’ fundamental error in not differentiating between Fasci members, Snell acknowledged that the names of twenty-six Italians on board the Arandora Star did not coincide with those on MI5’s list. However, he qualified this statement by pointing out that in about a dozen of these cases, the names were so similar ‘as to suggest that the persons embarked were, in fact, persons whose names appeared in the list’20 and concluded that ‘it seems likely that errors occurred in about a dozen cases’ which he attributed to the ‘great pressure’ faced by the officials compiling the embarkation lists.21 He also made the crucial acknowledgement that whilst the ‘underlying idea’ was to deport the so- called dangerous characters, ‘it would not be right to say that the orders issued ever laid it down that only aliens who ~225~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' could be described as dangerous characters were to be sent overseas’.22 The report was discussed in Cabinet in November when the furore had largely died down and a decision was made not to publish the findings.23 However, as a result of the whole debacle, it was decided that ‘no more Italians should be sent overseas’ and further deportations were abandoned.24

‘We don’t know where they are’ – loss and mourning The high death toll and the apparently chaotic nature of the final selection for the Arandora Star explain why it remains, in Marin’s view, ‘una cicatrice perennemente dolorante e sanguinante nel corpo vivo della collettività italiana’25 (a perpetually aching, bleeding scar on the living body of the Italian collectivity). Fortier agrees that the British Italian community ‘defines itself by the grief over the lives lost in the Arandora Star’.26 In particular, memories of the Arandora Star emphasise the suffering that distinguishes British Italians from other Italians worldwide.27 Epitomising this, the community newspaper, Italiani in Scozia, defines the event as ‘più grande disastro e tragedia che ha colpito la comunità emigrante italiana’26 (the biggest disaster and tragedy that has struck the Italian emigrant community). At the time of the tragedy, the wider climate of hostility towards Italians meant there was little space for public mourning for the bereaved families of the Arandora Star victims. Furthermore, as most of the bodies were never recovered, no private burials could take place and many relatives today express narratives of profound loss and absence. In the poignant words of Fiorinta Gallo, who lost her father, ‘We don’t know where they are. We don’t know if they’re still in the sea. Who knows?’29 Respondents now in their eighties, who lost their fathers when they were teenagers, are still grieving in many ways: an important factor in this mourning process is the fact that their loss was not publicly acknowledged at the time. This need for an acknowledged site of mourning was identified as early as August 1940, when Mrs Woodruff wrote of her work as Vice Chair of the Italian Internees’ Aid Committee, ‘This little Committee is trying to help the relatives of the internees, and we are in close touch with the families of the “Arandora Star” victims. It is heartrending work, and I think that to know that somewhere there is a sort of “Unknown Internee” grave would be a great consolation to them. The ruthless cruelty of transporting hundreds of people who have never even been before tribunals and sorted out on their merits is very difficult to explain away.’30 ~226~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star 'II dovere di ricordarli' ‒ the Italiani in Scozia campaign In 1990, the prestigious civic title of Cavalieri (Knight) was awarded to twenty-one Arandora Star survivors still living in Britain by the Italian government following an intensive campaign by agencies, including the community newspaper Italiani in Scozia.31 The latter publication was edited by Padre Pietro Zorza, an Italian missionary priest based in Glasgow. Printed in the Italian language, it ran for twenty-eight editions from December 1983 to October 1990 and was ‘distributed free to all Italian families in Scotland by volunteers’. From 1984 onwards, its pages are increasingly dominated by its Arandora Star campaign culminating in 1990, on the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy, with the honour of Cavalieri being conferred by the then Italian President, Cossiga, to seven survivors living in Scotland. In 1985, Zorza published a book, Arandora Star, as a supplement to Italiani in Scozia. The book aimed to highlight the tragedy, outlining a visit to Colonsay, the site of graves of some of the Arandora Star victims, and publishing interviews with survivors living in Scotland. This publication, through its subtitle, urged upon its readers ‘II dovere di ricordarli’ (the duty to remember them).32 On 2 July 1985, a mass was held at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow in honour of the victims of the Arandora Star followed by a civil ceremony at the Casa d’ltalia conferring ‘una Riconoscenza’ (‘gratitude’ or ‘recognition’) on five Scottish survivors and relatives of the victims.33 The seventh edition of the paper includes personal testimonies from survivors, internees and relatives of the internees and Arandora Star victims. From the mid-1980s onwards, a religious mass and civil ceremony were held every year at Glasgow Cathedral ‘nel ricordo del periti’ (in memory of those who perished.)34 The mass would be regularly presided over by an Italian priest, Monsignor Rossi, a formei internee, and those ‘invited’ included survivors, relatives of the victims and internees from the Isle of Man and Canada, effectively establishing a commemorative hierarchy within the community.35 All these memorial events were diligently recorded by Italiani in Scozia, with photographs of survivors and internees regularly reproduced. The ninth edition of the newspaper reiterates that Zorza’s book was written about the tragedy ‘per non essere dimenticati’ (so as not to be forgotten).36 Thus we begin to see a significant process at work. The decision in the 1980s to officially commemorate the victims of the Arandora Star and internees reflects what Wood defines as the elucidation of an ‘intention to remember’.37 Portelli identifies this ‘pressure to not forget and to derive memories from only one group’, such as a tight-knit circle of ~227~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' survivors, as a key example of the pressure of ‘collective’ upon ‘individual’ memory, a materialisation of ‘social control’.38 Furthermore, whilst the newspaper depicts very narrow strata of experience, the language surrounding its portrayals is one of inclusivity, this commemoration purports to be for the entire Italian community. In the October 1989 edition of Italiani in Scozia plans are revealed to utilise the fiftieth anniversary of the tragedy to honour, ‘attraverso i sei viventi, tutti i colpiti dalla tragedia, le loro famiglie e Vintera comunità italiana’39 (through the six living survivors, all those struck by the tragedy, their families and the entire Italian community). Yet, when I carried out my fieldwork from 1996 to 2001, less than half of the people I interviewed mentioned the disaster, suggesting that it is less central to Italian Scottish wartime experience than it is now presented. The honouring of the Arandora Star survivors inevitably sent a powerful message to members of the community in Scotland about those considered ‘good Italians’. Whilst Italiani in Scozia succeeded in its important objective to gain recognition for the survivors and victims of the Arandora Star, it also presented a one-dimensional view of the Italian community’s wartime history. In particular, the paper largely remained silent on the experiences of women and those who served in the British forces. The fact that the paper was produced in the Italian language serves to further exclude those who are not perceived as ‘good Italians’.40

The move towards memorialisation Towards the close of the twentieth century, there was a clearly definable move within sections of the Italian community from private remembrance towards more public commemoration, indicating that Italians in Britain now feel that it is safe to publicly claim their own sites of memory. Official commemoration began to be expressed some two decades after the war primarily via the medium of memorial sculptures.41 In November 1960, an ‘expressive bronze monument’ of the Arandora Star sculpted by Mancini was placed in the entrance of the Italian church of St Peter’s in London, inscribed ‘To the Memory which lives on in the Hearts of the Relatives, the Survivors and the Italian Community.’42 In Scotland, the Arandora Star disaster was first commemorated by a mosaic erected in the Casa d’ltalia in Glasgow in 1975 stating, ‘Non vi scorderemo mai’43 (We will never forget you). The iconic status of the Arandora Star has been reinforced by the numerous ~228~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star books, press articles and photographic collections that have been produced, focusing on the disaster.44 Furthermore, as Portelli notes, ‘mourning, like memory, is not a compact nucleus impenetrable to thought and language, but a process shaped (“elaborated”) in historical time’.45 Over time, there has been an increasing tendency to represent the disaster in emotive terms. In Zorza’s book, the Arandora Star is referred to as ‘I’eccidio’ (the massacre); Bernabei defines the Arandora Star as ‘somewhere between a war crime and a tragedy at sea’, a sentiment echoed by Pieri.46 Alistair MacLean’s influential article which first appeared in 1960, and was republished in 1986, describes the ship as a ‘floating concentration camp’, identifying the root of the tragedy as the existence of ‘murderous’ and ‘impenetrable’ barbed wire which cut off access to the lifeboats.47 In the twenty-first century, commemoration continues to take on new and diverse forms and fresh sites of mourning emerge. In August 1940, the novelist Compton Mackenzie noted that the body of ‘one Italian’, subsequently identified as a Roman tenor, Enrico Muzio, had washed up on the beach behind his house in Barra. He records five other bodies being washed ashore, two at South Uist.48 That same month, the Guardian reported that ‘about one hundred bodies from the Arandora Star’ had been seen floating in the sea off the Mayo coast although only seven had been recovered. These included a J. G. Marinchi, identified by a receipt from the treasurer of the Pontypridd Bowls Club.49 An investigation by Zorza in the 1980s highlighted how a number of the Arandora Star bodies had been ‘restituiti dal mare’ (returned from the sea) and buried in Colonsay.50 In some ways, this reflects Ballinger’s work in the Istrian peninsula where there are campaigns to exhume bodies from the Foibe as part of contested identity politics in the region.51 In Trieste, as the bodies are exhumed from caves, previously ‘submerged’ or marginalised stories are re-emerging.52 In 2005, the islanders of Colonsay decided to officially commemorate the disaster with the unveiling of a granite plaque so that ‘every year, the dead of the Arandora Star are remembered along with the islanders who fell serving their country’.53 In May 2008, the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, joined with the Archbishop of Glasgow, Mario Conti, to launch an appeal for an Arandora Star memorial in the form of an Italian cloister garden at Glasgow’s St Andrew’s Cathedral.54 In 2008, Liverpool City Council, as the designated ‘Capital of Culture’, unveiled a memorial plaque to the Arandora Star victims, to be located at the Pier Head, from where the ship sailed, and held a wreath-laying ceremony on a ~229~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' ferry on the River Mersey. On this occasion, the commemoration was positioned within the concept of a valued European identity, the Italian Honorary Consul, Nunzia Bertalli, stating, ‘As members of the European Union we are all working together to commemorate all the victims in the most appropriate way. It could help the families with their grief and is a good example of the difference us being European has made to the peace in the world.’55 In Middlesbrough, in July 2009, the Mayor unveiled a plaque at the local town hall commemorating thirteen Teesside Italians who drowned on the Arandora Star. This followed a campaign by the local MP Sir Stuart Bell, who saw the plaque as achieving ‘recognition of the injustice suffered by the families’.56 Finally, in Wales, it was announced that in July 2010, the seventieth anniversary of the sinking, a permanent memorial to the Arandora Star would be unveiled in Cardiff s Metropolitan Cathedral. Thus, after a relative silence of seven decades, it would appear that all corners of the British map are making competing claims for ownership of the tragedy, highlighting the extent to which these initiatives are firmly rooted in what Ballinger terms ‘moments of reception’.57 However, with this firm, unwavering focus on internment and the emotive discourse surrounding the Arandora Star tragedy, this ‘rememoration’ of the war serves to deny or neglect alternative memories. This is what Stanley defines as a ‘memory-making process’ whereby mourning the dead, a personal and individual matter, becomes superseded by public commemoration which is often highly politicised.58 The ‘interpretational context’59 has changed so that criteria for selection which focused, during the wartime invasion crisis, on those who were ‘“Fascio” Italians’60 are ignored and those on board become simply ‘Italian passport holders’.61 This mirrors developments in Italian discourse concerning the Foibe of Venezia Giulia where, Ballinger notes, an ‘ethno-national’ reading increasingly takes precedence over a political one.62 Furthermore, as Niven identifies in relation to Germany, the explosion into the public realm of notions of wartime victimhood potentially represents ‘the triumph of the private over the public, of emotion over enlightenment, and of uncritical empathy over pedagogy’.63 This process of memorialisation, whilst important in conferring some level of acknowledgement for the familial devastation caused, tends to foreground elements of recognition and remembrance whilst totally ignoring other factors. In what Stanley refers to as ‘the linked processes of forgetting’, the existence of inter-war Italian Fascist clubs is omitted from the commemorative picture.64 ~230~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star Apology campaigns As Ashplant, Dawson and Roper note, social groups suffering injustice, injury or trauma that originates in war have become increasingly prepared to demand public recognition of their experience, a process which often involves claims for material compensation and reparation. Ballinger’s work underlines how the post-Cold War geopolitical redrawing of the map of Europe has encouraged the emergence of themes of accountability and justice and has stimulated a revisiting of the identity politics of the past, stirring up related questions about complicity with Fascism and Communism.66 In North America, there has been a significant advance in the number of ethnic groups seeking redress for events spanning both world wars, inspired by the success of Japanese American communities in gaining compensation and an apology for wartime relocation in 1988. In 1990, the Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered a ‘full and unqualified’ apology to the National Congress of Italian Canadians.67 In the United States of America, the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act, addressing those interned, evacuated or arrested for violations under wartime regulations, was signed by President Clinton into Public Law in 2000.68 No doubt influenced both by the success of redress campaigns overseas and the devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, similar calls have been made in Scotland from key figures within the community. Whereas for Italiani in Scozia in the 1980s, the prime audience was the Italian government, within redress campaigns in the twenty-first century, the British government is targeted. This echoes historian John Foot’s observation, when discussing memories of German reprisal massacres in war- torn Italy, that whilst the Germans are recognised as being responsible, the blame for the atrocities often lies with the partisans.69 The idea of a public apology from the Scottish Parliament was first mooted by arts impresario Richard Demarco in an interview with Scotland on Sunday. ‘For De Marco, the close of the twentieth century seems an appropriate time for the Edinburgh parliament to call for a public apology to all those whose loved ones died on the SS Arandora Star.’70 He and the historian Terri Colpi circulated a petition at the Italian Scottish Identities conference held in Edinburgh in September 2000 where the latter ‘called for the drafting of a motion asking the Scottish parliament for an apology to the ScottishItalian community for internment’.71 A parallel development is the appearance of the Arandora Star Campaign on the Internet. The stated aims of the campaign are ‘to make known the tragic events of June/July ~231~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 1940 and the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Arandora Star, to obtain an official apology from the British Prime Minister and to seek compensation for the many Italian families who suffered grave personal and financial loss due to the Government’s policy of internment’. The website incorporates the key charges contained within the Arandora Star literature, namely that: ‘the boat sailed without convoy, was grossly overloaded, and with no regard to the capacity of the ship’s lifeboats; had no emergency drill or instruction; carried no Red Cross or other means of identification; the number of lifeboats was grossly inadequate and they were secured behind heavy wire mesh’.72 The website again makes the misleading assertion that ‘all Italian male civilians between the ages of 18 and 70 years were arrested by the police’ and, as with the media coverage of memorial appeals, there is no mention of inter-war Italian Fascism.73 Significantly, one of the remaining survivors, Rando Bertoia, a Glasgow-based watchmaker, whilst actively participating in Arandora Star memorial activity since the 1980s, has consistently refrained from apportioning blame. Born in Italy in 1920, he simply states that his internment was something he ‘accepted’ as ‘one of the harsh realities of war’.74 In a 2006 interview, Bertoia said that he didn’t agree with the main aims of the Arandora Star apology campaign: ‘“I always stated there shouldn’t be an apology from the British government, but there should have been an apology from Mr Mussolini. If Italy hadn’t gone to war, there wouldn’t have been any Arandora Star, so blaming the British government for what happened is wrong”.’75 Furthermore, at the launch of the Arandora Star memorial appeal in Glasgow in 2008 there were indications that the rhetoric of the apology campaigners was being contested within the community itself. The Times commented, ‘it is also hoped that the garden will help to allay the concerns of those who believe that British ministers should issue an official apology’ and to counter campaigners who ‘insist that the Government’s policy of internment was to blame’.76 Scots-born Archbishop Mario Conti stated at the launch, ‘The Arandora is a painful memory but no-one is looking for an apology. It was war.’77

‘Vittime innocenti’ - narratives of victimhood With the move towards rememoration within the Italian community in Scotland, the narrative of victimhood threads through communal discourse. On the forty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy, Italiani in ~232~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star Scozia paid homage to the ‘padri e i fratelli vittime innocenti’78 (fathers and brothers, innocent victims) of World War Two. Five years later, the paper was announcing the commemorative service to honour the Scottish survivors of the Arandora Star.‘Pregheremo per tutte le vittime innocenti'79 (We will pray for all the innocent victims). The most recent manifestations occurred in response to the announcements to erect memorials to the Arandora Star, with BBC Wales, for example, issuing a news story entitled, ‘Innocents killed on sunken liner’.80 In many respects, the victimisation narrative which runs throughout British Italian literature addressing internment draws upon the powerful ‘Italiani, brava gente’ mythology, discussed in chapter two, which perpetuates ‘the ahistorical innocence of Italians’.81 In her insightful work on the ‘post/memory’ of the concentration camps established by the British military during the Boer War, Stanley shows how the emotive levels of deaths of Boer women and children have since been utilised by South African nationalists to gain moral and political capital. Stanley introduces the term ‘post- slash-memory’ to indicate that memory, in the sense of a direct recall of events in the past, both is and is not involved in what ‘the facts’ are now understood to be.82 Following Halbwachs, her work highlights how people utilise aspects of the past to inform the present so that memory is ‘always fractured and always after the fact: it is actually remembering, an activity, located in time and space, always from a particular point of view, and usually contested", 83 Understandable attempts to highlight the fact that many of those on board the Arandora Star had been merely nominal members of the Fascio have led to the historical neglect of those who were Fascist supporters. This trend towards depoliticising the inter-war era is encapsulated by the former internee Monsignor Rossi: ‘Italian emigrants paid the price of internment and of the Arandora Star for a war which they did not want and towards which they had not contributed in any way.’84 Another common motif is the ‘harmless caterer’,85 including George Orwell’s contemporaneous reference in his war diary to the attacks on ‘harmless Italian shopkeepers’, which assists in the overall representation of Italian internees as somehow completely apolitical.86 Yet, as seen in chapter two, the willing engagement of a very small number of Italians in Fascist ceremonial in the inter-war period clearly influenced the ways in which Italians were constructed by the security authorities. It is widely acknowledged that errors were made in the selection of those embarked on the Arandora Star and that, in addition to Category ‘A’ Germans and Austrians and Fascio members, the ship ~233~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' included a very small number of known anti-Fascists and British subjects as well as Jewish refugees.87 However, the focus in all accounts relating to Italian experience is almost universally on the clear mistakes and anomalies: the naturalised British citizens or the known antiFascists such as Uberto Limentani or Decio Anzani.88 Anzani, a fiftyeight-year- old tailor, based in London since the First World War, acted as Secretary of the Italian League of the Rights of Man and had distributed anti-Fascist literature. It was later acknowledged by the Snell inquiry that he had been arrested ‘in error’.89 In her populist wartime history, Midge Gillies includes Anzani’s history as ‘The Italian’s Story’, making him emblematic of Italian experience in Britain in 1940 when in fact he was atypical.90 However, with his credentials, Anzani represents what Ballinger terms ‘the quintessential victim uncompromised by fascism’91 and thus he is repeatedly referred to in accounts of the Arandora Star. By throwing the spotlight on those who should unquestionably not have been on board, a veil is subtly drawn over the presence of known Fascists or those compromised by their support for Fascism. MI5’s fundamental, and lamentable, error in characterising Fascio membership as a Category ‘A’ security risk, and the resultant individual and familial tragedies, has meant that attention has been diverted from a more critical analysis of any internees who were, in Snell’s term, ‘ardently Fascist’.92 Canadian historians identify a similar ‘silence’ surrounding the question of whether some internees were actually committed Fascists.93 Lafitte, writing in 1940, probably strikes the most accurate note when he says of Italians on board the ship, ‘the majority probably were Fascists or sympathisers, but a considerable proportion were not’.94 Even Colpi concedes, ‘Mostly the men who died came from London, Glasgow, Edinburgh or Manchester. Arguably, these men were from the large Italian Communities where there was Fascist activity.’95 An analysis of those on board shows that a very small number sat on the Fasci Directive Councils, including Fascio secretaries from Belfast, Cardiff, Carlisle, Edinburgh and Swansea.96 Within representations of internment, emphasis is also placed on sons who were interned with their fathers. In Migrant Belongings, Fortier highlights the centrality of the notion of the ‘good son’ in relation to war remembrance within the Italian community in Britain.97 In one of the earliest mentions of the Arandora Star, Italiani in Scozia states that many of the dead were ‘padre & figli italiani’ (Italian fathers and their children) that worked in Scotland.98 In his book, Zorza reiterates that when the boat was struck by a torpedo, ‘centinaia di capi ~234~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star famiglia coi loro figli mascht (hundreds of heads of family with their sons) were drowned." However, the use of this compelling and poignant imagery serves to provide a misleading impression both of those present on board the Arandora Star and general levels of internment amongst second- generation Italians. In fact, the Italian-born ‘sons’ of the internees - the 405 ‘young single Italians’ recorded in official records generally sailed separately to Canada on the Ettrick on 3 July 1940.100 The British-born ‘sons’, detained under Regulation 18B, were British subjects and, as such, would not have been aboard the ship. Fortier argues that the Arandora Star iconography is one of suffering and sacrifice which draws upon the recurring motif within the Italian community of the suffering and sacrifices inherent in the act of emigration itself.1011 would go further and suggest that as well as imagery of sacrifice and suffering, the constant emphasis on the Arandora Star tragedy within communal discourse, drawing upon the symbolism of victimhood, functions essentially to distract attention away from the diversity of Italian experience. Helmut Schmitz cautions that, ‘While individual suffering has an unquestionable right of expression and acknowledgment, the public representation and commemoration of collective historical suffering usually serve collective purposes and underwrite a collective narrative.’102 AnneMarie Troger, writing of German women’s memories of World War Two, notes how the religious and popular symbol of the victim is often utilised in remembrance because it ‘absolves the victim of responsibility and guilt’ - a victim of the war cannot be responsible for it.103 Furthermore, the recurring motif of innocence functions to suppress any hint of political allegiances amongst Italian internees. As a result, those on board the Arandora Star - Nazi sympathisers, prominent Fasci members, Jewish refugees and British citizens - are all reconstructed as ‘vittime innocenti’ (innocent victims). Niven, analysing Germany’s evolving approach to its Nazi past, comments on the emergence, at the turn of the millennium, of a ‘universalising approach to victimhood’.104 In relation to Germany this involves a relativisation of suffering whereby, in commemorative activity, civilian casualties of Allied bombing, soldiers and the victims of expulsion from the eastern territories are placed on an equal rhetorical footing with Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. He writes that the post-1990 construction of German wartime victimhood ‘depends for its viability on ignoring issues such as historical context, processes of cause and effect, action and reaction, and questions of moral responsibility of those upon whom reactions ~235~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' impinge’.105 Sarah Farmer, in her work on the 1944 massacre at Oradoursur-Glane in France (when the population of 642 women, children and men were brutally killed by SS troops), highlights how, in post-war commemorative accounts, the massacre has been reframed as ‘the archetypical story of innocence and victimisation’.106 Oradour has become established as ‘the outstanding example of an ideal French village that, through no fault of its own, became the hapless victim of Nazi barbarism’ whereas, in fact, the massacre occurred within a long succession of German reprisals for local Resistance activity.107 Portelli addresses a similar trend in Italy surrounding remembrance of the massacre at Civitella Val di Chiana when, on 29 June 1944, the German occupying troops executed 115 male civilians, ostensibly in retaliation for the killing of 3 German soldiers by partisans. Portelli notes how the men are represented as victims who had not done anything that might explain their deaths; the dead of Civitella are victims who ‘died innocent’. Yet Portelli cuts through the sensitivity surrounding this imagery to tackle the crux of the matter: ‘The inexplicability of these deaths also depends on the purely negative definition given of innocence, in its etymological sense of harmlessness (non nocere). Being without guilt, however, does not mean being without responsibilities: having done nothing wrong is one thing but having done nothing against wrong is another.’108 As Portelli reiterates in later work on the 1944 Nazi massacre at Fosse Ardeatine, referring to those killed in the caves as ‘victims’ diminishes ‘their subjectivity and agency’.109 It has become a commonplace to state that no apology has ever been given for the Arandora Star disaster,110 yet these assertions ignore the fact that there was contemporary recognition by the government that some of those on board the Arandora Star had been unlawfully detained, most visibly expressed by Home Secretary Morrison’s public offer of compensation in House of Commons. In the aftermath of the disaster, the government acknowledged that there were naturalised British subjects who had been illegally transported on the Arandora Star, of which there were at least four cases.111 In a House of Commons debate on 8 October 1940, MP Lambert Ward raised the case of Gaetano Pacitto, a naturalised British subject, seized by the police in Hull and presumed drowned on the Arandora Star. He asked specifically, ‘what steps does the Government intend to take to compensate the widow and family for the loss of their breadwinner and for the agony of mind which they have suffered; and also, to rehabilitate the character of the man who is now known to have been a legal and law-abiding British citizen?’ Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison’s response is worth quoting in full: ~236~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star I very much regret that by an unfortunate series of mistakes Mr. Pacitto, who was a naturalised British subject of Italian origin, was interned, on the outbreak of war with Italy, at the time when a large number of persons of Italian nationality or origin were interned. Immediately afterwards, it was decided to send to Canada a number of internees, and Mr. Pacitto was amongst those placed on board the ‘Arandora Star’. He was not among the known survivors, and it must therefore be presumed that he lost his life when the ship was torpedoed by the enemy. The Government fully realise that no expression of regret or sympathy, and no offer of compensation, can repair the loss which the relatives have suffered. The Government deeply regret this tragic error and are prepared to pay proper compensation.112

The Pacitto family’s claim was ultimately settled for £2000 plus costs, with the Treasury keen to avoid ‘undesirable publicity, possibly leading to the stimulation of other actions not at present in sight’.113 Another case of wrongful internment ending in death on the Arandora Star was that of Antonio Mancini, who had been arrested by Ayr Burgh Police. Mancini, an Italian by birth, had lived in Scotland for twenty-seven years and became a naturalised British subject in 1938. He left a widow and six children, the youngest of whom was nine.114 Sir Oscar Dowson of the Home Office acknowledged that, ‘As a result of a series of blunders he was wrongfully interned in the purported exercise of the prerogative power to intern enemy aliens and his detention from first to last was unlawful.’115 The Lord Advocate’s Chambers agreed on the ‘illegality’ of the detention and believed that compensation could be issued on the grounds of loss of the family wage-earner and for solatium, compensation for the grief and injury to feelings inflicted by the death.116 In September 1940, the Home Office and Lord Advocate’s Chambers agreed to instruct an Edinburgh solicitor to arrange a settlement of the claim but it appears that when the Home Office proceeded to consult with the Treasury, no further action was taken.117 The Treasury was keen to avoid a ‘spontaneous offer of compensation’118 for fear of triggering other claims for compensation to the dependants of other Arandora Star victims, even where ‘the detention and deportation were lawful’.119 The Treasury’s hardbitten position was underlined in a letter to the Home Office on behalf of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury: ‘On grounds of expediency, My Lords do not consider it desirable to initiate proposals for compensation which has not been, and is otherwise unlikely to be, applied for, especially in view of the risk of provoking claims from dependants of other persons drowned on the “Arandora Star” which, even if without foundation in law, it might nevertheless be embarrassing to refuse.’120 ~237~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Prisoners of War memorials Wood highlights the importance of ‘commemorative rituals’ as vectors of memory.121 A key element of remembrance services within the Italian community in Britain is the fusion of the commemorative groupings of Italian POWs and internees/Arandora Star victims which again serves to identify those who were ‘good Italians’ and subtly sidelines those who served in British uniform during the conflict. One of the most significant of these events is the remembrance service, held every November at Brookwood military cemetery in Sussex, where 346 Italian Prisoners of War who died whilst prisoners in Britain are buried. Organised by the Italian Consulate and Embassy, in conjunction with the Associazione nazionale combattenti e reduci (National Association of War Veterans), Italian communities across the UK send delegates, and Colpi sees this ceremony as representing the equivalent of ‘Remembrance Sunday’ for the Italian community in Britain.122 The inflow of Italian prisoners into Britain from Africa and India reached a peak of over 155,000 by the end of 1944.123 During the period June 1942March 1943, 45,000 arrived in Scotland and it was anticipated that this figure would rise to a maximum of 82,000 by the end of 1943.124 As the war progressed, the Scottish landscape became increasingly populated with Italian Prisoners of War. Indeed, the presence of Italian POWs working in rural areas or near the main cities led to a strengthening of transnational links between Italian immigrant families and Italy. Files held at the National Archives Scotland contain testimony to fraternisation between local Italians and Italian POWs and personal narratives also testify to interaction between these two groups.125 Numerous respondents mention coming into contact with Italian POWs during the war; two state that Prisoners of War were invited to their homes for meals126 and the sisters of two respondents married POWs.127 Romanticised nostalgia about the presence of Italian POWs in Scotland endures within popular culture and media, encapsulated in Jessie Kesson’s 1983 book, Another Time, Another Place, made into a popular film the same year. Typical are the comments by Norman Longmate in his social history of wartime Britain: ‘When the first Italians were sent to work on British farms there was a ridiculous public outcry, based, apparently, on the insulting belief that no British woman could ever say “no” to a foreigner, but before long the Italians were not merely tolerated but positively popular.’128 This links into wider cultural representations of Italian soldiers as essentially humane and peaceloving, as discussed in chapter two, as well as ‘romantic fools’. Nicholas ~238~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star Doumanis’ study of the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese (1912-43), for example, highlights the tendency for the Italian colonisers to be remembered as men who were ‘predisposed to romance’.129 Fortier highlights the extent to which positive representations of Italian POWs within British popular culture have aided the reintegration of Italians into British society.130 She also notes how representations of POW camps frequently provide an opportunity for ‘displays of alliance’ between Italy and Britain: ‘the most striking aspect of these accounts is their depiction of [Italian] soldiers and their legacy to the British cultural heritage’.131 As a result of this, Italian POWs are often represented as ‘soldier-artists, craftsmen, bricklayers or carpenters who built lovely chapels’ rather than as warriors fighting for their nation. They are primarily remembered for the cultural heritage they bequeathed to different parts of Britain, including the famous Churchill Barriers of Kirkwall and the ‘Italian chapels’ in Orkney and Henlan, Wales.132 The 1943 transformation of two Nissen huts on Orkney into an Italian chapel by the artist Domenico Chiocchetti and other Italian POWs on the island is presented by Colpi as ‘a testimony not only to the faith of these men in adversity but also to the Italian love of the creation of beauty’.133 In the post-war era, the chapel prospered as a visitor attraction, and in 1996 a special declaration of friendship was signed between the peoples of Orkney and Moena, Chiocchetti’s home town.134 On the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of Italian POWs in Orkney, a specially commissioned play about their presence, Barriers, by Alan Plater with music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, was premiered as part of the 2002 St Magnus Festival. This focus on the ‘alliance rather than enmity’ between Italy and Britain is also, Fortier notes, foregrounded in commemorative services where stories of alliances and friendships rather than of division and animosity are emphasised.135 She cites the example of the 1993 memorial service at Brookwood when an Englishman was honoured for his contribution to the Italian Resistance and thanked by the Italian Ambassador in the name of all Italians. At the same ceremony, the Ambassador concluded the service with the following words: ‘liberty and unity are values which have been delivered by the sacrifice of our dead’.136 This has echoes of President Cossiga’s message delivered in Britain on the fiftieth anniversary of the Arandora Star sinking when he spoke of Italy and Britain as ‘peoples bound together through the centuries by deep and solid ties of friendship’.137 Thus, as Fortier astutely notes, ‘war memories speak of the struggle between estrangement and alliance, where the latter wins in the end. ~239~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' Britain, here, is the “host country” where even former hostages were well treated and respected... In other words, these remembrances are not reruns of the war, they are reruns of the armistice between Italy and England and the ensuing (re) integration of Italians in British society.’138 Building upon Fortier’s impressive analysis, I would argue that the most significant feature of these Brookwood services is the fact that they also commemorate the men who lost their lives on the Arandora Star and have, in Colpi’s words, ‘come to symbolise a pilgrimage representing the effect of the war on the Community’.139 This fusion of two distinct commemorative groupings - internees and POWs — further heightens the identification of those men who were interned or on the Arandora Star as ‘good Italians’. Indeed, the commemoration of the Arandora Star victims appears to have merged over time with POW memorials to become a symbol of what it meant to ‘be Italian’ in Britain during the war. There is no public space in which to acknowledge the experiences of second- and third-generation Italians who died in the British armed forces.140 As their stories fail to conform to the elite-led discourse of Italian wartime experience, they are effectively left stranded in a commemorative no-man’s land.141

10. A 2002 episode of TV series Foyle’s War provides a rare filmic depiction of a British Italian soldier, Tony Lucciano, played by Danny Dyer.

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Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star ‘In honour of Dennis, our VC’ – remembering/forgetting the British Army veteran The privileging of the internment/Arandora Star narrative ‘threatens to displace other kinds of war experience’, such as the contribution and experiences of those who served in the British forces.142 Significantly, this exclusion of British Army veterans from Italian memorial activity has a historical precedent. Following the First World War, divisions emerged within the Italian community in Britain between those who had returned to Italy to serve in the Italian Army and those who remained in Britain, often serving in the British Army. According to Sponza, ‘the surviving veterans who returned to Britain did not disguise their rancour towards their compatriots who, for whatever reason, had remained in Britain throughout the war’. A Union of Italian Veterans in Great Britain established in 1919 welcomed everybody who had ‘worn the Italian military uniform with honour’, effectively excluding Italians who had joined the British forces.143 This exclusion is highly revealing in what it says about community dynamics, specifically the longevity of the concept of the ‘good Italian’ and its demand for loyalty and allegiance, and is therefore relevant when addressing commemoration of World War Two. The hands of friendship will apparently still not extend to embrace those who took up arms in British uniform. Within historiography figures such as VC winner Fusilier Dennis Donnini, discussed in chapter six, remain neglected; his name is not even mentioned in the key texts of Sponza or Colpi. Yet it would appear that others outwith the Italian community are keen to (re)claim his memory, indicated by his appearance in 2006 in a list of top 100 North East Heroes, sandwiched between Tony Blair and Kevin Keegan.144 In his home town of Easington, County Durham, his picture hangs in the local workingmen’s club, a sheltered housing project has been named Donnini House,145 a bed in Easington hospital bears a brass tablet in his memory146 and his story has been immortalised in song by a local folksinger.147 In Scotland, he was honoured by his old regiment, the 4/5th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers Reunion Association naming an Ayr street, Donnini Court, ‘in honour of Dennis, our VC’,148 and in England the National Union of General and Municipal Workers claimed him, at the time of his death, as ‘Our First VC’.149 Yet, Donnini has not been similarly revered within the wider Italian community in Britain. There are signs that, in the twenty-first century, the figure of the British Italian soldier is emerging from cultural obscurity but, again, it ~241~

Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' could be significant that these dramatic and literary representations have rarely been produced by British Italians. The Scottish journalist, Albert Mackie, was responsible for the empathetic depiction of Domenico Campanelli in Gentle Like a Dove, discussed in the introduction. Kingsley Amis’ short story, My Enemy’s Enemy, first published in 1955, focuses on the racial harassment of an Italian Welsh soldier, Lieutenant Dalessio - ‘Dally’ - of the Signal Corps who, although he has contributed well to his unit’s Normandy campaign, is viewed by his adjutant as ‘a standing bloody reproach to this unit’ due to his unkempt demeanour. With his ‘ill-fitting battiedress blouse’, the army uniform again provides a metaphor for Dalessio’s failure to fit in.150 There was an almost threedecade hiatus until Italian Scottish playwright Anne Marie di Mambro created the character of Franco Pedreschi in her 1989 stage play Tally’s Blood.151 Pedreschi is a relatively minor character who, to the chagrin of his family, announces that he has joined the British Army and is later killed. Sarah Waters’ 2006 best-seller, The Nightwatch, includes the antihero serviceman, Reggie Nigri, who comments, ‘I’ve got second cousins twice removed - or something like that - who are fighting, now, for the other team, in Italy.’152 Significantly, perhaps, his Italian ethnicity is only unmasked at the climax of the novel - a plot device which acts as a final vindication of the reader’s suspicions that Nigri, a married man conducting a drawn-out affair, is inherently untrustworthy or duplicitous. Fifty years after Mackie’s perceptive play, ITV’s drama Foyle’s War explored similar themes with its sympathetic representation of a British Italian soldier. The episode ‘A Lesson in Murder’ depicts the character of London-born waiter, Tony Lucciano, joining up just before his Italian father is killed during the anti-Italian riots.153 He has already articulated his loyalty to Britain in a number of set pieces throughout the programme but his commitment is bitterly undermined by the fatal attack on his father. Lucciano has been cruelly shown that, despite outward appearances, he does not belong. At the close of the episode, he symbolically walks away from both Foyle, an old family friend, and the driver, Sam, whom he had originally hoped would be his ‘girl’.

Conclusion The concept of the ‘good Italian’ which predominated in the interwar Fascio period has persisted throughout commemoration within the community with the shared memorials and commemoration of Arandora Star victims, internees and POWs and the marked absence of ~242~

Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star those who died whilst serving in the British forces. Whilst the recent memorialisation of the Arandora Star has an invaluable function for many in the community, particularly the children of those who lost their lives, it also perpetuates the dominance of a one-dimensional discourse of Italian Scottish wartime experience, silencing the memories of others. There appears to be no public space in which to acknowledge the experiences of those who served in the British forces; their stories do not conform to the central narrative of what it meant to ‘be Italian’ during the war. In addition, the post-war commemorative focus on alliance means that memories of divisions are suppressed. Words cannot adequately express the depth of despair and devastation wrought upon the families of those who drowned on the Arandora Star. Yet, at the same time, it is crucial not to let our emotional response mean we lose sight of the wider historical context in which this tragedy occurred. Ballinger, in her work on contested identity politics of the Julian March region, posits the crucial question when addressing memory of World War Two in Europe: ‘How to allow for shades of gray... and various degrees and types of complicity ... How to recognise victimisation without creating a pervasive and exclusive sense of victimhood?’154 Essentially, popular representations which present the Arandora Star tragedy without reference to the preceding years of Fasci activity and ceremonial need to be examined more critically. Portelli acknowledges the inclination of audiences, when faced by traumatic stories such as survivors’ testimonies of the Civitella massacre, to respond reverentially. However, as he goes on to state: It is the scholar’s task... after accepting the impact, [to] step back, breathe deeply, and start thinking again. With due respect for the people involved, the authenticity of their sorrow, and the seriousness of their reasons, our task is still to interpret critically all documents and narratives, including theirs ... when we speak of divided memory, we must not imagine only an opposition between a spontaneous and pure communal memory versus an official and ideological one, so that once we deconstruct the latter we can implicitly take for granted the unmediated authenticity of the former. We are dealing rather with a multiplicity of fragmented and internally divided memories, all one way or the other ideologically and culturally mediated.155

Notes 1

J. Winter, Remembering War. The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 18.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 2 3

4 5

6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Ibid., p. 26. N. Hewitt, ‘A sceptical generation? War memorials and the collective memory of the Second World War in Britain, 1945-2000’, in Geppert (ed.), The Postwar Challenge, p. 97. Winter, Remembering War, p. 35. B. Niven, ‘Introduction: German victimhood at the turn of the millennium’, in B. Niven (ed.), Germans as Victims. Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 14. Williams, Wartime Disasters at Sea, p. 242; C. Mackenzie, My Life and Times. Octave Eight 1939-1946 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 97. D. Hickey and G. Smith, The Star of Shame - the Arandora Star (Dublin: Madison Publishing, 1989); Gillman, Collar the Lot!; A. MacLean, The Lonely Sea (London: Fontana, 1986). NA, FO, 371/25193, Extract from War Cabinet Conclusions, 11 June 1940. Williams, Wartime Disasters, p. 242. The Arandora Star Missing Persons List, reproduced by Colpi, states that 446 Italians died and this figure has been widely adopted. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 278. Drawing upon Blue Star Line records and the Lloyds War Loss Records, Williams states that ‘470 Italians lost their lives and 243 Germans as well as thirty seven British soldiers and fifty five crew members.’ Wartime Disasters, p. 107. NA, KV, 4/337 contains embarkation lists for the Arandora Star which indicate 486 Italian deaths, a figure used by Stent, Bespattered Page?, p. 105. F. Lafitte, The Internment of Aliens (London, Libris, 2nd edn, 1988). Hansard, vol. 365, col. 239, 8 October 1940. Mackenzie, Life and Times, p. 98. 'Arandora Star panic’, Edinburgh Evening News (4 July 1940), p. 5. ‘Liner torpedoed: 1000 lives lost’, Scotsman (4 July 1940), p. 5. Stent, Bespattered Page?, p. 105. Zorza, Arandora Star, p. 34. Cited in Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 231. Many of the Arandora Star survivors were hastily shipped to Australia on the Dunera, where they were subject to terrible abuses for which three crew member's were courtmartialled. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, pp. 245-53. Stent, Bespattered Page?, p. 106. See NA, KV, 4/337, Summary of the Arandora Star Inquiry, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 2. Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 262. Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 112. Marin, Italiani in Gran Bretagna, p. 86. Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 57. Ibid., p. 91. The close ties between the Bardi area of Parma and the Italian Welsh community were illuminated by the disaster, with a total of fortyeight men from Bardi drowning. A street in Bardi - Via Vittime Arandora

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Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48 49 50 51

Star - bears testimony to this loss and a chapel was erected to the memory of the men in 1969. See Colpi, ‘The Second World War’, p. 179. ‘Cossiga interviene e fa cavalieri sette de\VArandora Star’, Italiani in Scozia, 28 (1990), p. 3. SA1999.31, Fiorinta Gallo. Mackenzie, Life arid Times, p. 96. Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 124. Zorza, Arandora Star, p. 9. ‘II dovere di ricordarli’, Italiani in Scozia, 7 (1985), p. 1. Italiani in Scozia, 20 (1988), p. 6. ‘Degni di un Riconoscimento Civile?’, Italiani in Scozia, 24 (1989), p. 10. ‘Arandora Star’, Italiani in Scozia, 9 (1985), p. 7. Wood, Vectors of Memory, p. 3. Portelli, Battle of Valle Giulia, p. 157. ‘Degni di un Riconoscimento Civile?’, Italiani in Scozia, 24 (1989), p. 10. In contrast another community newspaper published in the 1980s, Oltremare, was bilingual, acknowledging the fact that second-generation Italians speak English as their first language. A significant memorial is Eduardo Paolozzi’s Edinburgh sculpture The Manuscript of Monte Cassino (1991), which consists of three massive bronze sculptures of an ankle, a foot and a hand. The sculptor, who lost his father and grandfather in the Arandora Star disaster, originally suggested that the objects be inscribed in the memory of the Italians who drowned. E. Paolozzi, ‘Texts for Monte Cassino’, Edinburgh Review, 104 (2000), 19. Marin, Italiani in Gran Bretagna, p. 87. Colpi, Italians Forward, p. 145. M. S. Balestracci, Arandora Star: una Tragedia Dimenticata (Parma: Millenium Editrice, 2006); O. Logan, Bloodlines. ViteAllo Specchio (Manchester: Comer- house Publications, 1994); M. Morrison, ‘Collar the Lot’; A. O’Hagan, Personality (London: Faber & Faber, 2003); F. Stock, A Foreign Country (London: Chatto & Windus, 1999). Portelli, Battle of Valle Giulia, p. 144. Zorza, Arandora Star, p. 9; A. Bernabei, ‘A gold watch is missing’, in Rose and Rossini (eds), Italian Scottish Identities, p. 53; J. Pieri, The ScotsItalians. Recollections of an Immigrant (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2005), p. 91. MacLean, Lonely Sea, pp. 42–3. Mackenzie, Life and Times, p. 97. ‘Arandora Star. Some bodies recovered’, Guardian (13 August 1940), p. 2. Zorza, Arandora Star, pp. 52-8. Foibe were deep cracks in the Istria region where around 500-700 Italians were killed by Slovene and Croat partisans cooperating with Italian communists. See I. Favretto, ‘Italy, EU-enlargement and the “Reinvention” of Europe: between historical memories and present representations’, in K. Eder and W. Spohn (eds), Collective Memory and European Identity. The Effects of Integration and Enlargement (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 98.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 52 53 54 55

56

57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72

73

Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 144. G. Madeley, ‘An island remembers’, Daily Mail (27 June 2005), p. 13. M. McLaughlin, ‘Garden to help lay wartime shame to rest’, Scotsman, (29 May 2008), p. 11. ‘Memorial for drowned internees’, Liverpool City Council Press Release 2614, 1 July 2008, www.liverpool.gov.uk/News/newsdetail_2614.asp, accessed 30 August 2009. Middlesbrough Council Press Release, Ref. no. 0177, 2 July 2009, www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/ccm/content/news/1 middlesbrough-councilpress-release, accessed 27 August 2009. Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 270. Stanley, Mourning Becomes, p. 11. Ibid., p. 114. NA, KV, 4/337, Minutes of ‘Conference on move of Prisoners of War and Internees to Canada’, 17 June 1940. P. Elson, ‘A fitting tribute to the lives lost on the Arandora Star’, Liverpool Daily Post (7 July 2008), www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/liverpoolcolumnists/peter-elson/2008/07, accessed 19 September 2009. This seamless narrative transition from innocents to victims is again evidenced in a BBC Scotland article: G. Rinaldi, ‘From ice cream men to “enemy aliens” ’ (10 June 2010), www.news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/scotland/10224872, accessed 10 June 2010. Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 145. B. Niven, ‘Introduction’, p. 20. Stanley, Mourning Becomes, p. 7. Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory’, p. 3. Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 272. Iacovetta and Ventresca, ‘Redress, collective memory’, p. 386. DiStasi, Storia Segreta, p. 9. J. Foot, ‘Via Ravella, 1944: memory, truth and history’, Historical Journal, 43:4 (2000), 1177. Morrison, ‘Collar the Lot’, p. 21. J. Gilchrist, ‘An alien nation’, Scotsman, S2 (19 October 2000), p. 3. In England MP Stuart Bell instigated a campaign ‘to get the Government to apologise for the actions that resulted in the deaths of so many men’; G. Hetherington, ‘Sad tale of the unlucky 13’, Northern Echo, www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/ features/4473099, accessed 27 August 2009. It is generally accepted that the high casualty rate was caused by a combination of the initial explosion, an insufficient number of life-boats and the fact that no boat-drill had been carried out. See Gillman, Collar the Lot!, pp. 198-200; Stent, Bespattered Page?, p. 101; Hickey and Smith, Star of Shame, p. 233. The Gillmans refute claims that the presence of barbed wire on board was the reason why so many died. Collar the Lot!, p. 200. http://www.chrisgibson.org/arandora/index.htm. accessed 12 January 2004.

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Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star 74 75

76

77

78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88

89 90

Morrison, ‘Collar the Lot’, p. 21; Cesarani and Kushner, Internment of Aliens, p. 230. A. Battista, ‘Odyssey of a watchmaker: the story of the Arandora Star’, S:Ven Magazine, 10 (2006), www.se7enmagazine.org/issue/issue_10.htm, accessed 18 November 2006. See also J. Gilchrist, ‘A sea of tears’, Scotsman (25 June 2010), pp. 18-19. C. Sweeney, ‘Last survivor tells of Arandora Star U-boat tragedy’, The Times, 28 May 2008, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article4023618, accessed 29 May 2008. G. Braiden, ‘Remembering casualties of war’, Herald, 29 May 2008, www.theherald.co.uk/misc/print.php?artid=2303695. By the time official commemorative events took place in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Glasgow in July 2010, calls for an apology appeared increasingly isolated, possibly as a result of the increased memorialisation surrounding the disaster. See S. Dick, ‘Call to heal the open wound of Italians’ treatment’, Edinburgh Evening News (10 March 2010), p. 3; S. Dick, ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’, Edinburgh Evening News (11 March 2010), pp. 22-3. See also Gilchrist, ‘A sea of tears’, p. 19; K. Williams, ‘Arandora Star loved ones remembered at service’, South Wales Echo, www.walesonline.co.uk/news/ wales-news/2010/07/03, accessed 3 July 2010; ‘Services remember Arandora Star victims’, BBC News, www.news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/scotland/10477689.stm, accessed 3 July 2010. Italiani in Scozia, 7 (1985), p. 1. Italiani in Scozia, 27 (1990), p. 1. G. Ryall, ‘Innocents killed on sunken liner’, BBC News (16 May 2009), www.news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/wales/8024642.stm, accessed 3 July 2010. Giovacchini, ‘Soccer with the dead’, p. 68. Stanley, Mourning Becomes, p. 4. [Italics in original.] Ibid., pp. 29; 245. Maurice Halbwachs emphasises how memory is a social construct, shaped on the basis of the present. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 39-40. Rossi, Memories of 1940, p. 67. Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 313; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 112. G. Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: Volume 2 (London: Penguin, 1970), p. 394. In relation to those who were wholly or partially Jewish, see Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 183. Anzani is most frequently cited. See Gillman, Collar the Lot!, p. 155; Lafitte, Internment of Aliens, p. 128; Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 120; Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 110. M. Gillies, Waiting for Hitler. Voices from Britain on the Brink of Invasion (London: Hodder, 2007), p. 301. Ibid., pp. 138-49.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 91 Ballinger refers to the case of Norma Cossetto: a student raped by partisans before being thrown in the Foibe, History in Exile, p. 155. 92 NA, KV, 4/337, Summary of the Arandora Star Inquiry, p. 4. 93 Iacovetta and Perin, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. 94 Lafitte, Internment of Aliens, p. 128. 95 Colpi, ‘The impact of the Second World War’, p. 179. 96 This is found through cross-referencing National Archives files HO 144/ 21079, Note on the Organisation and Activities of the Italian Fascist Party, 16 April 1936, and Additional Notes, 28 June 1937, with the missing persons list in Colpi, Italian Factor, pp. 271-8. 97 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, pp. 90-1. 98 Italiani in Scozia, 5 (1984), p. 7. 99 Zorza, Arandora Star, p. 9. 100 NA, KV, 4/337, Draft of memorandum on aliens, p. 5. 101 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 58. 102 Helmut Schmitz, ‘The birth of the collective from the spirit of empathy: from the “historians’ dispute” to German suffering’, in Niven (ed.), Germans as Victims, p. 94. 103 A. M. Troger, ‘German women’s memories of World War II’, in M. R. Higonnet, J. Jenson, S. Michel and M. Collins Weitz (eds), Behind the Lines. Gender and the Two World Wars (London: Yale University Press, 1987), p. 299. 104 Niven, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. 105 Ibid., p. 16. 106 S. Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 55. 107 Ibid., pp. 87; 58. 108 Portelli, Battle of Valle Giulia, p. 150. 109 A. Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out. History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), p. 198. 110 S. Mendez, ‘He said it had been quiet. Then the torpedo hit us’, Merthyr Express, 3 July 2008, www.walesonline.co.uk, accessed 15 April 2009, Contini, Dear Olivia, p. 349. 111 NAS, AD, 57/23, Correspondence of Lord Advocate’s department concerning case of Antonio Mancini. 112 Hansard, vol. 365, cols. 235-9, 8 October 1940. 113 NA, T, 161/1081, letter from Lawton to James, 4 April 1942; Letter from Home Office to James, 29 October 1941. 114 NAS, AD, 57/23, Draft letter to William Allan by Millar Craig, 9 September 1940. 115 Ibid., Letter from Dowson to Millar Craig, 31 August 1940. 116 Ibid., Handwritten note from Millar Craig to Lord Advocate, 2 September 1940; letter from Millar Craig to Newsam, 30 September 1940. 117 Ibid., Letter from Brass, 11 September 1940. 118 NA, T, 161/1081, Note in file.

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Commemoration, memorial and the Arandora Star 119 Ibid., Home Office minute, 29 August 1940. 120 Ibid., Draft letter from Hopkins, 1 March 1941. 121 Wood, Vectors of Memory, p. 6. She also refers to the importance of political discourse, new histories, survivor testimonial trials, novels and films as ‘vectors’ of public memory. 122 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 129. 123 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 261. 124 NAS, HH, 57/989, Letter to Graham-Harrison from War Office, 24 March 1943. 125 NAS, HH, 55/58, Special Branch report, January 1944. 126 SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo; SA2002.058, Anna Fergusson. 127 SA1999.30, Fiorinta Gallo; SA1997.109, Romeo Ugolini. 128 Longmate, How We Lived Then, p. 480. 129 Doumanis, Myth and Memory, pp. 168-70. 130 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 93. 131 Ibid., p. 91. 132 Ibid., p. 92. 133 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 128. 134 R. Stuart, ‘An unexpected bonus’, Scottish Castles Association Newsletter, 4 (2000), p. 17, www.scottishcasdesassociation.com/Newsltr/no4/pagel7. htm, accessed 26 March 2005. 135 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 56. 136 Ibid., p. 91. 137 ‘Arandora Star’, Italiani in Scozia, 28 (1990), p. 1. 138 Fortier, Migrant Belongings, p. 93. 139 Colpi, Italian Factor, p. 129. 140 At the same cemetery, the Brookwood Memorial commemorates those who died during the war with no known grave. It includes the names of British Italians such as Anthony Crolla of the King’s Regiment (Liverpool), who died on 11 April 1940. Commonwealth War Graves Commission Debt of Honour Register, www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty= 2145710, accessed 27 May 2000. 141 The participation of Italian Scottish veterans in formalised British military commemoration was not a topic which was spontaneously introduced or referred to by interviewees. 142 Ashplant, Dawson and Roper, ‘The politics of war memory’, p. 51. 143 Sponza, Divided Loyalties, p. 23. 144 ‘Dennis Donnini 100 North East Heroes’, Sunday Sun (2006), www.icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/printable_version.cfm?objectid=18842085&siteid=50, accessed 15 September 2007; ‘The pocket-sized hero who never saw his medal’, Northern Echo (4 July 2005), www.theconsettandstanleyadvertiser .com/ the_north_east/history/wwtwo/60th/040705.html, accessed 28 March 2009; ‘The bravest of them all’, Sunderland Echo (23 June 2006), www. sunderlandecho.com/daily/The-bravest-of-them-all. 1585041 .jp, accessed 26 July 2009.

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Experiencing war as the 'enemy other' 145 P. Doherty, ‘Honour our hero family fight on’, Sunday Sun (29 July 2001), www.wiki-north-east.co.uk, accessed 28 March 2009. 146 ‘The sad story of a forgotten hero’, Ancoats website, www.ancoats.demon. co.ku/ donnini.html, accessed 10 February 2000. 147 ‘Donnini Doolally’, on Jez Lowe & The Bad Pennies Doolally CD, released Tantobie Records, 2004. 148 Journal of The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 24:2 (2000), 47. 149 J. Yarwood, ‘Our First VC’, Journal of National Union of General and Municipal Workers, (May 1945), p. 131. 150 K. Amis, My Enemy’s Enemy (London: Victor Gollancz, 1962), pp. 15; 24. 151 First performed 1989. See A. M. di Mambro, Tally’s Blood. A Playscript for Higher Drama and English (Glasgow: Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2002). 152 S. Waters, The Nightwatch (London: Virago, 2006), p. 468. 153 First broadcast 10 November 2002. 154 Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 166. 155 Portelli, Battle of Valle Giulia, p. 142.

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Appendix Respondents’ biographies

In order to protect the anonymity of some respondents, some biographical details have been omitted. 1.

ROLANDO UGOLINI b. 1924 Lucca. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime. Relocated. Interviewed: 21 March 1996.

2.

GLORIA BEE b. 1940 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Father in Pioneer Corps; Mother in Edinburgh. Wartime: Edinburgh. Interviewed: 7 May 1997.

3.

ANITA BONI b. 1937 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star,; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 21 June 1997.

4.

LAWRENCE BONI b. 1932 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace: Italy. Mother’s birthplace: England. Parents’ war. Father naturalised. Parents remained in Edinburgh. Wartime: Edinburgh. Interviewed: 21 June 1997.

5.

MARIA SMITH b. 1931 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace: England. Mother’s birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Father served in Royal Artillery; Mother in Edinburgh. Wartime: Edinburgh. Interviewed: 2 July 1997.

6.

REMO CATIGNANI b. 1927 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 16 August 1997.

7.

CAMELIA GATTI [pseud.] b. 1925 Kirkcaldy. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 16 August 1997.

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Respondents' biographies 8. RONNIE BONI b. 1923 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace. Italy. Mother’s birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Father interned; Stepmother relocated. Wartime: Pioneer Corps. Interviewed: 16 August 1997. 9. DORA HARRIS b. [restricted] Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father died 1929; Mother relocated. Wartime. Worked in McVities. Interviewed: 21 October 1997. 10. ROMEO UGOLINI b. 1923 Armadale. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime. Pioneer Corps. Interviewed: 25 November 1997. 11. RACHELE SPINOSI [pseud.] b. 1927 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace: Italy. Mother’s birthplace. Scotland. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star, Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. 12. RINA VALENTE b. 1929 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace. Italy. Mother’s birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star, Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 26 January 1998; 13 November 1998. 13. LOLA CORRIERI b. 1928 Kelty. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father naturalised; Parents remained in Kelty. Wartime. Kelty. Interviewed: 1 February 1998; 1 March 1998. 14. ARLO VALENTE* b. 1914 Coatbridge. Father’s birthplace: Italy. Mother’s birthplace. England. Parents’ war. Father died 1918; Stepfather interned. Mother remained in Coatbridge. Wartime, served in Royal Army Medical Corps, North Africa and Italy. Interviewed: 4 May 1998. 15. JOHN COSTA b. 1930 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 7 July 1998. 16. ORESTE POLITI b. 1930 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 24 July 1998. 17. MARNA POLITI b. 1929 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy Parents’ war. Father interned. Mother relocated. Wartime: Italy. Interviewed: 24 July 1998. 18. JOSEPH PIA b. 1910 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father died 1919; Mother died 1940. Wartime: Interned. Interviewed: 1 August 1998. 19. RENZO SERAFINI b. 1915 Hawick. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother remained in Inverness. Wartime. Interned. Interviewed: 7 August 1998.

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Respondents' biographies 20. GERALDO COZZI b. 1906 London. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Absentee father; Mother relocated. Wartime: served in Royal Army Service Corps, Germany. Interviewed: 21 August 1998. 21. ISABELLA DI LENA [pseud.] b. 1917 Picinisco. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star, Mother relocated. Wartime: Ran restaurant. Interviewed: 3 November 1998. 22. ROSALINA MASTERSON [pseud.] b. 1919 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Ran family business. Interviewed: 19 February 1999. 23. ELIZABETH DI PONIO b. 1918 Whitburn. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father died 1940; Mother relocated. Wartime: Looked after her children in Edinburgh. Interviewed: 6 April 1999. 24. ANTONIETTA PACI [pseud.] b. 1923 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Land Army. Interviewed: 9 April 1999. 25. ALEX MARGIOTTA b. 1921 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Relocated. Wartime: served in Royal Scots Fusiliers, Holland and Germany. Interviewed: 3 May 1999. 26. FIORINTA GALLO b. 1927 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star, Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 4 May 1999; 28 June 1999. 27. ANDREA TOLLO [pseud.] b. 1936 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime. Relocated. Interviewed: 11 May 1999. 28. BENNEDETTA MATRUNDOLA b. 1934 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime. Relocated. Interviewed: 22 June 1999. 29. DOMENICO NATALE [pseud.] b. 1920 Scotland. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father naturalised so parents remained in home. Wartime: served in Royal Artillery, North Africa and Italy. Interviewed: 19 August 1999. 30. TINA NATALE [pseud.] b. 1919 Ayr. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father drowned on Arandora Star. Mother remained in Ayr. Wartime: Worked in family business. Interviewed: 19 August 1999. 31. ORAZIO CAIRA b. 1911 Italy. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father died 1911. Mother in Italy. Wartime: Interned. Interviewed: 2 October 1999.

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Respondents' biographies 32. ANGELO VALENTE b. 1921 Auchtermuchty. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father naturalised. Parents remained in Auchtermuchty. Wartime: Served in Royal Artillery, France, Belgium and Germany. Interviewed: 11 February 2000. 33. MARCO VALENTE b. 1918 Miranda. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father naturalised. Parents remained in Auchtermuchty. Wartime: Served in Royal Artillery, England and Northern Ireland. Interviewed: 11 February 2000. 34. CARMEN DEMARCO b. 1930 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace. Italy. Mother’s birthplace. Scotland. Parents’ war. Father interned; Stepmother relocated. Wartime. Relocated. Interviewed: 13 February 2000. 35. MARIA ANGELOSANTO b. 1921 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime. Ran family business; war work in factory. Interviewed: 7 March 2000. 36. IRENE POLITI b. 1939 Edinburgh. Father’s birthplace. Scotland. Mother’s birthplace: England. Parents’ war: Father in Pioneer Corps. Wartime: Loanhead. Interviewed: 28 March 2000. 37. ANNA FERGUSSON [pseud.] b. 1925 Alloa. Father’s birthplace: Italy. Mother’s birthplace. Scotland. Parents’ war. Remained in Alloa. Wartime. Worked in shipyards. Interviewed: 1 October 2000. 38. NORMA VENTISEI b. 1921 Glasgow. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother in Italy. Wartime. Served in ATS. Interviewed: 22 October 2000. 39. MARY AMBROSE b. 1929 North Berwick. Parents’ birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Remained in Edinburgh. Wartime: Evacuated. Interviewed: 9 June 2001. 40. PATRICIA AMBROSE b. 1933 Edinburgh. Parents’ birthplace: Scotland. Parents’ war. Remained in Edinburgh. Wartime. Evacuated. Interviewed: 9 June 2001. 41. PETER TOGNERI b. 1924 Stirling. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father interned; Mother relocated. Wartime: Served in Seaforth Highlanders, Far East. Interviewed: 7 July 2001. 42. DINA TOGNERI b. 1928 Irvine. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father died 1939; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 7 July 2001. 43. DIANA CORRIERI b. 1927 Uphall. Parents’ birthplace. Italy. Parents’ war. Father drowned returning from internment in Australia; Mother relocated. Wartime: Relocated. Interviewed: 21 August 2001.

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Respondents' biographies 44. FRANK CORRIERI b. 1925 Kelty. Parents’ birthplace: Italy. Parents’ war. Father naturalised. Parents remained in Kelty. Wartime: Bevin Boy. Interviewed: 21 August 2001. *This name has been altered from Angelo Valente to avoid confusion with another respondent with the same name.

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Select bibliography

Primary sources Edinburgh City Archives (ECA) D136. Anti Italian Demonstrations 1940. Imperial War Museum (IWM) 12229, Captain Belriso Porchetta, Diary. 15738, Carmin Sidonio, recorded interview. 88/35/1 Corrado Ruffoni, letters. 4660, Reginald Bottini, interview transcript. British Library Sound Archive C466/242/02-4, Richard Demarco, interviewed by Jenny Simmons, 20062007, National Life Stories. National Archives (NA) HO, 45/25759, WAR: Defence Regulation 18B Detainees: CAMILLO: Gilda. HO, 45/25761, WAR: Defence Regulation 18B Detainees: OGNI: Lorenzo. HO, 45/25760, WAR: Defence Regulation 18B Detainees: VANUCCI: Nicodemo. HO, 45/25088, WAR: Defence Regulation 18B detainee (released): BOTTACHI: Orazio. HO, 144/21079, Disturbances: Italian fascist propaganda: organisation and activities in the United Kingdom. HO, 213/375, Declarations of alienage. HO, 213/1662, Alienage: invalid renunciation of Italian nationality before outbreak of war. HO 213/1750, Aliens (Protected Areas) Orders 1940-1941: designation. HO, 215/367, Wives of Italian internees: voluntary internment.

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Select bibliography HO, 396/213-15, Italian internees released in UK. Women. HO, 396/284-294, Italians interned in UK 1939. KV, 4/290, Measures to counter activities of German Nazi and Italian Fascist groups in the UK, 1936-37. KV, 4/291, Measures to counter activities of German Nazi and Italian Fascist groups in the UK, 1937-38; KV, 4/292, Measures to counter activities of German Nazi and Italian Fascist groups in the UK, 1938-40. KV, 4/337, Policy on transfer of internees to camps in Canada. LAB, 29/179, ML Codified Circular 120: registration of men under the National Service Acts. T, 161/1081, Compensation. Prisoners: Home Office: Antonio Mancini and Gaetano Antonio Pacitto. WO, 253/9, Reports to Directorate of Labour on activities of Pioneer Corps: home commands. WO, 32/4545, Enlistments and extension of service: British army: enlistment of foreigners. National Archives Scotland (NAS) AD, 57/22, Correspondence of Lord Advocate’s Department concerning liability of Italians to pay rent for houses etc in protected areas. AD, 57/23, Correspondence of Lord Advocate’s Department concerning case of Antonio Mancini. HH, 55/5. ‘Riots’: Representations and general papers concerning the operation of the Riotous Assemblies Act (S), 1822, particularly compensation claims arising from Anti-Italian disturbances 1940-1943. HH, 55/57. Police War Duties. Special Branch Reports. HH, 55/58. Police War Duties, Special Branch Reports. Books and articles Ashplant, T. G., G. Dawson and M. Roper (eds), The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (London: Routledge, 2000). Baldoli, G, Exporting Fascism. Italian Fascists and Britain’s Italians in the 1930s (Oxford: Berg, 2003). Ballinger, P., History in Exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Barth, F. (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference (London: George Allen 8c Unwin, 1969). Belmonte, P., Italian Americans in World War II (Chicago: Arcadia, 2001). Berger Gluck, S. and D. Patai (eds), Women’s Words. The Feminist Practice of Oral History (London: Routledge, 1991). Bosworth, R., Mussolini’s Italy. Life under the Dictatorship 1915-1945 (London: Penguin, 2005).

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Select bibliography Bosworth, R. and R. Ugolini (eds), War, Internment and Mass Migration: The Italo- Australian Experience 1940-1990 (Rome: Gruppo Editoriale Intemazionale, 1992). Bosworth, R. J. B. and P. Dogliani (eds), Italian Fascism. History, Memory and Representation (London: Macmillan, 1999). Burrell, K. and P. Panayi (eds), Histories and Memories. Migrants and their History in Britain (London: Tauris, 2006). Calder, A., The Myth of the Blitz (London: Pimlico, 1991). Cesarani, D. and M. Fulbrook (eds), Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe (London: Routledge, 1996). Cesarani, D. and T. Kushner (eds), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1993). Colley, L., ‘Britishness and Otherness: an argument’, Journal of British Studies 31 (1992), pp. 309-29. Colpi, T., The Italian Factor (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1991). Crang, J. A., The British Army and the People’s War 1939-45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Cresciani, G., Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia 1922-1945 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980). Dawson, G., Soldier Heroes, British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994). De Caprariis, L., ‘Fascism for export: the rise and eclipse of the fasci italiani all’estero’, Journal of Contemporary History 25:2 (2000), pp. 151-83. De Grazia, V., The Culture of Consent. Mass Organisation of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Damousi, J., Living With the Aftermath. Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-war Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Dash Moore, D., GI Jews. How World War II Changed a Generation (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2006). Devine, T. M. (ed.), Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modem Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2000). Diggins, J. P., Mussolini and Fascism. The View from America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). Doumanis, N., Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean. Remembering Fascism’s Empire (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997). Dove, R. (ed.), Totally Un-English? Britain’s Internment of ‘Enemy Aliens’ in Two World Wars (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). Evans, M. and K. Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg, 1997). Farmer, S., Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur- Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). Fortier, A., Migrant Belongings: Memory, Space, Identity (Oxford: Berg, 2000). Fox, S., Uncivil Liberties. Italian Americans Under Siege during World War II (Boca Raton: Universal, 2000).

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Select bibliography Fussell, P., Wartime. Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Gabaccia, D. R., Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 2000). Gallagher, T., Edinburgh Divided. John Cormack and No Popery in the 1930s (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1987). Garner, S., Whiteness. An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2007). Geppert, D. (ed.), The Postwar Challenge: Cultural, Social and Political Change in Western Europe, 1945-1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Gillman, P. and L., ‘Collar the Lot!’ How Britain Interned and Expelled its Wartime Refugees (London: Quartet Books, 1980). Guida Generate degli Italiani in Gran Bretagna (London: E. Ercoli, 3"1 edn, 1939). Gullace, N., ‘Friends, aliens, and enemies: Active communities and the Lusitania riots of 1915’, Journal of Social History 39: 2 (2005), pp. 345-67. Halbwachs, M., On Collective Memory, trans. L. A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Holmes, C., John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society 1871-1971 (London: Macmillan, 1988). Hunt, L., M. Marshall and C. Rowlings (eds), Past Trauma in Late Life. European Perspectives on Therapeutic Work with Older People (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1997). Iacovetta, F., R. Perin and A. Principe (eds), Enemies Within. Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). Jenkins, R., Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Explorations (London: Sage, 1997). Kay, B. (ed.), The Complete Odyssey. Voices from Scotland’s Recent Past (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996). Knox, M., Common Destiny. Dictatorship, Foreign Policy, and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Kushner, T., The Persistence of Prejudice: Anti-Semitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989). Kushner, T., We Europeans? Mass-Observation, ‘Race’ and British Identity in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Lacy Rogers, K, S. Leydesdorff and G. Dawson (eds), Trauma and Life Stories. International Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1999). Lafitte, F., The Internment of Aliens (London: Libris, 2n