865.00/3–1748: Telegram

The Ambassador in Italy ( Dunn ) to the Secretary of State

secret
urgent

1176. It would appear that the conversations that Morgan Phillips1 and Denis Healey2 had March 12 and 13 in Rome with members of several strains of Italian Socialists were very animated, what the British Socialists had to say to the representatives of Nenni Socialists was blunt and uncompromising.

[Page 855]

Phillips and Healey cleared the boards with Guy Mollet3 in Paris before coming to Rome. They were able to finish their two all-day meetings Friday and Saturday before press learned of their presence. The ostensible purpose of their visit was to invite the Italian Socialists to the forthcoming Socialist international conference at London.

The general line which Phillips and Healey took was that there are only two ways of reconstructing Europe; one is the democratic Socialist way and the other, the Communist. There is no middle ground. US aid is indispensable and to be welcomed for the democratic reconstruction of Europe.

1.
At the Friday meeting with the PSLI group the English were exceedingly friendly and undertook to do everything to have the Italians seated at London (according to British contact, borne out by Lombardo, the British gestures might have been much more effective, as might their statements to the Nenni Socialists the next day, if made last January at the time of PSI Congress). In connection with the question of how to address the invitation Healey and Phillips suggested, according to British source, formation of an executive committee of Socialist unity, inasmuch as an invitation to PSLI would exclude Lombardo group. (This is contrary to Lombardo allegation who reported that British came to Rome to invite his new Socialist movement to London meetings, but that since this would have excluded PSLI Lombardo prevailed on the British to extend the invitation to the Socialist unity list which includes both his and Saragat’s groups). See in this regard London’s 55, March 13.4 The British feel that this executive committee can form the nucleus of a new Socialist party with which the British will cooperate after the elections. (It seems that the British prematurely assumed that the invitation was accepted and the Italians had to return the following day, in embarrassment, to say that their going to London was subject to concurrence by Saragat who was still unhappy about British Socialist coolness particularly at Brussels last fall, toward PSLI). However, morning press March 17 reports Lombardo as secretary of Union of Socialists movement, Simonini5 as secretary of PSLI and Treves6 PLSI will make the trip to London. In any case it seems that the British assured the Italians in behalf of both the British Socialist Party and French Socialist Party of their support of a new-born independent Italian Socialist Party.
2.
With Vecchietti,7 Basso8 and Morandi9 (PSI), the British were, we are told, brutally frank. They rejected the Italian argument that the Socialists were allied with the Communists not against US aid, as such, but against De Gasperi. They scoffed at the Italian assertion that Italian Socialists alone among the Socialist parties of Europe would not be crushed and extinguished in the Communist embrace. They said that the Nenni pretence of “neutrality” is untenable; it has been amply proved by Moscow itself.

They purportedly said that the fraternal relations between the Italian (Nenni) Socialist Party and the British Socialist Party, which the Italians said they “rely” upon, could not continue so long as the Italian Socialists on every issue relating to the welfare of Italy and Europe continued to take a position contrary to that of the British and French Socialist parties. “How”, reportedly asked the British, “can you justify telegram of congratulations to Prague when we and French sent condolences?”

The Italians kept saying that their present alliance in the democratic front is a tactic to rebuild Italian socialist strength which had been suffering from lack of touch with the masses. In reply to the British question what would the PSI do with respect to an endeavor to form a non-Communist government after April 18, the Italians are reported to have stated categorically that they were “completely free to enter the government without the Communist Party”. The Italians were unable to satisfy the British on the question how PSI could justify working in combination with the Communists against aid to the Italian people, and pretend to participation in a government which would presumably be committed to rebuilding Italy with American aid and within framework of European cooperation.

However violent these exchanges may have been the Italians accepted in behalf of PSI the invitation to attend the Marshall Plan meetings in London on the twentieth, and the party issued a cordial press release in this regard Saturday night. However, it seems that the PSI representatives who will probably go to London are lower level people without much say in the party’s councils. (A member of the British Embassy explained to us that the only reason Nenni himself, so far as the British were concerned, had not participated in the conversations was his absence from Rome.)10

Dunn
  1. General Secretary of the British Labour Party.
  2. Secretary of the International Department of the Labour Party.
  3. Secretary General of the French Socialist Party.
  4. Not printed.
  5. Alberto Simonini, deputy in the Constituent Assembly; member of the PSLI.
  6. Paolo Treves, deputy in the Constituent Assembly; member of the PSLI; had served with Saragat on the mission to Paris 1945–46.
  7. Tullio Vecchietti, head of the international office of the PSI.
  8. Lelio Basso, member of the directorate and Secretary of the PSI.
  9. Rodolfo Morandi, member of the directorate of the PSI; he had served as Minister of Industry and Commerce in the second and third cabinets of De Gasperi.
  10. A condensed version of this telegram was forwarded to Kennan in Tokyo, March 19, not printed (865.00/3–1948).