Aventine Secession (20th century)

The Aventine Secession was the withdrawal of the parliament opposition, mainly comprising the Italian Socialist Party, Italian Liberal Party, Italian People's Party and Communist Party of Italy, from the Chamber of Deputies in 1924–25, following the murder of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti by fascists on 10 June 1924.
The secession was named after the Aventine Secession in ancient Rome. This act of protest heralded the assumption of total power by Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party and the establishment of a one-party dictatorship in Italy. It was unsuccessful in opposing the National Fascist Party, and after two years the Chamber of Deputies ruled that the 123 Aventine deputies had forfeited their positions. In the following years, many of the "Aventinian" deputies were forced into exile or imprisoned.
In 1923, the Acerbo Law replaced proportional representation. It meant that the largest party, providing it had at least 25% of the vote, gained 2/3 of the parliamentary seats. Following the elections in April 1924, Mussolini obtained 64.9% of the vote, giving him a clear majority under either system.
After his outspoken accusation of the Fascist Party's underhand methods of political corruption and voter intimidation, the Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti was abducted and murdered by Amerigo Dumini and various other thugs whose names were linked to the Fascist Party. There is considerable dispute among historians as to the level (if any) of Mussolini's knowledge and involvement.
The resulting uproar after the Matteotti murder left Mussolini vulnerable, having been forced to dismiss numerous members of his entourage, including General De Bono, Chief of Police and Head of the MVSN. In late July 1924, the Socialists, Christian democrats and some Liberals began a boycott of Parliament, with the aim of forcing the King to dismiss Mussolini.
On 26 June 1924 around 130 of the Italian opposition deputies (including members of the Italian People's Party, Unitary Socialist Party, Italian Socialist Party, Communist Party of Italy, Social Democratic Party, Italian Republican Party, Democratic Liberal Party, and Sardinian Action Party) met in the Sala della Lupa (transl. Room of the She-wolf) of the Palazzo Montecitorio. There, they decided to abandon their parliamentary work since the government had not clarified its position on the disappearance of Giacomo Matteotti.
Giovanni Amendola of the Democratic Liberal Party published the reasoning behind the secession in Il Mondo:
The non-violent opposition to the government was also promoted by socialist deputy Filippo Turati. On 27 June 1924, he commemorated Matteotti at the Palazzo Montecitorio in front of the other secessionists.
Other than Mussolini's National Fascist Party, the parties that did not participate in the secession included the Italian Liberal Party, the Peasants' Party of Italy, and the Lists of Slavs and Germans.
The "Aventinians" were mostly against a popular insurrection to depose Mussolini's government. At the same time, the protesting deputies did not coordinate with the other opponents of fascism that did not join the secession and remained in the Italian parliament. The secessionists believed that, before the fascists' link to Matteotti's kidnapping and presumed death became clear, the Italian king would dismiss Mussolini and dissolve the Chamber to call for new elections. None of that happened.
Officer Dumini was arrested on 12 July 1924, at the Roma Termini railway station, as he was preparing to leave for the north of Italy and was brought to the Regina Coeli prison. On 16 August the body of the Matteotti was found in the forest of Quartarella, which agitated the already tense political crisis.
Between August and October 1924, some Aventinian leaders, including Giovanni Amendola, seemed to share the militant insurrectional line proposed by antifascist group Italia Libera. Italia libera secretly brought to Rome an armed group of several thousand men dubbed the "Amici del Popolo" (transl. Friends of the People). In an executive report by the Communist International, Palmiro Togliatti estimated there were 7,000 men in this Roman group, and he believed that around 4,000 could be controlled by Communist infiltrators.
On 12 September 1924 the militant communist Giovanni Corvi killed the fascist deputy Armando Casalini to avenge the murder of Matteotti, which increased the rigidity of the Fascist position. On 20 October the communist leader Antonio Gramsci proposed that the Aventinian opposition should form an "anti-parliament" to signal the great distance between the secessionists and a Parliament composed only of fascists. The proposal was not executed, however.
In the last months of 1924, Amendola decided to abandon the previous insurrectionary position as too unrealistic. He returned to his initial choice to rely on the support of the king to undermine Mussolini. Through the grand master of the Grand Orient of Italy, Domizio Torrigiani [it], Amendola came into possession of two letters that accused Mussolini as ordering the killing of Matteotti. The first was from Filippo Filippelli [it], who provided the kidnappers their Lancia Lambda escape vehicle they used to carry away and kill Matteotti. Filipelli accused policeman Amerigo Dumini, politician Cesare Rossi, general Emilio De Bono, and Benito Mussolini himself for being involved in the killing. He claimed the kidnapping had been organized by the internal political police of the National Fascist Party, the Ceka, which was directed by Rossi. The second letter was written by Rossi himself.
After a meeting together, Torrigiani and Ivanoe Bonomi (both Masons) decided that Bonomi, who had free access to the Quirinal Palace, should bring the letters to be seen by Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and convince him to dismiss Mussolini and form a transitional military government. The meeting went ahead at the beginning of November 1924, but had no result. The king, in fact, realizing the terrible accusations contained in the letters, handed them back to Bonomi.
On 8 November, on Amendola's suggestion, a group of the Aventinians created a new, antifascist political party to represent the principles of liberty and democracy—the Unione Nazionale [it]. The party comprised 11 deputies, 16 ex-deputies, and 11 senators.
Fearing that Vittorio Emanuele III would consider his dismissal, Mussolini pronounced his January 3rd, 1925, speech [it]. Through it, he assumed further political, moral, and historical responsibilities. Recalling Article 47 of the statues of the Chamber that foresaw the possibility of a king's minister being accused by deputies, Mussolini formally asked Parliament to make an indictment against him. However, this could not happen without the Aventinian deputies re-entering the Chamber and at least some votes from the majority of fascists deputies. Still, there was heated discussion of the proposal among the National Fascist Party members.
Without the socialists, the vote of no 'confidence' in Mussolini was a failure. The Aventinian opposition failed to react, both due to the immediate repressions ordered by Mussolini and for its internal divisions. It preferred to pursue changing the public opinion on fascism, rather than re-entering Parliament and fighting as a minority party.
King Victor Emmanuel III was disinclined to invoke further violence from the Fascist squads, and thus allowed Mussolini to keep his position as Prime Minister. The Secession actually aided Mussolini in his consolidation of power by eliminating all meaningful parliamentary opposition and depriving the King of any excuse to dismiss him. With the opposition thus reduced to inaction, Mussolini set about building his fascist state.
In January 1925, Mussolini declared a de facto dictatorship and started a series of repressive measures designed to destroy opposition. The groups of Italia libera were suppressed between 3 and 6 January that year. Acting as a high court, the Italian Senate gave a ruling on Emilio De Bono, solicited by Luigi Albertini and other Catholics. The ruling was archived after six months after Filippelli retracted his testimony from 24 March. Cesare Rossi was acquitted and released from prison in December 1925. On 20 July Giovanni Amendola was attacked by fascist squads in The Tuscan town of Pieve a Nievole. He never recovered from the attack and died in Cannes in April 1926.
On 16 January 1926 some of the populist and democratic-socialist Members of Parliament entered the Palazzo Montecitorio to assist with the mourning ceremonies for Margherita of Savoy. Shortly after, fascist parliamentarians violently expelled them from the hall. The day after, Mussolini accused the parliamentarians who had been expelled, accusing them of indecency against the queen.
Between 16 and 24 March the trial against Dumini and other people implicated in Matteotti's death was held. The judgment closed with three absolutions and three condemnations for pre-meditated homicide (among them Dumini), with sentences of 5 years, 11 months, and 20 days.
In the following days, after the attempted assassination of Mussolini on 31 October, the constitution was suspended and the laws of exceptional, the leggi fascistissime [it], were approved. With the king's decree of 5 November, a Testo unico delle leggi di pubblica sicurezza [it], the government approved the reintroduction of the death penalty, as well as the suppression of all antifascist newspapers and periodicals, the institution of police confinement of suspects without evidence, and the creation of a special administrative body, the Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello Stato With the regal decree of 6 November, all Italian political parties, except for the National Fascist Party, were suppressed to quash any public dissent and create the conditions for a dictatorship.
On 9 November 1926, the Chamber reopened to ratify the exceptional laws and also to deliberate on the secession of the 123 Aventinian parliamentarians, as well as the dissident journalist Massimo Rocca [it].
In the first motion, presented by Roberto Farinacci, debated the Aventinians and their parliamentary secession, excluding the communists who had returned to the hall. Augusto Turati then amended the motion to include the communists as well. Due to the previous regal orders, the only opposition members present were the 6 members belonging to the Giolittiana faction: already, the night before, Antonio Gramsci had been arrested, in violation of the parliamentary immunity still in force. Through the motions, it was declared that the Aventinian secessionists had forfeited their seats in the Chamber.
Socialist Filippo Turati successfully fled to Corsica in December 1926 on a motorboat led by Italian antifascist Italo Oxilia, with the help of Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Sandro Pertini. In 1932, he died in exile in Paris. After Gramsci's arrest, he spent 8 years in a Turin prison.
Among the other Aventinian deputies forced into exile were Bruno Buozzi [it], Arturo Labriolo, Claudio Treves, Guido Picelli, Ruggero Grieco, Emilio Lussu, Cipriano Facchinetti, Eugenio Chiesa, and Mario Bergmano [it]. The socialist Giuseppe Romita, the communist Luigi Repossi [it], and the republican Cino Macrelli [it] each spent years in jail. Whoever was not imprisoned had to abandon their political life until the fall of fascism.
After the fascist regime fell, the Constituent Assembly of Italy of the new Italian Republic created the Constitution of Italy on 1 January 1948. One article specified the criteria for the "Senators by right" of the first legislature. Other than those elected in the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy, the article added those who were "declared forfeited in the session of the Chamber of 9 November 1926." As a result, 106 senators were nominated, in addition to the 237 selected in the 1948 Italian general election.