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Although Italians had migrated to Australia since the middle of the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1920s that they became aware that they were a community in a foreign land, not just isolated individuals in search of fortune. Their political, cultural, economic and recreational associations became an important factor. Many of them, although settled in Australia, still thought of themselves as an appendage of Italy, a belief strengthened by Fascism’s nationalist propaganda which urged them to reject alien cultures, customs and traditions. The xenophobic hostility shown by some Australians greatly contributed to the success of these propaganda efforts. Moreover, the issue of Fascism in Italy was a contentious one among Italians in Australia, a large minority fighting with courage and determination against Fascism’s representatives in Australia. This broad study of Italian immigrants before and during World War II covers not only the effects of Fascism, but also records the ordeal of Italian settlers in the cities and the outback during the Depression and the difficulties they faced after the outbreak of the war. It deals with a subject that has long been neglected by scholars and is an important contribution to the history of Italian migrants in Australia. Although Italians had migrated to Australia since the middle of the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1920s that they became aware that they were a community in a foreign land, not just isolated individuals in search of fortune. Their political, cultural, economic and recreational associations became an important factor. Many of them, although settled in Australia, still thought of themselves as an appendage of Italy, a belief strengthened by Fascism’s nationalist propaganda which urged them to reject alien cultures, customs and traditions. The xenophobic hostility shown by some Australians greatly contributed to the success of these propaganda efforts. Moreover, the issue of Fascism in Italy was a contentious one among Italians in Australia, a large minority fighting with courage and determination against Fascism’s representatives in Australia. This broad study of Italian immigrants before and during World War II covers not only the effects of Fascism, but also records the ordeal of Italian settlers in the cities and the outback during the Depression and the difficulties they faced after the outbreak of the war. It deals with a subject that has long been neglected by scholars and is an important contribution to the history of Italian migrants in Australia. This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia 1922-1945 Gianfranco Cresciani Australian National University Press Canberra, ACT, London, England and Trumbull, Conn. USA 1980 First published in Australia 1980 Printed in Australia for the Australian National University Press, Canberra ©Gianfranco Cresciani 1980 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Cresciani, Gianfranco. Fascism, anti-fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945 Index Bibliography ISBN 0 7081 1158 0 1. Fascism — Australia. I. Title. 320.533’0994 Library of Congress No. 78-73567 United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, and Africa: Eurospan Ltd, 3 Henrietta St, London WC2E 8LU, England North America: Books Australia, Trumbull, Conn., USA Southeast Asia: Angus & Robertson (S.E. Asia) Pty Ltd, Singapore Japan: United Publishers Services Ltd, Tokyo To my parents Foreword Historians in Australia are divided into two castes. There are the historians of Australia, and the historians of ‘other places’, of America, Asia, Africa or Europe. In the common rooms of academe one caste scorns the other. According to one faction, devotion to the study of the world outside Australia is really only a cultural cringe, self-indulgent, irrelevant and somehow unpatriotic, disloyal to Australia’s values and needs. The other faction instead derides the primitiveness of Australian historiography, always ten years behind the times, at best ‘a subject which can be got up in a week’, with its bizarre or quaint interest in convicts and governors, or in the dionysian frenzy of third-rate bush balladeers. No doubt a society gets the historians which it deserves. A debate, or rather a division, on whether Australia’s interests and characteristics are local, parochial, born in the bush and nurtured in the tyranny of distance, or international, part of the history of colonialism and capitalism, is central to much Australian intellectual and political life. As a trained historian of modern Europe, I have made my own decisions, and polished my own prejudices. I believe that Australia scarcely exists, and that I scarcely exist as an Australian. As a resident of Sydney, a European city, inconveniently placed in the Pacific, but conveniently part of the international air routes, and sometimes reached by the international news services, I look outwards, away from the bush of flies and snakes and inconvenience, of a cruel dead landscape, sterile, forbidding and unmastered. In the last decade, I have been to Rome more vii viii F oreword often than I have been to Canberra, let alone to Melbourne. I seem yet another alienated Australian academic, Australian- born and therefore unable to slough off a skin made up of potato scallops, Alan McGilvray and The Potts, but staying in Australia only because the pay is good and . there always (?) are sabbaticals. Yet, in so many ways, Australia ought to have changed since 1945, and perhaps it has changed, and perhaps I exaggerate my alienation. Always an immigrant country, Australia has stopped being only the venue for Anglo-Saxon or Celtic kith and kin, and has been enriched by Italians, Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Vietnamese and many others. What a joy that in Sydney I can eat as well or better as in many a European city. And is it not time that our historians began to recognise that ‘Australian history’ now means not just the derring-do of Governor Bligh or Colonial Secretary Stephen, but also the political and social history of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Vietnam and the rest? Migration weaves a complex web, not surprising given that even Robert Bruce’s spider would tire at the labour, the travail of the migrant, and Australians are only beginning to study it. Sometimes in such study, there is absurd, if predictable bias. Some ‘Italo-Australians’ discover only in Australia that they are or were Italians; when in Italy they were Calabrians or paesani. Political views or even knowledge of the country of origin freezes at the moment of departure, and those in the political leadership of migrant communities go on fighting out the disputes of 1948 or 1943 or 1922 like flies warring in amber. Not only Australian historians have been forgetful of the migrant experience. Italy, that great emigrant country, has still not produced a serious historical investigation of emigration, and in fact the best study of Italian emigration in any language remains R. F. Foerster’s, The Italian Emigration of our Times, written by an American in 1919. For all these reasons, Cresciani’s study, despite the limitations of a monograph, must be welcomed by both castes in the common-rooms. Cresciani himself is a migrant, although one not dominated by the passions and ambitions of Italo- Australian politics. As a Triestine too, he carries the traditions of Central Europe, the Habsburg Empire as well as those of F oreword ix Italy, and can comprehend the fatuity of narrow nationalism. What the book says must stand for itself, but in introducing it to its readers, I must acknowledge Cresciani’s achievement. Cresciani reached Australia already an adult. In completing this work he has had to master English, and survive the lottery of under-graduate and post-graduate work as the head of a household, employed in an Italo-Australian business concern, and without the luxury of a Ph.D. scholarship or a university post. Yet no-one could have been more indefatigible in tracking down lost evidence, more enthusiastic and judicious in using the new techniques of oral history. Best of all for the author of this preface, a lecturer in Italian history at the University of Sydney has been granted an able and efficient student, and is granted a loyal, stimulating and independent friend. R. J. B. Bosworth Abbreviations AA Australian Archives ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato APC Italian Communist Party Archives CPA Communist Party of Australia DDI Documenti Diplomatici Italiani JAMP Jesuit Archives, Modotti Papers USNAID United States National Archives, Italian Documents x Preface During the years between the two World Wars, Italian migrants in Australia, for the first time in their history in this country, organised themselves in political associations and carried out political activities. Undoubtedly, one of the main motives which prompted them to become involved in politics was the Fascist Party’s coming to power in Italy. Their attitudes of support or opposition to the new Italian regime were dictated by the same political as well as social, economic and emotional reasons which divided Italians at home and in other countries. This study aims at illustrating the attitudes of the migrants towards the Fascist phenomenon and at demonstrating that, contrary to the claims of the Fascist authorities of those years and of some Italians still living in Australia, Fascism was a dividing force which split the Italian community.

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