Fascism

• He is on a secret mission to meet representatives of Britain’s ruling Labour party – including, he hopes, the recently elected prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald.
• The 38-year-old Matteotti, a tireless defender of workers’ rights, still hopes Mussolini can be stopped.
• For Matteotti, this new British government – the first to be led by Labour, although not as a majority – is a beacon of hope.

Four days in London

• Britain’s new prime minister was a working-class Scot who had made his way up via humble jobs and political activism.
• In contrast, Matteotti hailed from a wealthy family that owned 385 acres in the Polesine region of north-eastern Italy.

• The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
• But something else may have troubled Mussolini about Matteotti’s visit to London – part of a European tour that also included stops in Brussels and Paris.

Death of a socialist

• He had reportedly been working on this speech day and night, studying data and checking numbers for many hours.
• This secret group, known as Ceka after the Soviet political police created to repress dissent, had been following Matteotti for weeks.
• The squad’s leader, US-born Amerigo Dumini, reputedly boasted of having previously killed several socialist activists.
• Socialist MPs, alerted by Matteotti’s wife, denounced the MP’s disappearance – but were not altogether surprised by it.
• For a few days, it appeared that the resulting public outrage – much of it aimed at Mussolini himself – might even bring down Italy’s government, spelling the death knell for fascism.

Why was Matteotti murdered?

• His death can be seen as one of the most consequential political assassinations of the 20th century.
• Yet for the Italian right, Matteotti is a ghost.
• Throughout her political career, Italy’s current prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has hardly ever spoken about the historical crimes of fascists in Italy, and not once about the murder of Matteotti.
• The historical debate about the murder has also never reached a unanimous conclusion about who gave the order to kill Matteotti and why.

The LSE documents

• The story of how the documents came to be secreted away in the LSE library takes us back to London for another clandestine visit – this time by Gaetano Salvemini, an esteemed professor of modern history who fled Italy in November 1925.
• In December 1926, while still in London, Salvemini received the secret package which he soon passed on to the LSE.
• But they were driven by the conviction that these documents could one day prove beyond doubt that Mussolini had orchestrated Matteotti’s assassination.
• Salvemini may thus have considered the LSE a safe haven – and there the documents have remained ever since.

A voice from the dead

• Rather, the move allowed Mussolini to legislate unchallenged while the seats of the 123 MPs who had joined the rebellion were left vacant.
• Matteotti’s article, entitled “Machiavelli, Mussolini and Fascism”, was a response to an article published in the magazine’s June issue by Mussolini himself.
• The Italian prime minister’s translated essay about the Renaissance intellectual Niccolò Machiavelli had carried the provocative headline “The Folly of Democracy”.
• The article was widely commented on in the British press, which had been following the story of Matteotti’s murder almost daily.
• His funeral was rushed through very quickly, with the coffin being transported overnight in an attempt to prevent public gatherings.

The end of Italian democracy

• In a speech to parliament on January 3 1925, he took “political responsibility” for the murder while not admitting to ordering it.
• Mussolini’s speech ended with a rhetorical invitation to indict him – to a parliament now populated only by fascists.
• The speech signalled the end of Italian democracy.
• The nature of Mussolini’s involvement was little discussed in the wake of his execution in April 1945 and the end of the second world war.
• Was it the evidence of the Mussolini government’s corruption that he planned to reveal to the Italian parliament the day after his kidnap?

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• He has also received funding from the Fondazione Giacomo Matteotti to study the LSE documents.
• Gianluca Fantoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• In 1987, Skrewdriver’s frontman founded Blood & Honour, a music network that soon gained followers and branches throughout the US and Europe.
• Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), the dominant antifascist group of the time, struck back with their own musical network: Cable Street Beat (CSB).
• This is the story of how music became a battleground in the 1980s and 1990s, as antifascists fought fascism with guitars and microphones.

Cable Street Beat

Cable Street Beat was named after the antifascists’ celebrated victory over Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. Before the second world war, British MP Oswald Mosley had commanded a growing fascist movement that had been fiercely resisted by antifascists.

• On October 4 1936, Mosley amassed his Blackshirts on Cable Street to march through the East End of London.
• However, around 100,000 militant antifascists gathered to oppose them, ultimately preventing the fascists’ march.
• Crucially, the audience also heard a powerful speech from Solly Kaye, an antifascist veteran of the actual Battle of Cable Street five decades earlier.

The power of punk

CSB drew energy from the UK’s frenetic punk scene. Bands such as the Angelic Upstarts, Snuff and Yr Anhrefn all enthusiastically took up CSB’s cause. They shared the stage with antifascist activists who gave rousing speeches.

• Punk, and in particular the working-class focused, aggressive Oi!
• subgenre and related skinhead subculture, was an area that the far right had long tried to colonise.
• Indeed, few skinheads had any interest in white power.

Unity Carnivals

• CSB’s most high-profile strategy was its Unity Carnivals.
• The first, held in Hackney Downs Park in 1991, attracted 10,000 attendees.
• It brought a really diverse crowd together in Hackney and really got the political messages across.” Two more carnivals followed: another in Hackney in 1992 and one in Newcastle in 1993, where The Shamen headlined with their chart-topping song Ebeneezer Goode.

Freedom of movement

• By the early 1990s, electronic dance music had taken off in the UK.
• Antifascists immediately saw the potential and in Manchester local DJs and AFA set up the Freedom of Movement campaign in 1993 to mobilise these ravers.
• AFA’s magazine, Fighting Talk, declared Freedom of Movement’s aim was to “politicise the previously apathetic dance club scene, raising issues of racism and fascism”.
• From 1993 to 1996, AFA put on a series of antifascist club nights in cities from Edinburgh to London.

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Alexander Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• This month, his grandson, John Dos Passos Coggin , announced the launch of his Kickstarter campaign to raise seed money for a new feature film project he wrote, Son of Portugal.
• Son of Portugal is a drama/thriller feature film project set in 1964 in the United States and Portugal.
• John Dos Passos Coggin , an American writer, wrote the script for Son of Portugal.
• He co-manages the John Dos Passos literary estate and serves on the advisory board of the John Dos Passos Society .