Fighting for the Freedom of North-Italy

Introduction to the Lega Nord (Northern League)

Two Histories, Two Cultures

The political unity of what is now Italy was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, more than 1500 years ago; since then, the borders of the various States changed innumerable times, but with a constant feature: the local municipalities, Comuni (free communes), of Northern and Central Italy were among the richest, most active and most developed regions of Europe, enjoying the benefits of commercial and cultural exchanges with the Flanders, Germany, the Baltic region, England, the Middle East, even China. The world's oldest University was established in the North of Italy (Bologna, late 11th century); the greatest European poets and writers came from there (Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio); the greatest architects and engineers (Brunelleschi, Alberti); the greatest scientists (Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo); the greatest artists (Giotto, Raffaello, Michelangelo, all-rounder Leonardo, Caravaggio, Tiziano, to name only a few of those we can admire today in an Italy-in-three-days holiday package).

The central part of Italy was under the Pope's rule: a conservative, sometimes oppressive regime, not hostile to art and culture as long as it celebrated the Church's glory, wealth and power (hence the impressive Renaissance basiliche and palazzi of Rome, above all Saint Peter's Cathedral and Dome). Yet, unlike the northern States, the country's economy was stagnant; worst of all, the Papal State acted as a barrier (both political and cultural) between the South of Italy and Europe.

Finally, the South: never an independent State, it was swapped between the major continental powers, Germany, France, finally Spain from the 16th century onwards. As a consequence, it was always governed by second-rate politicians, while the local population never developed a political and civil consciousness. A total disrespect for the law and the civic rules emerged; corruption was widespread; paying taxes was unthinkable if one could bribe an official instead; stealing public money was considered more respectable than working; no one really bothered about improving the economy or just tiding up the cities; local Mafia and Camorra clans began to emerge in the absence of a respectable government. The situation worsened following the decline of the Spanish Empire; if one thinks that in the same period the moral ideal of the people in Northern Italy and in the rest of Europe was to improve their social position with their own work (cf Weber, the Ethic of Capitalism), the difference could not have been larger.

Even if the North of Italy was no longer the focal point of Europe in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, nonetheless it contributed to the ideas of Enlightment and to the industrial revolution; Milan and Triest (both under Austrian domination at the time) were among the richest cities on the Continent; little of this progress reached the South of Italy, where a few landowners controlled most of the territory, and neither industry, nor means of transportation and communication, nor more rational and effective agricultural techniques were developed.

Italy after Unification (1861)

Everyone makes mistakes. The king of Piedmont's was deciding to conquer the rest of Italy, emulating what the Prussian State was doing in Germany. The idea of a unified Italy was widely discussed at the time, arising from the necessity of better roads between the North and the South, of a common metric system, of a common currency to improve commerce and the rapidly growing industry of Lombardia (Milan's region); although principally based on economic reasons, it was often ideologically justified as a return to the great Roman Empire, or as a natural consequence of the country's common religion. Judging a posteriori, the best way to realize the unification would have been the "democratic" way supported by Milan-based politician and engineer Carlo Cattaneo: a confederation or a federation of the pre-existing States, following the American and the Swiss examples, accounting for the differences between the Italian regions in the framework of a common market economy and trade system, and a common foreign policy. Fellow Italian Giuseppe Mazzini was also a supporter of the democratic way to unity: he was in favour of a more centralized republic, but he also foresaw a confederation of the European nation as an ideal to pursue. Unfortunately, things went the wrong way and the democrats lost their battle: unity was achieved by the kingdom of Piedmont with a military campaign which swept away the other weak States in about a year, with the help of the French; in particular, the decisive step was the annexation of the "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies" in the South thanks to maverick general Giuseppe Garibaldi, who has been credited of unifying Italy ever since. Bulgarian-style plebiscites sealed the unification.
The new kingdom of Italy was a heavily militarized and centralized state; Rome was chosen as the new capital city, after the Papal State, too, was annexed ten years later; the people of the South felt it was simply another foreign domination, and the government's authority in those regions remained (and has remained today) very low, local Mafia families being much more respected. As to the North, the emerging middle classes felt their democratic hopes betrayed, their tradition of local autonomies spoiled by an oppressive Roman bureaucracy, and could never understand what on earth they had in common with the people living in Sicily, with whom we share almost nothing. After all, simply from a geographical point of view, the distance between Milan and Berlin, or between Turin and London, is less than the distance between those two North-Italian cities and Sicily; the same is true from a cultural point of view as well.

The situation worsened during the Fascist period (1922-1943), when Benito Mussolini pushed the process of political and economical centralization even further, trying to recreate the myth of Rome as the most powerful and glorious city in the world. Most of the political structures created during this period have been conserved, and Rome's power over the local communities is still oppressive today.

Another cause of great discontent in the North was, and is, the huge amount of money wasted in trying to support the State-run economy of the South (some US$1000 billion since WWII); while the Northern economy has always been productive and competitive on the world market (it would be even more so if we were independent...), the South of Italy has always lived on unproductive State-owned industries (eg, Soviet-style big steel plants when no one in the world is buying steel any more), unemployment benefits, fraudulent disability pensions (it appears that in some Southern regions one person out of three is unable to walk or see), an over-inflated and inefficient public sector; public jobs are easily available in the South if one supports the local Mafia boss at the elections. Taxes are never paid, and no one really cares about using public money for his own interest; if something is broken, the Northerner's attitude would be to try and fix it, the Southerner's often to sit down, wait for someone to come from Rome with the money to fix it, then take the money and let someone else worry about it. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on Mafia-controlled public works, for instance long stretches of 6-lane highways starting and ending nowhere in the Southern countryside, never-ending tunnels, Golden Gate-style bridges over small brooks, 20 year roadwork projects, power plants started 40 years ago and never finished, and so on; the sewage system in Naples has not been upgraded in 150 years. And I won't talk about the crime plague, the hundreds of Mafia killings each year, down to the small-scale activities of pickpockets, as all the tourists know.

Reasons for Cutting Ties with the South in brief

Divorce was declared legal in Italy in 1970; if the problems I'll summarize are not solved, why can't one part of the country get a divorce from the other, and live as (distant) friends forever more?

I've already talked about the differences in history and culture. The dialects spoken (at least as a second language) in the various Regions stress these differences: in the northwest, we speak a language related to French, to Provenzal (the language of Southern France in the Middle Ages, now almost disappeared) and to Catalan (spoken in Barcelona); in some areas of the northeast, German dialects are either spoken or understood; standard Italian comes from Florence, while the Southern-Italian dialects (totally unintelligible to us, and vice versa) were influenced by Spanish, Greek and even Arab (in Sicily). Instead of acknowledging those cultural traditions, as they did in Spain after the death of fascist ruler Francisco Franco, or as they did in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, or in Quebec, the central governments in Rome have always tried to suppress them, in particular the Northern dialects (Southern dialects are still widely spoken, even at public level, by Southern politicians). Only after the Lega Nord's success did they begin to admit our local languages have a dignity, after all.

Culture and ethnic identity may well be important but, one may reasonably argue, the economic structures are the main factor to ponder before splitting the country or transforming it into a federation. In fact, in all social, political and economic statistics Italy does not rank well at all, and only Portugal spares us from last place in the standings of Western Europe; this image is quite deceptive, though: the North is at the same level of the most developed regions of Germany, France and England, and could well be a leading force in the future European union; the South, on the other hand, can be compared with Tunisia or Algeria. We are struggling to win the right to develop our economy, culture, science and technology by establishing links with the rest of Europe, but we also spur the South to get rid of the rotting, Soviet-style State-run economy if they want to join Europe, as well. If this doesn't happen, Italy as a whole will be left behind. Prosperity in the North is based on private enterprise, and nothing could be more oppressive than the present corrupt and centralized regime. Not even our Universities are left free to compete with the best educational institutions in the world: almost all Italian Universities are State-run, and differences between them based on merit are not tolerated.

The problem of the South has been addressed by all the 50-odd governments in the last 50 years, but their only solution has been collecting money from the North and pouring it down (and we all know where the money goes). In 1994, each citizen of the North paid on average almost US$2000 more than he received from Rome; each citizen living in the South received some US$4000 more than he paid in taxes.

For instance, today we still pay taxes to collect money in support of the homeless after an earthquake in Sicily, in 1968; after 30 years, people there still live in cabins, or at least pretend to do so. Some 50 billion dollars have been spent so far for the 1980 earthquake around Naples: they all ended up in the pockets of local bosses and politicians, at least those with good gunmen and good friends in Rome. These bosses then redistributed part of the money to enforce their Mafia-style consensus at local level. The thought of actually rolling up their sleeves and rebuilding their towns as we did in the North in similar circumstances, instead of living on subsidies all their life, seems never to cross our dear Southern friends' minds.

Federalism: The Reason for the League's Success

Small political movements campaigning in defense of our local cultural traditions were formed after WWII, but they could never achieve remarkable success and change the course of Italian politics. On the other hand, tensions between il Nord and il Sud have always been smoldering; they exploded when the crisis of the State-run economy and the necessity of conforming our economy to the European standards made the burden of an unproductive South no longer tolerable for the North. The Lega Nord party was formed when the cultural and the economic demands merged; its symbol is a medieval warrior, in memory of the victorious struggles of the Northern Italian Comuni for self-rule in the 12th and 13th century. Local branches of the League are active in all Regions of the North: Piedmont (capital city: Turin, well known for the FIAT car factory); Lombardia (Milan) Veneto (Venice); Liguria (Genoa); Trentino (Trento); Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Trieste); support comes also from Emilia-Romagna (Bologna) and Tuscany (Florence).

Starting from about 2% of the votes in these Regions in the 1987 elections, consensus soared up to 10% (4% on the national scale) in 1990, then up to 19.5% in 1994 (with peaks of almost 50% in some cities). Leaders of the party in this exciting period were founder Umberto Bossi, constitutional expert prof. Gianfranco Miglio, Francesco Speroni, Franco Rocchetta, Gipo Farassino, Roberto Maroni, Milan's mayor Marco Formentini and Gianfranco Pagliarini.

The League's image at the 1994 general elections was that of a new movement thrown into the swamp of Italian politics. It appeared as the only party not involved in the graft scandal which sent most of the other parties' MPs back home (the lucky ones), into forced exile (former PM Bettino Craxi, now living in Tunisia because of an arrest warrant issued in Italy against him), straight into jail or even into the coffin (some corrupted politicians committed suicide after being caught). The League was not relying on the support of Mafia families (the fact that it wins less than 0.1% in Sicily may be seen as an asset from the point of view of a Northerner), being fiercely opposed to them, instead; it had revolutionary ideas (reshaping the Constitutional framework of Italy) appealing to the young; it reflected the middle-class demand for a more decentralized economy and bureaucracy; it had a controversial but doubtlessly charismatic leader in Umberto Bossi, capable of drawing crowds of tens of thousands of supporters at the party's happenings.

The message conveyed was simple to understand: the Regions of the North need greater autonomy from Rome. If Italy is to become a truly modern State, we must introduce a new Constitution based on federalism; models to look at are the US (at least, the ideas behind their Constitution), Switzerland, Spain (where the Region of Catalunya is largely autonomous from Madrid), Belgium, Australia. Federalism means sovereign powers for the local communities and the faculty of investing locally most of the money collected locally; it also allows the local traditions and languages to be appreciated. On the European scale, the League proposed the eventual dissolution of the nation-States into a (con)federation of Regions.

Although the strongest party in the North, the League had to find some allies in order to have a relevant power at the national level; Milan-based tycoon Silvio Berlusconi tried to present himself as a natural ally for the 1994 elections: a strong representative of the productive Northern middle-class, uncorrupted and unlinked to Mafia (so he said), ready to implement the federalist idea. The Lega Nord-Forza Italia (Berlusconi's new party) alliance registered an unprecedented landslide victory in the North. It swept out 72 of 73 seats in Lombardy and Veneto. The Northern League was now the largest party in the national Parliament, and the new Lega-Berlusconi government seemed ready to fulfill the aspirations of the Northern electorate. But this dream didn't last more than 7 months.

The League's Political Difficulties 1994-1995

After using the alliance with the League to become PM, Silvio Berlusconi soon forgot all federalist ideas; he started to pursue a conservative policy and strengthened his alliance with nationalist (ex fascist) leader Gianfranco Fini whose party was strong in the South. Moreover, Berlusconi tried to suffocate the anti-graft enquiries carried out by Milan-based judge Antonio di Pietro, who was forced to resign; he also came to the rescue of a number of old, discredited politicians who had a chance of recycling themselves in the new party. At the end of 1994 the League decided to withdraw its support and pulled out of the government. Berlusconi had to step down and a new, transitional government (lead by Mr Lamberto Dini) was formed with the external support of the centre-left parties and of the League itself; the main goal of Dini's government was to address the nation-State's most urgent financial problems. This transition period set up the political showdown between the center-left Ulivo (Olive Tree) coalition, the Northern League, and Berlusconi's and Fini's center-right coalition which culminated in the general elections of 21 April 1996. It may be worth reminding that Berlusconi owns 3 out of 6 Italian nation-wide TV channels, and this had given him an unfair edge over the other contenders in past elections; this still remains a hot issue in Italy even after Berlusconi's recent electoral defeats.

The turbulent events of 1994-1995 did not leave the League unscathed: many MPs decided to leave the party and follow Silvio Berlusconi in December 1994, some for political reasons, some probably lured by prospects of a more lucrative career in Berlusconi's party; the controversial leadership of Umberto Bossi and the way the relationship with Berlusconi had been dealt with came under criticism.

Nonetheless, in February 1995 Umberto Bossi was reappointed as the party's leader, eventhough almost one third of the MPs elected in 1994 had left; the big question was if the League could recover and become again the leading force in the North.

Prospects for the Future: The European Union of Regions

The problems which fuelled the rise of the Lega Nord in the early 1990s have certainly not been solved; everyone in the Italian political arena now talks of federalism, the League's key concept, but nothing has been done yet. The South of Italy is not closer to the North today than it was 5 years ago, and this is still the main factor preventing Italy from being a full member of the European Union.

After the turmoil in the political scene in the past few years, things are now silently settling down: most of the enquiries have been called off, the bribery scandals will soon be forgotten, most of the old parties are re-emerging under different names, as it happened in Eastern Europe; after a period of great hopes and active participation, people seem now to be disillusioned and disappointed. There is no doubt, though, that until the issues discussed before are tackled, a federalist movement like the Lega Nord can and must be active in our country, both at the national level and in the local communities; the League will survive and eventually gain support if it can foster the debate on the Italian Constitution and inspire a critical analysis of our last 100 years' history (before the League's struggles, we were simply not allowed to criticize the process of unification: we had to consider it the crowning episode of a glorious history).

The Northern League must stay outside and above the meaningless Left-Right scheme, fighting for its well-defined goal, against all other parties if necessary but at the same time trying to catalize transversal support among them. A stronger cultural basis is required to achieve this goal: the yearn for massive popular support driven by populistic slogans has to be put aside for a while, and the conduct must be subtler and more refined. The dreams of a revolution leading to the ultimate goal for many of us (full independence of the North) must not be confused with reality. Yet these dreams must survive: they may be eventually realized in a European Union based on a federation of Regions, after the dissolution of the nation- States (France, Italy, Germany); after all, the structure of the nation-State is a historical artifact functional to a given social and economic situation which will soon become obsolete. Building the future federation of Europe, as well as rewriting the Italian Constitution, will be the future goals of the Lega Nord and of the other federalist movements on the Continent.