50 per cent of the popular vote. Since they there-
fore had to rely on the votes of the right, the gov-
ernments from 1953 to 1958 had difficulty in
maintaining their reforming policies, though some
progress was made, particularly the adoption of a
ten-year development plan designed to reduce
unemployment in the more backward regions of
Italy through increasing investment. But for most
of the decade the centrist coalitions were locked in
a domestic stalemate, concerned with keeping
their clients happy. Thus the Christian Democrats
in the south worked with the Mafia and the land-
lords and also tried to assist the peasants; while in
the north-east, the Christian Democrats appealed
to workers and industrial leaders. The main polit-
ical principle was not to represent a cohesive ideol-
ogy but to amass as much support as possible from
whatever source.
There was movement politically on the left
too. The communist and Nenni Socialist alliance
fell slowly apart under the impact of events in the
Soviet empire following Stalin’s death in 1953.
Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s crimes in
February 1956 shocked the Socialists, but the
invasion of Hungary in November of the same
year was even worse for the image of commu-
nism. Though Togliatti declared the Italian
Communist Party independent of the Kremlin
leadership, he could not hold the Socialists, who
now accepted NATO as well as the need for a
multi-party state, as a necessary safeguard against
dictatorships of the Stalin variety. The Nenni
Socialists nevertheless moved slowly; not until
January 1959 did the Socialist Party Congress for-
mally approve the break with the communists.
Meanwhile, Amintore Fanfani, who was the
dominant politician of the Christian Democrats in
the late 1950s and 1960s, led the party away from
the right-centre support which could no longer
command a majority in parliament. The political
crisis reached its climax in 1960, when for months
no government capable of winning acceptance by
the Chamber of Deputies could be formed. The
choice for the Christian Democrats was between
the fascists and the Socialists, the latter alignment
bitterly opposed by the Vatican and the right
wing of the Christian Democratic Party itself. But
the Vatican’s Italian politics were also changing
under the influence of a reforming pope, John
XXIII. Even so, not until December 1963, after
further government crises, did Aldo Moro,
Fanfani’s successor, manage to form a coalition
government that included Nenni’s Socialists.
The change to a Christian Democratic align-
ment with the small Socialist Party did not,
however, lead to any lasting stability. The rela-
tionship was an uneasy one in the 1960s. The
Socialists feared that they would lose votes to
parties standing to their left, especially the com-
munists, if socialism was watered down too far
and the new coalition did not pursue vigorous
reform and economic planning. Fanfani had
nationalised the electricity industry in 1962, as
the price for Socialist cooperation, but as far as
planning and social reforms were concerned,
Moro, his successor, was cautious. He had in his
own party, after all, a suspicious right wing to
contend with. The key feature of the political
landscape was the health of the economy. The
extraordinary period of economic expansion had
not come to an end, but it was certainly deceler-
ating just at a time when trade unions and
workers had become far more strident in pressing
their demands. During the previous fifteen years
the industrial north had been transformed, and
contributing to this transformation was the low
cost of labour, the Italian worker having failed to
gain any but small rises.
The Italian economy from 1945 to 1963 had
been built on the back of low wages. The profits
made by successful industrial expansion tended to
be ploughed back, rather than distributed to
shareholders or to the workers. This was made
possible by two features of the Italian economy:
there was a large labour pool from the south,
which kept unemployment high and so weakened
trade union bargaining power, though it is true
that between 1946 and 1973 there was a net
migration loss of 3 million people (7.1 million
emigrated, 4.1 million immigrated); and there
was no large group of shareholders to satisfy.
Since the fascist years, the Italian state had indi-
rectly controlled a large variety of industries
through the IRI, a holding company for indus-
trial reconstruction dating from the depression.
The IRI controlled the banks which, in turn,552 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s