Co-op News (August 2019)
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
What is co-operative culture - and why does it matter? This issue looks at how co-op values intersect with the values in organisations, across movements and between countries. Plus 100 years of the Channel Islands Co-operative – and how the new Coop Exchange app is tackling the capital conundrum.
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CO-OP CULTURE IN<br />
LONG LIVE<br />
C0-OPERATIVES<br />
Mussolini could not kill the co-<strong>op</strong>s<br />
BY DaViD THOMPSON<br />
In April 1945, during Mussolini’s final<br />
days, he was hunted from town to town<br />
until he was seized, summarily executed<br />
and hanged publicly.<br />
His two decades in power had given<br />
him a long time to hone his murderous<br />
strong-arm tactics, which he used to rid<br />
himself of his enemies.<br />
Italy’s co-<strong>op</strong>erative movement was<br />
among those to suffer his attacks: as<br />
beacons of democracy, self-help and<br />
communal economy – aligned with<br />
socialist, communist, Catholic or<br />
republican groupings – they were a strong<br />
voice with values that fascism wanted to<br />
wipe out by force.<br />
Whether at the hand of the Blackshirt<br />
Fascisti squadristi street gangs or, later,<br />
the courts, police and army, the co-<strong>op</strong>s<br />
of Italy were destroyed by the regime. At<br />
rallies such as in Udine in 1921, Mussolini<br />
called for his followers to “demolish the<br />
entire social-democratic superstructure”.<br />
Everything the co-<strong>op</strong>s owned was<br />
seized and turned over to the Fascisti<br />
government. Rome or Death: The Story of<br />
Fascism, a contemporary account from<br />
1923 by US writer Carleton Beals, depicts<br />
physical intimidation and the systematic<br />
destruction of democracy and civil<br />
society – with scores of pages recording<br />
the violent takeover of co-<strong>op</strong>s, with<br />
leaders murdered, beaten or intimidated.<br />
Not even the Catholic co-<strong>op</strong>s were safe.<br />
One notorious case was the Blackshirt<br />
assassination in 1923 of Fr Giovanni<br />
Minzoni, a p<strong>op</strong>ular priest who organised<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>s in Emilia Romagna and was an<br />
early member of Catholic social action<br />
party Partito P<strong>op</strong>ulari Italiano (PPI).<br />
Also targeted was Fr Luigi Sturzo,<br />
secretary general of the PPI, who saw rural<br />
co-<strong>op</strong>s as a tool to bring Christian dignity<br />
and community to the pe<strong>op</strong>le and spoke<br />
strongly against fascism at the party’s<br />
national conference in 1923. Mussolini<br />
pressured the Vatican to remove him<br />
as head of the PPI; fearing for his life,<br />
Fr Sturzo fled Italy in 1924, seeking exile<br />
in London and later the USA.<br />
Fr Sturzo would become a father<br />
of the long-governing post-war Christian<br />
Democratic Party in Italy – and the Church<br />
now has him on the path to sainthood. On<br />
27 March 1946 – a year after Mussolini’s<br />
execution – he signed the editorial of the<br />
first issue of <strong>Co</strong>-<strong>op</strong>erative Italy, published<br />
by sector body <strong>Co</strong>nf<strong>Co</strong><strong>op</strong>erative.<br />
“My wish is that <strong>Co</strong><strong>op</strong>erative Italy is not<br />
only the title of the weekly that reaffirms<br />
the idea and practice of co-<strong>op</strong>eration<br />
between Italians, but the sign for the<br />
future of our country,” he wrote.<br />
After the war, three national co-<strong>op</strong><br />
federations re-started; <strong>Co</strong>nf<strong>Co</strong><strong>op</strong>erative<br />
to serve the Catholic-aligned co-<strong>op</strong>s,<br />
42 | AUGUST <strong>2019</strong>