Red Loss--And Gain

The West once again battled Communism in Italy. The outcome: a victory for the West--but not as solid a victory as the West had hoped for. The Communists could claim (correctly) that they had gained some popular support since their bitter election defeat three years ago.

Battle for the Towns. When Italy elected new local governments in 1946, the Communist Party captured control of about 2,000 towns and cities, chiefly in the industrial north. Anti-Communist forces, notably the Roman Catholic Church, began to organize a counterattack. At the same time, the U.S. launched the Marshall Plan, which helped ravaged Italy back on the road to recovery. By 1948, when Italians went to the polls to elect a new Parliament, the Red tide had been turned back; in that historic election, the Communists lost heavily to Italy's free parties, led by Premier Alcide de Gasperi's Demo-Christians. But the Communists still controlled the captured towns. Last week Italy was again holding municipal elections (beginning with North Italy, to be followed by the rest of the country later), and the anti-Communists had decided to storm the Red strongholds.

By the time most of the votes were counted in the first round of 2,735 municipalities, it was clear that the most important Communist citadels had fallen. The anti-Communist parties won control in some 800 of 1,200 communities which had been held by the Reds, among them Genoa, Venice,. Ravenna and Forli. Through their control of local governments, the Reds had been able to win friends not through ideological appeal but by doing favors on the mainstreet, grassroots level. Loss of that patronage was a severe blow to the Red political machine.

Rally of the Church. The coalition of anti-Red parties had been able to take over the Red strongholds partly because of a new electoral law which provides that any alliance of parties winning a plurality in a town automatically gets two-thirds of the seats on the town council. This made it possible for the Communists to lose control of towns in which they actually chalked up limited popular vote gains. In 27 provincial capitals the Reds got 37%, as against 34.3% in 1948, while the Demo-Christians were down from 43.3% in 1948 to 36.5%. The anti-Red alliance (Republicans, Liberals, right-wing Socialists) picked up small gains; the neo-fascist M S.I. more than doubled its share of votes, from 2% to 5.4%.

The Catholic Church had strongly rallied to De Gasperi's side. The archbishops and bishops of Tuscany proclaimed: "Voters who give their votes to parties professing doctrines contrary to the Catholic faith commit a mortal sin." Why had Church intervention not produced a bigger anti-Communist vote? Explained the Vatican's Osservatore Romano: Not all Italians "born Catholic, and even professing still to be so, are .. . faithful followers of the Church."

The Demo-Christians argued that one reason why the Communists had fared relatively better than in 1948 was that Italians felt the danger from Communism had diminished; some of them therefore felt safe in voting for the Reds on specific local issues without fearing an overall Communist victory. Demo-Christian leaders knew that such reasoning was dangerous, that anti-Communists must not relax their vigilance. As De Gasperi put it during the campaign: "Those who say that the Communist danger has been overcome . . . are fools."

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