Split in Italian Socialist Party causes problems

1968 - The Socialist Party split and seven members resigned their positions in the government in a move that could topple the coalition government. Foriegn Minister Pietro Neni resigned as Socialist Party president after failing in a weeklong struggle to keep the party united. The Party Central Committee voted down the 78-year old Nenni's compromise motion intended to keep the right wing faction of Mario Tanassi from bolting the party. Tanassi said the rejection of the Nenni document destroyed the foundation on which the two wings of the Socialist Party were reunited only three years ago. After the rejection of his compromise statement of policy, Nenni resigned as party president. At the same time cabinet minister Tanassi, Luigi Preti and Giuseppe Lupis and four undersecretaries, all Tanassi supporters, resigned their government positions. The Socialist schism was expected to bring the Christian Democratic Party to a crisis and possibly spark a spilt between right and left wing actions of that party. The two are the major parties in the center left coalition government. The party crisis could shake the government so badly that new elections would have to be called barely a year after the last general election, in which the Socialists lost heavily to the Communists. The basic issue involved was whether the socialists should tighten ties with the communists. The left was in favour, the right against. The split came only nine months after a party congress ratified a merger of the Socialist Parties which had parted 23 years before on the very same issue of relations with the Communists. Pietro Nenni made an impassioned plea for the faction leaders to sacrifice their personal and ideological interests for the sake of the party and the nation. The old warhorse of the Socialist Party warned that if new parliamentary elections were called, the socialists would suffer heavy losses. Nenni said those who formerly voted socialist would go either farther left, to the communists, or farther right to the Christian Democrats. (Credit Image: (c) Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS.com/Mary Evans)

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