Back to Italy and Britain folks;
Il Divo and the Black Friars
Andreotti’s return to power in Italy was not quite a return to normalcy, for the powers that be in Italy saw what happened when Christian Democracy was left to its own devices. The strategy of tension, long perfected over the Cold War, reached its peak in 1983 with a series of large-scale terrorist bombings (shocking a nation that had grown accustomed to violence). Fingers were pointed all around the country on whether the terrorists were CIA, Red Brigades, neo-fascists, or militant Palestianians, allowing for the government to push through a dream of P2. Bringing out the papers for the “Democratic Revival,” the government declared a state of emergency to enact their agenda.
The truth about P2 has been debated over the years, with the organization being involved with the mafia’s heroin trade through their associate Roberto Calvi, aka God’s Banker. Calvi did not have much longer to live for, as his body would soon be found hanging from a bridge in London. Dead men tell no tales, and Calvi was about to be put on trial for money laundering. Death was natural in this business, especially for a politician as well-seasoned as Andreotti. Thankfully for P2, who was hoping to get their dirty money back, the government agreed to bail out Banco Ambrosiano.
The state of emergency was quickly protested by the left, with the more radical unions and Proletarian Democracy coming out hardest. Of course, this just gave the government an excuse to crack down on organized labor. Media consolidation began too, with P2 member Silvio Berlusconi beginning to control the nation’s broadcasts. The judicial system earned its own set of reforms as well. Overall, the mission of consolidating right-wing rule and splintering the opposition was a success, but things began to collapse after a few short years.
The Argentine military junta was stuffed with P2 members, who upon the collapse of the regime launched a daring mission; to cash in on Juan Peron’s secret fortune in Switzerland. Peron had once been a friend of Licio Gelli, but most friendships in this shadow world were ones of convenience. Peron’s grave was vandalized, with his hands bizarrely found missing. The plan of the P2 was to use his fingerprints to unlock secret vaults of gold won from Argentina’s role in the Nazi ratlines. Unfortunately for the group, they were caught with Peron’s body, causing a diplomatic crisis. The new Argentine government demanded tht Licio Gelli be extradited just as investigators began to piece together Gelli’s involvement in the death of Roberto Calvi.
In the year 1985, Italy had transformed from an authoritarian government ruled by a deep state to a more conventional government of Christian Democracy. Licio Gelli was murdered walking out of his villa in Arezzo. Arnaldo Forlani was in power for a little less than a year, before the party made a clear break with the reformist Oscar Luigi Scalfaro taking power in early 1986. Andreotti, while still Foreign Minister, was forced to operate from the sidelines. While weakened, Christian Democracy won the 1986 elections, taking support from the center-left parties. In opposition post-communists still struggled to have a central figure as Capanna’s influence in the chamber only grew.
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Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards
“John Smith believed he was creating a new future for Britain. But this was a fantasy, his vision was a flawed one based upon a patricianal view of the state and this would end up influencing his leadership”
-Adam Curtis, Grand Illusions: The Black Hit of Space, 2013
John Smith felt like a man out of time when he came into office. With a Labour Party that was beginning to embrace the glossy advertisements and political work of the late 20th Century, John felt like a man from a different, more quaint time. The emphasis of old school charm though hid a more ruthless and mercurial nature.
John was a fine operator of the Labour Right Machine Politics that had ensured they held the balance of power since 1955. His pal-like relationship with the Trade Unions, Fellow Labour Right Wingers and a whole swathe of the Labour establishment meant he had plenty of support. Not everyone supported him, even though Benn had taken to the new leader, others like Ken Livingstone strained under his leadership, whilst Feminists were unsure about him due to his stance on abortion rights opposing there own. Many women would join Democratic Left due to this.
But John wanted to present a unifying figure to not just the Labour Party but also Britain. His vision of Britain was more in line with the European Social Democracies, more than Jenkins at least. Of course it was infused with a Monetarist view of economics, something the more Keynesian inspired members had trouble understanding and a view which some centred around Bryan Gould actively believed in dismantling.
The coalition with the Liberals would add things, Scottish, Welsh and a few regional Assemblies would be founded, STV would be implemented for those elections and for the European Parliament elections (something the Alliance hadn’t manage to complete) the Decentralisation of some of the Nationalised industries would be considered (the result was often the headquarters would be moved and little else) and a national convention about Nuclear Weapons would occur to decide whether to keep them or not.
Certain industries would be privatised which annoyed individuals like Bryan Gould who had been placed into the new cabinet role of Secretary for Media and Culture as part of the Government shift away from just focusing heavy industries. Whilst there he would try and get his idea for using the soon to be partially privatised BT to lay fibre optic cables across Britain. This idea would be declined by Roy Hattersley who strongly disliked Gould’s economic thinking.
This fiscal conservatism would end up impacting Labour in late 1985. The mainly Militant ran council in Liverpool had created an illegal budget to fund their projects in Liverpool. Hattersley, like many in Labour, strongly hated Militant and decided to use this to push the members out of the party. Pushed by John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone decided to create an illegal budget in solidarity with the Militant members. In one fell swoop the Labour Party would terminate the memberships of all involved despite protests from individuals like Benn, Heffer and Skinner.
Most of the Militant members in Liverpool would continue to sit on the Council as Militant Labour members and some of the Left of the Council would join them. Attempts to push them off the council would fail, with the police not making an arrests (which would make numerous people question if there was some form of shadowy conspiracy who wanted to make the Labour Party look bad, the main reason was there wasn’t enough evidence and most the cases were settled outside of court).
Ken Livingstone would be a high profile example of Labour dealing with it’s ‘loony left’ during its time in Government. The attempt to push all of the Livingstone supporting Councillors would fail and some of the former GLC councillors who were now MPs (like Dierdre Wood) threatened to join the Dem Left which would be disastrous with the slight majority the Government had. Livingstone and McDonnell would be ejected from the Labour party but they would still be allowed to work in GLC as members of ‘Independent Labour’.
Livingstone abandoned electoral politics in favour of his newspaper column, whose editor has to reject an increasing amount of work as the years go by. Most people in the modern day know the former GLC council leader as the host of the daytime chat show Ken, which currently airs on RT after being cancelled by several more prestigious networks.
Meanwhile the AIDS crisis in Britain would run rampant in Britain, the major domestic crisis of the late 80s would occur. The work of Health Secretary Neil Kinnock and Home Secretary Robin Cook would be trying to establish specialist wards, education and a safe sex campaign. But John Smith grumbled and griped about the campaign, as his usual collective outlook was oddly replaced by one of the individuals, at one point being recorded saying that he believed the crisis would probably be solved if people ‘took more personal responsibility’. This would become incredibly controversial amongst Left Wing circles, with John Peck attacking John Smith as “part of the same arrogant patrician elite that people want rid of”. AIDS would end up becoming a silent crisis that would become the death blow of Smith’s Government.
The first couple of years of John Smith’s Britain would be fairly quiet on the foreign front as Smith mainly tried to keep himself on side of America and the rising EEC. John Smith would awkwardly help America with it’s support of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as well as bombing Libya in 1986. The two most important foreign policy events would firstly be the ironing out of the fate of Hong Kong, with John Smith famously shaking hands with the recently made paramount leader Zhao Ziyang in the Autumn of 1987.
Another important foriegn policy event would be an accidental one, in December 1987 the First Intifada of Palestine would begin, whilst most of the world would deal with it through the United Nations, the Foriegn Secretary, Gerald Kaufman would personally visit Yasser Arafat and give his personal well wishes. The Israeli Government and sections of the Jewish community would be horrified and demanded an apology. Kaufman would refuse and call those who demanded an apology ‘deluded fools’. Kaufman would be reshuffled to the backbenchers by a grumpy Smith, who would replace Kaufman with the aggressive but less controversial Jack Cuningham who issued an formal apology, visiting Yitzhak Shamir as part of it (this horrified members of Labour’s ailing Far Left).
As the late 80s bloomed it became rapidly obvious that the old way of politics had become obsolete. The idea of appealing to the self interested new consumers would filter through to those who believed they could best capture these new potential voters, Social Democratic Party under David Owen would begin to raise in the polls based upon the policies and media ideas of Peter Mandelson, the Conservative leader of Ian Gow would revive the Thatcherite ideal and even Democratic Left under the new leader of Nina Temple would aim there campaign away from the big collective ideas of Marx but towards the smaller ideals of Municipal Socialism.
John Smith would avoid these forms of politics, seeing them as vulgar and un-socialist, ‘Substance over Style’ would be his message to the modernisers led by the two Gould’s who politics hewed more to the ideas of a form of Consumer Democracy/Market Socialism as it were instead of the bland European Social Democracies. But they were ignored, the polls were looking good for Labour, the economy was booming and it seemed that Labour would win a second term.
Then in October 1988, John Smith would have a massive heart attack and chaos would come with it.