Featured image: Roberto Fiore
The day before Britain and its World War Two allies remembered the D-Day landings the BBC broadcast a 25 minute documentary on the rise of fascism in Italy today, including shocking images of marching neo-fascists in their hundreds.
The documentary also included an interview with self-confessed fascist Roberto Fiore. That interview could have brought up Fiore’s links with UK neo-fascists and how they set up some very dubious businesses. Or it could have mentioned Fiore’s conviction for an attack on the offices of the Italian trade union confederation, for which he received a jail term. Or when he fled to the UK in the aftermath of the Bologna railway station bombing, why he was offered MI6 protection.
The BBC failed to ask about any of these matters. Not that the broadcaster can plead ignorance, for much of the information about Fiore and his exploits has been available for decades. That’s thanks partly to the “underground press”, and partly to an intervention by Jeremy Corbyn and a group of Labour MPs.
Warnings
In 1987 Black Flag, bulletin of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), warned [page 7, “Copy-cat Killers”] of Fiore and his links to British neo-fascists, such as Nick Griffin, while residing in the UK.
Fiore was founder and national secretary of the fascist Forza Nuova and co-founder of the short-lived Terza Posizione (Third Position) whose militant wing is believed to have been Avanguardia Nazionale (AN).
Fiore and other Terza Posizione members fled to the UK in the wake of the Bologna railway station bombing, which saw 85 people killed and more than 200 injured. The bombing was part of the Strategy of Tension, responsible for many other bombings. The idea behind the strategy was to cast blame for the bombings on anarchists and other leftists. This would then provide an opportunity for a far-right government, backed by the military, to take over Italy. One such anarchist caught up in the ensuing chaos was ABC-Italy secretary Giuseppe Pinelli, who was arrested then murdered by the police when they threw him out of a fourth floor police station window.
There was an earlier warning when in 1984 Stuart Christie, co-founder of the Black Cross, identified Stefano Delle Chiaie as a leading figure in the Strategy of Tension attacks, including the Bologna bombing:
Of the five people named as suspects by the Italian judge investigating the outrage at Bologna, one stands out from all the rest: Stefano Delle Chiaie. Master organiser of neo-fascist terror, or someone who has been deliberately set up as such by other more shadowy figures, the name of Delle Chiaie is inextricably linked with just about every major right-wing scandal and terrorist outrage to have rocked Italy during the past two decades.
Some years later FOIA Research summarised the attacks:
The first major false-flag attack occurred on December 12, 1969, in a bank on Piazza Fontana in Milan, where a bomb explosion resulted in 17 people dead and many more injured. The attack initially was attributed to anarchists of the obscure Circolo anarchico 22 marzo that had only been created in October of that year, inter alia by former Avanguardia Nazionale (AN) member Mario Merlino, most likely for the sole purpose of having a leftist group to blame. Only later the terrorists Guido Giannettini and Stefano Delle Chiaie were identified as the local masterminds of the attack, supported by members of the neofascist groups AN and Ordine Nuovo. Both were agents of the Portuguese Aginter Press, a fake press agency that was basically a mercenary terrorist organization, consisting in large part of Organisation armée secrète members, doing dirty work for various Western secret services. Aginter not only had instructed members of Delle Chiaie’s in the use of explosives, but it also provided them with fake identities to help them escape justice.
Extradition request
In the aftermath of the Bologna bombing the Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Fiore and 27 other suspects. Terza Posizione were accused of:
… having, in collaboration with each other and with other people, promoted, organized, established and in any case directed an association called Third Position, aimed at violently subverting the economic and social orders of the State; abolishing the system of parliamentary representations; and carrying out acts of violence with the aim of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order. These include the robbery at the Omnia Sport armory, at the Chase Manhattan Bank, at Di Vecchio Anna, at the Garage Italia in Via Lucrino, at the armory in Piazza Menenio Agrippa; the attempted murder of Roberto Ugolini; the murder of Antonio Leandri; the attack on the homes of Alberto Martiscelli and Franco Mattera, as well as Fernando Cento and the Vigile Urbano Gianfranco Tomassini; the fire in the Induno and Garden cinemas; the attack at the PCI headquarters in Via Rapisardi 44 and at the daily newspaper Paese Sera; and the setting up of clandestine bases where weapons were stored, including the warehouses in Via Alessandria 129, Acilia and the one found buried in the Villa Doria Pamphili; and finally, the spread of ideological beliefs aimed at the violent subversion of institutions.
Five years later Fiore was convicted of membership of the political wing of Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, or Armed Revolutionary Nuclei). Other Italians in hiding in the UK and wanted by the Italian authorities included Marcello De Angelis, Stefano Tiraboschi and Massimo Morsello. The Italian authorities suspected NAR members of being responsible for the Bologna station bombing.
Fiore was subsequently tried in Italy in-absentia. Although he was acquitted of involvement in the Bologna bombing, he was found guilty of armed conspiracy and subversive association. He was sentenced to five-and-a-half years jail on appeal.
Corbyn intervenes
The Italian authorities issued an extradition request – listed in the UK as HO 306/269 – for Fiore, as well as De Angelis, Morsello and Tiraboschi. In 1991 a European Parliament report into racism and xenophobia referred to Fiore as a “terrorist”; also that he was an agent of MI6:
Their [the National Front’s] connection with Italian far right terrorist exile Roberto Fiore only did them harm when it was revealed that he had been an agent of British Intelligence Section Ml6 since the early 1980s.
In February 1994 Jeremy Corbyn sponsored, with the support of 27 other Labour MPs, an early day motion criticising the Conservative government’s refusal to deport Fiore and Marsello:
That this House notes with concern the article in Issue 21 of Scallywag which alleges that two Italian fascists, Massimo Marsello and Roberto Fiore, who are suspected of being implicated in the bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980, not only remain in this country due to the Home Office thwarting extradition requests from the Italian authorities, but have become rich running a Rachmanite housing scam in London via two companies, Meeting Point and Easy London; notes that Morsello uses an entourage of fascist Italian skinheads, regularly joined by British skinheads, to beat up students and homeless foreigners to extort his rents; notes that there is a strong likelihood that the profits from this activity contributes to the racist, thuggish activities in this country of British fascist organisations like the BNP; considers that the Conservative government has behaved disgracefully and against the national interest in not deporting these two thugs and their skinhead cohorts long ago; and demands that they be rapidly returned to Italy to face justice for the Bologna murders.
Fiore’s protection pays off
In 1999 Fiore was able to return to Italy without fear of arrest, thanks to it’s statute of limitations.
More than two decades later my article in The Canary argued that Fiore’s presence in the UK was tolerated not just by MI6 but most likely Special Branch (and therefore MI5 too):
It beggars belief that the UK’s intelligence and security agencies, let alone the police and Special Branch, were unaware of Fiore’s safe housing and fund-raising activities. But given his alleged MI6 status, it’s no wonder those agencies tolerated Fiore’s and his associates’ presence in the UK for 20 years.
Last year questions resurfaced in regard to how Fiore may have been protected by forces of the state whilst residing in the UK.
Fiore’s ‘charities’ investigated
There is also a backstory to Fiore’s stay in the UK, involving businesses and charities he set up, as mentioned in the early day motion by Corbyn et al to the UK parliament.
Fiore was the trustee of UK charity St George’s Educational Trust (SGET). In 1997 he was suspended by the Charity Commission as trustee for the charity. The commission also froze the assets belonging to SGET’s sister organisation, the Trust of St Michael the Archangel (TSMA). TSMA was linked to the National Front via Third positionist Colin Todd (and later with UKIP via Hugh Williams). SGET’s Telegram channel was managed by Michael Fishwick, also a National Front member. It’s claimed the channel was used as a vehicle to raise funds for Fiore, when he was jailed in Italy for his part in an attack on the headquarters of Italy’s trade union confederation, the CGIL.
In 2003 Indymedia identified several UK businesses set up by Fiore and Griffin. It alleged that workers employed by these businesses – travel agencies, restaurants, etc – were on low wages and housed in overcrowded flats.
Five years later journalists Ian Cobain and Matthew Taylor revealed that Fiore was the sole director of another UK business – CL English Language, a London based college that catered for mostly Italian students. The college’s finances were overseen by Griffin’s parents. Despite having hundreds of students on its books, the college’s profits appeared suspiciously low. It begged the question – did some of the income generated from those businesses get siphoned off to Fiore’s political endeavours?
In 2009 Indymedia further revealed that Fiore had another UK-based business interest – Meeting Point/Easy London, an employment and accommodation agency. (Corbyn etc al mentioned these businesses in the early days motion.)
In 2022 the Charity Commission announced that SGET faced a statutory inquiry into its “potential political activity”.
Confronting the far-right
Fiore now heads with Griffin the Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF) party. In 2018 Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National joined forces with that party. Other far-right political groups that have joined with the alliance include the British National Party, the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and Forza Nuova (the latter also headed by Fiore).
Neo-Fascism and neo-Nazism has not dissipated but is very much on the rise again. And that’s not just in Italy, but in many other parts of Europe. Indeed the latest European elections saw great gains for far-right parties.
Meanwhile in the UK, in recent months there has been a notable increase in far-right violence, largely in response to the mass peaceful protests against the genocide of Palestinians underway in Gaza. As for the “strategy of tension”, Britain’s own version arguably pivots on the matter of “illegal” migrants, with the Conservative and Labour parties desperately trying to be seen as more right-wing on this issue than Nigel Farage’s Reform party.
We need to be constantly vigilant to ensure fascism in all its forms – on the streets or within parliaments – is rigorously confronted.
Featured image via FOIA Research
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