Mario Scelba (pronounced [ˈmaːrjo ʃˈʃɛlba] ; 5 September 1901 – 29 October 1991) was an Italian politician and statesman who was the 33rd prime minister of Italy from February 1954 to July 1955. A founder of Christian Democracy (DC), Scelba was one of the longest-serving Minister of the Interior in the history of the republic, having served at the Viminale Palace in three distinct terms from 1947 to 1962.
A fervent pro-Europeanist, Scelba was President of the European Parliament from March 1969 to March 1971. Known for his law and order policies, he was a key figure in Italy's post-war reconstruction, thanks to his drastic reorganization of the Italian police, which came out heavily disorganised from the war.
Scelba was born in Caltagirone, Sicily, in 1901. His father Gaetano Scelba was a poor sharecropper on land owned by the priest Don Luigi Sturzo, while his mother Maria Gambino was a housewife. The couple had five children, one of whom died during his young age. Scelba grew up in an observant Catholic family. At only 12 years old, he was forced to leave school to help his family's finances. In 1914, Don Sturzo took steps to guarantee an education to Scelba, who began attending the first class of the lower gymnasium in Caltagirone. The outbreak of the World War I forced the institute to suspend lessons and Scelba recovered the lost years by studying as a privatist and achieving the classical diploma in 1920. He then studied law and graduated at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1924, with a thesis on regional decentralization.
During university, he was selected by Sturzo as his private assistant and secretary. From 1919 Sturzo was in fact the leader of a Christian-democratic party, the Italian People's Party (PPI), and was one of the most important politicians in the country. When the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini rose to power, suppressing all the other parties, including the PPI, Sturzo was forced into exile, while Scelba remained in Rome as his informer. During the regime, Scelba wrote for the newspaper Il Popolo ("The People"); when it was banned by the Italian fascist regime in 1925, he founded a clandestine weekly newspaper known as L'idea popolare ("People's Idea"). In these years, Scelba started his career as a lawyer in the law firm of Filippo Del Giudice, and when the latter was forced to leave the country to save from fascist repression, Scelba inherited his customers.
In 1929 Scelba married Nerina Palestini, from San Benedetto del Tronto, from whom he had a daughter Maria Luisa, born in 1930.
During the 1930s Scelba became a close friend of Alcide De Gasperi, former leader of the People's Party after Sturzo's exile. Along with De Gasperi, he collaborated in the drafting of the "Reconstructive Ideas of Christian Democracy", the first programmatic document of the future party, which was published in July 1943. Scelba was part of the committee which led the new party, known as the DC, during the German occupation. He was also arrested by the Nazis but was released within three days. After the liberation of Rome in June 1944, he joined the executive committee of the new party. In the interregional congress of the DC, held in Naples on 29 and 30 July 1944, Scelba was elected to the party's national council, which appointed De Gasperi as new secretary. Scelba was instead appointed deputy secretary.
In September 1943, as a member of the DC, Scelba joined the National Liberation Committee (CLN), a political umbrella organization and the main representative of the Italian resistance movement fighting against the German occupation of Italy in the aftermath of the armistice of Cassibile. On 21 June 1945, Ferruccio Parri, leader of the Action Party, became the new prime minister and appointed Scelba as Minister of Mails and Telecommunications, a position that he would held until February 1947, even under the premiership of Alcide De Gasperi.
On 25 September 1945 Scelba was appointed to the National Council, the unelected legislative assembly established in the Kingdom of Italy after the end of the war. In the 1946 Italian general election, Scelba was elected in the Constituent Assembly for the constituency of Catania–Messina–Siracusa–Ragusa–Enna with nearly 40,000 votes.
Minister of the Interior (1947–1953)
On 2 February 1947 Scelba became Minister of the Interior in the third government of Alcide de Gasperi, and remained in office until July 1953. During these years, Scelba was probably the most powerful man in the country, after De Gasperi. Having witnessed the Red Biennium and the violent fascist reaction, which caused the crisis of the liberal state and the subsequent formation of the dictatorship, Scelba was deeply convinced that the control of public order was necessary for the defense of the newly founded democratic and republican institutions; in fact, during all his tenure he was a strong advocate of law and order policies. His hard-fisted record earned him the nickname "Iron Sicilian" for his ruthless suppression of left-wing workers' protests and strikes, as well as neo-fascist rallies.
Portella della Ginestra massacre
After just three months in office as Minister of the Interior, Scelba was confronted with the Portella della Ginestra massacre. Twelve days after the left-wing election victory in the Sicilian regional elections of 1947, the 1 May labour parade in Portella della Ginestra was attacked, culminating in the killing of 11 people and the wounding of over thirty. The attack was attributed to the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano, the aim being to punish local leftists for the recent election results.
Scelba reported to Parliament the next day that so far as the police could determine, the Portella della Ginestra shooting was non-political. He claimed that bandits notoriously infested the valley in which it occurred; however, that version was challenged by the left. The Italian Communist Party (PCI) deputy Girolamo Li Causi stressed the political nature of the massacre, claiming that the Mafia had perpetrated the attack, in cahoots with the large landowners, monarchists and the rightist Common Man's Front. He also claimed that police inspector Ettore Messana – supposed to coordinate the prosecution of the bandits – had been in league with Giuliano and denounced Scelba for allowing Messana to remain in office. Later documents would substantiate the accusation.
Li Causi and Scelba would be the main opponents in the aftermath of the massacre – the subsequent killing of the alleged perpetrator, Salvatore Giuliano, and the trial against Giuliano's lieutenant Gaspare Pisciotta and other remaining members of Giuliano's gang. The trial of those responsible was held in the city of Viterbo, starting in the summer of 1950. During the trial, Scelba was again accused of involvement in the plot to carry out the massacre, but the accusations were often contradictory or vague. In the end, the judge concluded that no higher authority had ordered the massacre and that the Giuliano band had acted autonomously. At the trial Pisciotta said: "Again and again Scelba has gone back on his word: Mattarella and Cusumano returned to Rome to plead for total amnesty for us, but Scelba denied all his promises." Pisciotta also claimed that he had killed Salvatore Giuliano in his sleep by arrangement with Scelba; however, there was no evidence that Scelba had had any relationship with Pisciotta.
The general election in April 1948 was heavily influenced by the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. After the Soviet-inspired February 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the US became alarmed about Soviet intentions and feared that, if the leftist coalition were to win the elections, the Soviet-funded PCI would draw Italy into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence.
The election campaign remained unmatched in verbal aggression and fanaticism in Italy's republican history. The DC propaganda became famous in claiming that in Communist countries "children sent parents to jail", "children were owned by the state", "people ate their own children", and claiming disaster would strike Italy if the left-wing would take power.