A Home Office file released after sixty-seven years of secrecy reveals that evidence of a London-based plot to murder the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, was suppressed on government orders when details threatened to be made public during a libel hearing in the early 1930s.
The plot was monitored by British Intelligence and details reached the Home Office and the Foreign Office under the government of Ramsay MacDonald pointing to the involvement of a Soho businessman suspected of having provided money and weapons for the assassination attempt in Rome. He was Emidio Recchioni, in his late sixties, of Italian origin with British nationality, well known to MI5 and the Special Branch as a political activist with a network of influential friends in literary and political circles.
The file, which was due to have remained closed until 2035, has passages covered up with black ink, but reveals that instead of leading to Recchioni’s arrest the Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Trenchard, decided that it was better to obstruct the course of justice than to allow sensitive information to come to light.
According to Italian sources in contact with Colonel Carter of the Special Branch, Recchioni had developed ‘a personal friendship with the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald’.
Recchioni was born near Ravenna in 1864 and arrived in England in 1899 after becoming embroiled in an assassination attempt on the prime minister Francesco Crispi. He acquired ....
