Mussolini forced to resign as Dictator of Italy

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 a delicatessen shop in Soho’s Old Compton Street called King Bomba, which became legendary for the quality of its imported Italian products. Recchioni’s crusade against Mussolini began in 1921 when the Italian Fascio opened an office at 25 Noel Street, Soho.

He soon turned King Bomba into a centre of intellectual and political activity against the dictatorship. George Orwell, Emma Goldman, Sylvia Pankhurst, the Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini and scores of Italian political exiles were among the guests. Rumours that Recchioni was organising plots to kill Mussolini began to circulate in 1929 and were conveyed to the Italian authorities by Carter himself who was in touch with agents of the Italian secret police, Ovra. One reported to Rome: ‘The enclosed recent photograph of Recchioni has been provided by Colonel Carter’ and another: ‘Recchioni has a personal friendship with the Prime Minister MacDonald’. The Home Office file reveals that Carter fiercely and successfully opposed Recchioni’s application for naturalisation under the Conservative government but he came under pressure and was overruled soon after MacDonald arrived at Downing Street. Lord Trenchard who became Police Commissioner after Carter’s departure wrote in a ‘very secret’ note: ‘Recchioni was naturalised in spite of a bad report from the Superintendent of the Special Branch who called him ‘an intriguer of the first order’. But after discussion with Sir John Pedder (Principal Assistant Secretary at the Home Office) Colonel Carter felt he could not oppose naturalisation’.

In 1931 Recchioni travelled to Brussels with his new British passport. He was shadowed by a Special Branch agent called J.O’Reilly. A section of this report remains classified under the hundred-year secrecy laws but other sources make it clear that Recchioni met Angelo Sbardellotto, a twenty-eight-year-old Italian anarchist who offered to go to Rome in person to kill the Duce if only someone would give him the money and the weapons. Recchioni apparently offered to provide both. He then arranged a string of rendezvous in Paris with the would-be killer.

When, after several failed attempts, Sbardellotto was arrested in Rome and found in possession of two bombs and a loaded revolver he made a full confession listing the precise dates on which he had met with Recchioni in Paris including the one on which he had been given the weapons. The Italian authorities sent a translation of his confession to London and requested Recchioni’s extradition.

The Home Office ordered an investigation to ascertain whether there was any proof that Recchioni had indeed crossed the Channel corresponding with the dates alleged by Sbardellotto. After a search through the registers of passengers at Dover and Folkestone it was found that the dates matched perfectly. The Home Office was told that ‘from records of journeys it seems likely that he (Recchioni) is in fact the person who supplied the bombs’.

Just as the Home Office, the Foreign Office and Trenchard were in a quandary as to what answer to give to the Italian authorities a further complication occurred. On reading a report in the Daily Telegraph which, quoting Italian sources, named him as one of those involved in the failed assassination plot, Recchioni sued for damages to his reputation as a ‘virtuous man’. A libel action against Lord Camrose as representing the Telegraph was due to be heard in the King’s Bench Division and the newspaper’s lawyers turned to Carter for help. Trenchard wrote to Samuel: ‘The DT have applied to Colonel Carter to know if he can help them but we told him that the only possible reply is that he has no evidence he can give’. This was clearly untrue. Carter would have had plenty to say. Under oath he might have had to explain why, against his strongest advice on the basis of what he knew, including an attempt by Recchioni to buy a plane in England for an unspecified Italian mission, the naturalisation had been rapidly approved after the arrival of MacDonald. And if encouraged by such revelations the Italians had chosen to damage the MacDonald coalition they might have produced their own evidence of Recchioni’s friendship with the prime minister, if indeed it existed.

In a secret note sent ‘by hand as I thought you ought to see it first’ Trenchard remarked to Samuel: ‘It is unfortunate that Recchioni may get damages out of the DT but I do not see how it can be helped’. Samuel approved. Carter never appeared at the hearing and the Telegraph lost the court case. Recchioni who had spent apparently a mere £35 in organising the plot to kill Mussolini received £1,177 in damages. He died two years later while under medical treatment in Paris. Had he lived longer there is little doubt that he would have used the money extracted from one of the pillars of the British Establishment to finance further attempts against his enemy in Rome.