Test Drive | Page 15

THE FASCIST PARTY IN INTERWAR NORTHERN IRELAND 7 attitudes towards the fasci prevailed throughout the UK; despite suggesting that the movement should be monitored, authorities in London took no action against the party until the late 1930s. Surveillance was increased dramatically as Italy edged closer to becoming an enemy nation. In 1937 Vernon Kell, the head of MI5, ordered that all Fascist Party branches in the UK should be placed under warrant (Kell 1937). Later that year, an intelligence report suggested that Italian fascism posed a substantial security threat to the UK. The report stated that the aim of the fasci was to condition British-Italians to become “securely bound to the service of the totalitarian State”, capable of subversion and sabotage (Committee of Imperial Defence 1937: 1). Bowd (2013: 84) argues that the authorities became wary of the Fascist Party after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, an event that led to increasing British suspicion of the Italian government.4 Soon after the Abyssinian invasion, the Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police wrote that fascist clubs were “now essentially places where Italian fascist policy is expounded instead of merely social clubs not much concerned with political affairs in any country” (Metropolitan Police 1936: 2). Italian fascism in the UK therefore transformed from being perceived as a benign, cultural movement, to a potential fifth column of enemy aliens. When Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, authorities immediately raided fasci across the UK and simultaneously interned all Italian males between the ages of sixteen and seventy (Hughes 1991: 93). Despite being isolated from the British mainland, Northern Ireland’s two branches were similarly targeted and sixty Italian males were interned (‘Round-up of Italians continues’: 9). Italian cafes and ice-cream shops in Belfast were subject to police protection, such was the ferocity of the public backlash against the city’s Italian population (‘Anti-Italian riot in London’ 1940: 1). As Kushner (2005: 183) argues, the policy of blanket interment provided the rioters with a sense of legitimacy. Reports do not specify where in Belfast the besieged Italian businesses were located, although Italians in Loyalist districts usually bore the brunt of abuse during periods of tension (see, for example ‘Unrest in Belfast’ 1912: 7; ‘Belfast rioting’ 1935: 2). 4 The Abyssinian Crisis led to increasing geopolitical tension. The limited international response to Italy’s invasion weakened the position of the UK and France prior to World War Two.