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.