The ordinary Italian on the radio

Radio Londra’s programmes addressed different social strata, with the aim of achieving the widest support possible. For British propaganda to be effective, a Foreign Office document declared in 1940, its writer needed an intimate understanding of the country and the people he was addressing. He had to know what was in the minds of housewives queuing for food, workers in factories, farmers and shopkeepers, and what ordinary people were saying about the Allied bombing (Cruickshank Reference Cruickshank1977, 59).Footnote ⁸

The first directives on British propaganda aimed at Italy, issued in September 1940, established that it should transmit messages that opposed the Fascist regime and Germany while promoting Britain and the Church. These same directives advised counting on the sense of humour of Italians, and on their being ‘logical’, ‘envious’, ‘frivolous’ and ‘melodramatic’. In addition, propaganda was supposed to concentrate on the civilian population. Particular attention was to be paid to the category of Italian women, because they loved their husbands and children much more than the state (Sponza Reference Sponza2013, 4).

Memoirs published by some of the Italian broadcasters also refer to ordinary people as the main intended audience for their programmes. Paolo Treves wrote that his work at the BBC consisted of ‘making Italians feel that they were not alone in the storm and the purifying pain’ (1945, 5–6). Elio Nissim’s ‘omo qualunque’ character (‘the little man’, as the BBC translated him) had its genesis in the wish to address those people who ran the daily risk of being killed by bombing (Nissim Reference Nissim2003, 182).

Depending on the phase of the war and the short-term political and military objectives, particular attention was sometimes paid to one or more specific categories of Italian. By examining the content of the broadcasts, we can identify at least three major long-term political objectives of the British radio propaganda directed at Italy between 1943 and 1945.

After the decision to land in Sicily had been made at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, preparing the Italian public for the Allied arrival became crucial. It was also necessary to weaken Italian consent to the Fascist regime.Footnote ⁹ A further objective was to convince Italians of the pointlessness of a war that had broken out only because Mussolini wanted it, and in nobody else’s interest.

For this purpose, all sectors of Italian society were important; every single individual could contribute to the British cause by supporting the arrival of the Allies. During this phase of the war, the BBC addressed a fairly wide segment of Italian society: the categories that cropped up most often were women, workers, servicemen, the middle class and the upper middle class. Radio Londra established specific programmes for each of these categories.

After Italy’s surrender and the beginning of the Resistance, the BBC above all took on an operational role, broadcasting not only the famous coded messages for the partisans but also unencoded news for the groups taking action. Normally, this latter type of programme provided indications on the troop movements of both the Allies and their opponents, inviting armed groups to act accordingly. As these could be heard by anyone who tuned in, the information was of a somewhat general nature. Programmes for the ordinary listener continued to be broadcast after the Allied landings, especially towards the end of the war. During the final months of the conflict, there were cultural features, language courses and programmes dedicated to listeners’ letters; in other words, having been a war station, Radio Londra was gradually turning into an entertainment broadcaster.

As often happens when different cultures meet, the BBC made use of many cultural stereotypes regarding both the average Italian and the average British person. In particular, the Italian woman whose world remained that of fashion and the family made frequent appearances in the British service’s feature programmes.

In 1941, Britain introduced conscription for women. The decision to include women directly in the war effort was necessarily backed up by propaganda campaigns directed at British women, and the BBC’s Italian Service also played its part. One instance is a programme of 29 June 1943 with the title ‘English Women in Wartime’, whose script used the involvement of British women in the war as a way of suggesting that Italian women should be following their example. As a consequence of their emancipation, Italian women were invited to contribute to the fortunes of their own country. However, the programme’s approach reveals that they were not in fact thought capable of understanding political issues:

The same topic was the focus of a broadcast on 6 January 1945:

The programme was referring to the uniform of the Women’s Voluntary Services. This body comprised all the women who gave their services to their country during the war; they provided a range of assistance to civilians, including the distribution of information on what to do in the case of enemy air raids.

On 2 February 1945, an interview was broadcast featuring an Italian woman who had moved to the United Kingdom after marrying a Scottish man. The topic was the issue of clothing in wartime, and the intention was to show that the British government looked after its citizens not only by ensuring that they could wear respectable clothing even in time of war, but also by considering their individual circumstances. As she came from Italy, a hot country, the woman in question did not have clothes suited to the Scottish cold. The British government had therefore given her a special coupon to acquire a larger number of items of clothing.Footnote ¹²

Having identified the differences between the two countries as regarded fashion, the woman and her interviewer agreed that there was one element of fashion that Italy and Britain shared:

The detail regarding the use of red, which might be considered unimportant, was in fact emblematic of a strategy that was consistently employed at the BBC: the attempt to find similarities between Italian and British customs. The aim was of course to make Italians feel emotionally and culturally close to Great Britain.

Another female stereotype that often featured in the programmes was that of the good wife and mother. Italian women were often represented as mothers whose husbands or children had been killed by the bombing. In one programme, broadcast in April 1944, Italian women claimed their rights, although these rights related rather more to their role in the family than their position in society:

Another aspect of the representation of Italian mothers became apparent in the ‘Italian Soldiers Programme’, first broadcast in December 1944, whose purpose was get messages from Italian soldiers and prisoners of war in Britain to their loved ones. Its principal theme was the attachment of Italian sons to their mothers. The initial progamme featured songs from a group of Italian soldiers; the very first of these, ‘Mamma mia’, was sung by Giovanni Acerboni, from Treviglio. The announcer introduced this by saying that ‘[t]he first thought of every Italian soldier is about his faraway mother, who is thinking about him and waiting for his news’.Footnote ¹⁵ There followed an ironic monologue, used by Corporal Abele Venosti of Naples to entertain his imprisoned companions, and two other songs, ‘Nostalgia napoletana’ and ‘Violetta’.

Lying behind these glimpses into the everyday lives of the soldiers was the clear intention to show Italian families that their friends and relatives were, ultimately, leading a decent life in the British camps.Footnote ¹⁶ The protagonists of the ‘Italian Soldiers Programme’ were the embodiment of the high-spirited Italian who loves to sing and laugh without restraint.

Similar programmes were also broadcast in regard to Italian internees. These were central to the BBC’s concerns, not only because they could be used to create the picture of a benevolent Britain that treated detained Italians with respect, but also because they could provide information that assisted British propaganda. Not by chance, Colonel Stevens visited a camp in Royston, as we can read in a report he drafted on 23 September 1941. While he was there, the occupants complained about the difficulties they were encountering in getting letters from their loved ones; they suspected that their recent messages to Italy had never actually been sent. According to his report, in the course of this meeting Stevens asked them if they wanted their names to be passed on to Radio Londra; this might have provided a way for them to get back in contact with their relatives in Italy.Footnote ¹⁷

In the series of broadcasts dedicated to soldiers and internees, political commentary was rare. While the Italian woman was held to be incapable of engaging with issues of national interest, it would seem that the same reasoning was being applied to the average Italian man.

The ordinary Italian was the protagonist of ‘Il monologo dell’omo qualunque’ (‘The Monologue of the Little Man’), a programme by Elio Nissim. The political party that appeared in the early years of the Italian Republic, the ‘Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque’, may have taken its name from the BBC broadcasts. According to both Gino Pallotta and Sandro Setta, during the Allied occupation the founder of this movement, Guglielmo Giannini, submitted a request to the Anglo-American authorities for publication of two magazines, with the titles ‘L’Uomo della strada’, which was subsequently replaced by ‘Novella poliziesca’, and ‘L’Uomo qualunque’. ‘L’Uomo della strada’ was in fact also the translation of a BBC programme title, ‘The Man in the Street’. It therefore seems highly likely that British radio was the source of Giannini’s inspiration (Setta Reference Setta1975, 4; Pallotta Reference Pallotta1972, 39).

The ‘omo qualunque’ of Nissim’s programmes had no cultural tools with which to interpret the events of the war clearly, and instead responded directly to the daily dramatic changes brought by the outbreak of war. These broadcasts are particularly interesting from a linguistic perspective, in view of the fact that the ‘common Italian’ of the period was generally illiterate.Footnote ¹⁸ Recognition of this can be seen in the use of expressions from Tuscan dialect: the BBC’s ‘l’omo qualunque’ is itself Florentine, like its creator Nissim. One special broadcast, ‘Il carosello dell’omo qualunque’, featured various characters in conversation with the usual protagonist; these included the young female radio announcer from the ‘Piccola Posta della Voce di Londra’, who usually read out the messages from Italians resident in Britain. On this occasion, the young woman had a message for ‘l’omo qualunque’ from ‘l’omo qualunque inglese’, his British counterpart, who wanted to meet him. Early in the broadcast the two characters actually met, and subsequently they exchanged witticisms:

Just as the colour red had united the Italian Mrs Cuff and British women, these ‘common men’ were united by geographical features and the routine habits of their daily lives: being surrounded by water, and smoking. At a certain point in the broadcast the British man says goodbye and leaves, and the Italian then comments on the encounter: ‘however, he’s a good man … he doesn’t say much … but he does things properly, carefully, accurately … and diligently’.

Another typical propaganda technique used on Radio Londra was, by contrast, the emphasis on how Britain and Italy were different, almost to the extent of wanting to explain the reasons for and origins of these differences. In this case, too, the clear aim was to provide an interpretative key to understanding British culture. Given that many of the announcers were Italian, the Italian Service programmes also tell us a lot about how the British were perceived by these Italian exiles. While it is true that the BBC periodically received directives from the PWE on programme content, this level of control seems to have related more to political and military issues than to cultural aspects. It is therefore highly probable that the broadcasts genuinely reflected the perspective of the scripts’ authors on the United Kingdom’s customs and traditions.Footnote ²⁰

In another programme, scripted by Paolo Treves, a detailed portrait emerges of Mr Smith, the embodiment of the typical British man. This was part of a series of broadcasts with the title ‘L’Uomo della settimana’, which every so often presented an exemplary character or, instead, someone whose behaviour merited reproach. This is how Treves described Mr Smith:

In both these depictions – the ‘omo qualunque inglese’ and Mr Smith – the reserved and somewhat taciturn nature of the average British man emerges. The mention of the cabbages grown in the ‘little piece of garden’ is significant, in that it alludes not just to the hobby of gardening, which was genuinely popular in Britain, but also to the individualism of British society. Hidden behind this individualism and seeming lack of interest in everything that surrounded Mr Smith there was in fact, the programme suggested, a strong civic sensibility and faith in the government, demonstrated by the fact that he did not lose heart even when the news was bad. The implicit message was that the average Italian, unfortunately, did not enjoy the privilege of being able to trust his government in like manner.

Up to this point the analysis has dealt with cases of Italians who were not educated, nor experts in historical and political matters. It is reasonable to assume that in the 1940s the concept of the ‘ordinary’ Italian did not normally include people who had enjoyed the privilege of studying, or who earned large salaries; in the Italy of the Second World War, education was in reality only the preserve of the especially well-to-do classes. On the other hand, Treves’ description of the ordinary Italian is interesting:

Once again, the intention was to emphasise the most human features of Italians. When we are faced with a war, Treves’ address seemed to be saying, social distinctions cease to exist; everybody, from the worker in the fields or factories to the intellectual who spends their days writing, shares an uncertain fate.

The workers, as a class, were very evident in BBC broadcasting. Many of the programmes dedicated to them were edited by the anti-Fascist movement ‘Free Italy’, mentioned earlier. This movement often addressed the workers while making reference to the ideals of the Italian Risorgimento.Footnote ²³ Factory workers were a potential subversive force, not only because the history of the Italian labour movement had shown the extent to which they were politicised, but also because they were in constant danger, working in places at high risk of being bombed. In addition, the factory strikes of March 1943 demonstrated that support for the Fascist regime was in crisis (Baldoli Reference Baldoli2012). The theme of socialist internationalism lent itself particularly well to the aim of engaging their interest:

The workers were often encouraged to rebel. In March 1944, exactly a year after the strikes in Turin and Milan, they were once again in revolt. Arthur Deakin, the acting general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, praised all working people:

The broadcast concluded with the promise that British workers would do everything possible to prevent the sacrifice of Italian workers being in vain.

The BBC also directed its efforts towards the political and cultural elites. After the fall of Fascism and Italy’s unconditional surrender there was a gradual rise in the percentage of programmes devoted to the well-educated, and fewer features for women, the middle classes and ordinary people. While every member of Italian society could have contributed to overturning the Fascist regime, when it came to thinking about Italy’s future political arrangements the people who needed addressing were the intellectuals and politicians. In the period after the fall of Mussolini, new programmes were launched; these included Aldo Cassuto’s ‘Un italiano dai capelli grigi’ (‘An Italian with grey hair’), in which an elderly educated anti-Fascist expounded his political analysis, and Paolo Treves’ ‘Lettera ad un italiano’. In the latter, Treves wrote imagined letters to acquaintances; here, too, the notional correspondents were anti-Fascist intellectuals, including Benedetto Croce, to whom Treves expressed his joy over seeing his name in the Italian press again.Footnote ²⁶ In most episodes, however, Treves addressed the former Fascists who had changed their minds about Mussolini’s regime. A language was employed in these letters that attempted to construct an intimate dialogue between the writer and recipient; the paternalistic attitude of the sender, Paolo, resembled that of an old friend seeking to show someone dear to him the correct path:

After the sorrowful passage in which he professed his understanding for political positions taken in the context of Fascist indoctrination, Paolo made it clear that he had no wish to adopt a position of superiority or reproof. From the education received in Fascist schools, to magazines such as Gerarchia, to the corporations: in successive letters, he demolished all the myths that had, until then, been part of Carlo’s life. Paolo’s letters were also addressed to others, including, every so often, a former Fascist of a different generation – an elderly lawyer, his name not given, who had witnessed the crisis of Liberal Italy in the period before the March on Rome. The historical events of his past, Paolo cautioned him, ought to enlighten him. Fascism had in fact taken the upper hand due to the ruling classes’ ‘fear of the people’. This fear had led to repressive measures when dealing with any discontent. Now, Paolo warned, probably alluding to the Badoglio government, no form of semi-Fascism was to be tolerated; he also offered the reassurance that of course this did not mean that Italy would see the establishment of ‘Soviets and workers’ courts to give the capitalists summary justice’.Footnote ²⁸ There was an obvious intention to prepare former Fascists like ‘Carlo’ to accept any potential popular revolt against Fascism; recognition of the failure of the regime in which they had believed, on its own, was not enough to overturn the status quo.

Former Fascists were potential new supporters of the Allies. As a result, British radio propaganda decided to invest in them too, and it is no surprise that programmes with this focus can be found in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham. It is perhaps less to be expected that the BBC was conscious of also being listened to by Fascists and the Italian authorities. From this it follows that the first implicit interlocutor of Radio Londra’s every programme was in fact its opposite number, the EIAR.

‘Caro colonnello …’: letters from the BBC’s listeners

The BBC’s recognition that it had an audience among Italians was evident right from the early years of its activity. It was mentioned in the BBC’s European Service Weekly Bulletin of 13 February 1941 that the broadcasts by Colonel Stevens had been cited the previous month on Radio Roma; his observations had been described as idiotic and ill-considered.Footnote ²⁹ If Stevens was being mentioned by the EIAR, it was clear that he had a following in Italy.

It is particularly difficult to estimate the number of radio listeners and get a good picture of their social extraction. To understand the composition of the EIAR audience, and what were its most appreciated programmes, researchers into Fascist radio have relied on two important elements: the number of Italians who owned a radio set, and the results of the radio surveys published by the regime from the mid-1920s onwards (Monticone Reference Monticone1978; Monteleone Reference Monteleone1976; Isola Reference Isola1990; Natale Reference Natale1990). In this regard, the survey of 1939–1940 is particularly important, because it tells us who was listening to Italian radio on the eve of Italy’s declaration of war. From a total of 1,194,849 radio licence-holders, there were 901,386 participants in the survey. The results showed that northern Italy had the highest percentage of licence-holders, most of whom belonged to the higher social strata; in central Italy the figure was lower, and in the South the percentage stood at only half that of the North (Natale Reference Natale1990). At the end of 1939, according to Antonio Papa, 12 per cent of families owned a radio set (Reference Papa1978, 36).

Knowing the number of Italian radio licence-holders in 1940 is certainly a good starting point for an assessment of the BBC’s potential audience. These percentages, however, do not tell us anything about which stations were listened to, and the survey does not tell us about the number of listeners who did not have a licence, or who they were. In view of the high cost of a radio set, listening in groups was in fact a widespread phenomenon. We do not know, for example, how many of these listeners understood standard Italian; because of the variety of dialects spoken in Italy, and the very low rate of literacy, many people could only get their information second-hand from other listeners.Footnote ³⁰

Despite the financial and cultural limits to widespread ownership of radio sets, it has been observed that radio played a part in the birth of a popular culture in Italy ‘even before the arrival of mass consumption toward the end of the 1950s’ (Forgacs and Gundle Reference Forgacs and Gundle2007, 62). From the interviews conducted by David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle for their study of mass culture in Italy, it emerged that radio had already entered the lives of many people in the 1930s; there are frequent references in the interviewees’ stories to weekly visits to relatives to listen to the radio, and memories of particular news items that they heard in broadcasts (54).

While the EIAR could turn to the surveys for an understanding of its listeners’ opinions, it was much harder for the BBC to get information on its Italian audience. Official data on the number of listeners could in fact only be obtained through Fascist bodies. The BBC drafted both weekly and monthly reports on listener satisfaction with its programmes and the quality of the radio signal; however, the basis of these documents was the information provided by British informants and prisoners in Italy, who were reporting on their conversations with Italians. An example is given by the BBC European Audience Estimates report of 26 July 1943:

As this extract illustrates, the percentage given by the British informant was based only on his personal estimate. Moreover, the report says nothing about the social class of the people to whom he was referring.

While these considerations allow us to conclude that it is impossible to get reliable quantitative data on Radio Londra’s audience, the letters from Italian Service listeners are important qualitative sources. For a number of reasons, these will not have been representative of the Italian population as a whole. As already mentioned in regard to Nissim’s ‘omo qualunque’, the proportion of people who could read and write was actually relatively low; letter-writers, therefore, had a relatively high level of education. It was no coincidence that there were many doctors, lawyers and teachers among them. Above all, not every literate listener necessarily felt the need to communicate with London. It should also be remembered that some letters will have been sent without ever reaching their destination, and others will have been destroyed in the bombing. Only a few folders of listeners’ letters are conserved in the BBC Written Archives, but the correspondence with the service’s audience must have been much more substantial. In 1944, Radio Londra in fact created a special programme to respond on air to all the requests for news and the messages of appreciation that the service had received. It should also be noted that the correspondence sent to Radio Londra, with the exception of a very few letters, did not contain criticism or evidence of contempt for the BBC. According to Asa Briggs, in 1940 many of the letters that the BBC received from Italian listeners were in fact hostile (Reference Briggs1970, 167); there now seems to be no trace of these letters in the archives. Notwithstanding the limitations that relate to this type of source and the wartime context, the letters saved are a very valuable source in relation to the Radio Londra audience.Footnote ³² As Peppino Ortoleva has emphasised, they provide a subjectivity and spontaneity that cannot really be found in the statistics from the surveys; in his view, letters and oral sources are the only resource that can tell us about the subjective experience of the radio listener (1984, 55). The same logic can be applied to the correspondence of Italians with the BBC. The letters sent to Colonel Stevens are an expression of the listeners’ appreciation, and of the role that they attributed to Radio Londra.

Communicating with the London radio service was undoubtedly dangerous for Italians living under the Fascist regime. The letters received prior to the Allied landings were therefore sent from neutral territories. The BBC service for one particular country could often also be heard in other countries. Some letters were therefore sent by people living in countries that were part of the British Empire, and in some cases the senders were British listeners who could understand Italian and wanted to give their advice to BBC staff on the approach to take when addressing Italy.

Much of this correspondence expresses appreciation in relation to Colonel Stevens. He was thanked for his news, an alternative to that of the regime, and for his moral support. Many listeners shared the desire to do something in exchange for the benefits that the Colonel had bestowed on them. Some writers invited him to spend some well-earned rest in their Italian residence when the war was over; others expressed their recognition by sending gifts, such as poems written in their own hand, cards and small paintings. One priest, who said that he was writing on behalf of many others in order to bless the arrival of the Allies, attached a religious image to his letter.

From the tones of the correspondence that the BBC received, it particularly emerges that Stevens was regarded as a celebrity by many of his listeners. Many of the Colonel’s followers even describe themselves as his ‘admirers’ rather than ‘listeners’, and a substantial number asked him to send them his photograph and an autograph. There was clearly a very strong wish to put a face to the voice that reflected the difficulties of their daily life.

Stevens was asked by many people to send them a collection of his broadcasts that they could read. Some small books with the title ‘È al microfono il colonnello Stevens’, containing extracts from the programmes, were in fact published during the war; it may well be that the inspiration for this venture derived from the large number of requests.Footnote ³³

A high proportion of the letters betray a degree of embarrassment over presuming to write to the Colonel despite not knowing him personally; the writers’ desire to convey their gratitude to him, and to the other members of the BBC, apparently impelled them to surmount their inhibitions. The names of other broadcasters that cropped up most often included Candidus (John Marus), Umberto Calosso and the ‘omo qualunque’.Footnote ³⁴

Stevens was well known for the greeting with which he opened and closed his programmes. One woman writing from Malta said that the best moment of her day was the evening, when she could finally turn on the radio and respond to the Colonel’s usual greeting at 8.30 with her own ‘buonasera’. She was by no means the only one: a number of letters tell of the customary collective ‘buonasera’ given in response to the English broadcaster.

The BBC’s Italian followers seemed to see the radio as something that could even solve practical problems in their own cities. One example of this is a letter of July 1943 from a resident of Nola, who asked Colonel Stevens to ensure that the electricity supply was restored to his town. Listeners must have frequently over-estimated Stevens’ importance, as he felt that he needed to reply to the resident of Nola to say that he did not have that degree of influence, and even less so the powers that listeners attributed to him.

Asking for the Colonel’s help became an increasingly common practice as the Allies gradually advanced north through the Italian peninsula, with inhabitants of the liberated territories now able to contact London without fear. Often, people hoped that Stevens could provide information on their loved ones, who had fallen out of touch and were presumed to be in British territory. In many cases, Stevens actually tried to contact the appropriate authorities for this information. This is demonstrated by the Colonel’s letters of reply, conserved by the BBC, and also by the feature ‘La Piccola Posta della Voce di Londra’, mentioned earlier, which sometimes featured announcements about the discovery of a family member who had been thought lost.

The favours asked of Stevens were sometimes much more trivial. One listener wrote in December 1945 to pay her compliments, but also to ask him to send her a Christmas card, as England was famous for its Christmas decorations; she felt, she said, that it would be a bit like breathing in the air of an English house.

Once the war had ended, Stevens continued to receive letters from Italy. Much of this correspondence, dated 1945 and 1946, makes reference to the vivid memory of his broadcasts, and the hope that these would long remain embedded in Italian minds. Clearly, the conclusion of hostilities had not resulted in the end of the Radio Londra phenomenon in Italy.