Remembering the 1980s, from winning the World Cup to Mafia massacres and public debt: topical lessons
Recurrences and similarities. During this difficult period, there is much being said and written about the 1980s. Remembering its glories: Italy becoming World Cup champions in Madrid on 11 July 1982, just forty years ago. But also its darker legacy: “Inflation (8%) returns to 1986 levels” read the “Il Sole24Ore” headline on Saturday 2 July. Celebrating the successes of a country that was trying to draw a line under the anguish and mourning of the “anni di piombo” (years of lead) with a great sporting and popular celebration. And not forgetting the risks, as then, to the standard of living and purchasing power of Italian families.
Anniversaries have an extraordinary amount of appeal. They allow us to play with the bittersweet taste of memory, selecting from it that which pleases us the most. But they risk causing us to drift along on melancholy and nostalgia, deluding us into thinking that “the way we were” is better than the way we are and perhaps will be. And so it is perhaps worth partially leveling the playing field and turning to a brutal historical reconstruction. The future of memory, in the patterns of intellectual and moral duties, calls for a lucid comparison of the past and the future. And critical awareness.
Let’s take a closer look, then. At that very July 1982 final between Italy and Germany, on the pitch of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. On the pitch, the Azzurri coached by Enzo Bearzot (here their names, each going on to become a legend: Zoff, Gentile, Cabrini, Bergomi, Collovati, Scirea, Conti, Tardelli, Rossi, Oriali, Graziani and, on the bench, Bordon, Dossena, Marini, Causio and Altobelli) and the Germans coached by Jupp Derwall. In the stands, next to the tall and strutting King Juan Carlos of Spain, the President of the Italian Republic, Sandro Pertini, all bursting with energy and cheering wholeheartedly. It ended, as everyone knows, 3-1 to us. A triumph.
“You don’t realise what you have done for your country,” Pertini told the Italian players immediately after the victory, “intending to emphasise that it was not “only” a football result, but something more substantial, confirming that sport, when it becomes legend, takes on an anthropological value,” with all the scenes “of a secular and mythological theatre,” recounts the skilful writer Giuseppe Lupo (“Il Sole24Ore”, 21 June).
A date that takes a sporting success as its symbol and turns it into a metaphor for a redemption from the gloom of the past and a rebirth in the name of a radical renewal of behaviour and hopes.
Behind us, we leave behind the dark and painful era that began with the massacre in Piazza Fontana, Milan, in December 1969 and was followed by attacks, ambushes, shootings, from the bombs of the neo-fascist “trame nere” involving bodies within the State and the killings by the Brigate Rosse terrorists and other extreme left-wing extremist groups. Political and social tensions. The dramatic 1973 oil crisis. Inflation ravaging the economy, topping double digits.
Looking forward, an extraordinary will to live. The liberalist economic policy of Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain (“There’s no such thing as society, there are individual men and women”). The signs of a coming “lightness” (in the vein of Italo Calvino’s ‘”American Lessons” and an extraordinary novel by Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which quickly became a catchphrase for the irony of TV broadcasts, from RAI with “Quelli della notte” and “Indietro tutta” with Renzo Arbore and the Mediaset channels with “Drive in” and “Emilio”). Everything was a bright colourful mix of fashion and manners, elegance and advertising (“Milan to drink” declared a successful ad for an alcoholic drink), a turbo-economy fuelling a growing stock market and major investments thanks to the activism of small and medium-sized enterprises, but also unscrupulous speculative finance (the “making money by using money”).
A dynamic and greedy tale, nonetheless vital to tell. But not the only story to be remembered.
Because that unforgettable 1982 World Cup celebration year also has other dates to be etched in our minds. 30 April, in Palermo, the assassination of the Sicilian PCI secretary Pio La Torre and his bodyguard Rosario Di Salvo. 3 September, again in Palermo, the Via Carini massacre, when Carabinieri General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (who had been the city’s prefect for a hundred days with a clear mandate to fight the Mafia but was left isolated and powerless) lost his life, along with his wife Emanuela Setti Carraro and escort officer Domenico Russo: “The meeting of Cosa Nostra and political and economic sectors”, said magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino on the origins of the crime. La Torre had been a supporter of a stricter and more incisive anti-mafia law, which was finally approved by Parliament only after Dalla Chiesa’s murder.
Here it is, the full picture of 1982. A party. And a massacre. The joy of recovery. And the mourning of a mafia war that left ten thousand victims in its wake in the early 1980s across Sicily, Calabria and Campania. Ten Thousand (a well-constructed account is laid out in the pages of Enrico Deaglio’s “The Red Harvest”, Il Saggiatore).
To put it succinctly: there was Milan to drink and Palermo to die.
Once again, the portrait of Italy is multifaceted, contrasting, laughable and dramatic.
Those 1980s of social and political firsts (including the first socialist Prime Minister in the history of the Republic: Bettino Craxi), of economic dynamism, but, with a rift that would reverberate in the years to come.
Indeed, public debt exploded, rising rapidly from 60% to over 120% of GDP within the decade. Public spending to maintain widespread living standards and the “buy consensus”, debts dumped on the shoulders of new generations.
The “generational pact” (where each generation is better off than the last, because fathers and mothers invest in their children’s future) was broken. And we are still suffering the consequences, spanning crisis, uncertainty and fragile trust.
That is why the headlines during these times comparing today’s inflation with the 1980s are disturbing. It reminds us of political errors and short-sighted calculations, a lack of sense of responsibility towards the future and unscrupulousness in administering public affairs.
It’s true, today we have greater limitations and constraints, starting with the EU’s decisions and the need for convergence of public accounts. Yet, we must commit to not giving in on easy public spending, on the rush to debt to satisfy the electorate, corporations and customers.
Indeed, that very 1982 still has lessons to teach us, to reflect on. Victory at the World Cup was the result of seriousness, commitment, sporting quality and team spirit. That responsible and supportive community spirit is still sorely needed.
And after the murders of those early 1980s, it was aptly in Palermo, drawing on the lesson of Dalla Chiesa and La Torre, but also of other politicians (Pier Santi Mattarella) and men of the institutions (Terranova, Costa, Chinnici, Basile, D’Aleo, Giuliano, Cassarà and many others), that the state was able to set up the mass trial of the Cosa Nostra bosses, which began in 1986 and ended in 1992 with the severe and well-founded convictions of the most powerful of them. There, the state won and the mafia lost. The state wins when it performs the role of state well.
And this is a good memory, worthy of being passed on to new generations.
(Photo by Peter Robinson/EMPICS via Getty Images)
Recurrences and similarities. During this difficult period, there is much being said and written about the 1980s. Remembering its glories: Italy becoming World Cup champions in Madrid on 11 July 1982, just forty years ago. But also its darker legacy: “Inflation (8%) returns to 1986 levels” read the “Il Sole24Ore” headline on Saturday 2 July. Celebrating the successes of a country that was trying to draw a line under the anguish and mourning of the “anni di piombo” (years of lead) with a great sporting and popular celebration. And not forgetting the risks, as then, to the standard of living and purchasing power of Italian families.
Anniversaries have an extraordinary amount of appeal. They allow us to play with the bittersweet taste of memory, selecting from it that which pleases us the most. But they risk causing us to drift along on melancholy and nostalgia, deluding us into thinking that “the way we were” is better than the way we are and perhaps will be. And so it is perhaps worth partially leveling the playing field and turning to a brutal historical reconstruction. The future of memory, in the patterns of intellectual and moral duties, calls for a lucid comparison of the past and the future. And critical awareness.
Let’s take a closer look, then. At that very July 1982 final between Italy and Germany, on the pitch of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. On the pitch, the Azzurri coached by Enzo Bearzot (here their names, each going on to become a legend: Zoff, Gentile, Cabrini, Bergomi, Collovati, Scirea, Conti, Tardelli, Rossi, Oriali, Graziani and, on the bench, Bordon, Dossena, Marini, Causio and Altobelli) and the Germans coached by Jupp Derwall. In the stands, next to the tall and strutting King Juan Carlos of Spain, the President of the Italian Republic, Sandro Pertini, all bursting with energy and cheering wholeheartedly. It ended, as everyone knows, 3-1 to us. A triumph.
“You don’t realise what you have done for your country,” Pertini told the Italian players immediately after the victory, “intending to emphasise that it was not “only” a football result, but something more substantial, confirming that sport, when it becomes legend, takes on an anthropological value,” with all the scenes “of a secular and mythological theatre,” recounts the skilful writer Giuseppe Lupo (“Il Sole24Ore”, 21 June).
A date that takes a sporting success as its symbol and turns it into a metaphor for a redemption from the gloom of the past and a rebirth in the name of a radical renewal of behaviour and hopes.
Behind us, we leave behind the dark and painful era that began with the massacre in Piazza Fontana, Milan, in December 1969 and was followed by attacks, ambushes, shootings, from the bombs of the neo-fascist “trame nere” involving bodies within the State and the killings by the Brigate Rosse terrorists and other extreme left-wing extremist groups. Political and social tensions. The dramatic 1973 oil crisis. Inflation ravaging the economy, topping double digits.
Looking forward, an extraordinary will to live. The liberalist economic policy of Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain (“There’s no such thing as society, there are individual men and women”). The signs of a coming “lightness” (in the vein of Italo Calvino’s ‘”American Lessons” and an extraordinary novel by Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which quickly became a catchphrase for the irony of TV broadcasts, from RAI with “Quelli della notte” and “Indietro tutta” with Renzo Arbore and the Mediaset channels with “Drive in” and “Emilio”). Everything was a bright colourful mix of fashion and manners, elegance and advertising (“Milan to drink” declared a successful ad for an alcoholic drink), a turbo-economy fuelling a growing stock market and major investments thanks to the activism of small and medium-sized enterprises, but also unscrupulous speculative finance (the “making money by using money”).
A dynamic and greedy tale, nonetheless vital to tell. But not the only story to be remembered.
Because that unforgettable 1982 World Cup celebration year also has other dates to be etched in our minds. 30 April, in Palermo, the assassination of the Sicilian PCI secretary Pio La Torre and his bodyguard Rosario Di Salvo. 3 September, again in Palermo, the Via Carini massacre, when Carabinieri General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (who had been the city’s prefect for a hundred days with a clear mandate to fight the Mafia but was left isolated and powerless) lost his life, along with his wife Emanuela Setti Carraro and escort officer Domenico Russo: “The meeting of Cosa Nostra and political and economic sectors”, said magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino on the origins of the crime. La Torre had been a supporter of a stricter and more incisive anti-mafia law, which was finally approved by Parliament only after Dalla Chiesa’s murder.
Here it is, the full picture of 1982. A party. And a massacre. The joy of recovery. And the mourning of a mafia war that left ten thousand victims in its wake in the early 1980s across Sicily, Calabria and Campania. Ten Thousand (a well-constructed account is laid out in the pages of Enrico Deaglio’s “The Red Harvest”, Il Saggiatore).
To put it succinctly: there was Milan to drink and Palermo to die.
Once again, the portrait of Italy is multifaceted, contrasting, laughable and dramatic.
Those 1980s of social and political firsts (including the first socialist Prime Minister in the history of the Republic: Bettino Craxi), of economic dynamism, but, with a rift that would reverberate in the years to come.
Indeed, public debt exploded, rising rapidly from 60% to over 120% of GDP within the decade. Public spending to maintain widespread living standards and the “buy consensus”, debts dumped on the shoulders of new generations.
The “generational pact” (where each generation is better off than the last, because fathers and mothers invest in their children’s future) was broken. And we are still suffering the consequences, spanning crisis, uncertainty and fragile trust.
That is why the headlines during these times comparing today’s inflation with the 1980s are disturbing. It reminds us of political errors and short-sighted calculations, a lack of sense of responsibility towards the future and unscrupulousness in administering public affairs.
It’s true, today we have greater limitations and constraints, starting with the EU’s decisions and the need for convergence of public accounts. Yet, we must commit to not giving in on easy public spending, on the rush to debt to satisfy the electorate, corporations and customers.
Indeed, that very 1982 still has lessons to teach us, to reflect on. Victory at the World Cup was the result of seriousness, commitment, sporting quality and team spirit. That responsible and supportive community spirit is still sorely needed.
And after the murders of those early 1980s, it was aptly in Palermo, drawing on the lesson of Dalla Chiesa and La Torre, but also of other politicians (Pier Santi Mattarella) and men of the institutions (Terranova, Costa, Chinnici, Basile, D’Aleo, Giuliano, Cassarà and many others), that the state was able to set up the mass trial of the Cosa Nostra bosses, which began in 1986 and ended in 1992 with the severe and well-founded convictions of the most powerful of them. There, the state won and the mafia lost. The state wins when it performs the role of state well.
And this is a good memory, worthy of being passed on to new generations.
(Photo by Peter Robinson/EMPICS via Getty Images)