Nicolò Carandini

Count Nicolò Carandini (December 6, 1896 – March 18, 1972) was the first Italian ambassador to Britain after World War II.

Biography

Carandini was born in Como.

His political career started in the 1920s when he got involved in the Italian democratic veterans movement, but he retired from political life after the rise of the fascist regime. In 1926 he married Elena Albertini, daughter of Luigi Albertini, who in 1925 had been removed by the fascists from his position as Director of the newspaper Corriere della Sera. Carandini then became chief administrator of the Torre in Pietra estate near Rome, transforming it into a modern agricultural enterprise. During the years of fascism he came into closer contact with democratic opposition groups around liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce and developed ideas of a modern reformatory liberalism, based on the principle of social justice.

In May 1943, two months before the overthrow of Benito Mussolini, he started writing liberal pamphlets and organized their distribution in the Roman underground. In August, he found himself with other liberal individuals such as Leone Cattani, Alessandro Casati and Mario Pannunzio to refound the Italian Liberal Party (PLI).

After the armistice of September 8 and the German occupation of Rome he was a member of the underground Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (the political organization of the Italian Resistance) and, after the liberation of the Italian Capital on June 4, 1944, he became Minister in the antifascist Bonomi government. In November of that year he was sent to be Italy's first Ambassador in Great Britain after the end of the fascist regime (which still existed as a German satellite state in Northern Italy until April 1945). He proved to be an efficient diplomat in his efforts to regain British confidence in the new Italian democratic government, but wasn't able to avoid his country being treated as a loser of World War II by the British and their Allies in the upcoming Peace Treaty.

Although being mostly in London, he also continued to occupy himself with Italian internal politics. By the end of 1945 he disapproved the initiative of Liberal Party leader Leone Cattani to overthrow the government of Ferruccio Parri, the elderly head of the Resistenza movement.

On June 2, 1946 he was elected to the Italian Constitutional Assembly, but declined in order to remain on his diplomatic mission in London. A few months later he brokered the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement that settled the fate of South Tyrol between Italy and Austria. Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi wanted Carandini to become his Foreign Minister in early 1947, but he refused, not having the full support of his party. He finally returned from Great Britain in autumn 1947.

The PLI-Congress at the end of 1947 signed a complete split between the Carandini-led left and the majoritarian right of the PLI. Not being able to gain the support of the party-centre, in early 1948 Carandini and a group of leading left-wing liberals left the PLI, assembling first in the Rinascita Liberale movement and, later that year, founding the Movimento Liberale Indipendente (MLI), which aimed on creating a Third Force alliance of all center-left democratic parties and groups as a lay counterpart of dominating Christian Democrats. By 1951 those plans failed, but Carandini had contributed in a change of the PLI-leadership (Bruno Villabruna) and a more progressive orientation of the party, which he and his movement re-joined in the end of that year.

But in 1954 the liberals once again changed leadership (Giovanni Malagodi) and the following year the left decided to leave the party for the second time. So, in late 1955 Carandini was among the founders of the Partito Radicale that existed as a small party until 1962. After that date he retired from active political life.

From 1948 to 1968 he served as president of the airline Alitalia. He was also a leading member of the Movimento Federalista Europeo, founded in 1943 on the base of the 1942 Ventotene Manifesto by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi.

Carandini was second cousin once removed of the British actor Christopher Lee (who claimed it is he who suggested him to start an acting career). One of his sons is the Roman archaeologist Andrea Carandini. One of his grandsons is the neuroscientist Matteo Carandini.

Sources

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