La Malfa, Ugo

(1903–1979)

   One of Italy’s most honest and talented postwar leaders, the Palermo-born Ugo La Malfa was an ex ponent of a socially humane brand of liberal capitalism that found few adherents in postwar Italy. As a student, he distinguished himself by both scholarly brilliance and antifascist activism (he was arrested briefly in 1934 and took part in the clandestine movement Giustizia e Liberta). Afounder of the Partito d’Azione/Action Party (PdA) in 1942, he was its representative in the Comitati di Liberazione Nazionale/National Liberation Committees (CLN) after the Italian surrender in September 1943.

   La Malfa’s ministerial career began immediately after the war. He was minister for transport under Ferruccio Parri and for foreign trade in the first of Alcide De Gasperi’s eight governments (November 1945–June 1946). Discontented with the policies being followed by Emilio Lussu, leader of the PdA, La Malfa—together with Parri—left the party in February 1946 to form the “Movement for Republican Democracy,” which later merged with the Partito Repubblicano Italiano/Italian Republican Party (PRI). Over the next 30 years, La Malfa came to symbolize the tiny PRI, whose reputation for being the “conscience” of the Italian center-left owed much to La Malfa’s intellectual rigor and personal integrity. He became party leader in 1965 after a period as budget minister under Amintore Fanfani (1960–1963). La Malfa was the minister responsible for the policy of austerity that followed the 1973 oil shock. He served as vice premier underAldo Moro between 1974 and 1976, and continued to preach a message of fiscal prudence. The need for financial stability led La Malfa to become Italy’s most vocal exponent of entry into the European Monetary System in 1979. President Sandro Pertini offered La Malfa the chance to form a government in March 1979. Blocked by the Democrazia Cristiana/Christian Democracy Party (DC), whose members distrusted his reforming zeal, La Malfa was forced to accept second best and become vice premier and budget minister under Giulio Andreotti. La Malfa immediately proposed large spending cuts but did not live long enough to put them into effect. Tired out by overwork, he died suddenly in Rome in the spring of 1979. His son, Giorgio, has followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming budget minister under Francesco Cossiga in 1981 and leader of the PRI since 1987.