Thought was duly given to exploiting the Atlantic Charter, a recent declaration by Churchill and Roosevelt that the Allies were fighting to ‘ensure life, liberty, independence and religious freedom and to preserve the rights of man and justice’. Eventually, in December, an Italian translation signed personally by the Deputy Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, and addressed to the Sardinian people was dispatched to Lisbon for Lussu to read. ‘The Charter is intended to ensure that the vanquished nations equally with the victors shall enjoy both independence and economic prosperity,’ added a special tail piece proposed by Jebb and approved by Dalton, ‘as soon as the Nazis and the whole system which they have endeavoured to fasten upon Europe have been utterly and finally destroyed.’12 Lussu read it and was not convinced. An explicit assurance about Italy’s borders, he told Mortimore in Lisbon, was ‘indispensable’ if Italians unhappy with Fascism were to be persuaded to take action against it.13
In January 1942, with the war still going badly for the British, a motion of no confidence in Britain’s Prime Minister was debated in the House of Commons. Before the vote was taken, Churchill was the last to speak. ‘I offer no apologies, I offer no excuses, I make no promises,’ he ended his address. ‘I avow my confidence, never stronger than at this moment, that we shall bring this conflict to an end in a manner agreeable to the interests of our country, and in a manner agreeable to the future of the world … Let every man act now in accordance with what he thinks is his duty in harmony with his heart and conscience.’14 Churchill won the motion by 464 votes to one. Watching all of this from a seat in the public gallery, though perhaps not understanding it since he spoke no English, was Emilio Lussu. SOE had secured him a seat in the gallery in the hope that he would be suitably ‘thrilled’.15
Days earlier, SOE had flown Lussu to Britain after hearing that the Portuguese police had discovered his real identity. He had landed at a grey and wintry airfield at Barnstaple on 23 January. Joyce Lussu followed two days later. The couple were waved through the usual security formalities and brought immediately to London, their real names being omitted from all paperwork, and then lodged in an SOE apartment at 7 Park Place, off Piccadilly. Soon Lussu was engaged in fresh talks. These began with an Englishman who had joined SOE a few weeks before. His name was Cecil Roseberry, and he was the newly appointed head of its tiny Italian desk in London. His arrival marked a watershed in SOE’s approach to tackling Italy.
Colleagues would remember Roseberry as ‘very intelligent’, ‘a real gentleman’, and ‘short, dark and earnest’.16 One who saw him around the London office recalled ‘a very dapper man’ in ‘a very neat grey suit’ who ‘loved what he was doing’.17 Born at Shoeburyness on the Essex coast in December 1891, he was the second son of a Durham-born Royal Artillery quartermaster sergeant who had married the daughter of an Essex carpenter. Despite these relatively humble origins, Roseberry had gone up to St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1911 to study natural sciences, though owing to troubles at home he came down without a degree and headed instead for the Continent to learn languages and business. For much of the First World War he had been British vice-consul at Narvik. After the war he had returned to London and spent the best part of twenty years employed as a merchant for Indian firms. Latterly he had spent a year in Norway, Switzerland and Finland before returning to Britain in the summer of 1941, joining SOE, and taking on the Italian role in October. He replaced the Greek specialist Derrick Perkins, who had manned the joint Greek–Italian desk for the preceding six months.
A dedicated Italian desk (it was known in Baker Street as ‘J Section’) was soon up and running once again, and Roseberry was to remain at the helm in London until 1945. His duties would include preparing plans for Italian operations, seeking permission to carry out those plans, keeping senior officers abreast of what the section was doing, and coordinating London’s anti-Italian efforts with those of its overseas offices in places like Lisbon, New York, Cairo, Malta and Berne. Conscientious, committed and empathetic, he was to earn the respect and friendship of even the most hard-bitten anti-Fascists, Lussu among them. They, in turn, would gradually help him to understand the scale of the difficulties standing in the way of fostering successful resistance in Italy. Most of them knew him simply as Major ‘Alp’. The pseudonym had been his mother’s maiden name. Impressing these Italians was no small achievement given that Roseberry had no Italian background and knew little of the language. When possible, he and the Italians conversed in French.
Roseberry used his first chats with Lussu to question him closely about what he wanted. ‘I explained that I was neither competent nor authorised to discuss questions of higher politics nor to indicate the Government’s attitude towards Italy,’ Roseberry recorded afterwards. ‘I warned him that large sections of the people of this and associated countries regarded Italy as a nation guilty of the worst treachery and deserving of no consideration, and that we should win the war whether Italy continued to fight under fascism till the end or not.’ Lussu, in response, ‘appeared convinced that we shall win, but is equally convinced that his plan, if it succeeds, will shorten the war’. Lussu also explained that he saw no chance of successfully restoring Italians’ ‘pride’ and preparing them ‘for the sacrifice which a revolution entails’ unless, in return for their help in shortening the war, their country emerged ‘with at least the position she held before fascism usurped control’.
I asked [Lussu] if this meant specific assurances regarding such geographical questions as East Africa, Cyrenaica, the Dodecanese, Trieste and Fiume. He replied that he, and thousands who thought as he, regarded all extra-metropolitan Italy as a liability and a liability which they would happily dispense with … But for the security of peace any cession of territory should be made by Italy … He must at all costs avoid any implication that he, before setting out on his mission, has (without any authority or mandate) ‘agreed’ to such cessions. It would at once be inferred that in return for British support, he had sold ‘the Empire’.
Roseberry was impressed by Lussu’s ‘sincerity, his earnestness, his balance and apparent lack of personal ambition’. He felt, too, that Lussu’s plans had great potential and that ‘somebody of authority’ should speak to him at a very early date. ‘I am aware of the undesirability if not of the impossibility of giving any geographical undertakings,’ Roseberry added when reporting their discussions, ‘but it is surely within our competence to give him the measure of confidence in our goodwill towards a “free Italy” which he needs before embarking on an enterprise in which he risks the life of himself and his wife and civil war in his own country.’18
It was decided that Gladwyn Jebb, Dalton’s right-hand man on SOE matters, should talk to Lussu over dinner at London’s Travellers Club. It might have seemed a suitable venue. Housed on Pall Mall in purpose-built premises inspired, it is said, by Raphael’s Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence, the Travellers had been founded as a meeting-place for gentlemen travellers, their foreign guests, and visiting diplomats. Jebb, meanwhile, had served for four years in the British Embassy in Rome. Yet his meeting with Lussu on the evening of 9 February went disastrously. When Jebb cut short the dinner to return to the office for a ten o’clock meeting with Dalton, Lussu interpreted his departure as a tactical escape and began to wonder if he should even be bothering with his plan. Next day Lussu told Roseberry that he had ‘spent a delightful evening with a charming, intelligent and sympathetic gentleman’ but, when they reached the stage where Lussu expected the conversation would turn to ‘serious issues’, Jebb had left to return to his ‘duties’. Lussu had concluded that his host had been instructed to be ‘nice’ to him ‘but not to touch on questions of political import’.19 Jebb, for his part, disclosed afterwards to Dalton his own dim view of Lussu. ‘I felt far from confident that he would make a successful revolutionary,’ Jebb wrote of him. ‘He is an enthusiast who regards persons and things with the eye of faith rather than with the perhaps less pleasing regard of the practical politician.’ Je
bb added, vaguely, that he sensed ‘rather instinctively’ that Lussu, if he ever made it to Sardinia, would have difficulties with his wireless set or fail to take even elementary security precautions.20
Roseberry was not pleased about this. ‘[Lussu] is an earnest, intelligent and bold man and his project offers possibilities which we would do wrong to miss.’21 Next to see him, it had been hoped, would be the minister. But after reading Jebb’s report of what transpired at the Travellers, Dalton reacted violently. ‘This man is a source of increasing embarrassment,’ he minuted of Lussu. ‘The sooner he goes away the better. He should not see any minister. It does not even seem that he is likely to do his job well in Sardinia.’22 Dalton’s outburst so jars with his earlier praise of Lussu’s ideas that it may have had more to do with other matters on his mind, not least a concern for his job. Dalton had a taut relationship with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, whom he was due to see the next day, and it is likely that Churchill moved to appease Eden and another enemy of Dalton’s, Brendan Bracken, when, a little later, a Cabinet reshuffle saw Dalton moved to the Board of Trade. Roundell Palmer, 3rd Earl of Selborne, replaced him as Minister of Economic Warfare and SOE’s boss.
At SOE headquarters, however, Roseberry was not the only officer to be dismayed at the lack of enthusiasm forthcoming for Lussu and his plan. Its shrewd and dynamic Director of Operations, Brigadier Colin Gubbins, was determined, too, to get things moving. With Roseberry present, Gubbins met Lussu in a London flat on the afternoon of 12 February, three days after the disastrous Travellers Club dinner. Gubbins’s opening gambit was to tell Lussu that he quite agreed that the success of his project required assurance over Italy’s pre-1922 borders. Roseberry noted that this ‘forthright’ statement ‘almost stunned’ Lussu. Then Gubbins followed it up with a lie. He said that while it was ‘difficult, if not impossible, for a politician or statesman to give an undertaking at this stage,’ he could ‘safely assure’ Lussu that a suitable statement could be secured once Lussu’s preparations seemed complete and his chances of success appeared reasonable.23 Gubbins added, more honestly, that he would look into recruiting suitable Sardinian prisoners of war from camps in India for Lussu’s liberation force and find some captured Italian weapons and ammunition with which to arm them; he would also arrange for Lussu to visit the United States to secure the support of his anti-Fascist friends there.
Lussu was delighted. He accepted Gubbins’s assurances and agreed to go into the details of his plan. It was also agreed that Joyce Lussu should be taught to use codes and secret inks, operate a wireless set, print clandestine pamphlets and shoot. And all of this was apparently down to Colin Gubbins’s brazen, and perhaps callous, bluff. ‘I am all for getting [Lussu] down to work,’ Gladwyn Jebb remarked when he heard about the meeting, ‘but I must point out that the assurances given are completely bogus, & that, even if [Lussu]’s “preparations are complete & the prospects of success appear reasonable”, they will not in fact be forthcoming, at any rate from H.M.G.’ It seemed to Jebb ‘quite possible’ that Lussu would ‘throw up [sic] the sponge’ when confronted with that fact.24 ‘Of course the undertaking is quite bogus!’ Dalton wrote in one of his last remarks as SOE’s minister. ‘Let us hope that [Lussu] will become so red hot, as the time gets ripe, that he won’t ask for the guarantees.’25
Lussu left Liverpool for New York on 24 February. He sailed on the SS Jamaica, a civilian passenger ship, travelling with a forged passport in the name of Myer Grienspan and masquerading as an author, a Toulouse-born Frenchman, who would be visiting publishing firms. ‘Please meet him and arrange all possible facilities,’ Baker Street instructed their New York office. ‘He speaks no English only French and Italian. Person contacting him should say Je viens de la part de Monsieur le Commandant a Londres … You are authorised to place one thousand repeat one thousand dollars at his disposal.’26
Lussu stayed in the United States for two months. Among the Italian exiles and émigrés with whom he spoke were his old friends from Paris, Alberto Cianca and Alberto Tarchiani. Another was Dino Giacobbe, a Sardinian now living in Boston, Massachusetts. A decorated First World War veteran who had commanded a Republican unit in Spain, Giacobbe was the man whom Lussu had in mind to raise and command the force of Sardinian volunteers he hoped would land on the island when the time was right. On the eve of his departure, SOE officers in New York told London that Lussu seemed ‘very satisfied’ with his time over there. The only alarm had been when ‘he was harassed in a ridiculous Phillips Oppenheim manner at the dead of night by certain over zealous employees of a United States office who were abusing their confidential knowledge of his presence in this country’.27 Sailing on the SS Sarpedon, a British cargo liner, and pretending to the necessary authorities that he had started his journey in Sydney, ‘Myer Grienspan’ returned to Liverpool on 27 April.
Back in London, Lussu told Roseberry that talks in the United States had only strengthened his opinion that without an assurance that Italy would emerge ‘stronger, with more friends and with better prospects of recovery’ than if it continued to fight under Fascism, ‘any movement launched against the Italian Government would be branded as treachery and the instigators as traitors’. Once again Roseberry advanced Lussu’s case to be given a chance to speak with someone ‘of real political significance’.28
This time the plea received the backing of Sir Charles Hambro, who, in April, had taken over as SOE’s chief from a now sick and over-worked Frank Nelson.29 There was ‘little doubt’ that Lussu was ‘a leader of considerable prestige,’ Hambro told the new minister, Lord Selborne. ‘He is perfectly honest and so far has never let us down. I think when you meet him you will realise that he is a big man.’30 More meetings followed. This time Lussu saw Selborne as well as two Cabinet Ministers, Clement Attlee and Stafford Cripps, and the Leader of the Opposition, Arthur Greenwood.
Then the Foreign Office intervened. A secret Whitehall agreement had recently laid down in black and white that, whenever SOE contacted groups or individuals capable of exerting political influence, the views of the Foreign Office had to be sought and its prescribed line followed. In this instance, those views were so strongly against granting Lussu’s wish for a declaration that all discussions were brought to an end. ‘Any such declaration would run counter to the very definite line we have been taking with the Russians and with the Americans on the question of postwar frontiers,’ SOE was told, ‘and would at once bring down on our heads demands that similar statements should be made in the interests of the Allied Governments, more especially Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece.’31
Lussu’s project was shelved. By now he had sensed anyway that no declaration was likely any time soon and had told SOE that it was time for him and Joyce to leave for France without one. Each week of waiting, he said, meant lost opportunities before autumn storms made it difficult to get to Sardinia and Corsica by sea. ‘Everything is suspended,’ he wrote unhappily to his friends in America in another letter opened and read by SOE:
The War Office [he meant SOE] has supported me with all its authority and could not have done more than it has. Our political problem has been put to and discussed with the highest authorities … The reply was as follows: the Italian problem will be re-examined in full later … [But] without political agreement I should have found myself faced with a mass of difficulties.32
Cecil Roseberry would argue to the end that the British should and could have afforded Lussu greater assurance about Italy’s future: ‘although it is possible that the declaration might have been so vague as to have had no influence on his decision, it was surely wrong not to put it to the test.’33 Yet it is hard to see how any declaration could have been acceptable to both Lussu and the Foreign Office. Lussu had rejected the Atlantic Charter, saying something more explicit was essential. The Foreign Office, however, was never likely to have supported a more expansive statement particular to Italy. As Gladwyn Jebb remarked when spotting the bogus nature of Colin Gubbins’s a
ssurances that, when the time was ripe, an acceptable statement would be forthcoming: ‘the only foreseeable circumstances’ in which such a declaration was likely ‘would be when we were in the process of losing the war, and required the assistance of Italian insurgents more than those of Yugoslavia or even those of France, and were under no obligation to consult our American, to say nothing of our Russian, Allies’.34
Before the Lussus left London to return covertly to France, they agreed to keep in contact and were issued with forged identity papers and a cover story that they were ‘a retired homme de lettres and his wife’.35 ‘He is still prepared and willing to collaborate with us to a limited but useful degree,’ Roseberry wrote of Lussu,
and I am happy to say that his personal chagrin at the collapse of his hopes for closer collaboration has not affected his cordial regard for this organisation … I should set on record as a testimony to his strict regard for what he regards as moral rectitude that, having failed to receive the political assurance without which he considered full collaboration impossible, he has repaid every penny advanced by us in Lisbon, New York and London for his maintenance.36
Since Joyce Lussu was now wireless-trained, SOE also undertook to smuggle a set concealed in a suitcase to a contact in Marseilles for her future use. ‘Exceptionally hard working and industrious,’ one of her training reports had read. ‘She is very determined, backed by a fanatical dislike of Fascism.’37 In July 1942 the Lussus were taken by flying boat to Gibraltar. They left for the south of France a week later, covering the final miles aboard a little Polish-crewed felucca called Seawolf. Early on the morning of 18 July, the couple crept quietly ashore at Port Miou, a steep-sided anchorage fifteen minutes’ walk from Cassis.
Target Page 15