A free thinker and anti-fascist

Giovanni Baldelli was born in Milano, Italy on the 22nd May 1914; his father was Italian and his mother was French.

Giovanni Baldelli

(Dangerous Characters documentary by Alfio Bernabei)

In 1929, at the age of 15, he was sent to live in France with his mother’s family. From a young age, Giovanni had shown an interest in Mazzini and had rejected fascism and its support for the monarchy. He became interested in Errico Mattatata [Malatesta]: an Italian anarchist propagandist and revolutionary socialist.

In 1932 Giovanni returned to Italy and was actively involved in anti-fascist activities. He became a member of Giustizia e Liberta and was acquainted with Giuseppe Farvaelli also exiled in France who played a prominent role in Giusetizia e Liberta. Giovanni wrote for the Italian anarchist journal: L’Internazionale Solidartie. 

On the 19th March 1933 he was arrested along with other members of Giustizia e Libera for anti-fascist propaganda and was sent to prison.  He spent time in Regina Coelia and was released on the 11th December 1933. He appeared before a ‘Tribunale Special’ and was freed due to insufficient proof.

Regarding military service in Italy, there are two versions.  The first being that he undertook military service for 18 months and the second version being that his father arranged a passport and in September 1937 he travelled to France to escape his military service. During this period, he contemplated going to Spain to serve against the fascists but the tide had turned in the Spanish Civil War and on the 23rd September 1937 he had arrived in London. During his time in Italy, he secured two diplomas.

He secured work as a French and Latin teacher at Frensham Heights Farnham, Surrey, and later worked at Marlborough Home Preparatory School, Reading and Beechworth House Southhampton.

Giovanni wrote under a pseudonym for Solidarite Internationale Antifasciste and served on several committees to help Republican Spain. He was well connected with likeminded people in USA, UK and France.

In June 1940, he was living in London sharing his accommodation with two refugees from the Spanish Civil War, Garcia Pradas and Gerardo Lopez.

Of his arrest on the 13th June 1940, he reflected, “Such was the fate of a proven anti-fascist in the so called war against Fascism!” In late September 1940 at Tatura Camp, he met with Honourable Justice Gavin Duffy to plead his case: he was arrested as a fascist yet he was an anarchist and anti-fascist. He continued to write to Honourable Justice Gavin Duffy during his internment.

In March 1943 the Free Italy Movement Italia Libera was inaugurated in Melbourne, Australia. Professor Chisholm of the University of Melbourne was the President of Italia Libera, Professor Massimo Montagnana was secretary and Dr Omero Schiassi of Melbourne was Chairman. Giovanni actively pursued these men by writing letters to ask for their assistance in obtaining his freedom and verifying his active anti-fascist and pro anarchist ideals. Dr Evatt, Federal attorney General had also expressed interest in the ideals and purposes of Italia Libera. The movement’s business was to secure justice for all genuine anti-fascists among Italians who have been interned.

But Giovanni had difficulty proving his anti-fascist leanings as he was seen as an ‘enemy alien’ who had been arrested for his fascist views. Contributing to the Australian Army Intelligence Office’s belief that he was a fascist, was his father’s position as a Major and an Italian Censor in Bolgona. “Although Baldelli claims anti-fascist views, this seems strange in view of his father’s high position in Fascist Italy” (A367 C76010) Giovanni’s letters detailed his connections to notable anarchists and journals, the names of referees in England who would attest to his anti-fascist views and in being included in Dr Evatt’s list of alien internees to be freed.

In a letter written to him by his father in July 1943, his father encouraged him to write his novel, From the Salesians to Regina Coelia: “write the famous novel… with all the description of actual life, of your impressions, your opponents and all that is inherent in the facts and events and you will be able to write spontaneously without having to follow determined rules".  His mother wrote to him in August 1943, telling him that the news in Italy was a ‘balm to your heart’. She also commented that now “many exiles will be able to return to their country, many families will be reunited and that there will be freedom of thought.”

He explained that during internment he spent most of his spare time for the community: giving lessons, conferences, organising sports and producing plays, writing poems and essays. Giovanni was involved in the camp wood and farm parties.  Of the theatrical performances, it was said that he kept busy translating or writing plays, ensuring their staging and reserving for himself, often, the main role.

On 16th May 1944, Giovanni was ‘released on parole’ and became a lumberjack in the Victorian bush working for the Forestry Commission. He wrote to Professor Montagnana about his impending release, “I shall have the joy of saying goodbye forever to the barbed wire and to the sadness and what they bring.”  He applied for release to enrol in the Australian Army but was informed that his application would not succeed. On the 23rd May 1945 he was discharged from the Civil Aliens Corps and his wood cutting work to await repatriation. Of his time in Australia, his record notes that he was ‘strong willed, industrious, intellectual with an excellent and clean record’.

In the preface of one of his poetry books it was written that upon his return to England in 1945: To survive, Baldelli once again made his 'return to the land' and took up work as a worker, an agricultural worker, as a ploughman, before finding the starched false collar of a Latin teacher in a private school. Giovanni continued his involvement with the social anarchist movement by writing articles during the 1950s and 1960s for Freedom: Anarchist Monthly. He was actively involved in the Anarchist Commission for International Relations. From 1968, he wrote regular articles to the Italian Anarchist Journal L’Internazionale.

During internment he rued that his literary work had always experienced an unlucky fate.  He had left large packets in France; in Farnham, England his work was burnt by Miss Anne Stayton and he left his work with a Welsh girl in Southampton, England who he could no longer contact. Any remaining paperwork he boarded the Arandora Star with were all lost. Giovanni was fearful that when he left Tatura Camp, his documents would be confiscated and in a letter to Mr PA Jacobs Esquire, Melbourne he asks if Jacobs might keep his manuscripts for him as Giovanni would like his work to be printed in Australia and post war he would like to remain and obtain a job as a teacher in Australia.

His crowning work: Social Anarchism defines social anarchism and provides a framework for its introduction and remains a major contributor to anarchist literature.  He believed in an anarchist society based on ethical values: without laws, without political authority, without concentrations of power. 

Giovanni Baldelli

(Dangerous Characters documentary by Alfio Bernabei)