Alfredo Covelli

Early life and education

Covelli was born in Bonito, Campania. He graduated in literature and philosophy, in law and political science in the second half of the 1930s, and in 1940 he was a teacher of Latin and Greek in a grammar school in Benevento. He took part in the Second World War as an officer in the Air Force, and after a series of operations in Tirana and Bari, he received a decoration for military valor.

During his military service he met King Victor Emmanuel III in Apulia, which caused him to become a committed monarchist, a political commitment he would retain for 50 years.

Political career

In 1944 Covelli joined the nascent Italian Democratic Party. In 1946, he was a candidate of the conservative monarchist National Bloc of Freedom for the Constituent Assembly. He was successfully elected in the Salerno constituency. In the concomitant referendum he opposed the successful push for the abolition of the monarchy.

Leading the PNM

In June 1946 he led the initiative to unite the PDI and other monarchist groups, forming the Monarchist National Party, of which he became leader, retaining this office for the party's thirteen-year existence. The party won just 2.8% of the vote in the 1948 election but made major gains in the 1953 election, where it achieved the best-ever result of post-war Italian monarchist parties, electing 40 deputies and 14 senators. However, the next year, a major schism in the monarchist movement resulted in the split between the PNM under Covelli and the People's Monarchist Party (PMP) under Mayor of Naples Achille Lauro. In the 1958 general election the PMP eclipsed the PNM and the total representation of monarchists in Parliament declined significantly.

Leading the PDIUM

In 1959, he, together with Lauro, agreed to reunify the PNM and the PMP into a new Italian Democratic Party, soon renamed the Italian Democratic Party of Monarchist Unity. Covelli became leader of the unified party, while Lauro took up the role of party president. Irrespective of the reunification of Italian monarchists, the 1963 general election produced a disappointing result for the PDIUM, which won 1.8% of the vote, less than half of the aggregate result the divided parties achieved in 1958; the party elected just 8 Deputies and 2 Senators.

In 1964 Covelli also took up a management role in football, becoming an advisor to SS Lazio.

In the 1968 election the party's result declined further and it won just 1.3% of the vote.

Uniting with the MSI

In 1970, facing a decline in the monarchist electorate, he negotiated an alliance of the PDIUM with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) which was known as Destra Nazionale or National Right.

Two years later, he was the chief architect of the dissolution of the PDIUM and its merger with the MSI, which then renamed itself the Italian Social Movement-National Right (MSI-DN). After the merger he took up the office of President in the new unified party.

A faction of the PDIUM that disagreed with uniting with the heirs of Fascism broke away to form the Monarchist Alliance (now Royal Italy), which continued into the 21st century.

National Democracy

Main article: National Democracy (Italy)

In 1976 a conflict emerged in the MSI between conservative members (organized in a current called National Democracy) and supporters of Giorgio Almirante, motivated by his refusal to support the Andreotti government in parliament. When Almirante was confirmed as leader at the MSI-DN's 1976 Congress, National Democracy broke away and became an independent party in January 1977. The party took with it 9 of the MSI's 15 Senators and 21 of its 35 Deputies but few grassroots members, leaving Almirante in near-unconstested control of the MSI. Covelli was one of those responsible for engineering the exit of DN from MSI and became a senior member of the new party. The new party was of a conservative, nationalist, and post-fascist orientation but did not programmatically espouse the monarchism for which Covelli fought.

The new party sought to ingratiate itself with the political mainstream and distance itself from the neo-fascist MSI. However, its overtures to the Christian Democrats were refused. As a result, in the 1979 general and European Parliament elections, the party saw disappointing results, winning less than 1% of the vote on both occasions and achieving representation in neither the Italian or European parliaments; Covelli failed to be re-elected deputy, the office he had held continually since 1948. As a result, he announced his retirement from politics; National Democracy was wound up in December 1979.

Retirement and death

On 15 January 1998 he was appointed by Victor Emmanuel of Savoy to the office of Honorary President of the Council of the Senators of the Kingdom, an institution created from former members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy.

He died on Christmas Day 1998 in Rome. At his request, he was buried in Bonito, his birthplace. President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro attended his funeral.

In 2008, his personal archives and correspondence were donated by his family to the Chamber of Deputies, which made them accessible to researchers.

Electoral history

References

References

1. (2023-01-27). "Alfredo Covelli {{!}} Comune di Bonito".
2. Adriano Monti Buzzetti Colella. (2015-05-20). "Alfredo Covelli: un ritratto".