AVENTINE SECESSION

   The Aventine secession was a boycott of Parliament in June 1924 that paradoxically left Benito Mussolini with a solid Fascist majority in the Parliament elected in the violenceridden 1924 general elections. The secession was a response to the kidnapping and murder of Giacomo Matteotti, who had bravely condemned Fascist illegality from the Parliament’s benches. The nonfascist opposition almost to a man retired “to the Aventine,” one of the seven hills of Rome to which members of the plebeian party had withdrawn (in 123 BC) in their struggle with the Roman aristocratic party. The Aventinians from the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI) returned to the Parliament in November 1924. In January 1926, the popolari of the Partito Popolare Italiano/Italian People’s Party (PPI), on instructions from their party congress, also returned. But Mussolini insisted that they should acknowledge that the Fascist revolution was an accomplished fact. The Aventinians refused, and the Chamber, with a clear Fascist majority, voted to expel all 123 Aventine deputies. This left a handful of liberals who had not joined the Aventine Secession in an otherwise totally Fascist Chamber of Deputies. For the next several years, this Parliament passed laws that formalized the dictatorship of the Fascist Party and the state.