Olindo Vernocchi

Olindo Vernocchi (Forlimpopoli, 12 April 1888 – Rome, 9 March 1948) was an Italian politician, journalist and anti- fascist, national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy and president of the Istituto Luce.

Commitment to socialism The son of a doctor, Vernocchi had enrolled at the University of Bologna to study law together with his friend, the young Benito Mussolini. It was he who first called him "duce" when Mussolini was released from prison in 1912. A few months later he took over the sole direction of the socialist newspaper from Forlì La Lotta di Classe

When Italy entered the First World War, he was called up to arms on 7 June 1915, and assigned to the Forlì garrison in the 11th Infantry Regiment; however, due to his party activity, Vernocchi was soon transferred to Agrigento, in southern Sicily, to the 5th Infantry Regiment.

In the 1924 Italian general election, held under the new Acerbo law, he supported the cause of a unitary list of the left in opposition to the National List of Mussolini, but the left parties ran separately. This grouping rejected any move towards rapprochement with the Social Democrats and the Communists; but in fact unable to participate in any political activity, he worked as an employee of the Phoenix insurance company; in 1932 he was employed as an insurance inspector at the company "La Fondiaria". The following year Vernocchi and Romita were able to go, representing the PSI in the Opposition Committee, to King Vittorio Emanuele III to ask for the dissolution of the National Fascist Party. The meeting took place on 26 July 1943, the day following the arrest of Mussolini, after the Grand Council of Fascism voted no confidence in him. A few months later Vernocchi was admitted to the national leadership of the party, which at the same time took the transitory name of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity, a name reconfirmed at the 1945 party congress. in which he was appointed a member of the First Commission for the examination of bills. His contribution to the work can be summed up in his support for some motions presented by the socialist group, for which Ernesto Carpano Maglioli was mostly the rapporteur.

In January 1947 he held the presidency of the socialist congress during the "split" of Giuseppe Saragat. He made the opening speech, in which he began by immediately revealing his unitarist position: "We have a duty towards the proletariat who trembles at the thought that our party might split up". After the separation, it was Vernocchi who ensured that the party resumed the original denomination of the Italian Socialist Party; Under his presidency the Institute, renamed "Istituto Nazionale Luce Nuova" produced a series of newsreels, called Notiziari Nuova Luce, from 26 July 1945 until January 1947, for a total of 22 issues.

He ended his mandate at the Constituent Assembly on January 31, 1948, a few days after having attended his last party congress, held in Rome from January 19 to 22. He died less than two months later in his Roman home.