Pietro Longo

Pietro Longo (born 29 October 1935) is an Italian politician.

Life and career Longo was born in Rome. His mother, Rosa Fazio Longo, from Campobasso, was a resistance fighter and member of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano; PSI) who was elected to Parliament in 1948. Longo studied law and social sciences at university, and as a sociologist became one of the founders of Censis (Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali), a socio-economic research institute. Politically, he followed in his mother's footsteps by becoming associated with the PSI's youth wing in 1951. A member of the party's autonomist-reformist current, he supported PSI leader Pietro Nenni's condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and from 1964 to 1968 was head of Nenni's political secretariat while the latter was Deputy Prime Minister. and later (1985) as PSDI secretary, after he was revealed to have been a member of the clandestine Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge since 1981. He failed to be re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the 1987 general election and lost judicial immunity. Longo thus underwent trial for the ICOMEC bribe scandal, being condemned in first (1989), second (1991) and third (1992) grade. This last condemnation caused him to be imprisoned in Rome's Rebibbia jail, where he served five months of a sentence of two and a half years before being released on probation.

Longo was replaced as secretary of the PSDI by Franco Nicolazzi, but disagreed with his successor's hostile attitude towards the PSI and publicly regretted having endorsed him. He eventually left the PSDI in early 1989 and joined forces with Pier Luigi Romita to establish a new force, the Movement of Unity and Socialist Democracy (Movimento di Unità e Democrazia Socialista; UDS). The UDS was intended primarily as a device that would allow disaffected PSDI members to leave the party and adhere to the PSI electoral 'area', with a view to eventual merger. Thus, after fighting the 1989 European Parliament election on the PSI list, the UDS was fully absorbed into the PSI later that year, with Longo assuming a place on the party's National Directorate. His return to the Socialists, after a period of 21 years, ended with his conviction and imprisonment in 1992.