Freemasonry has always been largely about networking. Roberto Calvi rang a bell. He was an Italian banker found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, the year I graduated from Oxford. I remembered that there had been some great scandal but couldn’t remember much about it. I imagine it all came out in dribs and drabs, but in The Craft, John Dickie explains all.
Licio Gelli was a fairly unremarkable man, on the small side, bespectacled, and manager of a clothing factory in Tuscany. He was poorly educated and had been a passionate fascist as a young man. He became a freemason in 1965. Two years later he transferred to a different lodge, Propoganda. Propoganda Lodge had been around since the 1880’s. After WWII, it became known as Propoganda 2, as it was the second most senior lodge in Italy. It became known as just P2.
Slowly but surely Gelli took total control of P2 and subverted it to his own use. He set about recruiting well connected people who knew secrets about other well connected people. Gelli wanted to know everyone’s secrets and control them. He was very successful at this style of networking. He was the centre of a web in which powerful men would ask other powerful men for favours in return for favours. In 1981 when the Italian newspapers printed the names of P2 members, they included three serving government ministers, over forty members of parliament, the heads of all branches of both civil and military secret services, the Chief of the Defence Staff and 195 officers of the army, navy and air force, of whom 92 were colonels and above. There were also five men from the Guardia di Finanzia, nine generals from the Carabinieri, and two from the state police. With such a network, Gelli was able to facilitate a tax dodging and illegal trading operation on an immense scale. It was also intent on battling the Italian communist party, and controlling the Christian Democrats. Gelli was a master of networking, but not in a good way.
I’ve only one more chapter to go, then I’ll post a review of The Craft in Readers Club.