Wendy Ugolini

Memory, War and the Italians in Edinburgh: The Role of Communal Myth

The outbreak of war between Italy and Britain in June 1940 had devastating consequences for Italian immigrant communities in Britain, including the internment and relocation of many Italian nationals. This article explores the construction of powerful communal myths about the war within the Italian Scottish community and looks at how the dominance of a singular elite narrative has silenced or denied the memories of different groups within the community. Through an analysis of the life story narratives of second-generation Italians, this article aims to provide an alternative perspective, recovering the diversity and multiplicity of wartime experience. It also highlights the need to address wartime antagonism towards the Italians within the broader context of domestic traditions of anti-alienism.

Incarcerated Masculinities: Male POWs and the Second World War

Abstract This article serves as an introduction to the themed issue on Incarcerated Masculinities, providing an overview of the literature in this field, including both scholarly texts and personal memoirs. The issue addresses a variety of POW experiences and memories, ranging geographically across incarceration in Europe and the Far East, considers the representation and cultural memory of POWs in the post-war period and engages with the intergenerational transmission of traumatic memories in subsequent decades. This article introduces the experience, impact and legacy of captivity amongst men from Australia, Britain and France during the Second World War which are explored in depth in subsequent articles.

Introduction: Journal of War and Culture Studies

This special issue on ‘Silenced Mourning’ explores the emphases and omissions in mourning the war dead in twentieth-century Britain, a focus which permits a multifaceted exploration of bereavement within a single cultural context over time. Six articles consider the complexities of grief and loss as experienced or represented, with a specific emphasis on that mourning which could not easily find a public space for expression. The focus of this journal ranges from the bereaved individual to the immediate family circle, to the local community, and to the national community. The articles by Kate Kennedy and Oliver Wilkinson focus on the First World War and its aftermath; those by Linda Maynard and Lucy Noakes on the Second World War; and the contributions of Corinna Peniston-Bird and Wendy Ugolini trace memorialization from each war to the present day. Together these articles illustrate how coming to terms with absence and death was a cultural as well as a psychological activity. Silence is inextricably linked with, and situated within the cultural processes of remembering and forgetting (Passerini, 2006; Winter, 2010). Jay Winter defines silences as hidden deposits which are ‘concealed at some moments and revealed at others’ and insists that they must be examined as ‘part of the cartography of recollection and remembrance’ within twentieth-century history (2010: 3). The Italian oral historian Luisa Passerini has been at the forefront of theoretical reflections which acknowledge the importance of silence and omissions when addressing the construction of personal narratives (1987, 2006). Passerini describes the variety of silences that historians can discern, which range from the repressed memories of the silence of a people to those of personal remembrance. There can be no study of the emphases of history without a concomitant awareness of the silences that distort and dislocate, in narratives, in sources, in archives, in individuals and peoples. Michel-Rolph Trouillot explored the interdependence of the creation and silencing of historical narratives in his study of the Haitian Revolution (1995). Further recent engagement with the place of silence within cultural memory includes Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory. Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (1994), Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, Ruth Ginio and Jay Winter (eds), Shadows of War. A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (2010), and Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy, journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 8 No. 1, February, 2015, 1–6

‘Spaghetti Lengths in a Bowl’? Recovering Narratives of Not ‘Belonging’ Amongst the Italian Scots

By the close of the twentieth century, the Italian presence in Scotland had become increasingly romanticised and glamorised. This paper illuminates the ways in which Italian immigrants who arrived in significant numbers in the late nineteenth century were subject to racialising discourses, which laid the groundwork for the overt and aggressive manifestations of hostility endured when war was declared between Italy and Britain in 1940. By analysing interwar narratives of childhood ethnicity, this paper illustrates the extent to which the alienation of the war years built upon a pre-existent sense of not ‘belonging’ amongst second generation Italians.

Untold Stories of Loss: Mourning the ‘Enemy’ in Second World War Britain

Abstract Italys declaration of war on Britain in June 1940 had dramatic consequences for Italian immigrant families living within Britain, signalling their traumatic construction as the ‘enemy within’. Male Italians between the ages of sixteen and seventy who had been resident in Britain for less than twenty years and all those who had been identified by MI5 as members of Italian Fascist clubs were interned, with those categorized as the ‘most dangerous’ internees deported overseas. Tragedy struck when a ship transporting internees to Canada, the Arandora Star, was torpedoed killing over 800 people, including over 400 Italians. This article explores the ways in which the disaster was recalled within the personal narratives of descendants of the victims, reflecting upon how bereaved families endured their loss within a wider context of wartime anti-Italianism and how aspects of the grieving process remained unresolved through the subsequent decades. It also reflects upon the increasing memorialization of the disaster, which intensified after the interviews had taken place, and its implication for the author, as a historian working with personal testimonies.

The embodiment of British Italian war memory? The curious marginalization of Dennis Donnini, VC

ABSTRACT Ugolini examines the contested nature of Second World War commemoration among the Italian diasporic community in Britain. Traditionally, many ethnic groups in Britain use evidence of war-time military service as a way of forging a sense of belonging in the national imaginary but Italian memorialization tends to focus on the war-time experience of internment rather than service in the British forces. In particular, Ugolini assesses the communal neglect of the heroic story of Fusilier Dennis Donnini, a Victoria Cross winner of Italian parentage. She argues that the silence surrounding second-generation Italians who fought in British uniform reflects the durability of the concept of the ‘good Italian’ that prevailed in the interwar period when Mussolinis Fascist regime aimed ‘to secure the allegiance’ of diasporic communities to the Fascist movement in Italy. The configuration of the ‘enemy alien’ internee as the ‘good Italian’ within memorial activity reinforces the historiographic displacement of the experiences of those who served, and died, in British uniform. While Dennis Donnini VC embodies heroism and martial valour, his experience does not conform to the dominant narrative of war-time victimhood that, in turn, succeeds in diverting attention away from the complexities of Italian diasporic allegiances and an interwar communal elite compromised by it apparent support of Fascism.