GIACOMO MANCINI: For many decades one of Italy's most controversial politicians, Giacomo Mancini, who died on April 8th aged 85, was six times a minister in the first centre-left governments and secretary of the Italian Socialist Party in the crucial years from 1970 to 1972, when it was trying to reunite with the anti-Soviet Social Democrats.
Even at the age of 77, he was elected mayor of his home city of Cosenza, in Calabria, becoming the last socialist to win an institutional position after his party's collapse in 1991, in the wake of Bettino Craxi's disgrace. In that office, he was plagued by ill-health and trials for Mafia association, but lived up to his reputation as a liberal anticonformist.
His father, Pietro, came from the landowning bourgeoisie, but in 1921 - the year that Mussolini came to power - he became the first socialist deputy elected in Calabria. Giacomo Mancini studied law at Turin University. He did military service in the air force and when the Germans occupied Rome joined the resistance.
In 1946, he became secretary of the Cosenza Socialist Federation, and, after his father suffered a stroke, he was elected deputy in his place in the first republican political elections of 1948. Pietro Nenni's socialists were still united in a popular front with Palmiro Togliatti's communists, and voters gave a clear majority to the Christian Democrats. In the 1950s, when they were no longer able to rule alone, they still managed to keep control of the south,depending on the local mafiosi to help them win votes.
Calabria was no exception, and, in the post-Nenni years, emerging leaders like Giacomo Mancini played a prominent role in obtaining a bargaining power in the precarious centre-left equilibrium. As a minister in governments led by Aldo Moro, Amintore Fanfani and other eminent Christian Democrats, he introduced free polio vaccination, overcoming pressure from the pharmaceutical industries.
In 1966, he put the Christian Democrats in a bad light when he unmasked building speculation in Agrigento. As minister of public works, he made the mistake of backing a steel plant, at Goia Tauro on the Calabrian coast, when what the area needed was a boost for tourism. But he was instrumental in launching the toll-free Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, succeeding in getting it to pass through "his" Cosenza rather than along the coast. The route became known as "Death's highway", and many still ask why it was built so inadequately.
His efforts to protect the rights of intellectuals accused of favouring terrorism did not go down well with the establishment. Among them was Franco Piperno, professor of physics at the university in Cosenza, who had been a founder of the extreme leftist group, Potere Operaio, which was accused of being close to the Red Brigades at the time of Moro's kidnapping and murder. Later, Giacomo Mancini visited Piperno in jail, an act regarded as being in conflict with his role on the parliamentary committee investigating the Moro affair.
The repercussions of this visit, and Giacomo Mancini's parliamentary speech defending Toni Negri, another professor accused of terrorism, brought much criticism. Though he had been kingmaker for Craxi's election as secretary of the Socialist party in 1976, their relationship soon cooled.
Even without the future prime minister's support, however, he continued to be re-elected as deputy, but stayed out of the limelight during Craxi's premiership in the 1980s. He was defeated in the general elections of 1992, when the Socialist Party was collapsing; he was still proud of his political tradition and would later adhere to the European Socialist Party.
During his first term as mayor of Cosenza, Giacomo Mancini was suspended for two years to face curiously motivated charges of associating with the local Mafia, the notorious Calabrian N'rangheta. After a no-holds-barred trial, with turncoat local criminals giving evidence against him, he was found guilty, only to win acquittal on appeal and after another trial, whereupon he was re-elected in 1997.
After years of negligent administration, he brought Cosenza back to life, giving it new urban lustre and cultural vitality. Though he ruled with the post-communist Democrats of the left, it was an uncomfortable alliance, and his sometimes despotic manner brought new enemies, particularly when he successfully manoeuvred to get his grandson Giacomo, still in his 20s, into parliament at last year's general elections.
John Francis Lane Giacomo Mancini: born 1916; died, April 2002