ABSTRACT
Politician and academic One of the central figures of Italian political Catholicism in the postwar period, Moro held the post of Prime Minister five times between 1964-8 (the crucial years of the centre-left) and again between 1974-6. Most importantly, he was also secretary of the Christian Democrat Party (see DC) from 1959-64, a period in which he laid the foundations of the ‘opening to the Left’ which eventually led to the inclusion of the PSI in government. He would later be kidnapped, ‘tried’ and ‘executed’ by the Red Brigades, paradoxically because he was once again opening to the Left and preparing the ground for the PCI’s entry into government. Intellectually able, meticulous and careful, he was nevertheless unable to take decisions quickly and was often justly caricatured as a Hamlet. His political speeches were always long and contorted and sometimes barely intelligible, although they generally succeeded in galvanizing support. During the Tambroni crisis of 1960, for example, he suggested in a speech that the DC and PSI should initiate a ‘parallel convergence’ -impossible in geometry, of course, but quite practical in politics-and a course which he successfully followed as Prime Minister.
