Back in the Day: Italy’s historic links to Scotland

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We often think of Italian immigration to Scotland as a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to the late 19th century. Yet people from Italy have been coming here for two millennia, and at the start it was not always with the best intentions – the first Italians here were Roman soldiers intent on conquest.

The country we know as Scotland was named Caledonia by the Romans in the first century AD. The name was repeated in the annals of the Roman historians of the time, and one of those historians, Tacitus gives a somewhat laudatory account of the Roman invasion of Scotland in the 70s and 80s AD. He had to praise it, as his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola was in command.

Thus it was an Italian who named the first Scot in recorded history. Tacitus tells us that Calgacus was the leader of the Caledonian confederacy of tribes which unsuccessfully fought Agricola’s army at the Battle of Mons Graupius in 83 or 84 AD. The historian’s son-in-law puts terrific words into the mouth of Calgacus: “There are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.”

It was the Romans who decided where Scotland’s boundary should be placed – Hadrian’s Wall, though they did try and build a border wall further north, the Antonine Wall between Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde and Carriden on the Forth. It was completed in 154 AD and abandoned only eight years later. The Romans went back behind Hadrian’s Wall and apart from a couple of abortive campaigns into Caledonian territory, they stayed down south in “Britannia” until the complete collapse of the Romano-British society in the early years of the fifth century.

Scottish dealings with Italians were few and far between in the rest of the first millennium though recent research has shown interaction between the Picts and traders from the Continent. The most important relationship was between the monarchs of Scotland and the Papal Court in Rome, with King Macbeth said to have visited the Eternal City.

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One Italian visitor who we do know about was Aeneas Piccolomini (1405-64) who as a young man was sent to the court of King James I, perhaps to persuade him to invade England to help out France, Scotland’s partners in the Auld Alliance. He recorded that Scotland was wild and uncivilised and had two languages but no wine of its own, though he reported that Scottish women were “white and beautiful and easily won”. During his stay he fathered a child but it died after a few days – helpful for his future career as he became Pope Pius II. He was also alive to Scotland’s troubled relationship with its neighbour, noting: “In conversation, nothing gives the Scots greater pleasure than to hear the English abused.”

It was not until the late 19th century that Italians immigrated into Scotland in considerable numbers. There had been a few craftsmen helping to build Catholic churches and chapels and there were groups of Italian makers of statuettes – known as figurinai – but as Professor Sir Tom Devine has shown in his work on Italian immigration to Scotland, contained in his book The Scottish Nation, A Modern History, in the 1881 census there were just 328 people resident in Scotland who were born in Italy. Yet by the start of World War I, Italians in Scotland numbered around 5500 and small but thriving communities had been established in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

There are some who maintain that many of the Italian immigrants were people who had been conned into going to Scotland as a stopping-off point on their journeys to a new life in the USA, but it is much more likely that after the first Italian immigrants arrived in Scotland and found a niche for themselves in creating ice cream parlours and chip shops, word was sent back to Italy that relatives and friends would find work here at a time when Italy was economically stagnant.

It often seems that whole villages from Italy transferred to Scotland, one of the most famous being Barga in the province of Lucca in Tuscany. It is known as the “most Scottish town in Italy” and it is estimated that 50% of the residents have Scottish relatives. It was perhaps the best example of the phenomenon in which Italians did not so much mass migrate as come in bunches from particular towns and villages and then supported each other when they got here, remaining quite clannish.

It is almost too patronising to say that a wave of immigration was founded on the Scottish sweet tooth and our love of fast food, but with Scots enjoying their ice cream and fish and chips, Italians moved across the country opening cafes in just about every sizeable town in Scotland. In Glasgow alone the number trebled between 1901 and 1905.

OFTEN these catering establishments were family run, with relatives helping to get them established. It might seem strange to us now with the UK’s hostile environment to migrants, but back then the English and Scottish people were mostly happy to see an Italian cafe in their midst, and since very few were licensed to sell alcohol, the strong Temperance Movement in Scotland in the first third of the 20th century was very supportive of the Italians.

The native population tended to call them Tallies though it was mostly an affectionate name. Though almost all Italians were Roman Catholic, the Italo-Scots also did not suffer the level of discrimination and downright bigotry expressed towards the Irish Catholics, and as people who were usually involved in family businesses they could not be accused of taking Scottish jobs.

Family groups dined together and the Italians had a reputation of “keeping themselves to themselves” while an important part of integration – intermarriage with other religions and nationalities – almost never happened in the first half of the 20th century.

There were problems, however. One of them was Benito Mussolini whose fascist triumph in the early 1920s saw him encourage Italian emigrant communities across the world to form fascist clubs. Scotland was no different and the club in Glasgow alone inspired such developments as the cultural centre the Casa D’Italia. Such was Mussolini’s grip on Italian mentality worldwide that many Italians in Scotland joined Il Duce’s Fascist Party, though very few aligned themselves with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

Italians who supported fascism were not alone – one of Scotland’s greatest cultural figures, Hugh MacDiarmid, flirted with fascism in the 1920s, inspired by the American poet Ezra Pound, but the rise of Hitler cured MacDiarmid of his fascination.

In the 1930s, the Italian community in Edinburgh in particular occasionally suffered dreadful treatment after the preaching of extreme Protestant politicians, but much worse was to come at the start of the Second World War. When war broke out on September 3, 1939, the Italo-Scot community immediately fell under suspicion and tensions rose between people who had previously been good friends and neighbours.

When Il Duce declared war on Britain on June 10, 1940, all hell broke loose for the Italian communities in Scotland. Italian businesses were smashed and ransacked and in Edinburgh alone, more than 100 people were arrested for attacking Italian people and their property. Eyewitnesses spoke of the ferocity of the attacks on Italo-Scots, many of them born here.

The following night the RAF bombed Turin and Genoa and everyone now knew that there was no going back in the war with Italy. The internment of every Italian man between the ages of 17 and 60 was a personal directive of Winston Churchill, and Italians were rounded up as “enemy aliens” and forced to work on war defences or to be transported overseas.

Which brings me to the horrific tale of the Arandora Star. In July this year there was a special mass and wreath laying – streamed live on the internet due to lockdown– in Glasgow to mark the 80th anniversary of the sinking of the Arandora Star.

On July 2, 1940, the converted cruise ship was being used to carry “enemy aliens” from Liverpool to Canada when she was torpedoed by a U-boat off Ireland, sinking quickly into the Atlantic while its cargo of human beings rushed to the lifeboats only to find there weren’t enough for the passengers and crew. It is often thought just Italians were on board – not so, as many Germans, including Nazi party members, who had been interned were going to Canada, too.

According to reports at the time, the German contingent rushed the lifeboats and that meant death for many of the Italians on board – some 468 died, including 100 Italo-Scots. Most were catering business owners or employees.

Historian Raffaello Gonnella from Glasgow said in July: “The impact was huge – every single Italian-Scottish family lost a relation or knew a family who lost someone in the tragedy.”

He is still asking the questions the Italo-Scot community want answered: “The Arandora Star sailed without any markings and was not part of any convoy.

“At least Red Cross markings should have been painted on the ship and why was such a prestigious ship allowed to make the journey alone?”

It was the worst disaster in the history of the Italo-Scots, and it took many families years to recover.

But after the war the community proved resourceful as ever, and with greater integration into Scottish society, especially in the field of further education, Scots of Italian extraction have played a vital and growing part in Scotland’s own “Risorgimento”.

There are now between 70,000 and 100,000 Italo-Scots living here, and some of them are famous names indeed.

Consider this list of Italo-Scots living and dead: the arts – Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Demarco, Oscar Marzaroli, Alberto Morrocco, Nicola Benedetti; entertainers and writers: Alexander Trocchi, Armando Iannucci, Sharleen Spiteri, Nina Conti, Rachel Sermanni, Lewis Capaldi, Paolo Nutini, Lena Zavaroni; actors: Peter Capaldi, Tom Conti, Daniela Nardini; sports: Lou Macari, Peter Marinello, Paul di Resta, Dario Franchitti, Chris Fusaro and Giovanni Moscardini, the only Scotsman to play football for Italy.

Not to mention the likes of Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow and Sir Anton Muscatelli of Glasgow University, and many more besides.