Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986)

Link to the Ventotene Manifesto (EN and IT version)

Altiero Spinelli was sent by the fascists into internal exile on the island of Ventotene in July 1939 because of his former communist involvement. Spinelli had broken with the Communists in 1937 and had been thinking about the problems of democracy when he came across works by Einaudi and by the Federal Union, which was very active in United Kingdom in the late 30s. It was as a result of this enquiry that he became a federalist as he writes in his memoirs. Spinelli wrote, with Ernesto Rossi, the Ventotene Manifesto as a call for a new Europe after the war.
The Manifesto was smuggled out to Rome in 1941. Walter Lipgens, the historian of post-war European unity, describes how it caused "a considerable stir in the many opposition groups during the following months and became one of the basic documents of the European federalist movement". These federalists in the resistance movements started organising federalist meetings from about 1943 onwards and together with representatives of Federal Union were the principal creators of the European Union of Federalists (EUF or later UEF) in 1947 and the Young European Federalists (JEF) in 1948. Initially these movements were broad, uniting supporters of both integral (social) and constitutional federalism and supporters of European and world federal unions.