Eighty years ago this week Italian voters reject monarchy

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The referendum on the  Italian monarchy gave a clear vote in favour of a republic: 54.3% to 45.7%. The poll was skewed regionally with monarchist support concentrated in the poorer South with scattered support in the dynasty's home in Savoy. The abdication of Victor Emmanuel III, who was heavily tainted by association with Mussolini,  had failed to save the House of Savoy. Umberto II left the country for exile after a few days, having reigned for only 34 days.

France held an election for the legislative assembly following the rejection of a proposed new constitution. The new assembly was set to draft a new constitution. The centre right MRP party won the largest share of the vote with 28% displacing the Communists whose vote shrank to 26%. The socialist SFIO vote dropped to 21% so the parties of the left could no longer command a majority in the assembly. The MRP had campaigned against  the new constitution, claiming that the the abolition of the Senate to make for a single-chamber legislature would have opened France to dictatorship. This was aimed at the Communists who had been the most vocal supporters of the rejected constitution.

The British government announced a scheme for the extension of wartime conscription into peacetime. Men called up for service in 1947 would serve a fixed term of two years and this period would fall progressively for subsequent groups, ending up at 18 months for  those beginning their service in December 1948. The rules would be tightened to reduce the number of exemptions and deferments. After the First World War conscription had not been abolished until 1920. Bureaucratic inertia was the chief driver, but the Cold War had clearly begun.  

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