5 NOVEMBER 1988, Page 45

The ghost in the machines

Antony Lambton

AGNELLI: THE NETWORK OF ITALIAN POWER by Alan Friedman

Harrap, £12.95, pp.320

The trouble with this biography is that it only superficially concentrates on Signor Agnelli's life and deals at great length with many tedious ramifications of the Fiat empire. Alan Friedman took a chance in believing that he could paint a convincing portrait of a man he has never interviewed, whose friends spoke of him with affection- ate discretion, and who lives in a milieu, his comments show, he neither under- stands nor would ever be at ease in. Therefore, not surprisingly, Agnelli never comes to life and remains a ghostly figure without substance whose character and relationship with Fiat is changed with bewildering frequency. Another fault is that the author, a journalist and a foreign correspondent, has not — according to the dust cover — written a book before. If his literary experience has been confined to articles for daily papers it may explain why this book reads as if it was dashed off to catch a last edition. He also alas frequently descends into the unfortunate journalese which his publisher, Mr Nicholas Berry, persuades his authors is necessary for success.

Mr Friedman tries to present Agnelli as an evil influence in Italy, despite his association with the gigantic economic advances of the last three decades, and lowers himself to discussing the legitimacy of his brother to prove his point. Why is he antagonistic to a man he does not know? Why does he incessantly try to denigrate the results of a living monument of the prosperity of Italy? Why does he ponder- ously attack, him like a clumsy duellist slowly thrusting his foil here, there and everywhere, never getting under a passive adversary's guard? Why does he criticise in turn his dictatorial management and then switch to berating his advisers who, he says, pushed him upstairs to be the un- crowned king of Italy? Why does he then change his mind and hold him responsible for every business deal carried out by men to whom Agnelli had allegedly handed over his responsibilities? Such contradic- tory censures are as banal as the author's style — a severe criticism. The trouble with Mr Friedman is that, despite his journalistic accolades, he is a typical American innocent abroad, who conveniently ignores the lack of ethics in his own country's business world and sings the tedious old transatlantic song of a fearless idealistic youth shocked by the cynical business methods of old Europe. Historically, he ignores the impact of Byzantium on Italian life and morals and, what is a greater fault, fails to mention the determination by the US government and every industrial nation to sell armaments wherever they can. Who sold gas to the Iraqis, chemical weapons to the Afghan government, armaments to Iran, Ireland, India, Pakistan, etc? Who gave Israel the money needed to become a nuclear power? Trading has never been an ethical business and by its nature never will be, despite countries engaged in the traffic justifying themselves by arguing that if they turned down rich contracts they would be snapped up elsewhere. Perhaps an exposure of the whole international racket is necessary. Certainly it would be an interesting study in hypocrisy, but as money rules the world it is doubtful if it would check the manufac- ture of armaments which is today one of the economic props of states in both the communist and free world. Dealers only become moralists when their wares are used against their interests. An under- standing of this truism makes Mr Fried- man's attack on Agnelli and Fiat, in a chapter dealing with the sales of banned nuclear technologies to Egypt and the Argentine, look a little naive. His hush- hush story is rather spoiled by sudden recollections that 'the news emerged pub- licly at the end of 1987 in an article published by the Financial Times of Lon- don' and that the evidence about the sale is unfortunately ambiguous!

I wonder whether Mr Friedman would have felt so outraged if he had not been an American. He expresses no horror at the annual signing of huge contracts in the USA to Israel or to anywhere else in the world, or displeasure at England, France and Germany cutting each others' throats to sell arms.

It is unwise to attack any country on this subject in isolation and ignore that the size of Fiat prevents the proliferation of 'wild- cat' arms dealers who would sell their mothers to the devil and ensures that doubtful sales are contained by interna- tional opinion and the necessity for Amer- ican contracts. Unfortunately, the author chooses to personalise a worldwide moral issue by suggesting Agnelli is a wicked arms dealer when his firms are only doing in Italy what many world heads of state encourage their own industrialists to do. He has, of course, like every man, his faults, but he does not deserve a biography which fails to do justice to his qualities and achievements and presents him as a sinister bore in an over-detailed book, written by a dwarf of good taste.