After the armistice of 8 September 1943, as a central member of the National Liberation Committee the Action Party actively participated in the Italian resistance movement with units of Giustizia e Libertà commanded by Ferruccio Parri. It maintained a clear anti-monarchical position and it was opposed to Palmiro Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party's Salerno Initiative for postwar governance.[13] The party adopted the symbol of a flaming sword and in the immediate post-war period joined the government securing the post of Prime Minister for Ferruccio Parri from June to November 1945. As a result of the internal conflict between the democratic-reformist line of Ugo La Malfa and the socialist line of Emilio Lussu, combined with the electoral defeat of 1946, the party folded. Unwillingness of the party members to work with reviving political parties "tainted by association with Fascism" also resulted in the decline of the Action Party. The main group of former members led by Riccardo Lombardi joined the Italian Socialist Party while the La Malfa group (as the Movement for Republican Democracy) entered the Italian Republican Party.[14] The last secretary general of the Action Party was Alberto Cianca.[15]
^ abSteve Bastow; James Martin (2003). Third Way Discourse: European Ideologies in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Edinburgh University Press, Ltd. p. 74.
^Bernard A. Cook, ed. (2001). "Italy". Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 671. ISBN978-1-135-17932-8.
^ abErcolessi, Giulio (2009), "Italy: The Contemporary Condition of Italian Laicità", Secularism, Women & the State: The Mediterranean World in the 21st Century, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, p. 13
Website of the Italian Resistance Historical Society ("Il Partito d'Azione"), including in-depth bios, recent remembrances and selections from party documents.
Historical dictionary entry from Paravia Mondadori Editori, an Italian educational publishing house ("Storia del Partito d'Azione").