Office1: | Member of the Chamber of Deputies |
Term Start1: | 16 June 1900 |
Term End1: | 8 February 1909 |
Office2: | Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour |
Term Start2: | 1906 |
Term End2: | 1918 |
Birth Date: | 2 February 1868 |
Birth Place: | Biella, Kingdom of Italy |
Death Place: | Milan, Italy |
Occupation: | Metal worker |
Nationality: | Italian |
Rinaldo Rigola (2 February 1868 – 10 January 1954) was an Italian socialist politician who served as the founding secretary general of the General Confederation of Labour (CGdL) in 1906.
Rigola was born in Biella on 2 February 1868.[1] He was a metal worker.[2] He became a member of the Italian Workers' Party (POI) in 1886.[1] He left the POI and joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in 1893.[2] In the PSI, Rigola was part of its reformist faction.[2] He served as the municipal councilor in Biella in 1895 and as the director of the newspaper Corriere Biellese in 1896.[1] That same year, he was forced to exile and settled in Switzerland where he stayed until 1900.[1]
Shortly after his return to Italy, Rigola was elected a deputy, being the first Italian worker at the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy.[1] [3] He wrote about trade union topics in the newspaper Avanti and then directed a magazine entitled Vita workeria.[1] In 1903, Rigola lost his sight completely as a result of an accident during his youth.[1]
In 1906, Rigola became founding secretary general of the CGdL.[1] He resigned from the post in 1918.[1] In 1922, he cofounded the Unitary Socialist Party (PSU).[1] [2] Rigola launched a magazine entitled Il Lavoro in Biella in 1924.[1] He also headed a cultural organization, the National Association for the Questions of Labour, which was associated with the magazine.[4]
Rigola retired from public life in 1940. He died in Milan on 10 January 1954.[1]
Rigola was a supporter of the guild socialism developed by G. D. H. Cole.[4] He did not openly approve fascist corporatism.[4] In 2012, a biography of Rigola was published, Rinaldo Rigola. Una biografia politica, by Paolo Mattera.[5]