Historian Terri Colpi specialises within British Italian community at the University of St Andrews. She has written several books on the Italian community migrating to Britain.

This particular chapter focuses upon the Italian immigrants within Scotland and the difficulties they faced with there community. Within the title, the author uses Italian as she writes “Senza un campanile?” which translates to “Without a bell-tower?” Within Italy is well- known that the campanile was rung for a communal service which gave an indication to when it was time to pray, it is was also rung on special occasions for example baptisms, weddings, funerals etc therefore it held sentimental value in bringing the Italian community together. The author, therefore, argues throughout the chapter that due to certain Italian churches within Scotland not having the campanile there has definitely been a struggle to keep the community close as it once used to be within Italy.

Colpi establishes that the Italians failed to authorise their own campanile due to reduced religious activity. She then continues this argument by expressing that religion was no longer the main priority for many Italian Immigrants within Scotland, many prioritized work commitments over religion and would often only attend church for family events such as weddings as opposed to traditionally attending every Sunday. Another key point the author establishes is that many of these Italian immigrants within Scotland had now introduced working on Sundays as the author states, “Because of the nature of their work in the catering trades often seven days a week, twelve hours a day there was little time for other religious devotions”. This is something that was newly implemented as this would have not been the case within the Italian community previously as Sundays were seen a sacred which employees would often ensure they would not work.  It was known that the Italian communities, particularly from Northern Italy became heavily involved with their own Italian cuisine and introduced fish and chip shops as well as ice cream shops. For example, the well-established Nardini family within Scotland successfully set up numerous fish and chips shops within Largs as their famous family ice-cream recipe is famously known throughout Scotland.

This article also focuses on the social community and religion as the author argued that both aspects were interlinked with each other. She argues that often a community will only tolerate its own kind of religion, for example, the Italians were known to follow the Catholic religion, therefore, they would often be known to only accept other Italian Catholics as opposed to other Catholics from other ethnic communities such as the Irish. Lastly, Colpi contributes to the issues of the “internal community” between the Italian immigrants that could be distributed to the division within Glasgow between two different types of Italians i.e. based on their origins of Italy. There was a clear confrontation between the two groups as they would actively avoid each other completely. This clearly played a large factor in the difficulties the Italian community i.e. a detached community. Overall ‘The Scottish Italian Community’ by Terri Colpi depicts the Italian Immigrants within Scotland and successfully evaluates some of the key factors of not having a Campiline resulting in the division of the Italian community within Scotland, and the chapter therefore successfully illustrates the Italian Immigrants within 20th century Scotland.