CAMPAIGN AGAINST "FIAT FASCISM"
FALL 1972: The center stage moved to the FIAT Mirafiori Works in Turin, where an imperialist counter-attack was mounting against the new workers' movement. Once again, as in 1922, the imperialists had brought in the fascists to do their dirty work. This time, FIAT had hired fascists to build a spy network in every department, fingering rank-and-file leaders for firing or arrest. The fascists also worked as fists, harassing the movement, and starting fights as pretext for the police. Outside the plant gates, police and fascists worked hand-in-glove to step up violent repression.
Mass firings, suspensions and transfers by FIAT management without union resistance led to demoralization. The PCI reformist union began to collaborate openly with the company. In the crisis, the Red Brigades began to rally FIAT workers to resist. The BR urged workers to see that a war had begun, in which it was now vital to gain hegemony on the factory floor by crushing the fascist network of repression.
In the Fall of 1972, the FIAT auto workers contract was up for renewal. Gianni Agnelli, the owner of the FIAT empire, and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) union leadership, both worried about limiting union militancy, formed a de-facto alliance. A joint PCI-FIAT conference was held on "the benefits of the new technology of auto production to both management and workers". The bourgeoisie had launched a campaign, spearheaded by the center-right DC (Christian Democratic Party) government of Premier Andreotti, to increase utilization of plant capacity and to raise worker productivity by limiting strikes and reducing sabotage and absenteeism. Italy's economic growth had fallen visibly between 1969 and 1972 because of three years of wildcat strikes, slowdowns and sabotage. The revisionist unions played their part by launching a parallel campaign against "extremist" workers' demands. On the shop floor inside FIAT plants in Turin, management unleashed a heavy propaganda campaign against "political strikes" through the fascist union CISNAL, and SIDA, its own company union. All these campaigns had a definite negative effect.
On the nights of October 21 and 22, 1972, the fascists set off a series of seven bombs in Turin against trains loaded with union demonstrators going to Reggio Calabria in the South for a union rally. When the revisionist unions called protest strikes and organized a mass protest march against the bombings, the response of the Turinese working class was very weak. Inside FIAT plants fascist company spies and thugs began operating with impunity. The inability or unwillingness of the reformist unions to mobilize Turinese workers against the fascists revealed the growing political disorientation and demoralization of the working class caused by the PCI's collaboration with FIAT.
On November 25 the Turin revolutionary Left held its first public demonstration in six months, to protest the criminal charges brought against 600 militant workers, and to denounce the Andreotti government and fascist violence. The demonstration was violently curtailed up by police and carabinieri, with the help of fascist provocateurs, who had infiltrated the demonstration to start fights. Thirty demonstrators were held by police, 11 of them arrested.
On November 26, early dawn, the Red Brigades counter-attacked. Nine autos were burned, all owned by fascists in Agnelli's FIAT company police, the Guardioni. The next day at the big Rivalta FIAT plant, a BR leaflet announcing its tactic of exemplary punishment against the fascists was distributed.
The text of the leaflet is reprinted below:
Let's smash the fascists at Mirafiori and Rivalta!
Let's drive them out of our factories and our neighborhoods!The contract fight is in full swing and the response of FIAT to the first signs of struggle has been a declaration of war: Mirafiori has been encircled by massive and provocative deployments of police, there have been so many transfers, warnings, suspensions, and firings that we've lost count.
This is the way things are going in other factories too, like Pininfarina for example. The generally repressive climate created by the Andreotti-Malagodi government is the same outside the factories, as exemplified by the cowardly police attack on the demonstration on Saturday. Against the 600 criminal charges, against fascism, and against the Andreotti government.
What are our bosses trying to achieve? It is simple: a new dictatorship. To do this, however, they have to strangle the mass struggle inside the factories, divide the working class, stop shop floor demonstrations and picket lines, in short, THEY MUST INFLICT A POLITICAL DEFEAT ON THE METAL-MECHANICAL WORKERS.(1) This is the first step toward a general political defeat of the entire working class.
We must answer this strategy. We must build ourselves an organization which allows us to go on the offensive in the factory and the neighborhood.
Now everybody knows that a secret army of scabs has been working for many months in our midst, in the shops, in the different departments, and on the assembly lines. Their miserable services make it possible for FIAT to identify and strike at those who propagandize for strikes, those who lead the struggle, those who head up demonstrations, those who picket - who doesn't know about the spies hiding behind corners or big crates who mark down the names of vanguards in the struggle? - or the security guards who film the marches, who block the streets, who attack the pickets? - who doesn't instinctively nourish a deep hatred for the fascist bandits of the MSI and CISNAL who are always ready to cause provocations, to organize the scabs and the goon squads, to sell the heads of the most combative workers to the bosses? - and those pigs from SIDA, from UILMD, from FEDERACLI of the Trade Unionist Initiative who for a quick promotion would sell their own mothers; who hasn't on at least one occasion despised them as one should? - and our foremen and assistant foremen who plan, cover for, and take advantage of all these machinations, are they any less responsible?
These saboteurs and liquidators of workers unity must be hit hard, beaten and dispersed without hesitation. They are the legs on which reaction walks in the factories. It is those legs that we must crush!
An old proverb says that fish stink from the head, but to gut them you must start from the tail. And the tail of our fish are precisely some fascists who saw their cars go up in smoke the other morning as a warning...
Note: Following this action the Fiat "500" auto of the worker Pasquale Di Fede was unintentionally damaged. We promise Mr. Di Fede that the Red Brigades will fully reimburse him for the damage.
Turin, November 26, 1972 (2)
While the bourgeois press totally ignored this action, it produced immediate and heavy repercussions among FIAT factory workers. The BR had been silent for six months and had not been previously active in Turin. Their action gave the lie to rumors that they had been wiped out by police raids. It also put the fascists inside FIAT on the defensive. Someone was following them, keeping files on them, just as they had done to the most militant workers. A detailed report had been prepared on each one of them. They had been carefully evaluated and selected for retaliation.
The morale of the workers totally flipped. Three days after the BR action, in the course of a strike, a shop floor procession of 4,000 workers led by the revolutionary Left, all wearing red handkerchiefs, marched through every department of the plant, sweeping every scab and fascist before them. The assembly line shop foreman responsible for firing a worker was forcibly thrown out of the factory, along with another foreman - both with red handkerchiefs tied around their necks. There were marches everyday, and as they continued, scabs and foremen started to make themselves scarce. The defeat of Agnelli and the fascists was complete. Meanwhile, the PCI newspaper L'Unita continued to denounce "these actions extraneous to the workers' movement".
Defeated inside the factory, reaction tried to win outside the factory. On December 9, 1972, the Turin police brought charges against 800 workers. Many of them were charged with "kidnapping, aggravated by the fact that more than 5 persons committed the crime". FIAT owner Agnelli additionally fired 5 workers (2 of them PCI union leaders) and threatened to fire 30 others. While FIAT was carrying out reprisals, FIAT and the PCI-led FLM union signed an "agreement of understanding" which the workers, in a play on words in Italian, quickly dubbed an "agreement of surrender". The FIAT-PCI agreement promised that the union would oppose all acts of violence by the workers in the factory. The PCI hoped that by guaranteeing Agnelli social peace, he in turn would have agreed to withdraw support from the center-right Andreotti government, and revive the reformist center-left coalition. Emboldened by this agreement, FIAT management expanded their firing and transfers of militants, exiling them to isolated shops where they couldn't carry on union activity. One PCI rank and file union leader was exiled to a shop with an active MSI Fascist party cell in it.
The FIAT C.U.B. (rank and file factory committee) explicitly and violently denounced the opportunism of the PCI's "agreement of understanding". FIAT workers also forced the top national PCI union leader, Bruno Trentin, plus several other PCI union hacks, to cancel a public FLM union meeting, where they where to speak.
Continuous Struggle denounced the FIAT-PCI compromise while the PCI's L'Unita and the "Maoist" Manifesto group proclaimed a big "victory". While the union reacted to the firing of its militants with compromises, the BR went on the offensive against "FIAT Fascism". On December 17, 1972, six more autos of SIDA company unionists were burned.
The next day a BR leaflet was distributed in the factory informing workers of the action:
FOREMEN - FASCISTS - SIDA - SECURITY GUARDS are rifles pointed against the working class - Drive them out of Mirafiori and Rivalta. Hunt them down in their own neighborhoods! Make them feel the taste of our power!
December 18, 1922: The fascists with the criminal Brandimarte at their head, in a blind rage at the heroic resistance the proletariat was putting up against the emerging fascist dictatorship, unleashed their bestial fury on the Turinese working class killing more than 200 comrades.
December 18, 1972: 50 years have passed but the new fascists in white and black shirts continue to offer their dismal services to the new dictatorship of Andreotti and Agnelli.
The sacks have been changed but the flour is the same: the shirts are no longer black but today just as in 1922, the bosses seek to push back and defeat the workers movement, its organizations and its struggles, with the force of the State and its "parallel militias."
Every day the attack becomes fiercer, it takes on the character of a war carried forward by a managerial front which extends from the last scab to the prime minister of the government in Rome.
We are all familiar with the phases of this war: they are the political firings (the last 5 were on Friday), the denial of freedom of movement to the union delegates, the criminal charges, the warning letters, the suspensions, the physical aggressions, the arrests on the picket lines...
Comrades, as a delegate from Rivalta put it, our strength is great and terrible and we have shown it in the struggles of these last few weeks, in the processions which have been a clear manifestation of our power in the factory.
But can we continue to advance against the machine guns of the bosses without organizing our defenses better? Without equipping ourselves for a more decisive attack?
For now these "machine-guns" are above all:
- The SIDA spies; this school of prostitution whose membership cards are a license to scab!
- The provocateurs of the MSI and CISNAL, anti-working class fascist militia whose functions are espionage, division, aggression.
- The foremen and assistant foremen who organize the scabs, tooth-gnashing hyenas from the private zoo of the Agnelli brothers.
- The security guards; armed forces and cops for the bosses.
Well comrades, if we want to continue to use the mass force of processions, picket lines and strikes; to block the restoration of the old levels of exploitation and the revival of a "Vallettian"(3) climate; to win a guaranteed salary and the contract we want we must reduce these enemies of workers' unity to silence, we must hit them hard, methodically, in their persons and their possessions, we must drive them from the factories and hunt them down in their own neighborhoods, we must not give them a minute of truce!(4)
The year 1972 ended with a temporary slackening in the mass struggle at FIAT. The fascists encouraged by the PCI-Agnelli compromise raised their hands again. The percentage of striking workers declined, and shop floor processions weakened. On New Year's Eve, the president of the Italian Republic, Leone, a Christian Democrat, in the traditional year-end message to the nation, made a big point of denouncing absenteeism on the job.
The struggle that the BR had launched in fall 1972 against FIAT fascism continued through January and February of 1973, and began to take on the character of a real war. On January 11, 1973 an armed nucleus independent of the BR spontaneously attacked the Turin headquarters of the Fascist CISNAL union, beat up a fascist activist from FIAT, and destroyed a significant amount of stored fascist propaganda material. Less than a week later on January 17, 4 fascists armed with chains and steel bars attacked 4 workers outside the FIAT factory gates. Then the four comrades attacked were arrested by the police! On January 22 the mobile unit of the police fired on a picket line at the Lancia auto plant, wounding 4 workers. On January 23 the police in Milan charged into a group of students and shot and killed one of them, Roberto Franceschi. On January 27 police opened fire on comrades in Turin who were protesting Franceschi's murder. No one was killed, but 25 arrest warrants were issued against participants in the demonstration.
On February 2, 1973 FIAT suspended 5,000 workers and 20,000 workers marched inside Mirafiori beating up scabs and fascists and driving them out of the plant. FIAT management retaliated with more firings. On February 9, there was a huge workers' demonstration in Rome. After months of struggle, the militancy of the workers was still very high, but the union leadership was unwilling to take advantage of it to lead the workers to victory in the strike.
On February 12, 1973 the BR carried out their second kidnapping. This time, they seized Bruno Labate, the provincial secretary of the fascist union, CISNAL, in front of his home and took him away in a van. Labate was interrogated, his head shaved, and 4 hours later he was left gagged and without his trousers, tied to a pole in front of the entrance to Mirafiori at 1:30 p.m. during the change of shift. Thousands of workers passed by him refusing his muffled pleas for help, telling him: "Help you? Hell, they should have killed you!" It took the police 20 minutes to show up and release him.
A BR leaflet prepared beforehand was passed around by workers during the action and was received with enthusiastic approval. The leaflet's text:
This is Bruno Labate, provincial secretary of CISNAL, the fascist pseudo-union which the bosses keep in our factories to divide the working class, to organize strike-breaking activities, to carry out aggressions and provocations and to infiltrate every type of spy into the departments.
We kidnapped him several hours ago to ask him some questions in regard to:
- his responsibility and those of several other FIAT managers in recruiting Southerners to be hired through CISNAL;
- his responsibility in the organization of provocations carried out by fascists in collusion with the Carabinieri or the police like the recent incident at gate 17;
- the organization of scabbing in which Agnelli's foremen and Almirante's(5) fascists divide up responsibilities;
- his responsibility and those of CISNAL in the organization of the spy network in the shops which has led to the firing of many vanguards;
- his meetings with the Minister of Labor, seeing that CISNAL is secretly being allowed to take part in contract negotiations.
We have also kidnapped him to prove to him factually the falsity and absurdity of his statements to a rightwing weekly according to which there are supposed to be 12,000(!!) fascists inside FIAT and that CISNAL has influence at other factories such as at Lancia, Pininfarina, Cromodora, Aspera Motor, Frigo, Rabotti Viberti and at Westinghouse. We have seized him to make him feel with his own skin that the Turinese workers won't tolerate his bullshit and intend to crush every attempt by the fascist dogs to root themselves in the factories.
We freed him with his head shaven and without his pants to show both our absolute contempt for the fascists and the necessity of striking them hard everywhere with every available means until our city is completely liberated.
WAR ON THE FASCISM OF ALMIRANTE AND ANDREOTTI! ARMED STRUGGLE FOR COMMUNISM!(6)
During his interrogation, Labate collaborated with his jailers, gave them "useful information" about the responsibilities of Cavaliere Amerio in the infiltration of fascists into FIAT.
The following days, the BR distributed a pamphlet inside Mirafiori entitled: War on the Fascists in the Turinese factories, with excerpts from Labate's interrogation:
THE HIRINGS THROUGH CISNAL
For many months now the Left has been facing the problem of the hirings jointly carried out by FIAT and CISNAL for the purpose of infiltrating a mass of docile laborers into the different plant departments to carry out a vast anti-working class design.
Seeing that Labate is one of the fascists responsible for this dirty "game" we asked him directly how this is done.
Here are the answers:
"The most important agreements are made through the party (the fascist MSI) and the MP Abelli Tullio (a member of Parliament) takes care of it himself. It's through his efforts that the questions are forwarded to the hiring office where Dr. Negri takes care of them. At the section level there are several heads of personnel who make sure that those workers we recommend are hired into the sections of FIAT we choose."
"Some names?... Well, Cavaliere Amerio:... for body assembly there was Dr. Annibaldi and now Ragione Cassina; for engineering department Dr. Dazzi; for Rivalta Dr. Audino."
Which of you in particular takes care of this matter?
"It's the task of the company division heads."
Who are?
"Angelo Trivisano for Mirafiori; Ritota Piero for the body assemblies; Benetti Giuliano for engineering; Gabriele Mazza for auxiliaries; Antonio Barone for parts; Guicciardino Giuseppe for Rivalta; Domenico Polito for OSA Lingotto."
THE FASCIST ORGANIZATION INSIDE FIAT
You stated to a rightwing weekly that there were lots of you at Mirafiori or at FIAT in any case. Are you really convinced about what you said?
"Well... no, it's not that logically speaking I'm convinced of this... but try to understand that it's a newspaper... a newspaper always has certain propagandistic needs... and besides it was them, the ones from the paper who wrote those figures..."
Agreed, so seeing that therefore there are not so many of you we want to know who are your activists and your leaders at FIAT. Let's begin with Mirafiori.
"The leader at Mirafiori is Angelo Trivisano who works in body assembly. He's been the leader since he was elected to the commissione interna(7) in '68, which at that time covered one section: Mirafiori."
"Then... then there are Giuliano Benetti for engineering and Ritota Piero for body assembly who are the leaders of their respective section groups."
And who are your activists in body assembly?
"I don't remember them, I don't know if..."
Make an effort, since anyway we have time! So, who are your activists in body assembly besides Trivisano and Ritota?
"Well,... there's Cicilioni Giuseppe, then the two Dademo brothers... one is called Antonio and the other, Francesco... Then there's Obino Nicola... Romagnola Sergio... oh, yes, Conteduca and Migliaccio who were just nominated... there's Giacomini Pasquale, Manganiello... then there's Sant'Angelo Luigi... then there are other members..., but..."
Then let's go on to the engine (engineering) division. Beside Benetti, who are the most important fascist activists?
"In engines (engineering) there are about twenty of us. Beside Benetti there's Cavalier Ferraris, there's Cartosi Nunzio... then Tarullo Rocco, there's Sganuzzo Vito and Antonio Caruso... then there's Rega who IJ think is called Antonio... Barillaro I don't remember his name... I'd be lying... Del Sarto who was the group leader before Benetti - then there's Alderucci... Farmiggio Giuseppe."
And Masera, that fascist who gives the roman salute when the processions pass?
"I know a Masera who is head of the cleaning department, but he's not one of ours, he must belong to Iniziativa Sindacale."(8)
Now let's go on to the stamping department. Here's that elite group of provocateurs who were responsible recently for a physical attack in front of gate 17. What do you have to say about that?
"One of them was not one of ours..."
Then tell us about the others, were they yours?
"They were Greco, Mangiola and Meo. Greco is called Antonio, Mangiola, I think is called Saverio and Meo is called Cosimo."
There's someone else in stamping, right?
"Well, yes, there's Ragionier Festa and also Filippo Greco."
Now let's talk about Auxiliaries. How many are you and who is your group leader?
"Mazza... Gabriele is the group leader."
And who are your other activists?
"In Auxiliaries there are only a few, really, practically only him; there are three or four, but the others don't carry out any particular activity..."
Then let's hear who your representatives are at Lingotto.
"... but I can't remember everything, how can I... Let's see there's Polito Domenico and also his son Filippo, then there is Serafino Oldano... there's Sarchimich Stefano..."
And Scattaglia, have you forgotten him?
"You're talking about Fabrizio Scattaglia... now he's not at Lingotto anymore, he works at the Marconi building in the personnel office..."
And at Motari-Avio?
"There there's Paolo Sissia, | don't know about any others."
And how do things stand in the Parts department?
"In Parts I already told you, there's Barone, I think, Antonio Barone. He's the group leader, but actually he does everything himself. There are only two or three in all. But the situation there is falling apart..."
And in the Foundry?
"In the Foundry, it's Sebastiano Palma who represents us, but there also..."
Now let's talk about Rivalta.
"There is a company group there of about thirty people, maybe a few less. I must say that I don't know them as well because our union, being decentralized, I only see them at our monthly meetings. They meet with the internal section. Guicciardino Giuseppe is the one who mainly keeps in contact with us... The others have less of an opportunity to visit our union because they live far away. I don't remember very many names... among the employees there's Ugo Ugolini... I don't remember any other names... Michele Tancredi, Enrico Di Loreto; then Mattana, Mattana is called Ugo... But Guicciardino is the one who knows..."(9)
The PCI daily L'Unita denounced the BR action as a "serious provocation", and accused the BR of giving the public a false idea of fascist strength in FIAT, claiming that the BR had spoken of "12,000 Fascists in FIAT", This, as the reader can see from the above BR texts, was a bald lie since the BR had proven the exact opposite: that the figure of 12,000 fascists was a fascist propaganda invention. The L'Unita article also carefully concealed the widespread worker support for the BR Labate action, and the fact that thousands of workers refused to lift a finger to help Labate.
Manifesto took the same line as L'Unita and even went further, suggesting that Labate had kidnapped himself!
Continuous Struggle ("Lotta Continua") opposed the kidnapping and pillory of Labate as "irresponsible and exhibitionistic", even though three years earlier in July 1970, it had approved of the pillory of two fascists by IGNIS factory workers in Trent as an "exemplary lesson".
Mass worker violence raged inside Mirafiori, as the contract fight dragged on. A FIAT company newspaper admitted that some 800 cars belonging to management and their sympathizers had been sabotaged between November 1972 and January 1973. A hundred people were wounded or beaten, there was damage to buildings, gates, office equipment and furniture, and a sell-out union headquarters was burned. The Brigades had both led, and been part of, this wave.
While class war raged inside FIAT's plants, on the outside, the revolutionary Left staged mass demonstrations throughout Italy to protest the holding of the January 1973 fascist MSI party congress in Rome. The revolutionary Left also made plans for the mass disruption of the MSI congress itself. During the night of January 14-15, a bomb exploded in Piazza S. Babila, a well-known gathering place of fascists in Rome. And even more bombs were tossed against various other fascist headquarters.
FOOTNOTES
(1) In Italy autoworkers are known as metal-mechanical workers because FIAT is a vertically integrated industry which produces its own steel and fabricates most of its own auto body parts.
(2) Contro-Information, #Zero, October 1973.
(3) Valletta - reactionary dictatorial head of FIAT in 40s and 50s.
(4) Contro-Information, #Zero, October 1973.
(5) Giorgio Almirante - top public leader of the fascist MSI party.
(6) Contro-Information, #Zero, October 1973.
(7) Shop floor grievance committee.
(8) Trade Unionist Initiative - coalition of the social-democratic, catholic and company unions.
(9) Contro-Information, #Zero, October 1973.
