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From Notes of the Month, International Socialism, No.56, March 1973, pp.4-5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Andreas Savonuzzi writes: Over the last few months police and fascist brutality has increased so much that even the foreign millionaire press has had to take notice. For the first time since the 1920s fascist squads are on a nation-wide offensive. Once again the club, knife, pistol and bomb are the weapons of these thugs, used with impunity, under the cloak of protection provided by the State.
While the fascist squads are on the offensive the repression against the left intensifies. Leading left wingers are being thrown in jail on the flimsiest of pretexts. The government is attempting to introduce through Parliament a bill to allow the police to search at will and to operate a system of preventive detention. People could then be held in jail for up to four days without charge, and without access to a lawyer. The four day limit is in itself significant. In Italy workers absent for more than three days without medical reasons are automatically sacked. A neat way of dealing with militants ... It is worthwhile noting that such a law had been introduced by the fascist legal code of 1926. The post war Constitutional Court, born of the Resistance, had expressly abolished it.
Violence is not new to Italian politics even in recent ‘less troubled’ years. One hundred and thirty seven militants have been killed since 1946 by the state or its agents. Yet and wave of violence which started in 1969 and which has accelerated today, marks a qualitative change.
In 1969 Italy was shaken by a massive wave of strikes for the renewal of the national contracts. Increases of up to 30 per cent were won. A shop steward type movement got off the ground in the massive wave of militancy. Revolutionary groups for the first time linked up with the working class vanguards, through the militant rank and file committees. The bosses began to see the red spectre of revolution.
Following a massive scare campaign in the popular press, directed at ‘red terrorists’, two bombs exploded in a Milan Bank, killing 12. Some anarchists were immediately arrested. One, Pinelli, died while being questioned. The official story was that he had committed suicide, by jumping from the window of the room where he was being held. The chief suspect, Valpreda, described by the press as the ‘red beast’, has not yet been tried. He was freed for the first time on bail in January, after three years in jail.
Since their arrests, the left has waged a massive campaign on their behalfs. Much has come to light. It is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that Pinelli was thrown from the window. Some fascists are now officially accused of the crime. The fact was certainly known from the outset, some State Magistrates are today on trial for wilfully concealing or destroying evidence.
What could not be achieved by provocation, slander and frame ups, is now attempted by brute force. Fascist strong arm men appear in the streets attempting to beat up workers and left militants. To the usual bomb attempts on the headquarters of the left groups and parties, is added the hunt of the individual. In Calabria, on election day, the 26th of November, a farmer was killed by knife wounds in the throat for refusing to vote fascist. Bombs are thrown on left demonstrations. Pistol shots are fired at left wingers. A comrade of Avanguardia Operaia was shot between eye and temple during a University assembly in Verona. Paper sellers and leafletters are brutally beaten up and knifed. The incidents are too many to list.
In all cases the police either looks on without intervening, or actually defend the fascists from counter attacks. The law never holds the odd fascist arrested by chance. The complicity is complete.
In Pisa for example, in an area which concentrates a number of military training centres, fascists receive unofficial military instruction. In the countryside south of the town an enormous arsenal of weapons was found, mixed with fascist symbols and pictures of Mussolini and Hitler. On the same day, in the town, the police charged a left demonstration held against a fascist meeting. A comrade was arrested. Thirty two hours later he was dead in his cell.
On January 24th, during a demonstration in Milan, a student (Franceshi) was killed by the police, and a young worker shot through the lung. The police, while admitting responsibility, talk of self defence, and pin the blame on a single agent, guilty of having lost his head. The facts are very different. The victims were shot in the back as they were fleeing the charging police; eye witnesses testify that many policeman were shooting; twenty five rounds of ammunition appear to have been used. The magistrate who unearthed this evidence has been removed from the case. Yet if the complicity of state and fascists increases, so does the response of workers and left groups. Time after time the fascists are chased off the streets, mass demonstration take place all over the country. On the occasion of the fascist congress in Rome on the 18th of January 300,000 workers took to the streets to prevent the black shirts from walking the streets openly.
The mobilisation to bring the ‘law and order’ government down is gaining strength. It is an essential step in the building of the Italian revolutionary Party.
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