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CHAPTER 19
ON WITH THE REVOLUTION!
By Summer
1969, the capitalist press was no longer able to
ignore the fact that something was
beginning to happen in Italy
__________
"The new Italian revolutionary Left received its
baptism of fire on FIAT's doorstep in Turin
on July 3rd. For more than ten hours a crowd of several thousand fought 2,000
riot police in the worst outbreak of street violence seen in N.
Italy for many years. The demonstration took place during a
24-hour general strike called by the unions in protest against rising rents but
it at once assumed an anti-union character. Police prevented the demonstrators
from marching round Turin's
working class areas, so that the disturbances did not spread significantly. But
barricades went up, and it took the whole afternoon and the best part of a
night to restore calm.
"Italy's
revolutionaries are still a tiny minority, but their progress is evident. For
the past two months, unofficial strikes have been slowing down FIAT. Few FIAT
workers took part in the riot, but even the thousand who were there would not
have taken any interest six months ago. The notion that students and workers
cannot find common ground was disproved when the hard core of student
revolutionaries was joined on the barricades by large groups of young workers.
Even workers loyal to the union notice that pay increases won through the
unofficial strikes are much greater than those gained after regular
management-union bargaining.
"The revolutionaries claim the support, of tens of
thousands of industrial workers all over the country. A national congress of
revolutionary workers groups is shortly to be held in Turin to 'work out the goals of a new phase
of class struggle which must affect the whole fabric of capitalist society'. It
sounds like a traditional Marxist blurb, but it works. Unrest is spreading to
other FIAT plants and many other factories besides.
"To the official leaders of the trade union
movement this spells disaster. Repeatedly they have tried to ride the
revolutionary tiger by joining in the unofficial strikes and by proclaiming
huge national strikes. But these strikes have failed to win the younger workers
over. They receive only lukewarm support, while unofficial stoppages,
and possibly violent demonstrations, arouse enthusiasm. In Turin itself things have reached the point
where union officials dare not enter certain workshops.”
[Reprinted from The Economist, 12 July 1969]
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_______________________________________
Extracted from: THE BOOK OF FIAT: Insurrection,
insubordination, occupation and revolutionary politics at the FIAT motor
company – 1907-1982
Published:
Red Notes / May Day Rooms
First
published in 2020