CHAPTER 20
THE BATTLE OF CORSO TRAIANO
PREFACE: This article is
taken from La Classe, July 1969. It is an account of the Corso Traiano riot outside the FIAT-Mirafiori factory, which
proved to be a turning point in the development of independent working class
organisation in the factory.
_____________________
THURSDAY 3 JULY 1969
5.00am: Groups of workers and students gather at the gates of
the Mirafiori and Rivalte plants for the strike
picket. By 6.00am barely a single person has entered the factory, either at
Mirafiori or Rivalta. At Gates 1 and 2 of Mirafiori the police are out in
force, with wagons and Black Marias. Police Chief Voria
is doing his best to intimidate the workers and students: the picket lines are
repeatedly being broken up and pushed back to the other side of the wide avenue
that runs around Mirafiori.
A few scabs try to get in, and the police do everything
in their means to prevent them being stopped. Despite this no more than 5 or 6
manage to get in, and at Gate 1 they are immediately met by workers coming off
the night shift, who drive them right back out of the gates again.
1.00pm: Tension on the gates is rising. At every entrance the
picket lines are growing. Whenever the workers try to stop the few scabs who
are trying to enter the factory for the afternoon shift, they are charged by
the police.
2.00pm: In the area in front of Gate 2 the workers off both
the morning and the afternoon shift begin to gether,
along with a few hundred students. There are already more than 3,000 people
there, and people keep arriving. There are two big banners proclaiming “Tutto il potere agli operai”
and “Lotta continua” [“All power to the workers” and “The struggle goes on”.
A BRUTAL ATTACK BY THE POLICE
A hundred, maybe two hundred police, in full riot gear,
with helmets and tear gas, begin pushing people to the centre of the area,
deliberately provoking then and trying to isolate them in every way. The Police
Chief announces that under no circumstances will the march be allowed to leave.
2.45pm: People are still standing there when the police make
their first charge, brutal, with them using their rifle butts as clubs. From
this moment on, the charges follow thick and fast: the people disperse,
regroup, scatter and regather again. Police
reinforcements arrive, and begin to fire tear gas grenades. They fire directly
into the crowd. Nobody can breathe, and everybody scatters into the surrounding
fields. The police start grabbing people.
The response is immediate: the centre of the street is
won back again, and stones gathered from the bed of the tramway begin to hail
down on the police from all sides. They are driven back. By now the struggle is
reaching mass dimensions. Seeing that it is impossible now that the march
should start from Mirafiori, a new departure point is proposed.
3.30pm: Ten thousand people gather between Corso Agnelli and
Corso Unione Sovietica.
Then the march sets off. But when it turns into Corso Traiano,
the police attack in force, using jeeps to charge the crowds, and teargas in
incredible quantities. They try to encircle the crowd with a pincer action:
with Carabinieri on one side and Public Security police on the other. Now a
violent urban guerrilla battle starts, which will last right into the night.
The police, with their violence and their teargas, are concentrating on
preventing even small groups from re-forming. It is plain that they are
absolutely determined to stop the march getting together again: they must foil
any attempt at a repetition of the Piazza Statuto
incident.
In the two hours that follow, the demonstration seems
apparently to have dispersed. But in fact nobody has left the scene, and groups
of people are reorganising spontaneously, throwing
rocks, and then dispersing, only to reappear somewhere else.
4.00pm: Workers from the FIAT plants at Lingotto and Rivalta
start arriving. The workers and students are joined by people from the neighbourhood around Mirafiori; young kids join the battle,
women hand round damp handkerchiefs to protect people from the gas, and many
local homes open their doors to comrades who are being chased by the police.
5.30pm: The real centre of the battle is Corso Traiano. The wide avenue becomes the scene of a raging
street-battle: workers, students and folk from the neighbourhood
return to the attack, construct the first barricades out of rocks and almost
succeed in capturing Police Chief Voria. Meanwhile,
groups of comrades have scattered and gone back to the University, where the
Faculty of Architecture is occupied. The police arrive there with jeeps and lorries and prepare to surround the building. There is a
moment of confusion and uncertainty. Some people propose that there should be a
General Assembly inside the Faculty, so a couple of hundred people enter the
building. The police promptly fire teargas grenades through the windowa. For this they are attacked with a shower of rocks
and bricks from the people who have stayed outside.
IN THE STREETS, FIGHTING HAND TO HAND
Outside the violence of the police onslaught and the
violence of the rockthrowing increase. The battle
spreads out of the court-yard into the street, into the arcades and the
surrounding side-streets: there is tear-gas, hand-to-hand fighting, and some
arrests.
6.30pm: The majority of the comrades set off once again for
Corso Traiano, which by now is totally in the hands
of the demonstrators. People are still arriving. You can hear the steady rhythm
of falling stones. The police have regrouped at the end of Corso Traiano. It’s hard for them to surround and comb the whole
area, what with the building sites, the factories, and people’s houses.
7.00pm: The sheer volume of the teargas forces the workers
and students to withdraw. The police slowly regain Corso Traiano,
but barricades are being built in all the side-streets. People who are caught
are beaten up and loaded into Black Marias, Many police take a beating too.
8.00pm to 9.00pm: The battle spreads. The most violent fighting
is in front of the FIAT administrative offices in Corso Traiano,
in Corso Agnelli, in all the side-streets, and in Piazza Bengasi, where the
police are making absurd, insanely violent charges. The comrades respond to the
attacks by building barricades one after another. Three cars are set on fire,
and they manage to halt a FIAT car transporter loaded with FIAT cars, which
becomes the target for well-aimed rocks. Meanwhile, the behaviour of the police
becomes more bestial: they are firing teargas right into people’s houses. Vice-questor Voria appears,
brandishing a grenade launcher, and telling people to get back from the windows
or else.
10.00pm to 11.00pm: In Piazza Bengasi the attacks and the
rock-throwing continue. The police surround the square, enter apartment blocks,
and even drag people out of their own apartments. Sporadic fighting goes on
till way after midnight, with people shouting “Pigs” and “Nazis” as the police
drag people out of their houses.
FIGHTING CONTINUES INTO THE NIGHT
Meanwhile, in Nichelino, a
working class suburb of
4.00am: The fighting is still going on. The police are slowly
winning back the ground they lost, and begin house-to-house searches with
methods that are cruel and vicious. But still the people don’t go away. By now
the workers and the people of the neighbourhood are
used to the teargas, and they ignore it, taking it in turns to build the
barricades.
By now a hundred people have been held by the police,
and thirty of these have been arrested. Every one of these thirty was a worker.
Meanwhile, police reinforcements are converging on
_______________________
At FIAT the struggle has been moving ahead. People are
refusing to accept the conditions in which they work and live, both inside the
factory and out. They are refusing the unions and the political parties any
control over their movement. And they are organising autonomously to fight for
objectives that they themselves have decided on. Added to this, they are coming
out onto the streets.
It’s been twenty years since the workers of FIAT have
been able to show themselves in the streets fighting hand-to-hand with the
police and coming away victorious. Once again the bosses and their minions have
provided us with a chance to generalise the struggle.
The intervention of the police meant that the inhabitants of Turin-South were
ready to come down and join the workers and the students in their fight. But
the struggle also spread to many other areas of
[Translated from La Classe, No.10, 5-12 July
1969]
_______________________________________
Translated
by Ed Emery
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