1918-1922: The Arditi del Popolo

By the end of World War I, the working class
in Italy were in a state of revolutionary ferment. Not yet ready
for the conquest of power themselves, workers and peasants by
1918 had won a variety of concessions from the state: an improvement
of wages, the eight-hour day, and a recognition of collective
contracts.

By 1919, however, a new radicalism had descended
upon the labour movement. In that year alone, there were 1,663
strikes across the peninsula, while in August the newly formed
shop stewards’ movement in Turin (the forerunner to the
workers’ councils) underlined the growth of a new vibrant
militancy that drew its strength from the autonomous capacity
of workers to organise themselves along libertarian lines and
which had “the potential objective of preparing men, organisations
and ideas, in a continuous pre-revolutionary control operation,
so that they are ready to replace employer authority in the enterprise
and impose a new discipline on social life”.*

In the countryside, the peasantry opened up
a second front against the state by occupying the land that had
been promised them before the war. The Visochi decree of September
1919 merely validated the co-operatives that had already been
set up while the ‘red leagues’ assisted the formation
of strong unions of day labourers.

However, 1919 also marked the initial signs
of capital defending itself against the growing onslaught. A meeting
of industrialists and landowners at Genoa in April sealed the
first stages of the ‘holy alliance’ against the rise
of labour power. From this meeting were drawn up plans for the
formation, in the following year, of both the General Federation
of Industry and the General Federation of Agriculture, which together
worked out a precise strategy for the dismantling of the labour
unions and the nascent councils.

Alone, however, the industrialists and landowners
could not undertake the struggle against the labour movement.
The workers themselves had to be cowed into submission, had to
have their spirit of revolt broken on the very streets they walked
and the fields they sowed. For this, capital turned to the armed
thuggery of fascism, and its biggest thug of all: Benito Mussolini.

Formation of the fascist squads

Immediately following the end of the war, there was a
veritable flowering of anti-labour leagues: Mussolini’s
‘Combat Fasci’, the Anti-Bolshevik League, ‘Fasci’
for Social Education, Umus, Italy Redeemed, etc. At the same time,
members of the war volunteer corps, on being demobilised, organised
themselves into an elite force of 20,000 shock troops and were
immediately put to use by the anti-labour movement.

This movement mostly comprised the middle
or lower middle class. Ex-officers and NCOs, white collar workers,
students and the self-employed all allied themselves to the fascist
cause in the towns, while in the countryside the sons of tenant
farmers, small landowners and estate managers were willing recruits
in the war against the perceived Red Menace. The police and the
army both actively encouraged the fascists, urging ex-officers
to join and train the squads, lending them vehicles and weapons,
even allowing criminals to enrol in them with the promise of benefits
and immunity. Arms permits, refused to workers and peasants, were
freely handed over to the fascist squadrons, while munitions from
the state arsenals gave the Blackshirts an immense military advantage
over their enemies. Ultimately, by November 1921, the various
hit squads were welded together into a military organisation known
as the ‘Principi’, with a hierarchy of sections, cohorts,
legions and a special uniform.

The Arditi del Popolo

To compensate for the shortcomings of the Socialist Party
(PSI – Partito Socialista Italiana) and the main trade union,
the CGL, militants of various tendencies, anarcho-syndicalists,
left socialists, communists and republicans formed, in June 1921,
a people’s militia, the ‘Arditi del Popolo’
(AdP), to take the fight to the fascists.

While politically diverse, the AdP was a predominantly
working class organisation. Workers were enlisted from factories,
farms, railways, shipyards, building sites, ports and public transport.
Some sections of the middle class also got involved, including
students, office workers and other professional types.

Structurally, the AdP was run along military
lines with battalions, companies and squads. Squads were made
up of 10 members and a group leader. Four squads made up a company
with a company commander and three companies made up a battalion
with its own battalion commander. Cycle squads were used to maintain
links between the general command and the workforce at large.

In spite of its structure, the AdP remained
elastic enough to form a rapid reaction force in response to fascist
threats. AdP behaviour was dictated by whatever political group
held sway in a particular locale, although most sections were
allowed virtual autonomy over their actions.

These sections were quickly set up in all
parts of the country, either as new creations, or as part of already
existing groups like the Communist Party of Italy (PCdI –
Partito Comunista d’Italia), the paramilitary ‘Arditi
Rossi’ in Trieste, the Children of No-One (Figli di Nessuno)
in Genova and Vercelli, or the Proletarian League (Lega Proletaria
– linked to the PSI). Overall, at least 144 sections had
been set up by the end of summer 1921, with a total of about 20,000
members. The largest sections were the Lazio sections with about
3,300 members, followed by Tuscany, 18 sections, with a total
of 3,000 members.

The AdP very quickly built up its own cultural
identity with individual sections proudly flaunting their own
logos and images of war. While the AdP as a whole was easily recognisable
by a skull surrounded by laurel wreath with a dagger in its teeth,
and the motto ‘A Noi’ (To us), the Directorate’s
logo was a dagger surrounded by an oak and laurel wreath. The
‘ivetavecchia’ meanwhile didn’t leave much to
the imagination when choosing their banner – an axe smashing
the fasces symbol! Although they didn’t have, nor want,
their own uniform, the average AdP member preferred to dress in
black sweaters, dark-grey trousers, with a red flower in their
buttonholes. Their songs were direct and confrontational as they
themselves were:

“We curb the violence

of the mercenary fascists

Everyone armed on the cavalry

of human redemption

This eternal youth

is renewed in the faith

for the people who demand equality and freedom.”