Antonio Sonnessa, "Working Class Defence Organisation, Anti-Fascist Resistance and the Arditi Del Popolo in Turin, 1919-1921"
Abstract of a paper presented at the New Socialist Approaches to History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, October 14 2002
The Arditi del Popolo (ADP) was a popular anti-fascist paramilitary movement which emerged in the summer of 1921 to combat fascist violence. Thousands, from all Left political currents, catholics, fiuman legionnaires and the wider working class joined the movement. Between summer-autumn 1921 it was the ADP, rather than the proletarian parties, which was at the vanguard of the anti-fascist resistance.
The tradition of working class defence organisation in Turin owed its existence and vitality to community as well as political and workplace factors. In Turin the response to the 1919-1920 Red Guard and the ADP was based more on non-sectarian networks of sociability and solidarity, and an instinct for survival at times of crisis, rather than simply political affiliation or ideology.
The experience of the ADP in Turin recasts the relationship between the workers' movement and the wider working class. Large-scale working class defiance of the abandonment of the ADP by the Italian communist and socialist parties showed how resistance could be turned against the workers' leaders, particularly when they were held to have misunderstood the situation at grass roots level.
The ADP was strongest in areas where traditional working class political culture was less exclusively socialist and had strong anarchist or syndicalist traditions. In places such as Bari, Livorno, Parma, Rome and Turin schisms between Left-wing currents were more successfully overcome at times of crisis, while alliances sections of an ex-combatant middle class, traditionally held to be among Fascism's natural constituency, were formed.
Turin's place in the history of the ADP movement has been almost completely ignored. The PCd'I and PSI denunciation of the ADP has led to suggestions that the ADP in Turin had little impact or was simply a communist movement. However, while it was mostly communists who organised and led Turin's ADP, it encouraged a response in which participation and support was informed by the non-sectarian traditions of the working class. Socialists and anarchists participated in and held leadership roles within the ADP in Turin.
The experience of the ADP in Turin should not equate with a lack of impact or importance. By autumn 1921 the ADP in Turin had been broken up. Nonetheless, Left-wing militants and anti-fascist sympathisers retreated into the stronger communist organisational networks. Drawing on the traditions of working class defence organisation, communist leaders, while demanding discipline to the PCd'I, provided vital space for non-sectarian participation. The ADP remained symbolically linked to communist military organisation, in a direct attempt to appeal to the non-sectarian traditions of the Turin working class. From late 1921 the name given to the squads defending important workers' institutions was the ADP.