Fasci Siciliani

The Fasci Siciliani (1891-1894) was a popular movement, of democratic and socialist inspiration, which arose in Sicily between the years 1891 and 1893 and whose aim was the collective organization of farmers, workers and miners, especially in the areas rich with sulphur.

Foundation

Attempting to establish a new sort of organization in Italy, somewhere between the political societies common to the age and the trade unions, between traditional mutualism and cooperation, the "Fasci", led by Rosario Garibaldi Bosco (in Palermo), by the physician Nicola Barbato (at Piana dei Greci), by Bernardino Verro (at Corleone), and by Giuseppe de Felice Giuffrida (at Catania), gained the support of the poorest and most exploited classes of the island by channelling their enormous frustration and discontent with the existing order into a coherent program based on vast economic transformation and the establishment of new rights. Consisting of a hodgepodge of traditionalist sentiment, religiosity, and modernist consciousness, the fruit of a mature socialist culture, the movement touched its apex in the summer of 1893, when strong, new conditions were presented to the landowners and mine owners of Sicily concerning the renewal of share cropping and rental contracts.

Immediately upon the rejection of these conditions, there was an outburst of strikes which rapidly spread throughout the island, and the following autumn was marked by violent social conflict, almost rising to the point of insurrection. The heads of the movement themselves were not always able to successfully keep the situation from getting out of control. The proprietors and landowners finally asked the government to intervene militarily and Francesco Crispi, the President of the Counsel of Ministers (or Premier) at the time, declared a state of emergency on January 3 1894, dissolving the new labour organization, having its leaders arrested and restoring order through the use of extreme force.

Political and historical context

After January 1891, the governments which succeeded that of Francesco Crispi in Italy, those of Antonio Starabba, Marchese di Rudinì and Giovanni Giolitti, involuntarily demonstrated how the work of that Sicilian statesman had succeeded in providing such an organic and comprehensive, if not necessarily effective, set of answers to the social problems of the times that it would be difficult for anyone who intended to do so to change direction without having to go down a radically new and different path. Crispi had fallen as a result of budgetary problems caused, in part, by his excessive military spending, in part by his political adventurism, in part by his protectionism which led to virtual trade wars with France, and in part by his politics of industrial development.

The government of Di Rudinì, constituted almost immediately after the fall of Crispi, represented only in part a return to the old historical right. His policies would bring the Triple Alliance to its historical apogee, giving it a solidity and cohesion which would remain substantially unchanged until 1915.

Di Rudinì’s successor, Giolitti, was able to delineate a program which took into account the new problems and challenges posed by the industrial revolution. Giolitti would evidence a tendency to accept the implications of a new mode of political direction of the nation which tended to actually try to confront social problems while simultaneously attempting to reorganize the fundamental institutions and structures of political power. However, his administration was often referred to as a system of "small-scale piemontesismo" (meaning in thrall to the House of Savoy) and he very effectively represented an elite political class which had accompanied the transformation of the monarchy from a regional state to a national state and from, what might be called an administrative monarchy to a truly representative monarchy. "Giolitti is not Cavour, but he was born in the same community as Cavour: a man of strict fealty to the monarchy", it was said of him.

Elected deputy of the Italian lower house (or Camera dei Deputati) in 1885, he had immediately distanced himself from the policies of Agostino Depretis, promoting the existence of a sub-alpine opposition group which espoused a position of strong economic liberalism. While not being an uncompromising opponent of Francesco Crispi, he went on to also distance himself from him for the same reasons that led to him to separate himself from De Pretis. In the fall of 1892, he was elected Prime Minister by a large margin. Despite Giolitti’s best intentions, the budgetary situation turned out to be far more complex and intractable than he had anticipated. Giolitti was unable to confront the crisis through domestic spending cuts and other small-scale economies while safeguarding military spending, as he had wished.

In the meantime, a series of scandals involving the Banca Romana continued to plunge the nation deeper and deeper into social crisis, as it was revealed that the causes of the corruption had their roots deep within the Italian political and social systems.

In fact, the social crisis began to expand to include entire sectors which up until the time had seemed to remain immune. The manifestations and protests which had their origins in nationalistic and anti-French sentiment, and which were generally directed against the French embassies and consulates, were gradually transformed into authentic proletarian uprisings. In reality, the first movements of protest which simultaneously agitated several large Italian cities, were clear demonstrations of the existence of a diffuse discontent throughout the peninsula, illustrating the total absence of weight of the organized workers' movement and the persistence of a widespread and capillary anarchist influence.

In Genoa, in Messina, in Rome, and in Naples the manifestations lasted for several days, becoming increasingly focused on the government and Italian society. The "Party of Italian Workers" (or "Partito dei Lavoratori Italiani", the initial name of the Italian Socialist Party) dissociated itself from these actions and declared itself extraneous to the organization of these agitations, with Antonio Labriola himself calling the events "spontaneous anarchy".

The regional dialectic of the socialist party experienced a new, and decisive manifestation in the movement of the "Fasci" of workers in Sicily.

With the extension of the "Mezzogiorno" to include Sicily, in fact, the socialist movement began to assume a genuinely national geographic dimension because it was forced to confront the problems of the South and, hence, to come to grips with the complex reality of the entire nation. It had to cease being an exclusively northern-corporative entity in order to become a meaningful force in the history of the nation.

The term "fasci"had had a large diffusion in the Italian post-unification democratic movement open to workers. Numerous associations derived from the international association of workers had called themselves "fasci operai". "Fascio della Democrazia" was the name of a radical-republican-socialist conglomerate promoted by Felice Cavallotti, Giovanni Bovio, and Andrea Costa in August of 1883, and "Fascio Operaio" was also an extremely common name for many Italian workers newspapers, from a weekly magazine published in Bologna to the much more famous organ of the Workers' Party of Italy. Organizations called "fasci dei lavoratori" sprung up all over Sicily at the end of the 1880s as an expression of a much more intense participation of workers in the struggle for social and political rights and, along with the aid of radicals and republicans, in order to ensure a base among the masses for electoral and administrative struggles. These groups, however, began to assume a new and different character as a consequence of the extension of the influence of the ideals of socialism and, even more, as a consequence of the repercussions in Sicily of the economic crisis that invested Italy in those years.

There was no other region of Italy which had been hit anywhere nearly as brutally as Sicily by the combination of the internal economic crisis and the trade war with France in every sector of the economy. The crisis of the sulphur mines was heaped on top of the agricultural crisis, causing a general discomfort in the population.

The reduction of the outward flow of Sicilian migrants to Tunisia, as a result of the French occupation there, accentuated the pressure of workers on the land and contributed to an eventual explosion of all the contradictions which had built up over the course of the centuries.

Giuseppe Ravioli, who was a professor of the history of Italian rights at the University of Palermo during the time to which this article refers, described the intermingling of ancient and new forms of exploitation and oppression which were strangling and suffocating Sicilian farmers and workers. The ideology of the leaders of the "fasci" was a mixture of republicanism and socialism, strongly marked by evolutionistic and futuristic sociologism of the two most distinguished intellectuals of the island, Napoleone Colajanni and Andrea Rapisardi, but also influenced by the contacts that the major exponents of the movement had begun to entertain with Italian and international workers movements.

The founder of the "Fascio palermitano", Rosario Garibaldi Bosco, had had a major part in supporting the work of Filippo Turati and Anna Kuliscioff at the Congress of Genoa. He affirmed that the model for his constitution of the Fasci was the French "Bourses du travail". The movement did not uniformly and unanimously adhere to the principles of the Congress of Genoa, however, and many maintained their adhesion to anarchism while others rebelled against it.

The movement started out as an urban movement, animated by artisans and by the intermediate classes closest to social decomposition. A more combative impulse was impressed by the agitations of the sulphur miners. But that which finally conferred on the "Fasci" the character of a powerful and meaningful mass movement was its extension to the more regressive, agrarian zones and the participation at the manifestation of an enormous number of women and children which infused it with a notable sense of combativeness and enthusiasm.

The labor conflicts of the cities and of the mines came together with the agitations and claims of the farmers in the autumn of 1893 and hurled itself up against the institutions around which the dominant classes consolidated themselves.

The movement reached its greatest breadth in the manifestations against taxes, involving the lowest tiers of the city and the country, assuming a much more pointed character, becoming difficult, if not impossible, to control by its leaders.

The Giolitti government, meanwhile, had maintained a relatively benevolent attitude toward the movement. He had wished to create an electoral base in Sicily and a solid backing among the poor against Crispi. Nevertheless, there was strong pressure by the dominant local groups on their regional representatives in the government towards a much more decisive repressive intervention against the Fasci on the part of the central powers.

But precisely as these repressive tendencies were beginning to carry the day and when the scandal of the Banca Romana was about to submerge him, Giolitti, between the choice of falling out of power by repressing the Sicilian uprisings or reiterating and developing the original nucleus of his political program, chose the latter course and, in an electoral speech held at Dronero on October 18 1893, announced his decision to introduce progressive taxation on income and to increase the inheritance tax. One month later, he handed in his resignation.

In 1893, a new government with Francesco Crispi once again at its head was formed. Crispi seemed to many to be "the man for the situation". He had always maintained the belief that the bourgeoisie constituted the only class authentically capable of managing Italian society. It was their role, according to his view, to bring to term the real revolution and he identified in the unified national State that he had helped to found and reinforce, the living incarnation of this revolution. He was, therefore, the last person capable of comprehending even the possibility that some significant political and social push for transformation might come from the "plebs". The political program with which Crispi returned to office included the repression of the movement of the "Fasci."

The dissolution of the "Fasci" was followed by two thousand arrests. The trials against the major exponents of the movement (Giuseppe de Felice Giuffrida, Rosario Garibaldi Bosco, Nicola Barbato), carried out by military tribunals, ended with heavy condemnations which ranged from twelve to eighteen years in jail. The state of emergency was still in place while the President of the Counsel (Crispi) confirmed in Palermo a certain piece of libellous gossip on a presumed "Treaty of Bisacquino", the tiny center of Sicily where there was supposed to have been held a fictitious meeting where an accord was reached between the representatives of the Fasci and French agents stipulating that the French would support any movement for Sicilian secession militarily.

In July 1894, Crispi presented and had approved by Parliament a series of laws which substantially restricted the base of political power and the exercise of free association. Moreover, using the pretext of a series of alleged attacks on his person, he had approved a package of measures which he defined as "anti-anarchic", which were only partially designed to prevent assassination attempts, but were fundamentally designed to strike at, through the prohibition of association and meetings, the associative movement of workers. It was, in fact, the application of this law that resulted in the dissolution of the Party of Italian Workers in 1894.

The Rise and Fall of the Fasci Siciliani

Between the months of February and June 1892, the young republicans who were becoming increasingly favourable to a more revolutionary socialist outlook began to create in western Sicily, and more precisely at Palermo and Trapani, the "Fasci dei Lavoratori", associations of workers from various categories which were modelled on those that had already been formed in Messina and Catania. They would have had no idea that those small beginnings would eventually lead to the grand organization and mass movement which the "Fasci" would come to represent the next year in the island and in the whole nation. As compared to the movement that had been formed in the northern regions, the particularity of the Sicilian movement consisted in the fact that this new organization developed as a union of all categories of workers in a single disciplined organization with a unique leadership and an explicitly socialist orientation.

In other words, the "Fasci Siciliani" were completely autonomous of all political parties and powerful individual influences of the traditional democratic post-unification bourgeoisie. It was the first time in Italy that there arose a typically modern organization of workers which had received from Milanese workers a push toward unity and organization on a mass basis. In 1892, there arose several so-called "fasci" in Sicily, the fasci of Trapani, of Marsala, of Favara, of Riposto, of Misterbianco, of Motta Sant'Anastasia and of Misilmeri. The movement, however, still needed to bring in among its adherents the rural populations and this was strongly facilitated by the massacre of many rural farmers at Catavuturo at the hands of landowners and police. The members of the "Fasci" demonstrated a sense of solidarity and political concern toward the victims which obviously appealed to the rural population.

Some weeks after the events at Catavuturo, the prefect of Palermo sent several reports to the Minister of Interior, Giollitti, regarding the propaganda activities of the leaders of the Fasci in the countryside. Giolitti recommended the strictest surveillance and the immediate denunciation to judicial authorities as soon as any members of the movement could be proved to have violated any laws. The prefect gave orders to the sub-prefect and to the police to "surprise the agitators and collect evidence in order to have them arrested and refer them to the judicial authorities". The results were the first arrests of many members of the Fasci. But the difficult job of organization, of propaganda, and of action on the part of the leaders of the Fasci in the countryside continued.

The "Fasci Siciliani", from an organizational point of view, was considered an organization of the masses adhering to the principles, but autonomous, of the Party of Italian Workers with its seat in Milan, and dependent on a Central regional committee residing in Palermo. But it is important to point out that even in the Fasci of the major cities, such as Palermo, Catania, Messina and Trapani; there was never really a uniformity of principles and actions. Even though adhering to the Party of Italian Workers, neither in Messina nor in Catania had the Fasci proceeded to exclude the anarchists, as had happened in Palermo. And it was precisely at Palermo that that the first Congress of the Fasci was held in Sicily on the May 21 1893. Many major leaders, such as De Felice, of the principle Fasci appeared and spoke at this Congress.

The Fasci constituted an autonomous organization of the popular masses with their own insignia,Medals of order, uniforms and even a musical band which never missed an occasion to intone the hymns of the workers, their own local pubs and halls for reunions and congresses in which anyone who was not a member was rigorously excluded. In some centres, the material and social betterment generated by the work of the "Fasci" created an atmosphere of solidarity which extended well beyond the movement itself. Many workers, small proprietors, students and even public functionaries outside of the movement sympathized with its spirit and goals. It was this enormous influence which most concerned the political and judicial authorities and the large landowners (or "latifondisti") were terrified and offended by the new demands which renters, even outside of the movement, began demanding on the basis of the principles and declarations of the movement of the Fasci. The rapid and vast development of the organization of the Fasci is due, above all, to the direct intervention of the leaders of these organizations in the economic agitations of the workers whom they managed and inspired in the struggle against the exploitation practiced by the landowning classes.

The denunciations and arrests which ended up finally suppressing the movement were targeted not only against the heads of the Fasci but also against regular members and associates. Even though it was Giolitti who had initiated the Italian government’s attempts to put a halt to the manifestations and protests of the Fasci, his measures were relatively mild. It was largely with the second Crispi regime, as noted above, that the repression of the Fasci was accentuated into outright persecution. The government arrested not just the leaders of the movement, but masses of poor farmers, students, professionals, sympathizers of the Fasci, and even those simply suspected of having sympathized with the movement at some point in time, progressive democrats, anti-monarchists, republicans and anarchists, in many cases without any evidential justification for the accusation of criminality. After the declaration of the state of emergency, the condemnations began falling on the heads of innocent citizens for the paltriest of reasons. Many rioters were incarcerated for having shouted things such as "Viva l’anarchia" or "down with the King Umberto I". At Palermo, in April and May of 1894, the trials against the central committee of the Fasci took place and this was the final blow that signalled the death knell of the movement of the "Fasci Siciliani."

References

*Romano, S.F. "Storia dei Fasci Siciliani", Editore Laterza, Bari, 1959.
*"Storia d'Italia: Dall'Unità ad Oggi", Editore Einaudi.
*G. De Felice Giuffrida, "Mafia e delinquenza in Sicilia" - Milano, 1900;
*G. De Felice Giuffrida, "La questione sociale in Sicilia" - Roma, 1901.

ee also

*History of Italy