Praxis urbaine: Notes on urban struggles in Italy

U r b a n p r a x i s

Prax i s urbaine

Notes on urban struggles in Italy

by Piero Della Seta

Cet article critique le point de vue avanci- par certains grouper italiens, selon lequel la lutte urbaine sc produirait dans un cadre distinct de celui des conflits au travail et posstderait un potentiel politique plus grand que ces derniers. La lutte urbaine a t t t au centre de la croissance du mouvement ouvrier dans I’Italie de I’aprPs-guerre. L’article remonte ensuite aux racines historiques de CK phenomtne et trouve une signification toute particulitre dans la periode de la rksistancc anti-fasciste et dans la toute rtcente pCriode historique. Cet expose est illustrP par une documentation d’actualit; et par Id discussion d’un grand Pventail de cas dc lutte urbaine. On y avancc que le mouvement ouvrier (c’est i dire les partis officiels et les syndicats), ont donne i la lutte urbaine une perspective historique et Line ampleur nationalc, la transformant en un vi-ritable mouvement et faismt d’elle le moteur de rtformes.

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What has been the role of urban struggles in Italy in the last thirty years? According to some, these struggles developed without the workers’ movement either planning or predicting them, that is, largely outside, even against, that movement. They were, in this view, the result of the events of 1968-more correctly, 1969 in Italy-and of the political movements that developed a t that conjuncture. I t is said that the workers’ movement lacked both theoretical and strategic strength and because of this it failed to relate these struggles to those in the factory. The claim is also made that marxist research has neglected this field and thus has been unable to provide a theory capable of producing an effective intervention in these struggles with respect to ‘the changes that have taken place in the composition of capital, in the social formation, and in the strategy of the dominant power bloc’.’ But are these judgements valid?

Urban struggles and the workers’ movement

See, in particular, Bottero (1975). and the introduction by Neri Braulin and Gianni Seudo to Castells (1975). See also Pergola (1972-4; 1972-3), Ginotempo (197j), Bondioli (1974), and the introduction to Daolio (1974).

303 N o t e s on urban stri4‘q,les in I ta ly

I t would be useful a t this point to raise a question to which we shall return later. The term ‘urban struggles’ is not a familiar one in the Italian workers’ movement. The organizations of the historical left, much prefer to speak of the development of mass struggles in the city as well as in the country because they have emphasized unity, and have advocated politics that were valid for the whole nation, notjust for certain zones or parts of i t . The expression ‘urban struggles’ was introduced by the organizations of the ‘new left’ which grew out of the events of 1960. And, although less so in Italy, than elsewhere, the term already had a precise political content, reflecting thatof those groups which had had no contact with the countryside. Also they underestimated, or did not acknowledge, the role of class struggle in the factories. This was because they thought that the working class had been coopted via its reformist leadership-or because they were unable to enter into factory struggles, or for both reasons. As a result the groups had to base their revolutionary theory on those social strata they mainly represented: intellectuals, the fringes of the middle classes and the urban subproletariat.

Such’opinion holds that urban struggles are an alternative or substitute form of action rather than something which adds to and can be integrated with the working-class fight. They aim to fill the gap left by the reformist parties as they pursue their politics of integration into the system. They are struggles that elevate the social a t the expense of the political and that arc counterposed to workers’ struggles in a manifestly ‘third world’ way. (The country versus the city; the revolution as the work of the ‘consumer’, the ‘tenant’, the ‘subproletariat’, ‘marginal groups’, because the factory worker is no longer capable of carrying it through; urban movements as the only possible means of creating a rupture in the system.)

However, it is true that urban areas, in a period of strong industrial expansion and intense industrialization, with a regime that allows the maximum space for private appropriation and profit through the mechanisms of the use and transformation of territory, do constitute a privileged terrain for the accumulation ofsuper profits by capital. So urban struggles are a specific area of conflict between capitalism and the workers’ movement that challenges it. It is therefore right to investigate the stages and modifications that have occurred in the course of this conflict.

Actually, urban struggles-for housing, for improvements within local administration, for better living conditions, for the democratic management ofland (that is, struggles in which the working class and its allies strive for united action not directly a t the workplace and around organizational problems associated with it , but in the areas where they are forced to live, and around problems of local organization) have had anything but a secondary importance in the post-war history of the democratic movement. They have contributed greatly to a definition of some of the fundamental characteristics of Italian democracy which is based on a broad articulation of decentralized, local powers. In fact, i t is difficult, without realizing this, to explain how in a country like Italy the workers’ movement was able to win positions of strength and gain its current prestige

Piero Della Seta 305

given that thirty years ago it was in a minority and that even later it was concentrated in a restricted area of the country-the so-called industrial triangle. And i t certainly would not have been able to exert a widespread, if uneven, influence over the whole of the country, without a solid set of struggles waged outside the factory behind it. Above all there were struggles in the country among the peasant masses, but there were also urban struggles. These involved general political battles (and ones for administrative objectives of course) but they also included campaigns on social problems. Because of its size, i t s particular social composition, and its specific function as the capital city, Rome is one of the best examples in supporting these contentions.

In Rome, despite the absence of a strong concentration of workers, the PCI and PSI have managed to gain positions of exceptional prominence, increasing their share of the vote from 23.3% in 1946 to 44.3% in 1976. They have maintained and consolidated their influence, especially on the outskirts of the city in the band of borgatc; an area characterized by social upheaval caused by the uncertainty and the insecurity of employment.

An election balance sheet, like the Roman one, where there have been systematic gains over the past 30 years, is unthinkable without background of struggles for living conditions, and for ways of organizing and running the local administration. In Rome, urban struggle is one of the principal areas in which the workers’ movement has been involved since the Liber- ation, as the official documents and resolutions of the parties of the left and the unions demonstrate.

The reasons for this particular development are pinpointed by several historical situations in which the Italian workers’ movement was actively involved. The first of these is that represented by the niunicipal tradition which has centuries of history behind it. This tradition had to a certain extent resisted fascism. (The law of 1033 relating to local and provincial councils-still in force today-had not been able to wipe out the local councils although naturally it had eliminated elected administration, and there was significant decentralization of authority.) I t had also created particularly favourable conditions for the development of an ‘articulated’ movement. The modern industrial revolution was concentrated in a single area of national territory and was born out of an agreement between the bourgeoisie and landowners, which a t least facilitated a parallel agreement between the industrial proletariat and the peasant movement, thus freeing the workers’ movement from closed sectarianism. Also the expansive phase of Italian capitalism and the classic phenomena it brought with it-heavy urbanization and congestion, insufficient services, etc.-occurred a t a time when the workers’ movement was already politically mature and had the capacity to organize and direct demands related to these factors.

But, above all, the important factor was the specific and orginal line the workers’ movement presented nationally-at least from the moment of antifascist struggle. Urban struggles found their first expression in the popular unity of the Resistance; a mass movement of strong social inspiration, in the course of which, initiatives relating to civil society and to the

306 Notes on urban struggles i n I taly

survival of the population were increasingly interlinked with military aims. This was especially true in the last months of the occupation and i t led to popular democratic forms of government in some of the liberated zones of the north. So it was not surprising that in the great cities of the north and the centre, a continuous red presence united the two phases of the antifascist struggle and the first battles for reconstruction. The organizations that presided over the liberation struggle, those that undertook it, and afterwards those that mobilized the people for the solution of social problems seemed to unite in a single process. As records ofthe Roman experience, the documents included below provide a fine testimony; the first is taken from the clandestine press, the second from the records of a protagonist of the period.

General strike of protest against starvation arid the brirtality of the eneniy (L’Unitd, 13 A p r i l 1944):

The tragic situation of the Roman people gets worse every day. The newspapers report constant increases in unemployment, increasing starvation of the workers, sharp price rises, growing scarcity of basic foodstuffs, less and less adjustment of public services (transport, gas, water, etc.) to the needs of the population. The occupying forces and their fascist lackeys respond with a vile press campaign (part of an organized move) for the exploitation of the city.

But the evidence is increasing. The Roman mases will not put up with passively advancing to certain death m y more. And they will not be deceived by the enemy’s tactics. The shouts of protest from the factories and offices are getting stronger and increasing in number. (Those who follow the reports in Vocc dei Lavorntori can see this for themselves.) N o w they often develop into actions designed to enforce their vital, urgent demands. But a much fiercer fighting spirit is also obvious in the masses. Partially as a result of news-sheets, there are daily episodes in many city district$- popular demonstrations against starvation, disturbances by those who have been evacuated, more and more energetic protests against the arrogance of the enemy, open rebellion against his brutal outrages. The victory of the bread by the women of Borgo Pio, got by an onslaught by main force against a German lorry, and the demonstration at the Palace ofJustice against the savage massacre of 14 March deserve special notice.

But even ifthey have enormous significance as a symptom ofthe state of mind ofthe Roman masses, and even if they are preparations for more decisive initiatives, they can’t-given the tragic state of affairs here in Rome-change the general situation much.

I t is becoming increasingly clear to the Roman people that it’s only by welding these spontaneous, fragmented, isolated actions into a single coherent whole that real results will be achieved . . . moving from partial protests in the factories, on the streets, from rallies and temporary work stoppages, to ‘a general strike of protest’. The strike is a powerful weapon in the hands of the masses when they know how to use it with unity and determination. I t really could be the new and decisive factor in Rome’s tragic situation. Everyone must participate in the general strike; they must stop work for the day and for the period oftime that is decided. Every worker in the city from those who work in the public services to office workers, those who work in schools, in entertain- ment halls etc.-everyone must be associated with it. This will show the occupying forces that the Romans have no intention of waiting passively to die of hunger, o r of suffering their outrages any more.

The general strike, a peaceful strike, must show the enemy the capabilities and the decisiveness of the popular masses as well as their will to go on, if their demands are not met, to a general, insurrectional strike. That is, to an armed strike, to revolt.

It is up to the Union Committee of Agitation, which through its secret committees in the factories, in the streets, in the local districts, exercises a united control over all Roman workers, to fix the time and the exact concerns of the strike. The Roman

Piero Del la Scta 307

Committee for National Liberation will give every support to every Roman citizen, of every profession and every social class to draw up united and in order around the Committee for Agitation. Always keep in mind the feeling of solidarity that is contained in the slogan ‘All for one, one for all’.

By o u r solidarity, we must shatter any enemy attempts to divide the people by giving partial concessions to this group or that group of workers. These concessions bring no change in the general situation and have one aim: to weaken the combined actionr of the masses.

The Roman people’s future is in their own hands today as never before, i t behoves everyone to show himself ready to fight and win for the salvation of all. In this way he will save himself from death and his city from destruction.

The situafioti in Rorne after 4 J u n e 1944 Cfrom the book by Nicold Licata ( 1 9 7 7 ) ) ~ Discontent in the population made them irritated m d disorderly; acts of violence

and disturbances in the rquarec were common. The locdl centre5 of National Liberation were created to bring a bit of order to things. The Torpignattara group included the tram driver Bardini of PCI, Signor Macerates1 from IIC and me (PSI) ds president. I retigned about the end of July 1945 becduse I was taken up with my duties of party organization through the ‘Roman Socialist Union’, the ta rkr of the leading Committee of ANPI in the province, and by the local branch of the PSI, where I was elected secretary by acclamation.

The duties of these ‘local liberation centres’ were quite delicate and time-consuming, especially in the period straight after the Germans and the fascist chiefs had fled from Rome. The accumulated hatred of yearr, thc pain of a war not wanted but suffered by most Italians, the disappointment of a war that according to the fascist buffoon would only last a few weeks but had gone on for almost four years, the illusion that Italian soil would never be the theatre of exchange of warmongert, and yet it had suffered the Nazis, and now the arrival ofthe English and the Americans and their alliec, the fear of the consequences of a war that had at i ts sad epilogue for the Italian people, a painful fratricidal struggle, ail of this had created a state of mind-one of intolerance, impatience, reactions against everyone and everything. Corruption and brutality, theft, robberies, hunger and misery, the rampage of the black market, the devastation of the military occupation, the almost total lack of essential services like water, transport, electricity, housing, schools, public health, had taken forms of exaggerated virulence that exploded in violent actions.

The anarchy and moral deterioration produced by fascism and its filthy war had produced alarming chaos in social relations and in the daily life of the people. We are still paying the price of all this today, and paying dearly because they couldn’t affirm the essence of democracy and freedom. And yet well-nigh two hundred thousand partisans gave their lives for it.

T o find ways of alleviating the chaos, a group of partisans was assigned to the commissariat ofPS (Public Security) a t Torpignattara. They were to assist in maintain- ing public order. O u r participation was really providential both in the officer and in the external activities. Patrols were organized composed of officials or workers of PS and partisans. These gave some satisfaction to the Commissioner Dr Angiiella. He often turned to Franchellocci, to Forcella ofPC1 or to me for help with some ofthe problems that he couldn’t resolve alone. He kept a ctrict eye on the cheap eating places and the trattorias. He alto took on the task of keeping watch over the lmpero Cinema to try to prevent crime and acts of vandalism. He had an agreement with the owner. These were the main duties the Local Centres of the Liberation took on to restore some order and calm in the breasts of the local population. Then w e were able to move on to less dangerous and demanding work, but it was equally important channelhng chaos and anarchy into the conduit of democracy and freedom. In fact, quite soon the basic aims

Licata was, from the beginning and for many years, one of the leaders of the Consulk Popolari in Rome.

308 Notes on urban struggles in Italy

of these Local Centres became antifascist vigilance and trying to draw attention to the conditions of the outlying settlements straight after liberation and to the urgent requirements of the local citizens, A lot of meetings and rallies were held. TO allow a major participation of new elements in the management of public affa~rs I t seemed necessary to set up the so-called Consutte Popolari.

The Consulte Popolari (The Popular Advice Centres) were the organizations in the capital that during the fifties and sixties guided the masses on the problems of the various districts and suburbs through the development of services and the defence ofthe civil rights of the inhabitants, especially those of the periphery. This was one of the most massive of the city movements among the many that developed then in Italy. These were movements that dealt not with union problems but with life in the area. At the initial meeting held on 3 I January I948 in the lecture room of the law faculty in the university they were spoken of as ‘organs of direct government, the result of the years of war and the liberation struggle during which the people became aware of their own strength and their own capacities for self-government. They (the people) want to be really sovereign and participate in the making of their own laws and control the various administrative organs’. Dating from this period is the request for administrative decentralization to be realized through local administrative districts ‘because a city of two million inhabitants cannot be governed by I j or 16 persons’ (L’Unitd, I February 1948).

In 1972 the corisulte were dissolved having spawned three other organizations, one a local Roman one-the Union of Roman Borgafe founded to look after the interests of the inhabitants of the so-called ‘spontaneous’ or ‘illegal’ townships that had grown up in the post-war period on the basis of land speculation and the struggles that developed in the lands of the Agro; the other two, national organizations-1’Associu~ione Italiana per la Casa and S UNIA (Sindacato Unitario Nazionale degli inquilini e assegnatari). SUNIA is the biggest Italian tenants organization. Out of the very rich legacy of struggles organized by the Consulte Popolari, the struggles for tfreedom ofresidence’ and for the abrogation of the fascist law on the growth of cities acquire a particular importance. Among other noteworthy struggles were those for the reclamation of the outer settlements and the shanties; the building of council houses; and the recognition of the illegal townships in the new Town Plan. These struggles which attempted to resolve the acute problems of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the periphery were one of the most important bases for the growth of a popular awareness of land problems.

The mass movement on city problems also took other forms in Rome in the years immediately following the war. One of the most typical of these is the so-called Scioperi a rovescio-strikes in reverse. The movement was born and developed particularly in the settlements of the older periphery- established areas where there was a greater class consciousness-Prima- valle, Torpignattarra, Ostia Antica, Garbatella. I t began in the winter of 1947-8 and spread to unite the struggles against unemployment with struggles around resolution of the most pressing local problems. It


demanded the introduction of public works by the government but, at the Same time, to encourage the active, united solidarity of the population, the inhabitants of the area organized themselves and-obviously for its protest value-built one road, bitumencd another, and carried out other urgent jobs requested by the people. I t was a movement which became very big and gave rise to strong feelings of solidarity among the citizens. It extended from Rome to the other areas of Lazio. Workers in the factories and especially those in the municipalized companies run by local authorities, organized the collection and distribution of milk and basic foodstuffs for the unemployed.

The Consirlte Popolari were not confined to Rome but were promoted and encouraged throughout the country by the parties of the left particularly the PCI. They developed mostly in the north and centre. I t was here that the effects of urbanization and the massive exodus from the countryside in the immediate post-war period were most felt, and it was here too that the most acute congestion of cities and pressures on the housing market and on the organization of services occurred. Movements developed in the smaller towns, but most activity occurred primarily in the major centres, especially Milan, where there were 46 Consulte by the middle of 1947.3 Here there were big battles against evictions and for rent reductions. The Consulte contributed the first organizational nuclei in many local areas and were the forerunners of the zone councils (consigli di zona) . They occurred particularly ‘in the places where the living conditions were most difficult and where there was already a popular consciousness or the opportunity to create it-i.e. the old neighbourhoods more or less on the outskirts of the city. Here and there still existed the tradition of popular mobilization that had manifested itself in the Resistance as the natural struggle for the individual’s right to be free’ (Erba, 1975; for Milan, see Daolio, 1974; see Lucchini and Schiaffonatti, 1969). Apart from old districts (Isola, Corveti, Stadera), new opportunities were offered in some of the areas of more recent construction where town planning by speculators had created impossible living conditions (Comasina, Chiesa Rossa, Lorenteggio, Quarto Oggiaro). O n the initiative of the Constrlte Popolari, the neighbourhood assemblies set up many organizations and committees, some more stable than others, which were concerned with the housing problem in Milan a t that time. Among these were an Association of the Homeless, a Housing Committee founded by all the parties of the CLN (Committee of National Liberation), a Front for the Home and Family, and various tenants associations in particular local districts or in apartment blocks.

In Bologna, besides the Consulte Popolari, there also developed the

In an article that appeared in Rinasciti, November-December 1947, they are described as ‘free associations of citizens who meet for the study and defence of their basic interests, independently of party, ideology or religious faith’. They demonstrate that ‘active participation [of the masses in public life] is not limited to election day’. In reply to a polemic by leading members of the Christian Democrats, who objected to the ‘non-democratic nature of the Consulte’ because they did not have legal recognition, this article states ‘democracy exists where power belongs to the people and where the people take an active part in public life’.

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Consigli Tributari Muriicipali (Fiscal Town Councils). These were bodies concerned with the legal department of local land taxes and with the settlement of accounts. Four were initially set up corresponding to the four zones of the city. Their members were nominated in part by the town council and in part by the council of the CLN. A report, dated 2 April 19474 states that through these bodies, the initiatives already begun by the people would be carried into the fiscal field.


If the problem of a modern democracy is to find vital, energetic forms of respon- sible, direct, democracy the problem of the moment is grafting the new $tructural forms onto the old healthy stock ofthe public, administrative bodies. In this way direct democracy, the historical expression of a new ruling class, provides the stimulus of fresh energies, while traditional democracy make5 the no l e s~ necessary contribution of alert maturity and acquired knowledge.

The local tax councils (Consi'qli trihutari di quartiere) spread to other cities. They represented the concrete achievement of a democratic fiscal politics on the part of the municipality, but they also became one of the most efficacious means of sensitizing and mobilizing public opinion for the reform ofthe tax systems. This had been inspired by classist criteria derived from the Umbertine state, the predecessor of fascism.

After the Liberation, Corisulte Popolari and other neighbourhood groups grew up in Naples. And there is no doubt that the Consulte Popolari represented the prevalent, if not the only united mass organization (apart from those of Catholic inspiration) dealing with city problems throughout Italy a t that time. Except in Rome, they did not survive beyond the first half of the fifties. They failed because of the breakdown in the national political situation which compromised their basis in unity. Also, certain manipulative lines of thought in the very party that these organizations had promoted, worked against them. In a resolution of the PCI national office concerned with the problem of community activity in thc mass associations, we read:

1 3 October 194X: Consulle Popolari. Everywhere they have been set up they have proved useful for involving the broad masses in the problems of local administration in the application of democratic fiscal politics, and as a means of mass pressure in the face of reactionary local councils. However, after 18 Aprils we also had to recognize the state of neglect and disorder of these unitary organizations, and of the investigations of the allies. In several provinces the Consulte Popolari were seen only as electoral machines and this was certainly a mistake. They must be a permanent form of contact between the local authorities and the people. The everyday life of the municipality poses problems of real interest for the worker$. The Consulfe Popolnri provide the opportunity of developing links with the parties in every area of the city and in every village, of making contacts and connections with elements of different classes. They therefore offer us the possibility of developing serious mass work. So they and the fiscal committees must he maintained, reactivated, developed; thcir activity must he given new life and linked with other mass organizations.

And further on, the same resolution affirmed that to succeed, we communists have to learn to lead, to organize, to mobilize the masses,

See the publication of the Municipal Council of Bologna Esperienze dei Corisigli Tributari Municipali (Mareggiani, 1947).

The date of the legislative elections.

Piero Della Sera 3 I I

not only by meanc of party activity, but through the macs organlzatlons, through all the channels of communication; without these, i t I S irnpostible to win the decisive part of the working class to the struggle.

Even if they added later that this does not mean that the mass organizations had to be subordinate to the leadership of the party, only the members who were also communists had to be able to direct them towards objectives ‘that are in the interests of the people’.

The particular experiences of the ConsuIte should not distract us from the fundamental point: namely, that the mass movements-in the city and in the countryside-remain the essential support for the development of the workers’ movement. And the history of urban struggles is their most important aspect. There have been different periods and different stages. The unitary moments of the Resistance were followed by the cold war years when the initiatives returned, for the most part, directly to the hands of the established parties. Building and rebuilding autonomous organizations and the creation of national bodies was not easy. But the fundamental inspiration of the great political partie5 and unions of the Italian working class was never lost. The aim was to create a movement that was not confined to the limits ofthe workplace. What w a s wanted was a movement that could expand into other areas, a movement that could take on the problems of the whole social organism, and not only those of direct concern to the working class. The working class had to become capable of ‘moulding itself into every crevice of society’, as Togliatti urged.

The resolutions and official texts of the left parties and of the union organizations document this effort. I t was expressed in many ways-the Consulte Popolari, the Consigli di Gestione, the Coniitati per la 7erra, the Conferenze di Produzione, the Consigli Tributari, the Assemblee di Cassegiati, the Consigli d i Z o n a , the Cornitati di Quartiere, the Associazioni di Inquilini, etc.

The same effort and the same reality existed, in different ways, for the second great component of Italian society, the Catholic movement. The parishes, and the ACLI circles in a number of cities became centres of a popular initiative and of a social prerrence-at the district level, a t the quartiere level, and a t the level of sniall groups of people. This impulse, joined to that of the workers’ movement, would help strengthen the whole position of the working class.

The multiplicity of meetings, of deputations, of committees and of forms of unity often failed-at least during the cold war-and often, despite the inspiration that moved them, rested on the shoulders of a single communist branch. Nevertheless these constituted the basis for the events of the 1970s and the advancement of the achievement of administrative decentralization.

I1

I t is certainly true that at the end of the sixties and particularly at the beginning of the seventies, ‘urban struggles’ and more generally the mass movement around problems of territory revived. Several factors were

The hot autumn and urban struggles

3 I 2 Notes on urban strugqles in Italy

important: urbanization and the progressive concentration of population in cities (in the 10 years from 1961-71, in 33 metropolitan areas, the population grew from 19.8 to 26.7 million inhabitants which put 49.4% of the total population on scarcely I .8% ofthe national territory); the destruction and imbalance provoked by a politics of land use that aimed to transform a period of economic expansion into an exceptional opportunity for superprofits for the forces of private property and monopoly capital; finally, the beginnings of the economic crisis which, besides intensifying all the problems also brought into the open the excessive parasitism present everywhere. Also the quality of the struggles altered because of the process of general civil and political reawakening that shook Italy, a reflection of the general growth in the workers’ movement, not something occurring outside it. Nor was it by chance that these struggles occurred a few years later than those in the factories. The ‘union autumn’ of 1969 was certainly one of the principal and most direct causes, but not the only one, because the impetus from the factories needed to link up with the other essential component-reform of land structure and administrative decentralization. Autumn 1969 and the birth of the regions with the elections of 7 June I970 represented a new departure point for urban struggles and suggested new ways of managing the land problem as part of the democratic movement.

Just as in the period after Liberation the history of ‘urban struggles’ and of mass movements on social problems would be unthinkable without taking the parties into consideration, so, now, i t would be impossible to reconstruct the events of recent years if the union movement and the development of the autonomous groups were not kept as obligatory points of reference.

From the first post-war years the unions had tried to throw themselves into society, fearing the risks involved in a politics concentrated entirely within the factory. But at the beginning the union movement pursued this political practice by formulating proposals and objectives that were deli- vered from on high rather than filtered through the union organization. They presented ideas that were agreed on with the parties first, on those occasions when they were not actually transmitted directly from them. In June 1950 the Piano del Lavoro, the work plan of CGIL was launched. It proposed a programme of organic development, not just for the employed sectors, but especially in the interests of the masses of jobless. Its biggest objective was the nationalization of the electricity monopolies. It also suggested worker participation especially in sectors fundamental to the economy. I t invited ‘not only the workers, but the unemployed, profes- sionals, intellectuals, tradespeople, small and medium-sized industrialists, peasants, not just small and medium holders, but well-to-do peasants’,6 to struggle for the attainment of these objectives.

The years that followed were years of a return to the factory, of defence. It was the time of the ‘economic miracle’. The phenomenon caught the workers’ movement by surprise. Uncomprehending, the working class

From the_ speech by Giuseppe Di Vittorio at the Convegno nazionale per l’lndustria e il Piano del Lavore, Milan, 14 June 1950; Rome: Library of the Chamber of Deputies.

Piero Della Seta 3 13

locked itself in the factory to study and to try to grasp the new problems that were appearing, such as the expansion of the productive apparatus, technological advance, the wave of new workers that were beginning to arrive from the south, the offensive launched by the bosses who did not hesitate to pro.fit from their strong situation (1954 saw the Valletta operation a t Fiat, agreed with the American ambassador Luce and with the white unions in support); the new relations that were being created in the workplace and the intensification of exploitation. These were years of reflection and rethinking. I t was not by chance that the movement inside and outside the factory appeared very weak. The struggle was taken up again in the sixties. The working class had now, before all else, to settle its account with the bosses to recover-at least in part-what had been taken away during the boom years and to reestablish a certain ‘equilibrium of wages’. A period of high inflation had to follow because the working class had to defend not only nominal salaries but real ones-so, together with the maintenance of income indexation, the working class also pressed for an adequate supply of services and means of ‘social consumption’.

An important form of struggle was demonstrations. These, as Aris Accomero records in his article on the history of the Italian Trade Union movement (1976, 27), had already begun at the end of the fifties when young people put themselves a t the head of the demonstrations and processions of workers when there were general strikes in Rome, Reggio Emilia, Palermo.

The processions and demonstrations in the heart of the city obviously helped the people’s understanding of the complex problems that the advancing crisis was bringing to the notice of the country; this kind of activity made a contribution ofits own to the process ofdemocratization in progress, and rewelded the alliance of the working class with the strata of the urban middle class that this movement primarily addressed. In particular in Rome, the continuous demands of delegations coming from every part of Italy had quite an effect in modifying the relations between the capital and the country in general.

This positive tie demonstrated that the former was not a body separate and hostile to the rest of the nation. The demonstrators who came to Rome, came not only to demonstrate a<qainst the government but even more to demonstrate for the Roman people, to offer their hand in friendship, to establish a relationship and a bond with them.

And the reactions of the Romans? Undoubtedly they developed in an ever more positive sense. Despite some inconveniences in city life and despite the serious incidents that caused moments of panic in the winter of 1976-77, it cannot be denied that the behaviour of the Romans towards the demonstrations-and these happened with excessive regularity, practically daily in fact-became increasingly more tolerant and well-disposed, even, with time, ‘sympathetic’. This was obviously helped by the fact that not only the metal mechanics or building workers or electrical engineers, or people from the south, were involved, but more and more often, the government workers, employees of semi-governmental corporations,

3 14 Notes on urban struggles in Italy

students, retired, women, even travelling salesmen and street sellers (demonstration, 1 5 June 1977). All this certainly contributed to the unifica- tion of the active democratic forces that had been maturing.

Despite the trade unions’ interest in going beyond the factory, they did not really get to grips with land problems. Even at the beginning of 1974, the CGIL document had to point out the work needed to establish the Consiglio di Zona-the chosen instrument for this purpose. It had this aim ‘just at the time when the participatory life of the base is developing through the multiplicity of new democratic forms like Neighbourhood Councils, scholastic districts, local health centres’ (Didb) yet the unions’ proposals came about through the initiatives of the leadership. It did not become a reality in terms of active collaboration between union members and inhabitants of the villages or districts. The ‘Comitati di Zona’ found it hard to get going. In 1977, after five years, there were no more than 348 in operation; all of them in the north. At the conference in Rimini,’ the secretary Lama testified that ‘the difficulty, the darkest area where we have to throw light, is the participation of the union, no longer a t the level of the firm, but outside the factory, at the societal level, since it would be totally inconceivable and empty to advance pleas for developing a struggle and also to obtain results if the platforms of factory struggle don’t find a connection, an organic position in a more general programme of economic development’.

It would undoubtedly be valuable to understand the reasons for this delay in going beyond factory problems, a t a time when interest and struggle over problems of the land was intensifying. The Italian worker was individually more open and sympathetic than ever to civil and political problems and responded fully to the divorce referendum and to electoral campaigns of a political and administrative kind. It is almost as if the workers, as workers, just cannot find the time to extend themselves beyond their factories. It is always the working class that has to be preoccupied with wage problems. It also should not be forgotten that the mass movement about land problems developed because two elements (besides the unions) lent support. These were the political parties, and the administrations of local areas.

The new urban movements which developed a t the beginning of the 1 9 7 O S , found their roots in what happened in the factory. The Councils existed in the factory before they existed in the neighbourhoods. The new methods that democracy in the factory took on with the ‘hot autumn’, provoked important changes in the development and appearance of the movement taken as a whole and provided an essential contribution to the extension and the reinforcement of democratic structures elsewhere.

Inevitably the problem of what relations to establish between the factory-council structure and union organizations arose (and analogously, between the district committees and the institutional organizations concerned with the land). But this problem was faced and resolved in a positive way by the unions. O n 20 December 1970, on the instructions of CGIL, the ’ Ix Congress of CGIL, 6-1 I June 1977.

Piero Della Seta 3 I j

‘factory delegates’ and the ‘councils of the factory delegates’ were officially adopted as fundamental structures of the new unified union system it was aiming at. Structures alive and functioning although the united union- structure had still to be achieved. The Rimini conference of CGIL, provided the following data: unlike the Corisigli di Zona , the councils ofthe factory-delegates were increasing rapidly. At the beginning of I 977 there were 32 02.1 in operation with 206 336 delegates for a total of 5 188 818 workers concerned. (The weak-spot is the south where the councils in firms numbered only 2992 with 2.2 ooo delegates.)

Councils of delegates

Number of NIlrnber of workers Period Number of councils delegates concerned

9 813 97 161 2 567 709 1972 1974 16 000 150 000 4 000 000 1977 32 021 206 336 5188818

Local councils

Set up In the planning stage

1974 165 1975 261 261 1977 348 163

I11 The rise of the movement in the seventies

But the movement (about land) that developed in the seventies received not only an impetus from the unions but from contemporary events, above all the economic crisis, the increasing local autonomy achieved despite the revival of centrism in the government, and the process of general civil awakening within the nation.

The student movement, feminism, the educational debates, the campaign round the divorce referendum of May 1974, the polemics on the problem of abortion, and those on prison conditions-they were all moments of a single process. It was a massive debate that drove home the conviction that these were pertinent problems, about which i t was the people’s turn to express themselves.

One of the most significant moments of this growth of awareness and of participation (which because of the circumstances and the manner in which it was manifested, one has no hesitation in including among the ‘urban movements’) was represented by the elections for the Consigli scolastici carried out throughout the country in February 1975.

This was not just a simple electoral campaign but a mass battle, that saw

3 16 Notes on urban struggles in italy

for about eight weeks the participation of several million people-students, parents and teachers-the greater part of whom were involved in grassroots action for the first time. The campaign concerned one of the crucial elements of regional organization, namely, that of school structure. The movement developed both in the country and in the cities. In the cities, obviously, the intensity of the confrontation was livelier; but in the country the turn-out of voters was often higher. As usual the movement was less successful in the south. There, the percentage of voters did not reach more than so%, compared with 80% in the centre-north. In conclusion, as the journal of the PCI wrote, it was ‘a powerful drive towards a renewal of the schools and the institutions, towards a different, new way of conceiving the relations between culture and society’ (Napolitano, 1975).

The economic crisis that occurred around 1973 after the war of Yom Kippur, stimulated the awareness of the country. The crisis immediately reopened the Italian debate on wages, parasitism in the economy, the management of land for the collective good.

The debate on land is not new in Italy. O n many occasions liberals, and even supporters of industry, have argued against land-revenues. Now, following the workers’ victories in the factories, what had always been a supplementary channel of accumulation for big capital carried risks of rebounding on those who up till now had calmly profited by it. Every increase in rents increased wages on the sliding scale. The difficulty of finding lodgings a t a low rent became an objective impediment to the mobility of labour that the industrialists saw as the solution to their problems. So immediately there was a cry of alarm. (In 1973 the boss of Fiat himself denounced ‘the parasitical wages that pay socially unproductive groups whose extent spreads in a pathological way’, adding that ‘the reform of housing, of health, of training services, a better organization of civil services in the large cities, and of public transport, are all indispensable elements in the modernization of industry’.

This debate began to acquire a mass dimension. I t was intertwined with the leap forward that civil society was making with the growth that occurred in the representative and democratic structures of the country. The economic crisis exposed in Italy a whole series of explosive problems. Firstly, housing.

The problem of housing has always been one of the recurring themes of the mass movement that developed around the problems of living conditions in the Italian cities (or as one used to say of ‘urban conflict’). The 1971 census revealed that while the population grew in the previous 10 years by 6.7% the number of dwellings constructed increased by 27.7% and the number of rooms by 3 3 %. This meant, in other words, that the amount of accommodation completed increased so that the typical level of standards was raised. In absolute terms there were by now 63 234 418 rooms for 54 025 2 1 I inhabitants (in the main towns 20 846 047 and 18 454 466), i.e. more than a room per head.

But the fact is that construction waste in Italy had reached severe proportions. From the same census it was pointed out that 12% of habi-

Piero Della Seta 3 I 7

tations and I 1.7% of the total number of rooms were ‘unoccupied’, second houses, that is houses with costs too high to be able to be absorbed by the market, or houses that the constructor had finished but decided not to put on the market, in order to wait for inflation to realize up to three times the profit (for the chief municipalities the ‘unoccupied’ percentages were 7. I (% and 7% or, in absolute figures, 416 786 houses and I 422 303 rooms).

Despite the enormous building effort, occupancy levels had not im- proved. Moreover, as the above changes make clear, the market had been irresistibly moving towards the areas of more expensive housing a propor- tional increase in costs for the user. Supply and demand became increasingly skewed until in 1973 they completely lost contact and the crisis was apparent. Rent took up a bigger and bigger part of the worker’s wage. There was also the absurd way in which the development of urban housing had been given over to the interests of private property.

The movement exploded in the more important Italian cities in the centre-north; to begin with the soJth was pretty well excluded. O n 19 November 1969 there was a national strike for reform of the housing law. Then the union initiative faltered temporarily because it had to come to terms with the economism and corporatism that weakened its activity and facilitated resurgence of the right in the two years 1972-73 (anticipated legislative elections, an Andreotti-Malagodi government). Then the occupations of houses began as did the various forms of rent strikes-or ‘price’ strikes-directed mainly by the groups of the extraparliamentary left in Rome, Turin, Milan, Naples, Florence, Palermo, Messina, Salerno. (The movement soon spread to the southern cities; for obvious reasons, it spread in marginal areas and where social disintegration was stronger.)

In 1974 the workers’ movements demanded a 10-year plan for the financing of public building. There were several national strikes promoted by the union Federation (supported by SUNIA and by the cooperative movement) and a revival of local initiatives; but occupations and activities ‘of disturbance’ continued, as inevitably happens in a situation dominated by a strong economic and political crisis, and by a process of ultimate deterioration of social equilibrium.

In Rome housing struggles have always had a particular dimension; in the capital the movement reached the threshold of the seventies through an almost uninterrupted passage from the distant days of the Liberation. At the beginning of the fifties it had begun with the struggle for the clearance of the slum dwellings created by fascism a t Gordiani, San Basilio, Pietra- lata. I t succeeded. Afterwards there were struggles for the reclamation and for the elimination of the ‘borghetti’, shanty towns, that bordered the sides of the consular roads and signalled the entry points of immigration to the capital (before speculation invented the mechanism of illegal division into allotments). By the end of the sixties 1 5 borghetti had gone because about 6000 homes were built for the inhabitants. The struggles of the illegal borgate began. Ou t of these struggles grew the Union of Borgate, the organization that became in the seventies one of the principal interrogators of local administrations on the subject of planning and reclamation of the

3 18 Notes on urban struggles in I taly

Roman land. In the heat of the housing struggle in Rome in 1964, UNIA, the organization of tenants and lodgers, was started. This organization was later to become SUNIA, the biggest national organization of the sector, present in practically all provinces, having its own headquarters and about 200 ooo members.

In Rome the initiatives and movements tied to, or anyway inspired by, the large Catholic presence were numerous. In particular, that promoted and directed by Don Lutte a t Prato Rotondo, (begun in 1967) led in 1971 to the elimination of this borgata and the transfer of families into the new neighbourhood of Magliana. Another important initiative was that of Don Sardelli at Aquedotto Felice, where in 1969 the coordinating committee of Roman Borgate presented a petition to the Camera with more than 3 0 ooo signatures (see Lutte, 1977; also 1971). Such Catholic-backed struggles were important, but ultimately failed to create a unifying political perspective of their own.

In the summer of 1969 in Milan teAants started cutting their own rents. Occupations began with families moving into Acquedotto Felice, and they were promoted by the Committee of Agitation for the Boyate , a Catholic- influenced body. Yet the largest occupations took place in the following months, through the initiative of UNIA, with the simultaneous occupation of 700 houses in various parts of Rome.

Squatting still continued throughout 1970 and into the first months of 1971. But then a heated polemic developed between the Communist Party and the extreme-left extraparliamentary groups, Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio and I1 Manifesto. This proved a costly and unmanageable struggle which transformed the direction of the movement (under the influence of the acute needs of the families involved who came in from the shanty- towns) towards one of permanent occupations, This drained it of its real purpose, and it became a source of dissent within the working class, rather than a consolidating factor for it. In any case, the occupations did not turn into a universal instrument for mass political action, but were destined by their nature to be taken over by various groups and have their usefulness restricted.

The movement, therefore, was soon abandoned by the workers’ parties. It became instead-especially in the ‘hot’ years of 1974-76, and as we have seen in various Italian cities-one of the preferred fields of initiative and activity of the groups of the extraparliamentary left. But it became more and more often an instrument of division, and an area of experimentation for ‘revolutionary’ strategies. The occupations were mainly directed to the few blocks of council houses available. Here (obviously) they met the least resistance on the part of employers and private property (or were they even encouraged by them?). Here too, they nourished the so-called ‘war between the poor’, provoking incredible states of siege between the families assigned to the dwelling and the occupying families. They became battle for battle’s sake, with a show of songs, red flags, and the principal declared aim of making an impression on right-minded people rather than that of resolving the housing problem. ‘The occupation of Celio’, writes

Piero Della Seta 3 19

Marcello Marcelloni in 1974, referring to the occupation of 200 houses in 1969 by the families of Aquedotto Felice (see Daolio, 1974), ‘also symbo- lized a kind of battle against marginalization, a fight for the reappropriation of the heart ofthe city. . . . The reappropriation of the city, the rejection of marginalization had to be visible: the good bourgeois only heard the borghetti and barracati spoken about in the newspapers, their struggles never touched him a t close quarters, because they happened on the periphery. But these occupations, tended to make him see the slum dwellers, they had to pass (on foot or by car), the occupied buildings every day. Their fronts were always full of posters/slogans, red flags’. Where it is felt that an occupation is conceived and organized primarily against the bourgeoisie and the lower middle classes, there is a need for the workers’ movement to try to neutralize if not indeed to defeat it. Marcelloni describes the usual result of such an occupation: it is to scare off the middle class that lives in the neighbourhood.

I t is certainly not difficult to discover the reasons why the formations of the extreme left take part in these forms ofhousing struggles. After the hot autumn the ‘groups found difficulty continuing their work in the factory. The working class rejected them. They had to find compensation in zones that were easier for them to penetrate: here, they found a sufficient degree of aggravation and frustration to make the reception of their maximalist and over-ambitious catchwords possible.’

IV

The economic crisis and the recognition of the devastation caused by 30 years of Christian democratic government developed awareness and solidarity about land problems. Town planning came out of the closets of professional studies and privileged headquarters of cultural associations and began to become part of mass consciousness. Observations on town planning schemes and their provisions, signed by thousands of citizens, began to be discussed at public meetings. The formal, juridicial reasons why this or that plot of land had the right to be excluded from expropriation and left to be freely disposed of by the private sector were no longer the key. Instead people begin to list the urban and social reasons why this or that estate was to be dedicated to the interests of the collectivity. The growing movement took many forms, often gathering round the so-called District Committees (di quartiere). In some places these were partly promoted by the municipal administrations, elsewhere they were opposed to them. But basically they all had a common denominator: increased awareness and a lively desire to participate on the part of the people. These were fed-despite individual moments of incomprehension-by the initiatives of the workers’ movement and of its organizations which were in turn affected.

Towards town planning by the masses

The reports below provide some example5.

Pescara, Autumn 1975: Inside the municipality there was an abandoned

320

park where the Villa Sabucchi once was. In an intensely inhabited zone deprived completely of open spaces and facilities i t represented the last remaining possibility of filling the gap. T w o hectares of land were involved. The preceding town plan destined it for a private park but now the local administration was preparing a new plan. A debate with the people took place. They asked for the land to be dedicated as a public park, expropriated, and put at the disposal of the inhabitants. The Administ- ration wanted to reach an agreement with the owner. In the end, the majority of the Council approved the second solution: half of the area would be acquired by the municipality, on the other half the owner would be able to build a minimum of 28 000 cubic metres. The Comitati di Quarfiere mobilized; ten days had not elapsed before a petition, signed by 5000 people dropped on the mayor’s table. So the operation was blocked (Corriere della Sera, I I October 1975).


Padua, Summer 1974: Through an age-old series ofamendments to clauses in the town plan approved in 1957, the ‘city of the saint’ had been defining itself as the ‘feudal property’ of five or six ancient and noble families as well as two other ‘families’, respectively, the oldest and the most recent: the Curia and Christian Democracy with their relevant interests. Only a few months before the elections for the municipal council, the Christian- Democrat mayor, of a centre-left administration, wanted to leave his own mark on the process of disintegration of the city and tried to launch a further plan amendment to ratify and definitively endorse changes of the preceding years. The crisis exploded in the Council and the socialists left the majority. The mayor, sure of himself, launched a challenge and promoted a kind of consultation-referendum, seeking approval for his proposals from the corporations and the cultural associations, as well as the Council’s neighbourhood. He postponed the project from 26 July, so that people might present alternative suggestions, but he made the closing date 24 August, in the middle of the holiday period. All hell was let loose. The Architects Association revolted and got the date pushed back to 24 October. Then the associations and neighbourhood councils mobilized :nd in a few weeks 718 counter proposals rained on to the mayor’s desk. Tilit was enough to block the operation. The variation proposed by the mayor had aimed a t I 500 hectares (of new building) in areas of private property six times the extent of the whole historic centre; while in a ten-year period the construction of only 6000 council houses had been proposed (La Repubbfica, 12 April 1976).

Genoa, June 1977: In Genoa, the neighbourhood councils entered the history of the city with the 1970 flood, when the authorities were in crisis and they found themselves the centre of the organization of relief work and reconstruction. ‘From that strange fog that then covered up the city, formed of dried mud transported from the north, a new political and cultural depth on urban problems emerged, a knowledge that is translated into memor- able struggles’ (L’Unitd, 6 August 1975). O n 4 August 1975 the new left

Piero Della Seta 3 2 I

majority tried as far as possible to bring some order to a situation marked by 20 years of speculation and adopted a general plan variation which reserved vacant areas for open space and for services, and called for the views of neighbourhood councils and the delegations. The proposal immediately gave rise to unexpectedly strong reactions and debate.There were meetings in the theatres and in packed cinemas; the usual influx of citizens into the headquarters of the neighbourhood councils; there were also meetings held in the party branches of the majority. There were, 1000 counter proposals presented to the plan; several thousand closepacked pages of lawsuits, arguments, suggestions. In many cases it was the defence of particular and private interests; but anyway, there was certainly a mass reaction (La Stampa, 13 April and 21 June 1977).

Pavia, 1974-75: The left council formed in 1973 decided to take in hand a situation that until then had been characterized by waste and privatization. A campaign was organized with the slogan: ‘the city in your hands’. The general project was preceded by three sectoral plans ‘each one of these was debated in many meetings of neighbourhood committees, and in 30 zone assemblies’. There were meetings in the grammar schools; gatherings and debates with trade unions and professional associations. In one week- from 3 0 May to 9 June-open air assemblies in ten districts of the city were announced, after an illustrated copy of the plan had been sent to the house of every family. At the beginning of 1976 a public debate in a city theatre concluded the campaign. ‘A real and actual capillary work of information’ the socialist mayor said-‘to involve the population in the discussion and realization of the plan’. The daily L e Monde devoted a special report to the event in the issue of Sunday, 29 February 1976 ( L a Repubblica, 3 May 1976).

Rome, 19June 1977: At villa Torlonia, on the Nomentana, a procession of citizens took place to celebrate, the end of what, with good reason, can be seen as an exemplary popular struggle: two weeks before TAR (Regional Administrative Tribunal) finally removed the last obstacle and rejected the umpteenth appeal presented by the main landowner, and the local Administration was free to take possession of 14 hectares of the district. There were many public meetings and delegations, organized by the branches of the popular parties and the local committees for the district of Italia-Nomentano. Mass town planning in Rome took root a t the end of the fifties and started in the most distant outskirts of the city. Battling with the difficult problems of existence the new immigrants, who were forced to live on the edge of the city in ‘illegal’ settlements, succeeded almost immediately in providing themselves with an organization. From the periphery the movement then gradually took root inside the city and penetrated the local areas (quartiere). At the beginning of the seventies besides the Council of the district (circoscrizione) instituted by the Administ- ration, the Comitati di Quartiere also grew up, as an expression of the basic movement. The initiatives multiplied: for two or three years there had been citizens on guard-duty around the Roman villas ready to intervene. In

322

this way villa Blanc, villa Carpegna and the remaining land of villas Leopardi and Chigi had been saved. Twenty-four hectares of the Pineto had also been saved from building and real estate. There was also intervention in the spread of amendments to the use of land of the eighteenth and of the twentieth city-divisions, saving the villa Livia and the Casali park. In the capital the initiatives taken by UISP-the Union for Popular Sports- are notable: sports fields and areas equipped directly by the local population at Primavalle, Pietralata, Statuario, Centocelle, Tiburtino; marches and town-planning races promoted together with the newspaper Paese Sera: ‘Run for open spaces’, ‘Run for the Variation’, ‘Run for expropriation’. One case to note is that of Magliana, where the local Comitari di Quarliere set out in 1g71--~ven though in continuous conflict with the left parties, especially with PCI-to give life to a mass action that succeeded despite everything and flourished. With a substantial part of the quartiere, i t promoted initiatives that concerned and involved the actual local administration. I t was a ‘popular action’ with the demands for payment of damages by a Council which allowed the construction of the whole district a good seven metres below the level of the Tiber. It obtained in the spring of 1977 from the new left Council an undertaking to recover from the construction companies the necessary cost of reclamation and slum clearance (see Com- irato di Quartiere, 1977).


Bologna: The participation of the citizens in the problems of land-management took a different and original trend in Bologna. From the beginning the municipal Administration did not try to oppose but on the contrary promoted participation and i t was linked with the activities of the ConsWli di Quartiere which were instituted in 1964. ‘Decentralization, participation, grass-roots democracy, consultation: in Bologna they are not just beautiful words’, writes Cederna in Corriere della Sera. All moves towards perfec- tion? Certainly not, and in a conference organized by the Bologna Fede- ration of the PCI in 1973 the speaker listed clearly the defects and the lacunae. Among others he reported, ‘the tendency, even in a part of the political forces involved in the process, to see the quartiere as a technical, bureaucratic and administrative decentralization away from the “political” and from the struggle that is proceeding with growing intensity, signalling the reality of workplaces, of schools, of organized civil society’.8 But in the meantime, about twenty of the Consigli di Quartiere in operation contributed in a determined way to the town-planning decisions of the Administration; they participated actively in the elaboration of the variation to the town plan which put a brake on the indiscriminate expansion of the city; they debated the plans for the historic centre, for the hills, and for the administration; 5 5 sessions of the Council, and 77 meetings of the Commission were devoted to the examination of the study notes on the town plan. Fifty-five sessions and 24 public meetings were given over to considering the preliminary balance-sheet proposed by the Council.

Quotations are from Le lottepar la cum a Firenre (Savelli, 1 ~ 7 5 ) ; Daolio, 1974; Bottero, 197s.


Seventy-eight assemblies and meetings were held on the proposed plan for nurseries and on the problem of school meals (Corriere della Sera, 1 5 February I 977).

Parma, October 197j-May 1976: The case of Parma cannot be omitted for two reasons: because it contains a scandal that concerns a left council (PCI and PSI have been in power there since the Liberation); and for the exemplary way with which it was tackled by the political forces that had responsibility for governing the city. I t exploded in October 1975, with the accusation that the Administration tried to give, to an advice centre and to a private firm, an area already dedicated as green belt and for public building. The majority rejected the accusation claiming that no project had been approved. Every possible solution would be checked and discussed with the people. The whole city was concerned for about nine months with a debate on its own town planning system, and with a critical rethinking of past experience. The debate occurred, moreover, between two electoral campaigns, that ofJune 1975 which saw the reconfirmation of the ‘red’ council and that of 20 June 1976 for the Camera and the Senate. A commission nominated by the local council and composed of a majority ofPC1 and PSI, was encharged with checking the town planning policies carried on from 1969 to 1974, and of singling out what were the weak points. It saw that there had been insufficient and scanty participation of the Consigli di Quartiere and by the political and social forces of the citizenry, in the choices by the Administration. The communists for their part, referred to ‘the negative effects on local activity through the lack or the poor functioning of the mechanisms of participation and of popular control. I t must be remembered in relation to this that the ConsigIi di Quartiere were for a long time paralysed by sterile polemic against the election of a representative of the MSI. This lack ofparticipation had permitted negative phenomena and distortions in the conduct of the politics of town planning in the municipality of Parma’ (L’Unitd, 9 and 19 May 1976).

Milan, 1971-26 &4ly 1972: In the Milan of the ‘temporary agreements’ (agreed with the bit construction companies in opposition to the town plan, and called ‘temporary’ in that they awaited validation by successive amendments), the popular struggle of the Garibaldi district-to save itself and put it beyond the reach of speculation-provides an exemplary case. The experience of the Cornitato di Quartiere that led the battle was recalled thus:

The political differences inside the committee have never been serious. The real desire for unity has always allowed them to be overcome without causing wounds. The first themes of debate were the definition of the required platform and the methods of struggle; but in a short time positions of agreement were reached. Several areas of disagreement emerged, for example on how the different political components should participate in the public demonstrations of the committee. At first some thought of participating with their own flags, with banners and with their own slogans. The question was resolved by deciding that the only symbol a t the demonstrations must be the banner with theinscription, ‘Comitafi di Quartiere Caribaldi‘. Ample freedom was left to the spokesmen of the political groups and the trade-unions to

324 Notes on urban struggles in I ta ly

expand their positions and proposals in the course of the demonstrations. The other question that arose was the proposed regulation of the internal life of the committee with the appointment of agencies of leadership, the nomination of people in charge, etc. The argument that resolved the question was that internal regulation would lead to a separation from the popular section, always present in great numbers a t every moment of debate, who because they were not enclosed in political organizations would feel marginal to the decision-making process. Only the records and administration sections were entrusted to a person in charge. All of the political decisions were taken a t public meetings open to the sum-total of all contributions. The assemblies of the committee were not held less than once a week and were held in turn by the various groups actively involved, a brief account of recent events and of decisions to be taken and of problematic aspects; from the debate arose proposals and reports on which operative decisions were taken collectively.

The variation of the town plan of 1953, that allowed the application of law 167 on free areas and on houses for renovation in the old quartiere was approved by the local council 26 July 1972 (La lotta di G‘aribaldi, Milano: Libreria Feltrinelli, 1973).

Trentino, V a l di Sole, March 1977: Mass town planning developed almost exclusively in the cities and mainly in the bigger ones. The reason for this is easily understood. I t is here that the encounter between the private and the social-in the use of land-shows itself with greatest intensity. It is here, too that the forms of aggregation and of organization of the users find the most favourable conditions. The cities are, in addition, the parts of the country where an awareness of town planning has been most easily able to develop, because of the fact that town planning legislation has been characterized in Italy by exclusively urban and civic concerns. As a result town plans have been, until now, solely a prerogative of urban centres, the big ones in particular. W e know of only one example of mass town planning that did not have a city character. It conccrns the Val di Sole, in the Trentino, stretched between the Massifs of Tonale, Presanella Cevedale, and the Dolomites of the Brenta. To bring about a territorial urban plan to transform the valley into a zone of ‘high tourism’ through the building of five million cubic metres of luxury holiday flats and hotels in the middle of the pines and rivers, the president of the district decided to have a referendum of the population involved, certain of an affirmative reply. There were four questions: should existing villages with high-density housing be enlarged; should new ones be built; would it be useful to build luxury flats and hotels; would the elector agree to the designation of areas as ‘n.1ture parks’?

Of those questioned 34.6% replied: not a high proportion but not negligible, given the nature of the enterprise. The actual results of the referendum however were sensational: to the first three questions a majority replied ‘no’; ‘yes’ replies dominated only in the fourth with 1 5 1 2 as against I I 19. The various financial trusts that had already laid hands on the project were forced to pack their bags (Corriere della Sera, 4 April 1977).

Piero Della Seta 3 2 5

V

A point remains to be defined: that is the relation set up in the course oftime between movement and institutions, between the ‘legal’ and the ‘real’ and what points of contact there have been between the two moments. A certain line of argument of the extremist extraparliamentary groups has dwelt with particular insistence on this theme, endeavouring to evaluate and exalt urban struggles only in so far as they are counterposed to democratic institutions, trying in every way to present the activities of the parties of the constitutional left as leading towards choices predisposed by the system. So the Cornitati di Quartiere are seen and presented ‘as a form antagonistic to the local bureaucracy, an alternative power base for the poor people, that participation brings about; and with popular participation notable victories result’. For the leaders of PCI and for the forces of the centre-left they are only ‘organs a t the grassroots level capable of stimulating the local administrations in such ways as to guarantee that they conform to the institutional reasons (constitutional) for which they have been created’. And again, the activity for administrative decentralization carried forward in Italy by the workers’ movement and by the parties of the left is seen as ‘a clear attempt to engulf consent in plans and projects governed by a logic (in agreement with the state apparatus) ‘of managing the problems, resolving the contradictions, curbing the conflicts, i.e. a logic which is rationally and technically neutral’. This was counterposed to the line of the struggle ‘followed by the social factors who are subject to the contradictions inherent in the objective of changing the situation’, inherent, that is, ‘in a popular mobilization directed and organized towards becoming a real agent of social change against the dominant social logic’. O r to sum up, there was the customary denunciation of the way the mediating initiatives of public bodies or the PCI against the hotbeds of corruption had been largely turned towards isolating these struggles (the urban struggles) by means of capable compromises which bit by bit absorb them into reformist campaigns.a

But it is the main merit of the Italian workers’ movement to have known how to harness the impulse coming from this multitude of movements and to link it to the institutions: to have kept the first tied to the second, to have utilized their propulsive forceunifying a multiplicity of particular and diverse issues and preventing them from exhausting their charges within the limits of the local situations from whence they came and extracting the political from the purely social, applying them to the modification and the transformation of other areas. In this way the workers’ movement has given to those struggles an historical perspective and a national breadth, transforming them into ‘a movement’ and making them protagonists of reform. This reform was among the most consistent of the many that have been put into operation in Italy in the past two decades, the reform of administrative decentralization and, more generally, of the state machine.

In this the Italian workers’ movement has followed the master line of its own political strategy, that of considering the state-after the resistance

Urban struggles and adminis t ra t ive decentralization


and after the launching of the Constitution-as already in great part an entity of its own, as a victory partially achieved, against the weak and nihilistic vision presented by the extreme left. However, one cannot fail to recognize the positive contribution that the extreme groupings brought to the movement and to the struggles that have been discussed here, especially in the first period. I mean the stimulus given to the movement’s autonomy, to pluralism, to the acquisition and practice of the principle of ‘self management’. In the sense, their activity in the big battles of civil rights which occurred in the first half of the seventies-divorce, abortion, freedom from censorship, prison reform-seem to have been much more efficacious. Here they were concerned to make an impression above all on the mentality of a petty bourgeoisie distinguishable by Catholic modera- tism. (The classic left parties have shown some delay and uncertainty in locating and organizing this contribution.) But the extreme left has failed in a strategic analysis and an historical view of the Italian situation (being unable to evaluate the transformations that had already taken place in society) and by their fundamental refusal of every concrete possibility of political alliance. So they arrived a t positions of total isolation and growing desperation that constituted the primary source of numerous episodes of violence. These ranged from the actions of ‘proletarian expenditure’, through the wildcat strikes that occurred a t the Policlinico, to the displays of real urban guerrilla warfare that exploded in Rome and in several cities in the winter of 1976-77. These began in I972 and reached a gradual cres- cendo. These groups and the social strata edged out of society by them would provide the mass base for outbursts of further violence. Even when in the winter of 1976-77 these manifestations reached levels of particular intensity and violence, they did not seem-in the opinion of the author -to modify the general picture, because they concerned after all, marginal, if not negligible, sections of society and because an undoubted growth of society taken as a whole was going on in the meantime.

The distorted judgement hinted at above-i.e. evaluating and considering the urban movements only from an anti-institutional point of view- leads some of its elaborators to the absurd but inevitable consequence of no longer succeeding in accounting for the facts. The following appeared in the journal Centro Sociale (no. I 18-20) in 1974:

How is it that in the cities in which the problem of political participation at the neighbourhood level has been posed ‘outside the people’ (through the youngest and those in positions external to the parties) with the creation, in the last years of the sixties, of spontaneous comitati di quartiere, that decentralization is gaining in strength almost everywhere (the big exception being Milan, where there was a notable commitment of the parties which only confirms the rule)?

There is too the case of Turin (that only recently and with big contradictions began decentralization) and also of Florence. In the latter the comitati di quartiere were born straight after the 1966 flood, and they immediately revealed themselves as extremely alive and active (more than any other organization on that occasion). But, in almost every case, all this has unfortunately been short-lived. And we can also ask how the first experiences of the consigli di quartiere in Italy started in Bologna: not the city most in need of such innovations. They were not necessary because of its size (433 ooo inhabitants in December 1961, the seventh largest Italian city), nor because ofthe type

of urban Ftructure (limited land, n o dislocated urbanization and Lvithout separate outlying areas), nor becaux of i tc tradition5 (the existing qunrtieri have no connections with ancient qunrtirri and medieval renaissance hill town\, nor with elective political administrative structures, nor the quartieri, horgi and parishes of the end of the eighteenth century), nor because of the nature of its economic and social development (certainly not a tumultuous growth compared with the major regiondl capitals of the north) ; nor because of its o w n experiences ofdebate; indeed, the type of party presence already permitted a passable working of the political-administrative channels.

Here an explanation is sought of a phenomenon that appears inexplicable and absurd, given the presence of a political channel that could urge and direct the process; in the same way, i t is obviously not by chance that in Florence the Consi‘qli di Quartiere got going on 17 May 1976, when a left council had just been reestablished after the elections of 15 June 1975. The movement for administrative deccntralization-through the constitution of Conscqli di zona, di rircoscrizione, di quartierc, di jiazionc, delexazione, rione rentina-took course in the period that spans the two decades, the sixties and the seventies, and gained its first general result with law 278 (8 April 1976) which laid down the norms for ‘popular participation in the administrative management of local communities’ and provided for the direct election of decentralized bodies for municipalities with a population greater than 40 ooo inhabitants. The first city to institute Consiqli di Quartieri-with indirect nominations and elections by the Consigli comunale -was Bologna, 29 April 1964. I t remained the only one until 1968. Emilia has been, on the other hand, the region whose municipalities first established decentralization: Rimini on 12 November 1968, Modena on 3 March 1969, Reggio Emilia on 3 0 December 1970, Ferrara on 2 April 1971, Lug0 on 31 May 1971, Casalecchio di Reno on 16 March 1971, Faenia on 2

February 1972, Cesena on 16 February 1972, Ravenna on 10 March 1972, Parma on 20 March 1972, and Imola on 28 December 1973.

By the middle of 1977 there were about a hundred municipalities that had set decentralization in motion, of these more than half were the chief centres of the province, situated above all in Lombardy, Emilia and Tuscany. As regards the major centres, after Bologna, the Consigli were launched in Venice (regulation in 1964, Councils nominated 1967); Rome (regulation in 1966, Councils in 1969); Milan (regulation in 1968, Councils in 1969); Genoa (regulations in 1969, Councils in 1969); Naples (regulation in 1968 and Councils in 1971); Bari (regulation in 1970, and Councils in 1972); Florence (regulation in 1968 and Councils in 1976).

I t is useful to record here how the inspiration for decentralization has traces in the work of the Constituent Assembly and deep roots in the Constitution. Article 5, in fact, says that ‘the Republic single and indivi- sible, recognizes and promotes local autonomy; it enacts in the administrations that depend on the state the broadest decentralization; it adapts the principles and methods of its legislation to the demands of autonomy and decentralization.’ And it is useful to recall that in Italy in the accomplish- ment of this principle, the initiatives promoted by the marxist-inspired political movement and those deriving from currents of left-wing social Christian thought meet. The first bill on the subject was presented to the


Senate for the Communist Party by Senator Ambrogio Domini in 1955, while the debate in the provincial capital of Emilia was begun-on the occasion of the election campaign for the local government elections of 1956-011 the basis of two different proposals, the 'white paper' presented by Dossetti for Christian Democracy, and that formulated by Dozza of the Communist Party.

After the adoption of law 278, and until the summer of 1977, the direct elections to the District Councils provided for in the new law were carried out in I I districts. The attendance of voters at the ballots is detailed below. It-better than any other argument-attests to the levels of popular participation in this reform. All the more so if one keeps in mind that in these municipalities they voted only for the circoscrizioni and that in many of them just the year before they had voted for new Consigli comunali. Direct elections for the appointment of the Councils circoscrizionali

Municipality Pistoria Perugia Arezzo Firenze Novara Liverno Trevi Mariano Cemanse Cortona Como Cremona

Percenrage of voters 81 6 84 0 83 8 82 2 72 4 84 0 85 2 90 1 88 7 75 3 77 5

Commune, Consigli di Quartiere, Comitati di Quartiere-three instances that have a specific history behind each of them. Three different moments of democracy. What are the prospects? What is their shared future?

Rome

VI References

Accomero, A. 1976: Problemi del movimento sindacale in Italia:

Bondioli, F. 1974: I quartieri a Bologna: analisi di un caso di decentra-

Bottero, B. 1975: Le lotte urbane oggi. Quaderni Piacentini no. '50. Castells, M. 1975: Lotte urbane. Padua: Marsilio. Comitato di Quartiere (a cura di) 1977: La Magliana: vile e lotte di un

Daolio, A. 1974: Le lotte per la case in Italia. Rome: Feltrinelli. Della Pergola, G. 1972; 1974: La conflittualitd urbana. Milan: Feltrinelli.

1947-73. Annuli Feltrinelli, pp. I 3 ff.

mento communale. Centro Sociale no. I I 8-20 (December).

quartiere proletario. Milan: Feltrinelli.

1972; 1973: Cittd e conflitto sociale, inchiesta a1 Garibaldi-Isola e in altri quartieri periferici di Milano. Milan: Feltrinelli.


Did&, V. M. Le lotte in ltalia 197-75. Quaderni di rasegnasindacale (journal

Erba, V. 197s: Lotte urbana e partecipazione democratica a Milano. In

Ginotempo, N. 1975: La casa in I t a h . Milan: Mazzotta. Licata, N. 1977: Volontari del rischio e della libertd. Rome: Perfccta. Lucchini, M. and Schiaffonati, F. 1969: I1 decentramento comunale a

Lutte, G. 1971: DaUe baracche alla casa. Bologna: Dehoniane.

of the CGIL) no. 5 1.

Ceci, P., editor, CUM, cittd e struttura sociale, Rome: Riuniti.

Milano. Cittd e Societd (May-June).

1977: Dalla borgata di Prato Rotondo a1 quartiere della Magliana. La Critica Social4 no. 41.

Napolitano, G. 1975: Editorial. Rinascita no. 8.

Documents

Praxis urbaine: Notes on urban struggles in Italy