nrougnour inis winter a lerocious wave of repression has been sweeping across Italy. From Turin in the North to Brindisi and Palermo in cultural workers have either been arrested or nave been charged witn ollences wich can lairly be called political.
ine most alarming and actual -Case 15 1031 of Piergiorgio Bellocchio. Bellocchio was put on Inal in Milan on rnaay, rebruary z/in. on 14 charges ranging 'incitement to disobedience in ine rmed services *incitement to hatred between social classes." The load ol charges inrown at bellocchio is ine largest since the fall of Mussolini: altogether. if found outy. ne could get between 1 and 3) vears in prison. And his case is important since it is both specinic and exemplary Bellocchio is being tried solely as a temporary legal guarantor for a revich, cona conanua, in which he did not actually write. He is the second Committees against the such legal guarantor tried in recent months! Francesco Tolin, legal guarantor of another milant let teview. Potere Operaio, was sentenced to 17 months imprisonment last autumn. Clearly, the government wants to scare off left-wing magazines by making it difficult or impossible to get guarantors. But Bellocchio is also the editor and founder of Quaderni Piacentini (the Piacenza Review), a magazine which has played a vital role in very large Italian student movement. Quaderni Piacentini, in the early 60s. picked up the legacy of the marxist current outside the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which had been established during the Resistance and flourished in the immediate postwar period, particularly in the evew. Politecnico run by Elio Vittorini and Franco Fortini. This current clashed with the PCI and with Togliatti. Quaderni Piacentini not only paved a kev role in introducing heterodox marxism into Italy, it also challeged the official PCI line on the whole of Italy's lay and marxist culture. It rejected the PCI's populist interpretation of the Resistance. and its uncritical attitude to confused and un-marxist figures like Fasolin ane Moravis benocenio is only one oi many possible legal guarantors who could have been hit, and his role in Quaderni Piacenitini cannot have been irrelevant.
THE ATTACK ON INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS But the case is only part of a much wider assault by the regime on independent publications. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the Milan publisher, has also been arraigned for distributing the Cuban review, Tricontinental. He has managed to flee the country. The Italian Radio and Television (RAI-TV) has long been a source of systematic propaganda on behalf of the ruling class. Possession of the communications media is power. This is true even in the pettiest sense: Italo De Feo. the Social Democrat vice president of the RAI-TV, recently signed a lucrative contract for the rights on a story by a certain Dario Castagnoli, who turns out to be De Feo himself under a pseudonym. MOre importantly, attempts by some employees of the RA-TV to present a less biased view or une grea proletarian upheavals this winter caused a violent pontical spill in the organization, witl the right wing emerginh triumphant. The RTF exposed during the May Revolution, was a bastion of free expression compared with the RAI-TV. More generally, it has to be emphasised that all communications arE conceived of propaganda organs: politicians like Andreotti, Scelba or Pella (all in the rient of the Christian Democrat Partv) owi their own reviews or news agencies which churn out tne leaders une. ine only dany newspape. which, in a limited and cautious way, presents an anerauve viewpoint to ine omcial regime line from the left, i Unita, has itself now been charged with s pontical olences in recent weeks as part of the overall terrorization of the media.
THE COMMITTEES AGAINST THE KEPKESSION The silence of most of the British press makes it hard to realize exactly what is going on. The repression against the media in Italy would seem to nave taken is ton on some of the foreign correspondents there. Yet the formation in January and February this year of special Repression, and the alarmed manifestoes which they have issued. should have been adequate sign of the gravity of the situation. In January a group of 40 cineasts joined together to film a vast documentary on the repression: the original signatories included such famous names as Luchino Visconti, Gillo Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers), Bernardo Bertolucei (Before the Revolution, Partner) and Cesare Zavattini, the leading script-writer of the postwar neo-reanst penod. une group nas since received the active support of virtually the entire tanan cmnema word. neir manuresto exoncis states that they have joined together "to fight the constant mis-information (disinformazione) to which the public is subjected." The project involves notony i mine ine renression. outaso trying to arrange new distribution circuits and combating the grip of the RAI-TV.
At the same time the left and centre journalists broke away from the right-wingcontrolled journalists' union, and helped set up committees against the repression in the main towns: these have the support of hundreds of eminent figures from the academic, intellectual and cultural worlds: Giacomo Manzü, the sculptor; NATA 19) Ginzburg. the novelist: Giuseppe Ungaretti, the poet; Carlo Levi, the novelist; Franco Fortini, poet; Roberto Roversi. poet; Valerio Zurlini, film director; Renato painter The manifesto signed by ethers states flatly that: widespread emotion and grief over the slaughter at Milan (the bomb explosion in a bank) and the attempted explosions in kome nave once agam been to cover the direct or indirect re sponsibilities of part of the ruling class, cynically June victims to operationalize systematize a plan for repression: everywhere there are houses being searched, books being seizea, provocations and arrests against all whe express the Italian people's desire for progress.
This repression, which is repugnant in the way it exploits the nation's grief, also corrupts COURTY S Insulutions and tramples on the rights of the citizen; it is increasingly taking on a coherent and permanent aspect which cannot but make one think a plan is actually being carried out, which it is everyone's duty to oppose in the most concrete and effective ways possible.
The manifestoes which have been issued, and which have been signed by virtually the whole of the intellectual and cultural world, make it clear that the situation is graver than it ever has been since the war.
THE GREAT PROLETARIAN STRUGGLE OF AUTUMN-WINTER 1969-70 The reason for the repression is blatant: it is a direct reponse to the great upsurge in class SLEULEIC. The struggles of last year, which started with the huge urban riot in Turin in July, have seriously endangered the process of capital accumuianon. as well as production, big industry. Last vear there was a real overall flight of capital from Italy, little of which shows signs of returning, even clandestinelv (as investments placed by Italians through dummy Swiss fronts to avoid taxation). Northern Italian industry has consistenu been extremelv brutal to its employees: Fiats not only own most of Turin, in cluding the newspaper and most of the workers nouses, mey also employ ine largest goon-squad in Europe. The July riot in Turin was not simply a factory upheaval—it was a wholesale urban riot against Fiat terrorism thoughout the town. Agnelli, like the Shah of Persia, has acquired a glossy image abroad, but in Italy he occupies much the same place in the mind of the masses as Henry Ford did in America during the early days of the American motor indistry-and his methods are much the same.
The other area where repression has been particularly severe has been in the Southespecially in the provinces of Sicily and Puglia. Here share-croppers. enraged b starvanion wages and long periods of enforced unemployment (due to the government's failure to come up with any adequate farm plan), have been arrested and charged by the thousand: official trade union figures gave 4000 arrests in Puglia as of late Januarv: unofficial figures give 7000 people charged with political offences in Sicily alone as of the end of February. . It is hard to know the exact number: the figure of 9,938 industrial and agricultural workers arrestco on charged. which was given by the unions on January 25th refers only to manual workers. does not cover research workers (e.g. at the university staff. Since the figures were released there appear to nave been many more arrests and charges (again, even arrests are hard to quantify as the police can arrest and hold anyone as long as they want).
This wave of arrests itself only makes sense if one vital fact is borne in mind: that the huge wave of proletarian militancy which erupted last year is something completely new. Above all, most of the active leaders are outside the established organizations such as the Italian Communist Party and the CGIL (the main trade union federation. grouping Communists and Socialists). The militancy can no longer Di contained in the old ways hence the mass arrests.
THE TACTICS OF THE RULING CLASS Last week a special commission of Italian businessmen, neadca by Leopoldo Firem, unt head of the giant rubber and textile firm, releas ed a report announcing an imminent shake up in the Confindustria (the Italian CBI), and a more determined intervention by business in politics. The objective is obvious: faced with severe contradictions among its political representatives, business intends to move in and take control more firmly itself.
Most press reports emerging from Italy in the last few have concentrated on the alriculies lacing ine formadon or a new govern ment, and it particular on the divorce question But iwo vital tacts tend to be ignored: first there is no such thing as "no government" When you cannot see a prime minister, it does not at all mean no one is ruling. On the contrary, it may well be the same men as before. as a "caretaker government", or it may bureaucrats and others who can best have a field day during such intervals between cabinets. Magistrates, especially, can go to town on such occassions. Second, the divorce question is being used in a very precise way within the Christian Democrat Party (DC). The key Vatican man in the Christian Democrats is Giulio Andreotti, long-time Minister of Defence, legman for the Pentagon, ex-secretary of De Gasperi, and cle e friend of Paul V. Andreotti has consistenti spoken for the Pope in the DC, and was the first leadine Christian Democrat to float the idea of : referendum (never yet used, although embodied Constitution) to circumvent parliamentary vote endorsing the possibility of divorce. Ine aivorce issue nas been mampulated to promote Andreotti inside the DC, on a rightwing positon. He would nave the backing noi only of the Vatican, but also of the armed forces and of much of big industry (he was recently Ministry of Industry).
At the same time, Saragat, the President, has been vigorously doing his bit to push "law and order and his powers have been greatly increased by the vacancy at the cabinet level. After the bomb explosion in Milan last December, Saragat sent a special telegram to premier Rumor urging him both to enforce Law
The Black Dwarf 7th March 1970 Page 10 and order more strictly, and to proceed with court cases against all those who had been charted pontical and cuas-Doluca. offences. Some of these dated back as much as 5 years, and nad been lett pending, simpry acung as instruments of terror on those against whom the charges had been laid. In principle, many of them would have been liquidated by the next amnesty (a recurrent feature, partly due to the overcrowding of both courts and jails). Saragat has played a leading role in the whole law and order campaign. This, too, tends to get glossed over in England, since his party, the Social Democrats (now the United Socialists) are thought to have something in common with their name. But they occupy much the same place in the political spectrum as Mayor Daley does in the Us. (also a and are besi characterized by the old description "socialfascists. The Social Democrats are the main force, along with Andreotti, pushing for a rightproletariat.
This problem has not yet resolved itself. Rumor has just announced he cannot get a government togetner. saragal nas to make tne next move. Yet this apparent power void has been used to promote the right. Fascist gangs TIC TAC The national campaign against the French TAC addressed by Alar Krivine and Michel Wolinsky and documents the reactionary