‘The Public Force of the Private State’ – Strikebreaking and Visions of Subversion in Liberal Italy (1880s to 1914)

Policing the Strikes

In 1894, the first of Giolitti’s governments fell amid accusations of financial corruption and with it the new policy regarding social conflicts rang hollow for a long time to come. Brutal repression again became the main policy for dealing with social protests, as evidenced by the so-called Milan massacre of 1898. ¹⁰ Repressive measures were accompanied by attempts to reshape the state in a more authoritarian fashion, all with the blessing of King Umberto I. Eventually, opposition from within the liberal parties and from the socialists curbed the use of reactionary measures and reaffirmed the centrality of Parliament. In 1900, the anarchist Gaetano Bresci assassinated King Umberto, allegedly in revenge for the Milan massacre. The murder served as a powerful reminder of the consequences of illiberal and reactionary practices, which lent credence to Giolitti as the person best able to lead the country through a period of rapid change and new challenges. First as Minister of the Interior in Zanardelli’s cabinet (1901–1903) and then as Prime Minister, Giolitti tried to implement the policy he had presented to the Senate in 1893. Equal enforcement of the right to strike and the right to work through rigorous police intervention were the twin pillars of Giolitti’s political programme, as well as a response to the enlargement of the public sphere and the development of political, labour and social organizations. This policy had ‘essentially conservative aims’ and was ‘designed to render the state more stable’ and broaden its foundations. ¹¹ Nevertheless, Giolitti’s policy, and a significant portion of the legitimization of the liberal state along with it, proved almost impossible to implement in the context of labour conflicts.

The beginning of the twentieth century marked a turning point. Statistics may be limited in their scope and not always reliable, but they do offer an initial insight into the problem. ¹² In 1900, there had been 388 strikes, rising to 1,671 in 1901 before falling to 1,008 in 1902, statistics that reveal a sudden surge in the number of strikes. In the agricultural sector, the number of strikers rose from a previous peak of 24,000 in 1897 to almost 223,000 in 1901 and stood at 146,000 in 1902. ¹³ In 1901, strikers in the agricultural sector were for the first time more numerous than strikers in industry (222,985 vs 196,540). ¹⁴ During the period 1901–1905, the annual average number of strikes in the industrial sector was 732, involving some 150,000 workers, while in the agricultural sector it was 238, involving 106,000 workers. However, the number of disturbances increased again following the economic crisis of 1903–1904. Between 1906 and 1910, the annual average number of strikes reached 1,318, involving 220,000 workers in the industrial sector, and 250, involving 123,000 strikers in the agricultural sector. ¹⁵ There was an exceptional increase in the number of disturbances in 1907, which saw the highest number of agricultural strikers in the entire pre-World-War-I period at 254,131. ¹⁶ From 1901 onwards, therefore, ‘the liberalization of industrial conflicts fostered by Giolitti at a political level’ clashed with ‘the policies followed by employers’. ¹⁷

The conflicts in agriculture had even more worrying features as the ratio of strikes to strikers was much higher than in industrial conflicts, showing that although agricultural conflicts were less frequent, they involved many more workers. In fact, where unskilled labourers predominate, a strike can only be won by potentially mobilizing the entire workforce. ¹⁸ High levels of unemployment, the seasonal nature of many agricultural jobs, overpopulation in many areas and the introduction of labour-saving techniques and machines worsened the living conditions of hundreds of thousands of day labourers. The aim of the trade unions was therefore to establish a monopoly in control over the workforce and they made constant efforts in this direction. Class solidarity went hand in hand with boycotts and intimidation in an effort to prevent landowners and leaseholders from recruiting blacklegs and breaking union solidarity. ¹⁹ Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Po Valley had witnessed a mushrooming of class organizations on both sides of the social spectrum. In 1901, the National Federation of Agricultural Labourers (Federterra) was founded, bringing together the various unions that had been formed throughout the Po Valley since the 1880s. Immediately after its establishment, membership of Federterra had already reached 228,000, larger than that of the other industrial or commercial unions. ²⁰ Following a serious crisis in 1902–1904, when membership fell to only 45,000, it increased again after 1905–1906, eventually reaching 130,000 in 1908 and 150,000 in 1910. ²¹ However, the Federterra brought together only a fraction of the unionized rural workers, and the numbers would be almost double if all the workers organized by the local Chambers of Labour or by unions that were not part of the federal organization were taken into account. ²²

The massive increase in the number of labourers’ organizations and their activism helped spread insecurity and panic in the Po Valley. The old guard and, especially, the new capitalist leaseholders did not give up easily and organized a ‘united front of employer associations’ that ‘gradually took the offensive against the trade union movement and the Socialist Party and ultimately attacked the political compromises and social reforms’ underlying Giolitti’s policy. ²³ After 1902, agrarian associations spread throughout the Po Valley, especially in Emilia Romagna and Lombardy. ²⁴ In 1907, the main – and arguably most combative – association was founded in Parma, namely the Interprovinciale Agraria, which gathered together the main associations of the Veneto and Emilia Romagna. ²⁵ In some provinces in particular, such as Parma, Bologna, Ferrara and Cremona, agriculture was a capitalist system employing intensive production and marketing techniques. Huge investments in fertilizers, machines, reclamation and transport went hand in hand with the most advanced breakthroughs in agronomics and zootechnics, making the Po Valley one of Europe’s most productive agricultural regions. Although only 13 per cent of Italy’s cultivable land was in the Po Valley, the region accounted for over one third of its agricultural production. The social composition of the area may have been highly varied, but the most modern and enterprising of the Po Valley large landowners and commercial farmers had graduated in agronomics, engineering or law, owned industries or banks, or edited newspapers, and were far from the stereotypes of the paternalistic, detached landowner or the churlish, uneducated farmer. ²⁶

The flourishing of workers’ and employers’ associations mirrored an exceptionally intense period of social conflicts, while these were aggravated by the agricultural crisis of the late 1880s and then again by the financial-economic crisis of 1907–1908 that resulted in stagnant markets and declining profits. The new generation of rural entrepreneurs were therefore pushed into passing the burden on to the workforce and to strongly opposing the unions. Given the huge interests at stake, the consequences, unsurprisingly, went far beyond mere economic facts. Referring to a major agricultural strike that took place in the province of Ferrara in 1901, the Conservative Member of Parliament Pietro Niccolini stated that ‘the strike was the least important issue. … It was the definitive rupture of all moral traditions upon which, along with agricultural contracts, the entire order of the province was based. … The strike was a small psychological revolution’. ²⁷

Increased organization among the two opposing fronts radicalized the struggle, with the consequence that it became even more difficult to implement a credible policing policy, while structural deficiencies in the state apparatus further aggravated the situation. The main difficulty was the lack of sufficient police forces. As Giolitti reminded the Senate (1904), there were only 8,000 policemen in the entire country, while the city of London alone had 12,000. The comparison is still striking even when we include the 25,000 operational carabinieri (1909). ²⁸ By way of example, the prefect of Milan could deploy only 1000 soldiers, 600 policemen and 50 carabinieri against the 150,000 strikers who took to the streets during the general strike of 1904. ²⁹ Insufficient numbers was usually the reason for the escalation of violence: the freedom to work could not be secured and collisions between strikers and blacklegs became inevitable, frequently with violent consequences. ³⁰ Giolitti’s new policing policy also induced deep resentment among police officers and even prefects, who were now restrained from using repression and violence when dealing with the masses, whom they considered to be dangerous and even uncivilized. ³¹ As a police officer from Apulia – where violence was much more common than in northern Italy – exclaimed: ‘Damn Giolitti! If it were not for him, you would all be burnt alive’. ³² Finally, it should be borne in mind that Giolitti still relied on the landowners’ support in parliament and could not therefore push his liberal policy too far. Repression was therefore tolerated from time to time in order to reassure political supporters. ³³

For all these reasons, the new policing policy was far from consistent across the country. As Giolitti admitted, he followed an ‘empirical’ policy and the balance between dialogue and repression changed from province to province and from case to case. ³⁴ A series of interconnected reasons influenced attitudes to policing. Firstly, there was the divide between the so-called economic and revolutionary strikes. Strikes aimed at achieving better wages and working conditions were met with relative mildness and prefects sought to reach a fair agreement: ‘as long as there are disputes between work and capital, government action will not intervene in any way’, Giolitti declared in 1893. ³⁵ In contrast, the response to general and political strikes was usually a massive presence of troops and police, preventive arrests and the disbandment of associations and unions. ³⁶ A second divide was that between agricultural and industrial strikes. Giolitti was always much more thorough in preventing major violent conflicts in urban areas in order to appease the reformist leadership of the Socialist Party, avoid major disruption to industrial production and show goodwill towards industrialists. However, as he admitted in the Senate, ‘agricultural strikes are more extensive and more easily give rise to abuse out of proportion to the difficulties met by public authorities because of the vast expanses of land involved and the greater distances from habitations’. ³⁷ This was aggravated by the ‘inherently stronger tendencies’ of agricultural strikes to result in violence. ³⁸ Factors such as thousands of strikers acting over hundreds of hectares, high levels of underemployment, the crucial importance of seasonal jobs, the pressure to maintain union solidarity and counter unfair competition from strike-breakers, and the extremely hard living conditions of day labourers, who were constantly at risk of starvation and illness, made agricultural strikes a zero sum game with ‘a frightening potency’. ³⁹ A major strike at harvest time meant crops being left to rot in the fields and the loss of an entire year’s worth of investment for employers, while the landowners’ efficiency in recruiting and employing strike-breakers could mean starvation for unionized day labourers and retaliation for years to come. ⁴⁰ The divide between rural and urban areas largely mirrored that between the revolutionary (or maximalist) and reformist socialists, since the latter were more prominent in urban-industrial areas, while the provinces were politically more fragmented. After 1904, when a revolutionary faction took control of the Socialist Party leadership, the collaborative alignment between Giolitti and the moderate socialist leaders (principally Filippo Turati) was seriously endangered. There were also differences at the provincial level. Whenever a workers’ organization failed to conform to Giolitti’s political aims, force was considered more effective than dialogue and recognition. ⁴¹ For example, the prefects of Ferrara continued to offer protection to blacklegs recruited from neighbouring provinces as a way of weakening the revolutionary leadership of the local unions. ⁴² This had tragic consequences during a major strike in 1901 when, in the small village of Berra, an army unit fired on an unarmed crowd of 500 protesters to protect blacklegs working on land belonging to the Society for the Reclamation of Ferrara Lands, killing four workers and injuring over 30. ⁴³ In Parliament, Giolitti criticized the company’s intransigence, but also clearly defended the army and attributed the events to a lack of organization, with the workers ‘acting like a mob’. ⁴⁴ However, despite the new political climate, in 1907 the reformist socialist mayor of Molinella (Bologna), just a few kilometres from Ferrara, praised the prefect's decision to no longer provide armed escorts for blacklegs recruited by several leaseholders in the province. ⁴⁵ All these divides converge on the main divide between northern and southern Italy. If the Berra massacre was quite exceptional in northern Italy, ⁴⁶ in the south similar events took place almost daily. The paucity of socialist forces in the south resulted in less control and discipline amongst the masses, which, along with distrust of the impartiality of the state, increasingly desperate living conditions, insufficient forces and a general prejudice that southern populations should be ruled with an iron fist, resulted in brutal repression occurring much more frequently. ⁴⁷ In 1902, for example, one protester was killed and four injured in Cassano Murge (August), five workers were killed and 12 wounded at Candela (September), and a conflict in Giarratana (October) resulted in one carabiniere being lynched, two workers being killed and over 50 people being injured. ⁴⁸

Work Replacement in Liberal Italy

In Italy, strike-breakers had a very bad reputation and were generally addressed as crumiri. The word came from a misspelling of the name of an eastern Tunisian tribe, the Khumair, whose raids and acts of banditry gave France an excuse to put the region under a protectorate. During a major strike in Marseille (1901), the rumours of incoming replacement workers from Tunisia gave rise to blacklegs being identified as crumiri and the derogative epithet was soon adopted by the Italian socialist movement. ⁴⁹

Strikebreaking was generally widespread and used extensively in sectors that did not require special skills, that is, where the workers could be easily replaced. In the skilled industrial sectors (e.g. car factories, metal works, etc.) ‘class dignity’ was also probably much stronger, which helped make strikebreaking ‘almost impossible – and very risky as well’. ⁵⁰ As the metalworkers of Turin would say, ‘someone can’t play the role of a Fiat or Lancia worker’. ⁵¹ Indeed, when over 6,500 Turin metalworkers went on strike for over 90 days in 1913, no cases of blacklegs were recorded. ⁵² Nevertheless, blacklegs were sometimes recruited to substitute skilled workers. For instance, 60 crumiri were hired to replace workers at the Officine di Savigliano (Piedmont) during a strike in July 1907, although they were probably brought in from other plants operated by the same company. ⁵³ Crumiri were also recruited (and armed with knives) by the Officine Roma to replace metalworkers who went on strike in October 1909. ⁵⁴ However, it was much easier to recruit blacklegs for unskilled jobs: for example, over 800 crumiri were recruited by the Union de Gaz to run the gasworks during a strike in Milan in 1907. ⁵⁵ The unskilled workers in sugar factories were also at risk of replacement, as in the case of a major strike in Forlì when the Eridania sugar company recruited several blacklegs and armed them with knives and guns. ⁵⁶ The iron foundries of Piombino and Portoferraio (Tuscany) also tried to establish a parallel company union. By offering dedicated social insurance schemes, sales outlets and mutual aid funds, the company tried to organize a reservoir of loyal skilled workers with the aim of limiting the potential impact of strikes. To defend themselves against the socialist unions, these workers (who the unions were quick to call crumiri) were armed with guns. There were indeed a number of shootings during a strike in 1913. ⁵⁷

The violent social conflicts stemming from strikebreaking provoked reflection on the legitimacy of the practice. From the turn of the century, many began to question the extent to which it was legitimate to use replacement workers and defend them from strikers. In 1904, the lawyer and attorney Raffaele De Notaristefani wrote an article provocatively titled ‘The Punishment of the Blackleg’ (La punizione del krumiro), in which he defended the employers’ complete right to use replacement workers whenever strikers’ demands were excessive and unfair. However, when strikers and unions were simply seeking moderate and reasonable improvements, the employers’ use of unemployed, foreign or non-unionized workers became a form of ‘unfair competition’ and ‘injustice’ that state authorities should prevent. ⁵⁸ The article was widely discussed and opened up a spirited debate on the legitimacy of strikebreaking. ⁵⁹ De Notaristefani stressed that the progressive illegitimacy of strikebreaking was largely due to a ‘new direction in private and public law towards the limitation of individual freedom in keeping with the demands of justice and morality’. ⁶⁰ This position was shared by the lawyer Rodolfo Laschi, who recognized that national interests played a crucial role in determining whether or not strikebreaking was legitimate. ⁶¹ Pasquale Arena, a professor of law, wrote that the state should act according to the ‘holy right of self-defence’ and use both repression and replacement workers in response to public service strikes. ⁶² ‘No one can deny the state the opportunity to ban public service strikes in order to defend its own existence’, stated his colleague Guglielmo Sabatini. ⁶³

It should be no surprise, therefore, that a policing policy based on state neutrality and equal recognition of the right to strike and the right to work was considered not to apply to public services. Strikes in these sectors (railways and tramways, gas and electricity supply, postal services) were treated severely and the state expended major resources not only on maintaining public order but also on replacing striking workers. ⁶⁴ The significant threat posed by a general strike in the railway sector eventually resulted in a 1905 law putting railway workers on a par with public officials, thereby prohibiting them from striking. ⁶⁵ With regard to strikes in other public services, the authorities resorted to two main strategies. Usually, troops or police officers were deployed to defend premises and factories and to protect the blacklegs hired by the employers. In some cases, however, the state took direct control and sent soldiers, sailors, firefighters or local policemen to replace striking workers. For example, during a strike at the Turin gasworks in 1902, the mayor replaced striking workers with road sweepers and firefighters, while city guards provided protection. Meanwhile, the gas companies recruited blacklegs from the countryside, while police forces and army battalions were mobilized to secure the ‘freedom to work of those hired to replace the strikers’. ⁶⁶ When a general strike was later declared, soldiers were sent to the gasworks, electric power plants and even bakeries to replace striking workers, while over 1,500 troops and hundreds of policemen and carabinieri kept the city centre under control. ⁶⁷ Speaking to Parliament, Giolitti used public order arguments to vehemently defend the decision to use the army to replace striking workers: ‘a city without public lighting is an unsafe city’. In the case of strikes in public services, especially the railways, he concluded that the country would face ‘a greater state necessity which overcomes any other considerations’. ⁶⁸ The use of troops to replace striking workers was therefore not uncommon. Sailors and navy ships were used to keep the postal service running in Genoa in 1901, ⁶⁹ soldiers substituted for bakers in Turin in 1907, and 50 soldiers were deployed to light street lamps in Rome in 1908. ⁷⁰ Although not always legitimate, strikebreaking was generally considered necessary in sectors that involved the public good and wealth.

The difference between public and private interests was not, however, always clear-cut. ⁷¹ For a long time, agriculture was considered by both agricultural landowners and the state itself to be a strategic sector, as evidenced by the employment of the so-called soldier-harvesters. During major agricultural strikes, the government frequently deployed army battalions in the area, not only to preserve public order, but also to replace striking workers, and soldiers were put to work harvesting crops in a militarized countryside. ⁷² In 1900, Saracco’s government decided to stop using soldier-harvesters following public protests. The economist Luigi Einaudi considered the harvest a ‘private affair’ and the long-established practice of using the army to ‘keep the salaries down’ inappropriate in a ‘civil country’. ⁷³ Vilfredo Pareto thought somewhat similarly, pointing out that while landowners endorsed the free-trade credo, they hypocritically resorted to inappropriate support from the army. He invited them and the rest of the bourgeoisie to organize themselves and find the wherewithal to prevent the socialists from gaining power. ⁷⁴

Having become used to unconditional, direct government support, many were shocked by the decision to no longer deploy soldier-harvesters. ⁷⁵ As noted by Bologna’s Chief of Police (questore) in 1911, large landowners and capitalistic farmers believed that the right to private property was ‘sacred’, ‘absolute and intangible’, and that ‘because we pay taxes the government must protect us with every means’. ⁷⁶ Facing what they perceived to be a personal and national betrayal, many of the Po Valley landowners and bourgeoisie decided to follow Pareto’s advice to find the energy and resources needed to combat the unions.

Strikebreaking in the Po Valley

In the capitalist farms of the Po Valley, the figure of the crumiro came to embody extreme counter positions, deep-seated hatred and contrasting images. A variety of subjects were defined as crumiri. Although they could be workers from other provinces or villages who had agreed to work during strikes, either because they needed to do so or because they had been misled, they could also be permanent or semi-permanent workers hired directly by the employers. Eventually, the term was also typically applied to members of non-socialist unions. Unionized workers saw them as betrayers, exploiters, a threat to class solidarity and slaves of the masters, while union leaders described blacklegs as ‘egoists, cynics and beasts’. ⁷⁷ Poor farmers from the Veneto region were among the most eagerly sought-after (and desperate) blacklegs, recruited by ruthless intermediaries and then sold to landowners and leaseholders in Ferrara and Bologna. They were described by the socialist press as ‘despicable human livestock’. ⁷⁸ During a major strike in Ferrara in 1911, ‘shady figures in the guise of brigands, at the complete mercy of the wine and money of betrayal’ came up against the unions, guns in the hands. ⁷⁹

On the other side, the propertied classes saw the strike-breakers as humble, devoted and loyal workers, whose courage ensured their wealth and prosperity. The journalist and economist Francesco Papafava criticized union members for their lack of empathy towards the crumiri, often the ‘fifth estate of desperate people’. ⁸⁰ Over the years, the word ‘crumiri’ stopped being a ‘cruel insult’ and became ‘peaceably accepted and actually proudly donned by the agricultural worker’, or so claimed Enrico Sturani, President of the Agrarian Association of Bologna, in 1906. ⁸¹ As we will see, after the 1908 strike in Parma, landowners and sometimes also state authorities started to refer to the crumiri as ‘free workers’, since they were outside the traditional unions. ⁸²

The enterprising landowners and leaseholders relied on specialist professionals to support their efforts to guarantee a constant availability of blacklegs. ⁸³ Ferruccio Grazzi, a lawyer from Ferrara and son of the city’s chief attorney, along with the mayor of a nearby village were accused of being ‘crumiri makers’. ⁸⁴ The most infamous of these specialists was probably ‘Mister’ Primo Mangolini, with his signature American carbine. ⁸⁵ Employers also tried to organize or at least support independent unions with the aim of circumventing the socialists’ control over the workforce. Attempts to create alternative unions had started at the turn of the century, the most popular being the Catholic unions, which were initially formed in the provinces of Cremona and Lodi in 1901–1902 but became quite common elsewhere over the following years. ⁸⁶ From 1901 onwards, the so-called Professional Unions or Popolari (Popular Unions) were organized in the province of Ferrara. These were Catholic trade unions that had the direct support of the church and rested on values such as obedience, class co-operation and submission to legitimate authorities, church hierarchies and employers. ⁸⁷ Not surprisingly, the Ferrara Catholic unions did not usually join in strikes or labour conflicts so their members were included among the blacklegs, with the result that they often came into violent conflict with the left-wing unions. ⁸⁸ The conservative and liberal elites also tried to directly organize the workforce along the lines of cross-class ideals and co-operation. The so-called ‘Capital and Work’ unions mainly gathered together artisans, small proprietors and sharecroppers, but also a few labourers. Although barely effective, they tried to attract workers by offering secure employment as well as other benefits and social activities (card games, taverns, dances, etc.). ⁸⁹

There were often insufficient numbers of non-unionized workers to break a strike. Blacklegs had always to be protected from the propaganda and intimidation of the unions, as well as verbal abuse, threats and even physical violence. Their defence, however, did not necessarily assume illegal forms. Public security laws and penal procedures authorized proprietors to hire guardie campestri (rural guards), whose appointment was subject to the prefect’s approval and who had to swear to maintain order and respect the law. The rural guards had a special gun licence, usually for a rifle, and they could wear a uniform. Until at least 1901–1904, the rural guards were generally considered equivalent to public officials and agents of the judiciary police, although they were paid by private citizens or companies. ⁹⁰ Their duties included protecting the borders of estates, supervising day labourers and farmers, and defending private property against poachers, fishermen, thieves and poor people who might try to steal tools or food. ⁹¹ If trouble broke out, the rural guards were the first line of defence against both land invasions and peaceful rallies. ⁹² In the province of Ferrara, the rural guards were the armed wing of repression. In 1889, a guard following the orders of his masters fired on a group of fishermen, killing a 27-year-old man. In 1895, a guard shot and wounded a peasant as he was stealing some hay. In 1899, a guard wounded three women who were gathering leftover crops. ⁹³ In March 1904, rural guard Blanzieri, who was on the payroll of a major landowner, killed one labourer and badly wounded another when he caught them sleeping on the estate. According to the socialist newspaper, La Scintilla, men like Blanzieri were hired from among the ‘dregs of society’ by ‘lords’ keen to reassert their absolute power over all men and things on their properties. At his trial, Blanzieri was acquitted of the killing because he had allegedly acted in self-defence. ⁹⁴ All these episodes reflected a new meaning of private property, according to which the customary traditions of trespassing and gathering leftover crops became criminal offences that the guards could respond to with the use of firearms. These transformations were particularly profound in places where the land had been reclassified. ⁹⁵

Generally, rural guards acted alone or in small groups on single estates. Sometimes, however, they could be organized into something akin to a private police corps, as was the case of the Society for the Reclamation of the Ferrara Lands (Società bonifica terreni ferraresi – SBTF). ⁹⁶ In the 1870s, the SBTF began acquiring huge swathes of marshlands in the province of Ferrara. Having attracted massive investments they constructed canals, streets and draining pumps and turned over 20,000 hectares of marsh into fertile lands, which had a huge impact on the province’s hydraulic, geographical, social and economic landscape. In less than two decades, the province had doubled its area of fertile land. After various bankruptcies and controlled administrations, the Bank of Turin took control of the company and managed it as a purely capitalist enterprise, the main goal of which was to make a profit for the shareholders. ⁹⁷ As a result of traditional forms of tenure being integrated into a strictly capitalist system, the workers’ contracts resembled a legalized form of slavery. ⁹⁸ For example, the workers could not leave the estate without permission from company agents, while misconduct was dealt with by fines and punishments. ⁹⁹ Traditional behaviours and consolidated rights, such as gleaning wheat and corn, were formally forbidden and equated with theft. ¹⁰⁰

For a company whose lands were almost exclusively farmed directly, maintaining a workforce was crucial. During a major strike in 1901, the SBTF resorted to a two-fold strategy: mass redundancies were announced for all those who participated in or supported the strike, ¹⁰¹ and following a strict interpretation of their contracts the company also prevented the workers from accessing wells or using carriages to transport water, forcing thousands of people to walk more than five kilometres to fill bottles and jars from the cloudy waters of the Po di Volano. ¹⁰² The company also resorted to mass recruitment of blacklegs, who were hired in the neighbouring provinces of Bologna, Rovigo and Padua, as well as within the province of Ferrara, and were organized into squads ready for deployment wherever needed. ¹⁰³ Exploiting its connections to the Bank of Turin – the SBTF’s main shareholder – the company hired almost 900 workers in Piedmont and Apulia, an extraordinary logistical effort. ¹⁰⁴ During the same strike, Mangolini – the specialist organiser of crumiri – was able to recruit 500 workers, which greatly contributed to weakening the strikers’ resistance and led to the SBTF recognizing Mangolini as its ‘viceroy’. The socialist newspaper La Scintilla described the blacklegs as ‘a tribe which set up a camp in the strike area, and there they sleep, live and eat as long as they are needed’, claiming that they had agreed to be paid less than the SBTF workers. ¹⁰⁵ The recruitment of hundreds of strike-breakers, both locally and nationally, significantly contributed to alleviating the impact of the strike on SBTF lands, ¹⁰⁶ albeit at the cost of major conflicts, including the massacre at Berra.

After the ‘very serious damage’ and economic losses of 1901, the following year ‘a good number of mounted security guards were recruited’. ¹⁰⁷ In fact, the SBTF had employed rural guards since its foundation. In 1897, a guard shot and killed a peasant in Copparo, ¹⁰⁸ while two years later an armed land agent employed by the SBTF killed a labourer who was caught stealing corn. ¹⁰⁹ In this context, the 1902 corps represented a step change in the company’s repressive strategy. Their employment contract stated that the guards should be men under 40 years of age who were physically fit and of high moral character. As was the case for other personnel, they could not leave the estate without permission and the company could not be held accountable for any criminal conduct on their part. Each guard received a horse, a rifle and a uniform and had, of course, to comply with all the requirements of the law under which the guardie campestri were constituted. ¹¹⁰ With its corps of mounted rural guards, the SBTF was able to keep socialist propaganda and strikes outside the estate and to increase the control and discipline of its workers. This policy matched the new business strategy adopted by the company in 1904, which was to sell all the lands that could not be directly farmed. The project also had urbanistic and administrative ramifications. In 1904, the company founded the small village of Le Venezie at the exact centre of its estates and within the municipality of Copparo. The village was intended to be the new headquarters of the SBTF as well as a residential centre for its workers. A church, a primary school and a medical clinic (employing a general practitioner and a midwife) were built as well as a police station. ¹¹¹ In 1910, a new aqueduct was built, making the village the first in the reclaimed lands to have access to fresh drinking water. In 1909, Le Venezie became an autonomous municipality and in 1911 its name was changed to Jolanda di Savoia, after King Victor Emanuel’s daughter. ¹¹² According to company director Alessandro Marangoni, the SBTF estates would stretch to fit the limits of the municipality. ¹¹³ The company’s control was almost absolute. The first mayor was a former rural guard, and no socialist unions or parties were allowed within the municipality. ¹¹⁴

The new strategy, which was based on control, repression, absolute isolation and very limited company welfare, actually worked. Violent incidents still occurred in 1907, although the majority of workers remained subdued and obedient to the company. ¹¹⁵ The SBTF remained totally unaffected by a boatmen’s strike in 1909, since it had its own workers. ¹¹⁶ In 1912 and 1914, Marangoni could proudly state that during the previous years the SBTF had remained immune from the social conflicts that had swept the province. ¹¹⁷ Protected by armed mounted guards and exercising a regime of terror and subtle incentives for semi-enslaved workers, the SBTF effectively controlled an entire municipality where it exerted its power and rule. The company’s pervasive control over its lands, men and possessions was legally effected by means of new contracts, urban initiatives and a corps of rural guards. This mirrored a radical and obsessive vision of private property in which private and public prerogatives continuously overlapped.

The Italian Supreme Court eventually declared, in 1904, that private guards were in fact private and could therefore not carry out police work, make arrests or undertake searches. ¹¹⁸ The SBTF partly overcame this with other strategies aimed at creating an autonomous, isolated workplace. In other cases, however, the border between the legal and illegal protection of strike-breakers was significantly more blurred.

A good example is the case of Alfredo Benni. A farmer’s son, Benni rapidly became one of the most important capitalist leaseholders in the entire province of Bologna. In 1904, he became the main shareholder and director of the Mezzolara estate, over 2,000 hectares owned by Napoleon III’s widow, Princess Eugenia. Benni managed Mezzolara as a capitalist farm and with consistent investment he transformed it into one of the most productive estates in the Po Valley. Benni also circumvented the local unions’ control over the workforce. He hired over 500 permanent workers and gave them good wages, houses and various benefits. ¹¹⁹ As he stated, ‘I will do everything to protect the family of my workers, whom, if loyal, I will never abandon’. ¹²⁰ In 1907, journalists reported that masses of workers had gathered in the main courtyard of the farm, where they were praised by Benni for their loyalty. ¹²¹ The local unions defined them as crumiri and organized a lengthy campaign of ostracisation of Benni’s personal workforce, excluding them from accessing local services, which lasted from 1907 to 1910. ¹²² Armed with rifles and wearing bandoleers, Benni’s rural guards formed the first line of defence of the estate and its workers. ¹²³ Shootouts between Benni’s private guards and protesters occurred in 1907 and 1908, in particular as a consequence of attempted land occupations. ¹²⁴ Along with the rural guards, many crumiri and young boys were also armed with pistols and rifles, even though they did not have gun licences; others used work tools such as billhooks and knives for self-defence. ¹²⁵ Benni’s crumiri frequently attacked unionized workers or fired at their houses. Given this increasing violence, the socialist press threatened Benni and the police authorities that ‘if the unlicensed crumiri were not arrested, the local [socialist] co-operative would buy revolvers for members of the union’. ¹²⁶ The police authorities admitted that such incidents resulted from a lack of sufficient forces in the area and reported that Benni repeatedly used armed strike-breakers and rural guards not only to defend the company’s estates but also to provoke incidents and probably also to have an excuse to call in troops to defend ‘public order as well as [the estate’s] own interests’. ¹²⁷

The landowners’ two-fold strategy, which involved resorting to both legal and illegal means of protecting strike-breakers and at the same time provoking incidents, probably reached its peak during the 1908 strike in Parma. At the behest of Lino Carrara, squads of Volunteer Workers and Free Workers were organized in January 1908, at least five months prior to the lock-out declared by the ‘strongest agrarian association in Italy’ in retaliation for the strike won by De Ambris and his unions the year before. ¹²⁸ Young farmers, students and also former members of the military, that is, a ‘concentrated segment of the bourgeoisie’, formed the ranks of the Volunteer Workers, whose aim was to ‘prevent violence, by using violence, [and] to defend the freedom to work’. ¹²⁹ In practice, they escorted and protected the Free Workers – blacklegs recruited in other provinces as well as former members of the socialist unions. ¹³⁰ In Carrara’s words, the Volunteer Workers were ‘the public force of the private state, substituting the official, now impotent, state’. ¹³¹

Despite their clearly subversive aims, Carrara and his fellow agrarians did not completely break with legality. They always stressed the fact that the Volunteer Workers had official gun licences and that they acted in self-defence and to preserve the right to work that the Penal Code guaranteed them. ¹³² However, as the unions constantly protested, the Volunteer Workers did not act as individuals, but rather as ‘armed bands’, whose creation was clearly contrary to both the law and the constitution. ¹³³ The Volunteer Workers’ strategy was to provoke incidents in order to justify state repression, which in fact happened during the final phase of the strike: the Free Workers paraded provocatively through the city and Volunteer Workers fired randomly at strikers and bystanders in the city centre simply to enflame the strikers and hence justify state intervention. Following such incidents, cavalry and troops intervened en masse, occupied the Chamber of Labour and put an end to the strike. ¹³⁴

After the victorious conclusion of the strike, Carrara continued his efforts to create ‘a stable organization of labourers tied by relationships of dependency to the employers’ association’ by taking over the traditional haunts, rituals and spaces of unionized workers. ¹³⁵ Volunteer Workers continued to provoke incidents in traditional working-class social spaces, such as bars, taverns and dance halls. Special funds and insurances for sickness, accidents and maternity, as well as forms of sharecropping and profit-sharing, were established to improve the Free Workers’ conditions and keep them loyal. ¹³⁶ These initiatives were aimed at legitimizing the Free Workers: they came to understand the need for social hierarchies and were willing to defend production and national wealth, thereby embodying the ideals of class collaboration, sacrifice, obedience and loyalty. ¹³⁷ On the other side, the left-wing unions denounced the Free Workers as not only traitors, but also technically inept. ¹³⁸ If, in 1909 and 1910, Carrara’s strategy seemed to be working, from 1911 onwards internal and external opposition resulted in the Federation of Free Workers losing the majority of its membership. ¹³⁹

The 1908 strike in Parma marked a turning point, and both Free and Volunteer Workers became common in other provinces too. At the time of the 1908 strike, the Agrarian Federation of Ferrara sought to create a ‘volunteer’ corps, although the initiative probably met with little success. ¹⁴⁰ Carrara and other leaders of the Po Valley agrarian associations also advocated the creation of an interprovincial corps of volunteers. ¹⁴¹ In official reports and documents, the word ‘crumiri’ started to be replaced by ‘volunteers’ or ‘free workers’. ¹⁴² According to the provincial Chief of Police of Bologna, after the 1908 strike in Parma the region’s agrarian associations improved their activities, in particular in the ‘organization of the so-called crumiraggio [strikebreaking] and any means of defence and class struggle’. ¹⁴³ These considerations were also shared by the union leaders. An article published in 1913 in the socialist newspaper La Scintilla described two types of Free Workers. The first, ‘organized and specialized’, were permanent members of independent unions managed by the employers and met all the ‘necessary technical requirements’ to adequately replace strikers. However, this group had very few members (only 440 men and 210 women in Parma) so they were fairly ineffective during massive strikes that might involve ‘tens of thousands of strikers’. In contrast, the second type of Free Workers included ‘those who had learnt well the job of the layabout: they are totally incapable of doing anything’. They were mainly used to intimidate striking workers with their numbers, although they were actually harmless: ‘if an agreement is not reached, they will be unable to save the harvest’. ¹⁴⁴

After the Parma strike, crumiri armed with revolvers and rifles (often without licences) became an increasingly familiar sight. ¹⁴⁵ Back in 1907, the socialist mayor of Molinella complained of the presence of ‘crumiri armed by the same leaseholders to beat and injure unionized workers in order to have the excuse to call for repression’. ¹⁴⁶ In 1911, a strike was declared in the province of Ferrara with the precise aim of protesting against the ‘armed bands’ of ‘“squires” and blacklegs, armed to the teeth’ that the agrarian association had organized in order to ‘provoke and challenge’. ¹⁴⁷ During a conflict in Bologna in November 1911, ‘free workers’ were arrested as they were pulling out the revolvers they had in their possession ‘without licences’; according to the police, they were ‘permanent employees’ of a local landowner. ¹⁴⁸ The agrarian associations took extraordinary risks to fulfil their policy goal of full autonomy from both the state and the unions. In Bologna, in particular, the local agrarian association informed the police authorities only a few hours before the arrival of ‘free workers’ in the fields. Their ulterior motive was to challenge both the state authorities (by accusing them of incompetence in the case of disorder) and the socialist unions (by showing that the agrarian association could carry out farm work independently). It was during one of these ‘challenges’ that a brutal incident occurred in Guarda. In October 1914, five blacklegs – extremely poor and desperate day labourers from the province of Padua – were killed with sticks and stones by hundreds of unionized workers, who were exasperated by the leaseholders’ resistance and provocations. The authorities intervened promptly to disband the unions and arrest their leaders. The agrarians blamed ‘Giolittian permissiveness’ for being the main cause of the massacre and then took advantage of the repression to establish an ‘apolitical league’ based on ‘good relations’ between employers and the workforce. ¹⁴⁹

As the incident in Guarda and the previous examples have made clear, such conflicts were not the sole result of state weakness or unpreparedness, they were also the outcome of deliberate provocation on the part of the employers. According to historian Anthony Cardoza, men like Benni and Carrara represented the ‘vanguard of a new movement of agrarian insurgency’, which was directed against the socialist unions, traditional landowners and the state. ¹⁵⁰ The extreme bitterness of the unsolvable social conflicts together with the proprietors’ conscious decision to challenge the unions gave rise to struggles that became subversive. This contributed to an escalation in conflict that could barely be solved within the boundaries of a liberal democracy.

Conclusion

Although generally underestimated, strikebreaking was an absolutely crucial aspect of the social dynamics in liberal Italy. In this regard, the Po Valley represented a contradiction: in spite of the abundance of unskilled workers, the solid, pervasive network of day labourers’ unions largely prevented the hiring of replacement workers. The general unwritten rule that the strength of a union should be proportionate to the skill of the trade was subject to a significant exception here. ¹⁵¹ Giolitti’s policing and political strategies for breaking the deadlock were uncertain, shifting and opportunistic. Certainly, the Giolittian policy of state neutrality (in all its forms, including the new status of rural guards) exposed the fact that repression had a class-based nature. ¹⁵² This forced employers to confront the inherent contradictions of their declared laissez-faire attitude. On the one hand, landowners and leaseholders were always eager to obtain state support for repression and economic benefits (above all, protectionism), ¹⁵³ while on the other hand, and quite paradoxically, state intervention was fiercely criticized and private intervention lauded whenever issues of economic, political or symbolic power were at stake. ¹⁵⁴ As a leaseholder stated during the strike in Parma, in ‘well-organized societies, social defence is a duty of the government, by tacit social agreement. Nowadays, however, faced with multiple offences, we are reclaiming the natural right to provide for our defence’. ¹⁵⁵ Leaders of the agrarian associations had therefore no hesitation in declaring their determination to confront ‘whoever attacks our rights, whether they are socialists, municipal government, or the state’. ¹⁵⁶ In this context, the timid efforts to improve the conditions of the working classes, reduce repressive policies and enlarge political participation in order to make government a credible interlocutor were not only contradictory in themselves, they did nothing but exacerbate the situation and widen the gap between rulers and ruled. The strategies adopted in social conflicts in fact mirrored broader political conundrums. Within the framework of a fairly elitist liberal state lacking sufficient political capital, policies to foster economic development by extending political participation were pursued by a minority of the political elites. Faced with the contradictions and counterproductive consequences of Giolitti’s policies of tolerance, Po Valley large landowners and commercial leaseholders created political cultures and employed strategies based on the more effective combination of organized violence, authoritarian seduction, labour discipline and productivist tendencies. It was on these cultural and practical foundations that Fascism was able to prosper after the end of the Great War.

The ultimate outcome was the establishment of the authoritarian fascist regime, but it was not predetermined. The comparative perspective adopted in this special issue helps situate the Italian case within a wider European framework: the semblance of direct continuity between the Giolittian era and Fascism is belied by similarities with other European countries during the Belle Époque that were having similar difficulties in striking a balance between social order and the rule of law in increasingly mass societies. However, what sets Italy apart is the particular social, economic and political features of the Po Valley which had a strong hand in shaping the ‘agrarian roots of Fascism’. ¹⁵⁷ There is agreement among historians that the fascist black-shirts cannot be portrayed simply as the ‘white guards’ of agricultural proprietors and their raison d’être was not strikebreaking. Nevertheless, Fascism prospered because it was able to offer an effective and durable solution for controlling the workforce in regions where the problem had been almost unresolvable for decades.

The paradox of strikebreaking may then help explain the paradox in the shift of a fragile Italian democracy towards authoritarianism. Consideration of the interplay between violence and consensus and the reconfiguration of the public and private domains from the specialized perspective of strikebreaking and within a broader comparative framework may help resolve the paradox of Italy’s apparent exceptionality.