19.10.2011

Black Bloc allowed to wreck protest

The spontaneism of the 'horizontalists' was completely exposed in Rome, writes Toby Abse

The Roman demonstration on Saturday October 15 was by far the largest of the 950 anti-capitalist protests in more than 80 countries that took place on that day all around the globe. The centre-left daily La Repubblica estimated the crowd at 300,000; as is customary on such occasions, the police estimate was lower - 70,000-80,000, according to Giuseppe Pecoraro, the prefect of Rome.

Whatever the precise figures, a crowd of this size was a very remarkable phenomenon, given that the event was organised not by a large trade union confederation or a major political party, but by the Comitato 15 Ottobre - a loose confederation inspired by the Spanish Indignados. Such a massive mobilisation was an indication of the very widespread popular anger against the bankers and the mainstream politicians linked to them in the wake of Italy’s deep economic and political crisis and involved a far greater variety of people than those attracted by the relatively small Occupy London event near St Paul’s, which got more support on Facebook than in the real world.

However, the impressive Italian demonstration was also the most violent of all the protests, even if the aggressive section of the crowd, a galaxy of anarchist and autonomist groups popularly known as the Black Bloc, seems to have accounted for about 500 people at the start of the demonstration. It may have had the support of around 3,000, probably including some angry young people - generally unemployed or casually employed - won over on the day in Piazza San Giovanni, where the march reached its chaotic conclusion. The planned but abandoned final rally was superseded by the symbolic burning of a carabinieri van, on the back of which was spray-painted in white the slogan “Carlo vive ACAB” (a reference to Carlo Giuliani, killed by the carabinieri in Genoa in July 2001; the acronym stands for ‘All cops are bastards’ - Italian anarchists and autonomists have a penchant for English language slogans).

The outcome was completely predictable. Large demonstrations require careful stewarding. The reason why the million-strong demonstration at the close of the European Social Forum in November 2002 did not degenerate into the “sack of Florence” predicted by Oriana Fallaci, the notorious rightwing journalist renowned for her Islamophobia, was the impressive stewarding by the CGIL union confederation, particularly the Livornese dockers. Incidentally the latter ensured that the Socialist Workers Party’s ludicrous attempt to replace striking Fiat workers at the head of the march came to a rather more rapid and ignominious end than professor Callinicos could have foreseen.

However, last Saturday there were no stewards. This was not the result of any accident, any lack of forethought or any piece of incompetence. This lunacy was quite deliberate. Those inspired by the Spanish Indignados insisted weeks in advance that the demonstration must be totally spontaneous and free from any hierarchy with nobody imposing their will on anybody else. The appalling consequences of this craziness were compounded by another very conscious decision taken by the advocates of the ‘horizontal’ approach. Political parties were given firm instructions to march at the back of the procession: even this represented a degree of compromise by the Indignati, as the most impassioned advocates of the Spanish approach had at first tried to exclude political parties, or at least the banners of the political parties, from the demonstration. Members of the union representing Fiat workers, Fiom, were also sent to the back and, while the rank-and-filist Cobas union was nearer the front and was able to protect its own section of the march against the Black Bloc, it was not strong enough to displace it at the head.

This hostility to political parties in general, as opposed to the establishment parties associated with the bankers, was extremely foolish, as parties have a degree of internal cohesion, group loyalty and discipline that often enables them to give a lead in a potentially chaotic situation where an atomised crowd of individuals would, understandably, be prone to panic. Whilst Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) is far weaker now than it was in 2001, it should be remembered that it was a massive mobilisation of party members from all over Italy that to some extent limited the violence inflicted by the state on the day after the carabinieri killed Carlo Giuliani.

Needless to say, whilst political parties like the PRC, Sinistra Ecologia Libertà and Italia dei Valori (IdV) dutifully took their place in the rearguard and the contingents of militant trade unionists did not impose their own stewarding on the demonstration as a whole, the Black Bloc showed absolutely no hesitation in placing themselves near the front of the demonstration and in effect assumed a leadership role in a far more vanguardist fashion than of any of the Marxist groupings of which the Spanish Indignados and the Italian Indignati are so critical.

On this occasion - unlike the spontaneous riot in central Rome in December 2010, when a crowd of largely student protestors exploded with anger at the unexpected news that prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had survived what everybody assumed would be a fatal confidence vote - there does seem to have been a marked degree of coordination on the part of the various components of the Black Bloc (it is extremely unlikely that the instigators were reacting to Berlusconi’s wafer-thin majority in the October 14 2011 confidence vote, even if they may have hoped to win more support amongst the crowd in its wake). How far the actions of the Black Bloc were planned in advance or arranged at the last minute by text messaging is impossible for an outsider to judge.

Moreover, significantly, the Black Bloc did not lead a breakaway march towards the forbidden Red Zone of Rome, within which the police and carabinieri were conducting a massive operation to protect the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Berlusconi’s official and private residences and various other likely targets, but remained within the main body of the march. Sometimes they took off their balaclavas and other identifying gear to merge into the crowd of peaceful protestors - tactics strongly reminiscent of Autonomia Operaia during the demonstrations of the movement of 1977. There is, however, no evidence of the 1977 tradition of using firearms - as opposed to iron bars, wooden poles, Molotov cocktails, smoke bombs and fire crackers, all of which were employed with great gusto last Saturday.

Counterproductive

The behaviour of the Black Bloc was completely counterproductive in terms of the aims of the demonstration’s original organisers, who sought to build the broadest possible mass movement against the bankers and the austerity policies they are imposing on the Italian and other European governments.

The Black Bloc’s action has already given the Italian government a wonderful excuse for intensifying repression against all the strikes, demonstrations and occupations scheduled for the coming weeks - starting with a month-long ban on marches in Rome, which will, for example, limit Fiat strikers to a static assembly during their one-day walkout on Friday October 21 (PRC leader Paolo Ferrero is amongst those who have come out clearly against this ban). But it would be inaccurate to characterise the violence that occurred as random hooliganism - while there was some incidental looting, this was not the work of apolitical criminal gangs bent on economic gain of the type we saw in London in August.

The anarchists’ slogans were clearly political and a response, albeit a crude one, to the current crisis. The slogans ‘Fuck austerity’, ‘Smash capitalism’ , ‘Eat the rich’ and ‘Eat the bankers’ appeared - in English - along the walls of Via Cavour and Via Labicana, as the Black Bloc passed through. By and large the choice of buildings to be attacked had a far greater logic than that displayed by those who attacked carpet showrooms or barber shops in Tottenham this summer - the Banca Etruria, the Banca Popolare del Lazio and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro may not be the leading Italian banks, but were presumably the closest to the approved route. The destruction of McDonald’s in Via Appia or the attack on a branch of Manpower - an international symbol of casualisation and low-paid jobs - in Via Labicana all fitted into a generic anti-capitalist ideology.

Other targets included the five-star Hotel Boscolo and, whether or not the looted Supermercato Elite was really quite as upmarket as its name implied, it was not a corner shop. Burning down offices of the ministry of defence may not have been a universally acceptable form of protest against the Italian armed forces’ involvement in Afghanistan or Libya, but it is not equivalent to the random firebombing of the homes of people on benefit that occurred in some of the London riots.

What is less certain is whether the anarchist/autonomist alliance merely sought to attack symbolic targets and engage in ritual confrontation with the police, particularly the carabinieri, or whether there is any truth in the claim put forward by Giovanni Bianconi in an article in Corriere della Sera that the movimento antagonista was actually aiming at an insurrection (inspired, not by the pacifism of the Spanish Indignados, whom they hold in total contempt, but by the wilder elements in Greece). Whether any of the Black Bloc seriously thought that they could lead a crowd of 300,000 into an all-out assault on the state on the spur of the movement will probably never be known.

Given the inevitably one-sided accounts of violent incidents on any demonstration in the mainstream press, it should be emphasised that, while 70 demonstrators were injured, only 10 policemen, according to La Repubblica, or at most 30, according to the Corriere, were hurt. This suggests that in the final clashes the security forces’ response was fairly ferocious, even if some demonstrators were injured by the Black Bloc. It is worth pointing out that the centre-right Corriere had to admit that its photographer, Carlo Lannutti, ended up in hospital after being truncheoned during a police charge (rather than as the result of any attack on the media by the Black Bloc, which often demonstrates an aversion to photographers). Furthermore, the police asked doctors at San Camillo hospital to identify the wounded before treating them, but the medical staff firmly and courageously refused, correctly stressing their overriding duty to offer immediate medical assistance to all those who needed it.

Nonetheless, whatever the culminating excesses of the police, whose behaviour during the earlier stages of the demonstration was suspiciously restrained (some have suggested they had orders to let the Black Bloc cause havoc unmolested), some of the anarchist behaviour towards the more pacific majority of the demonstrators was absolutely inexcusable. One member of Sinistra Ecologia Libertà lost a couple of fingers as a result of an incident caused by a Black Bloc bomb, which to some extent explains the speed and vehemence with which SEL leader Nichi Vendola denounced the behaviour of the Black Bloc.

Three conclusions

What conclusions can be drawn from all this? First, it is essential to stress the utterly counterproductive character of the Black Bloc’s adventurist and substitutionist tactics, which only unleashes intensified state repression - both interior minister Roberto Maroni and IdV leader (and former policeman) Antonio Di Pietro have now come out in favour of reintroducing the Reale laws of the 1970s. These in effect gave the carabinieri licence to shoot to kill if somebody refused to stop when asked to do so by officers, as well as extending the police considerable powers to hold people without charge for relatively long periods. The Black Bloc’s antics could also lead to less hardened and experienced demonstrators withdrawing from political activity, in the same way as Autonomia’s disgraceful behaviour destroyed the movement in Italy in the course of 1977-78.

Secondly, if hard autonomism (which rather than classical anarchism is the predominant ideology of the Black Bloc) is an obvious danger to the workers’ movement, the soft autonomism represented by the leaderless, ‘horizontal’ activism of the Spanish Indignados, the Italian Indignati and their British equivalents in UK Uncut and some local anti-cuts groups is also a big problem. Whilst it may claim success for small-scale, symbolic actions like the blocking of Westminster Bridge, it is just not fit for purpose when it comes to demonstrations involving tens or hundreds of thousands. It could easily have tragic consequences for those who are deluded into believing that it is possible to change the world without taking power, if either the state or the Black Bloc or both refuse to participate in a Gandhian game.

Thirdly, there is very little hope of any lasting gains in a context of state repression and desperate manoeuvring by a weakened Berlusconi, unless Rifondazione rebuilds a mass membership through an orientation towards the movements rather than the institutions. Whilst there is clearly some value in having local or regional councillors acting as tribunes of the people, the holding of such posts is not an end in itself - there is no point in hanging on to municipal or regional office by one’s fingertips, if to do so requires coalitions with parties of the centre-left.

Whilst the medium-term objective of the reunification of all communists in a single party may be laudable in itself, the ‘intermediate stage’ - the Federazione della Sinistra alongside the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani - is continually dragging the PRC away from the movements towards a subaltern alliance with parties to its right. The call to abandon the federation made by the left currents within the PRC - the International Marxist Tendency’s Falce e Martello and the Committee for a Workers’ International-affiliated Controcorrente - may be justified.

However, the sectarian refusal of such organisations as Marco Ferrando’s Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori and the Fourth International’s Sinistra Critica to rejoin the PRC after the departure of Vendola’s right wing, seems more and more ridiculous, given their own failure to build a substantial organisation that could challenge or replace the PRC, and makes the task of the existing left wing of the PRC more difficult than it need have been.