ITALY The discreet war of the
Italian bourgeoisie
LAST autumn, Italian political life was dominated by revelations on the so-called "Gladio affair", one of the most murky episodes in recent
Italian history.
An official inquiry has been opened
ENZO TRAVERSO
A N official document sent to
parliament by the head of the government, Giulio Andreotti, on October 19, 1990, revealed the existence of a clandestine structure (secret, but not illegal) whose name, Gladio [sword], recalls one of the symbols of the Salò Republic — the regime led by Mussolini in the Nazi-occupied north of
Gladio was a "secret resistance network" created during the Cold War period, which was intended to confront any attack by Warsaw Pact troops. In pursuit of this goal it was prepared to gather information, develop anti-Communist propaganda and organize sabotage and guerilla activities. Set up in 1951, it came under the control of the secret services in 1956 and was reorganized in 1980. It had considerable military equipment at its
Partial revelations
In fact, the document which Andreotti presented to parliament contained nothing new and only confirmed what was already known and strongly suspected by quite a large body of public opinion. Gladio is only a fragment, "cleaned up" and made presentable, of a much bigger structure linked in many ways to the state, which has played an active and important role in Italian political life during the past 35 to 40 years.
The novelty rests in the fact that for the 10 ted some a goverat has beer danied for first time a government figure has admityears. In fact this was the second occasion; in August 1990 Andreotti referred in parliament to this same structure, claiming that it had been dissolved in 1972, although, according to all the information now available, it in fact survived until November 1990 — being currently "on ice" waiting for the storm to blow over. On Monday January 7, the Italian press published a detailed list of 577 people who belonged to this organization.
State involvement in massacres
During the 1970s it was widely believed, especially in the big cities of the North, that there was a connection between a series of massacres — in 1969 at the agricultural bank in Milan, at an anti-fascist meeting in Brescia in 1974 and several times on trains - and the fascists and the state. Later on, the rise of leftist armed groups such as the Red Brigades was used to turn the notion of terrorism into a nebulous, ahistorical entity.
Since then memories of that period of Italian history, when it was quite reasonable to have the greatest suspicions about the activities of the Italian state, have fad-
The significance of Andreotti's statements is not only that they show up the unconstitutional character of an apparently innocent organization. They amount to an official and public confirmation of such suspicions.
The idea that Gladio was a defense against the eventuality of an enemy invasion does not hold water. Can anyone really believe that, despite its information, NATO feared a Soviet invasion — whether in 1951, 1956, 1972 or 1980 of a territory which the Yalta accords had firmly fixed in the Western sphere? The real reason for Gladio was to prevent the entry into government of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which was supported by the most important Italian trade union and drew its strength from a whole phase of massive and radical struggles, perhaps the most important in a postwar Western
This was pointed out by the director of the main Italian daily, Eugenio Scalfari: "It has now been shown with dramatic clarity what we have been repeating for a long time - that the various projects such as Solo, Gladio and Sigma were all part of a single structure, outside the public security institutions, designed to prevent, and if necessary repress, the coming to power of the PCI." (La Repubblica, November 16, 1990)
For years all parliamentary inquiries into the massacres, the attempted coups d'etat and the plots of the P2 Masonic lodge (an anti-communist body closely tied to the state) have been baffled by the intervention of a secret organization, which is not always exactly the same, but which is always dependent on the same NATO and the secret services. Here are hidden the illegal military and paramilitary structures of which Scalfari speaks.
### Investigations blocked
Already in 1974, during an inquiry into the activities of a far-right organization, the Rosa dei Venti, the Padua judge, Giovanni Tamburino discovered a connection between this outfit and a secret security structure.
One of its officers, the murderer Gianfranco Bertoli, who carried out the massacre in the rue Fatebenefratelli in Milan, appears on the list of Gladio's members. The investigation was taken out of the hands of Bertoli and transferred to Rome, where it was allowed to die. There have been several examples of this sort
Strike wave signals end of dark decade
February 4, 1991 • #199 Internationa! Viewpoint
Some on the left, and notably the Il Manifesto daily, have interpreted the Gladio affair as a proof of the "limited sovereignty" of the Italian state vis-à-vis the United States. This is a total misreading of the case. It is true that Andreotti's document talks about a "military organism formed within the NATO framework" and it is well-known that this latter drew up several plans for interventions against the "communist threat". It is known furthermore that some far right terrorist "strategy of tension" in the 1970s were by the secret services
THE present round of negotiations for collective wage agreements in Turkey involves nearly half a million workers in
TURKEY saw a change in attitudes and in union personnel. A number of union leaderships passed into the hands of more militant elements, near to social democratic ideas. This has been the case with Genel Maden-Is, the General Mining Union, affiliated to the rightpublic enterprises. Some 100,000 trained in the Capo Marrangiu NATO base. But all this is of secondary impor-
If you look at the period and the forms metalworkers are already on strike and are soon to be joined wing Türk-Is confederation.
The Gulf crisis has aggravated the situation. Pushed along by Özal, Turkey has been dragged into playing an by 100,000 textile workers. But it of activity used by the secret services, at the interests which they protected, and at the political decisions that directed them, it becomes absolutely clear that Gladio is above all an Italian affair.
While the US may have collaborated through NATO and given protection to the operation, all the operational decisions concerning Gladio were taken at the national level.
Dictatorships in Southern
Europe
How to explain the existence of this clandestine structure? In the postwar decades, economic development, the changing relation of forces between social classes, the growth of trade unions and leftist movements in the advanced capitalist countries, all produced a process of democratization in which the interwar dictatorships were replaced. Even so, fascism survived in Spain and Portugal until the 1970s, while in Greece there was the dictatorship of the Colonels — and in Italy there was Gladio, with its massacres and its failed coups.
In this country, the key sections of the ruling classes chose to use the strategy of tension" as a means of provocation and threat, without however overturning the
The repressive apparatus of the state was used with a cer-
On the whole it was more sensible for them to look to the PCI and the unions to control the anti-capitalist sentiments of the working class and other social movements. On the other hand, if the reformist leaderships could not exercise such control, there were other possibilities. A coup d'etat and full-scale use of repression