Cipriani's trip to Sicily did not start well. He left Marseille on March
15 and arrived in Reggio Calabria on the 18th, after a brief stop in
Naples, he crossed the strait by boat and contracted bronchitis. Only on
March 21 was he finally able to preside over the meeting organized in
his honor at the "Nuovo Arena" theater in Messina by old patriots like
Raffaele Villari - who introduced him to the sound of Garibaldi's anthem
- and by young local anarchists. He spoke briefly about the purpose of
his trip: to prepare for the next May 1st "a peaceful demonstration if
bayonets and cannons are not opposed; otherwise the people, although
unarmed, will know how to make a revolution". This is not exactly what
was prescribed by the "secret" clause added to the resolution on May 1st
voted by the Capolago congress ("organize the unemployed workers, spread
ideas of revolt among the masses in every way and on every occasion, and
possibly lead the people to the social revolution").
Even the conciliatory attitude that Cipriani begins to nurture, in this
first stage in Messina, towards the leaders of the radical democracy in
Sicily (Petrina, then in prison, in Messina; De Felice Giuffrida then in
Catania; Napoleone Colajanni in Palermo), in order to ensure their
personal support, and that of the workers' societies connected to them,
for the planned insurrectional movement, contrasts with the mandate
received in Capolago, to avoid «any transaction or even temporary union
with the irredentist and republican parties, as contrary to the
principles of socialism and harmful to the cause, because it prevents
the clear delineation of the reactionary bourgeois forces on the one
hand and revolutionary socialist workers on the other - delineation that
alone will open the way to the Social Revolution».
This «union» will later be considered by the «intransigent» anarchists
as one of the main causes of the failed insurrection of May 1st.
On March 23 Cipriani arrived in Catania by train and on the 29th he took
part in the rally of unemployed workers (sic!) called by Giuseppe De
Felice Giuffrida in the central Via Lincoln, which was broken up by the
police due to the verbal excesses of the anarchist Zoppina and De Felice
himself. In that rally he exhorted the workers "to unite, to strengthen
themselves, to join hands to be ready, united and compact when great
battles must be fought ... for the social revolution yet to come"
(questor to Prefect of Catania, March 29, 1891). On March 30 he arrived
in Palermo, after a stop of a few hours in Caltanissetta, where he spoke
privately with local anarchists. On April 4 he left for Trapani and on
the 8th he went to Marsala where, "welcomed by an immense crowd", he
managed to give two speeches from the balcony of the "Leone" hotel where
he was staying. On the 9th he returned to Palermo from where he embarked
for Naples.
During his stay on the Island he had meanwhile developed a deep mistrust
in the possibility of an insurrectional movement starting from the
Island, so much so that, as soon as he arrived in Naples, he confided to
those comrades - and to the spy infiltrated by the police headquarters -
that he "considered the revolutionary acts untimely for the moment, as
the time was not ripe. The trip to Sicily proved to him that Italy still
needs more years of propaganda and therefore all the party's efforts
must be directed towards this" (questor to prefect of Naples 10 April 1891).
In reality, even before coming to Sicily he had repeatedly expressed his
hesitation about the success of the insurrectional project, convinced
that the government was aware of it and that the organization of the
anarchist party, at a national level, was far from complete. In response
to a letter from Gulì, who had urged him to leave for Sicily, on March 4
he had also written to him about «his absolute lack of means» and that
«the revolution[...]should be prolonged beyond the established May 1st»;
this had provoked the indignant reaction of Malatesta who, in a letter
sent immediately after from Paris, had even offered to replace him.
If the problem of the lack of means to undertake the journey had been
resolved in the end, the same could not be said for the financial means
to start the revolution and procure weapons. The proposals put forward
(loans from Sceusa and the Bulgarian Stoïanoff, a friend of Schicchi,
robbery of the wages of railway employees) had seemed insufficient and
uncertain. Furthermore, police repression had intensified after the
searches in March - which continued throughout April - against the most
well-known anarchists who, assiduously monitored and threatened with
arrest and forced residence, saw their political freedom drastically
reduced.
Informed of this and of the series of objections, some specious, raised
by Antonino Azzaretti, director of the «Proletario» of Marsala, the main
newspaper available to the anarchists in Sicily, by Vincenzo Piazza and
Giuseppe Gallo, anarchists from Agrigento in close relations with the
sulphur miners, Salvatore Cagliari and other anarchists from Palermo
veterans of '66, some specious, in the end even Malatesta began to doubt
the goodness of the insurrectional project and to assume that typical
wavering posture (favorable to a coup although destined, at first sight,
to failure, because - he maintained - in popular insurrections you don't
know what can really happen) that would accompany him also in the months
following May 1st.
We know of these contrasts thanks to a couple of letters by Paolo
Schicchi seized from the anarchist from Catania Reitano Perrucca. Having
left Catania on February 8th disguised as a priest, Schicchi had
preceded Cipriani on his tour of the island: first in Palermo, then in
Marsala, from February 11th to 22nd, where he visited the interior of
the island, practiced shooting with a rifle, compiled a newspaper issue
and escaped a second arrest, after the one - in which he had not been
recognized - suffered in Catania; he returned to Palermo, where on March
11th he participated in the regional meeting in which the insurrection
plan was finalized; for about fifteen days he moved to Agrigento to
carry out propaganda among the miners; having procured 22 sticks of
dynamite and 2 of explosive gelatine, towards the end of April he
returned to Palermo and on May 1st, dissuaded from blowing up the Royal
Palace, he carried out a demonstrative attack on the Cavalry Barracks.
On May 4th he left again crossing Sicily and Italy by sea, headed for
Switzerland.
In the letter sent to Reitano on 23 February he spoke among other things
of the correspondence between Malatesta and Azzaretti, which he had been
able to view in Marsala: «All those in Trapani are full of good will and
determined to act. Only Azzaretti (excessively pusillanimous and
frivolous as can be) wrote a discouraging letter to Errico who responded
with a letter that will not please you. From this letter that I enclose
I am persuaded that it is useless to chatter with these Byzantines.
Don't you see? As soon as Azzaretti writes him a nonsense without
hearing all the others he writes to you in that way. Oh! why don't they
come here to see for themselves instead of holding conferences?[...]In
Marsala except Azzaretti everyone is very determined. Indeed when he
wrote those stories to Errico everyone was indignant[...]You see, Errico
Malatesta who also writes to Stoïanoff saying that we are optimistic
etc. etc.? Do you want more? and thus put discouragement[...]I will know
what to answer to Errico when the time comes».
So, despite the emerging doubts, Schicchi remained an enthusiastic
supporter of the insurrection that he believed was possible until the
end, if realized in the time and with the measures taken in the meeting
of March 11. He will return to it in his exile in Geneva, when in the
second issue of «Pensiero e Dinamite», of July 28, he will use the plan
elaborated in Palermo as a perfect example of «revolutionary tactics».
First of all, he explains, it is necessary to abandon the idea of an
insurrection in a single large city, where the army and the police can
concentrate their forces and easily overcome the revolutionaries, and to
aim at the industrial districts and provincial villages without
government forces: «It is there that there is the way and the time to
procure weapons and fighters, to prepare for the fight, to retreat or
advance as one deems appropriate, to take advantage of all the accidents
of the soil to organize a merciless guerrilla warfare, to make people
pay dearly for their lives, to ask for asylum and strength from the
mountains and the forest in the event of defeat. This is how the enemy
forces are thrown into confusion, all their plans are thrown into
confusion and, what is more, the troops are forced to abandon part of
the big cities which could then rise up more easily[...]If before May
1st, when the agitation was at its height, before even entering the days
of terror, weariness and discouragement, a handful of resolute men had
thrown themselves armed, into some industrial or mining centers or into
certain countrysides of discontented peasants, breaking bridges,
railways and telegraphs, attacking all the villages encountered on the
way to supply arms to the rebels gathered, and then had marched in
separate legions in all directions, always gathering fighters towards
the big city, what would have been the effect? Perhaps, I dare say, a
victory».
What happened instead on the eve of May 1st in Palermo - but in a
similar way almost everywhere in Sicily and the rest of Italy - is
recounted in the confidential letters of the police commissioner to the
prefect of Palermo. He boasted of having "paralyzed" the revolutionary
insurrection, calling "all the most influential people from the various
neighborhoods, who once, acting as Mafia bosses, managed to gain a
position; and I declared them responsible, if individuals from the same
neighborhoods came to Palermo on May 1st. I called all the presidents of
the various workers' societies, and explained how any agitation would
bring harm, rather than benefit to the workers; because, apart from the
penal consequences to which they would be exposed, the foreign leaders
who are in Palermo would go away and the next exposition, from which
everyone expects an economic advantage, would also be compromised. I
urged them to make arrangements with their respective members, so that
they would not listen to the advice of agitators, who aspire to profit
from the damage of others, rather than to improve the lot of the poor. I
did not fail to call the individual members of the commissions[in charge
of making socialist propaganda for May 1st], warning them to keep their
ground, because their steps would be followed. I had all the most
well-known anarchists with whom Cipriani dealt come to me, and I warned
them too, making it clear that their intentions were too well known, and
that, in the event of disorder, they would be held responsible. Then I
told everyone without distinction that, after friendly advice, I would
enforce the law at all costs, and that no means would be spared to
protect public order».
Paolo Schicchi was right in maintaining that «attacks on a fixed date
are a strategic absurdity» and that the «immense agitation» and
«infinite propaganda» of a moment - claimed by Malatesta, Gori and
Merlino - was now replaced by «apathy that no one knows how long will
last; the propaganda made is sterilized, destroyed by the double, the
triple that hundreds of arrested comrades would have continued to do and
now they can no longer do it»? Or did Cipriani have it, when he thought
that the revolution should continue beyond May 1st, giving the workers
the opportunity to be ready, united and compact at the moment of the
final struggle?
The fact is that on that May 1st, apparently doomed to failure, the
workers of Catania and Messina, taking up the solicitation of Cipriani
and his companions, gathered in a rally giving or reviving a single
powerful association, the Fascio dei Lavoratori.
Natale Musarra
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
15 and arrived in Reggio Calabria on the 18th, after a brief stop in
Naples, he crossed the strait by boat and contracted bronchitis. Only on
March 21 was he finally able to preside over the meeting organized in
his honor at the "Nuovo Arena" theater in Messina by old patriots like
Raffaele Villari - who introduced him to the sound of Garibaldi's anthem
- and by young local anarchists. He spoke briefly about the purpose of
his trip: to prepare for the next May 1st "a peaceful demonstration if
bayonets and cannons are not opposed; otherwise the people, although
unarmed, will know how to make a revolution". This is not exactly what
was prescribed by the "secret" clause added to the resolution on May 1st
voted by the Capolago congress ("organize the unemployed workers, spread
ideas of revolt among the masses in every way and on every occasion, and
possibly lead the people to the social revolution").
Even the conciliatory attitude that Cipriani begins to nurture, in this
first stage in Messina, towards the leaders of the radical democracy in
Sicily (Petrina, then in prison, in Messina; De Felice Giuffrida then in
Catania; Napoleone Colajanni in Palermo), in order to ensure their
personal support, and that of the workers' societies connected to them,
for the planned insurrectional movement, contrasts with the mandate
received in Capolago, to avoid «any transaction or even temporary union
with the irredentist and republican parties, as contrary to the
principles of socialism and harmful to the cause, because it prevents
the clear delineation of the reactionary bourgeois forces on the one
hand and revolutionary socialist workers on the other - delineation that
alone will open the way to the Social Revolution».
This «union» will later be considered by the «intransigent» anarchists
as one of the main causes of the failed insurrection of May 1st.
On March 23 Cipriani arrived in Catania by train and on the 29th he took
part in the rally of unemployed workers (sic!) called by Giuseppe De
Felice Giuffrida in the central Via Lincoln, which was broken up by the
police due to the verbal excesses of the anarchist Zoppina and De Felice
himself. In that rally he exhorted the workers "to unite, to strengthen
themselves, to join hands to be ready, united and compact when great
battles must be fought ... for the social revolution yet to come"
(questor to Prefect of Catania, March 29, 1891). On March 30 he arrived
in Palermo, after a stop of a few hours in Caltanissetta, where he spoke
privately with local anarchists. On April 4 he left for Trapani and on
the 8th he went to Marsala where, "welcomed by an immense crowd", he
managed to give two speeches from the balcony of the "Leone" hotel where
he was staying. On the 9th he returned to Palermo from where he embarked
for Naples.
During his stay on the Island he had meanwhile developed a deep mistrust
in the possibility of an insurrectional movement starting from the
Island, so much so that, as soon as he arrived in Naples, he confided to
those comrades - and to the spy infiltrated by the police headquarters -
that he "considered the revolutionary acts untimely for the moment, as
the time was not ripe. The trip to Sicily proved to him that Italy still
needs more years of propaganda and therefore all the party's efforts
must be directed towards this" (questor to prefect of Naples 10 April 1891).
In reality, even before coming to Sicily he had repeatedly expressed his
hesitation about the success of the insurrectional project, convinced
that the government was aware of it and that the organization of the
anarchist party, at a national level, was far from complete. In response
to a letter from Gulì, who had urged him to leave for Sicily, on March 4
he had also written to him about «his absolute lack of means» and that
«the revolution[...]should be prolonged beyond the established May 1st»;
this had provoked the indignant reaction of Malatesta who, in a letter
sent immediately after from Paris, had even offered to replace him.
If the problem of the lack of means to undertake the journey had been
resolved in the end, the same could not be said for the financial means
to start the revolution and procure weapons. The proposals put forward
(loans from Sceusa and the Bulgarian Stoïanoff, a friend of Schicchi,
robbery of the wages of railway employees) had seemed insufficient and
uncertain. Furthermore, police repression had intensified after the
searches in March - which continued throughout April - against the most
well-known anarchists who, assiduously monitored and threatened with
arrest and forced residence, saw their political freedom drastically
reduced.
Informed of this and of the series of objections, some specious, raised
by Antonino Azzaretti, director of the «Proletario» of Marsala, the main
newspaper available to the anarchists in Sicily, by Vincenzo Piazza and
Giuseppe Gallo, anarchists from Agrigento in close relations with the
sulphur miners, Salvatore Cagliari and other anarchists from Palermo
veterans of '66, some specious, in the end even Malatesta began to doubt
the goodness of the insurrectional project and to assume that typical
wavering posture (favorable to a coup although destined, at first sight,
to failure, because - he maintained - in popular insurrections you don't
know what can really happen) that would accompany him also in the months
following May 1st.
We know of these contrasts thanks to a couple of letters by Paolo
Schicchi seized from the anarchist from Catania Reitano Perrucca. Having
left Catania on February 8th disguised as a priest, Schicchi had
preceded Cipriani on his tour of the island: first in Palermo, then in
Marsala, from February 11th to 22nd, where he visited the interior of
the island, practiced shooting with a rifle, compiled a newspaper issue
and escaped a second arrest, after the one - in which he had not been
recognized - suffered in Catania; he returned to Palermo, where on March
11th he participated in the regional meeting in which the insurrection
plan was finalized; for about fifteen days he moved to Agrigento to
carry out propaganda among the miners; having procured 22 sticks of
dynamite and 2 of explosive gelatine, towards the end of April he
returned to Palermo and on May 1st, dissuaded from blowing up the Royal
Palace, he carried out a demonstrative attack on the Cavalry Barracks.
On May 4th he left again crossing Sicily and Italy by sea, headed for
Switzerland.
In the letter sent to Reitano on 23 February he spoke among other things
of the correspondence between Malatesta and Azzaretti, which he had been
able to view in Marsala: «All those in Trapani are full of good will and
determined to act. Only Azzaretti (excessively pusillanimous and
frivolous as can be) wrote a discouraging letter to Errico who responded
with a letter that will not please you. From this letter that I enclose
I am persuaded that it is useless to chatter with these Byzantines.
Don't you see? As soon as Azzaretti writes him a nonsense without
hearing all the others he writes to you in that way. Oh! why don't they
come here to see for themselves instead of holding conferences?[...]In
Marsala except Azzaretti everyone is very determined. Indeed when he
wrote those stories to Errico everyone was indignant[...]You see, Errico
Malatesta who also writes to Stoïanoff saying that we are optimistic
etc. etc.? Do you want more? and thus put discouragement[...]I will know
what to answer to Errico when the time comes».
So, despite the emerging doubts, Schicchi remained an enthusiastic
supporter of the insurrection that he believed was possible until the
end, if realized in the time and with the measures taken in the meeting
of March 11. He will return to it in his exile in Geneva, when in the
second issue of «Pensiero e Dinamite», of July 28, he will use the plan
elaborated in Palermo as a perfect example of «revolutionary tactics».
First of all, he explains, it is necessary to abandon the idea of an
insurrection in a single large city, where the army and the police can
concentrate their forces and easily overcome the revolutionaries, and to
aim at the industrial districts and provincial villages without
government forces: «It is there that there is the way and the time to
procure weapons and fighters, to prepare for the fight, to retreat or
advance as one deems appropriate, to take advantage of all the accidents
of the soil to organize a merciless guerrilla warfare, to make people
pay dearly for their lives, to ask for asylum and strength from the
mountains and the forest in the event of defeat. This is how the enemy
forces are thrown into confusion, all their plans are thrown into
confusion and, what is more, the troops are forced to abandon part of
the big cities which could then rise up more easily[...]If before May
1st, when the agitation was at its height, before even entering the days
of terror, weariness and discouragement, a handful of resolute men had
thrown themselves armed, into some industrial or mining centers or into
certain countrysides of discontented peasants, breaking bridges,
railways and telegraphs, attacking all the villages encountered on the
way to supply arms to the rebels gathered, and then had marched in
separate legions in all directions, always gathering fighters towards
the big city, what would have been the effect? Perhaps, I dare say, a
victory».
What happened instead on the eve of May 1st in Palermo - but in a
similar way almost everywhere in Sicily and the rest of Italy - is
recounted in the confidential letters of the police commissioner to the
prefect of Palermo. He boasted of having "paralyzed" the revolutionary
insurrection, calling "all the most influential people from the various
neighborhoods, who once, acting as Mafia bosses, managed to gain a
position; and I declared them responsible, if individuals from the same
neighborhoods came to Palermo on May 1st. I called all the presidents of
the various workers' societies, and explained how any agitation would
bring harm, rather than benefit to the workers; because, apart from the
penal consequences to which they would be exposed, the foreign leaders
who are in Palermo would go away and the next exposition, from which
everyone expects an economic advantage, would also be compromised. I
urged them to make arrangements with their respective members, so that
they would not listen to the advice of agitators, who aspire to profit
from the damage of others, rather than to improve the lot of the poor. I
did not fail to call the individual members of the commissions[in charge
of making socialist propaganda for May 1st], warning them to keep their
ground, because their steps would be followed. I had all the most
well-known anarchists with whom Cipriani dealt come to me, and I warned
them too, making it clear that their intentions were too well known, and
that, in the event of disorder, they would be held responsible. Then I
told everyone without distinction that, after friendly advice, I would
enforce the law at all costs, and that no means would be spared to
protect public order».
Paolo Schicchi was right in maintaining that «attacks on a fixed date
are a strategic absurdity» and that the «immense agitation» and
«infinite propaganda» of a moment - claimed by Malatesta, Gori and
Merlino - was now replaced by «apathy that no one knows how long will
last; the propaganda made is sterilized, destroyed by the double, the
triple that hundreds of arrested comrades would have continued to do and
now they can no longer do it»? Or did Cipriani have it, when he thought
that the revolution should continue beyond May 1st, giving the workers
the opportunity to be ready, united and compact at the moment of the
final struggle?
The fact is that on that May 1st, apparently doomed to failure, the
workers of Catania and Messina, taking up the solicitation of Cipriani
and his companions, gathered in a rally giving or reviving a single
powerful association, the Fascio dei Lavoratori.
Natale Musarra
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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