![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
This article is an analysis of a long union dispute between the workers and the management of the Società Mineraria del Valdarno (S.M.V.), a company which had mining rights in the lignite basin of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, in the municipality of Cavriglia. Cavriglia is in a ‘red zone’ in the province of Arezzo, in central Tuscany and the dispute raged on from the end of 1947 to the first half of the 1950s. The article focuses primarily on two aspects: (1) how the union dispute of the miners of Valdarno fits into the broader political strategy of the Italian Communist Party (PCI); (2) how this struggle was perceived and elaborated by workers and incorporated into the collective memory of local communities.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the leaders of the Partito Democratico of San Giovanni who kindly allowed him to study, for the first time, the PCI documents stored at the Casa del Popolo of San Giovanni Valdarno. He would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive criticisms of the first version of the article.
Notes
Notes
1. Many works of local history and memoirs discuss the theme of the Resistance in the upper Valdarno. See for example Bigianti (Citation1988); Sacconi (1991).
2. See D’Attorre (1991). Regarding the province of Arezzo see the concerned testimony of a functionary of the Psychological Warfare Branch, cited in Ginsborg (Citation1989, 68).
3. Several authors have highlighted how the conspiratorial power of the PCI during the Fascist Regime was fairly weak, and how the party was faced with the destruction of its clandestine web on several occasions because of organisational failures or because of a misreading of the political situation in Italy. See, for example, Galli (Citation1993, 95–112).
4. See Sacchetti (Citation1998, 2002) and Sladojevich (Citation1980).
5. In terms of the history of the PCI in this period the most detailed studies are Martinelli (Citation1995), Martinelli and Gozzini (Citation1998). For a local perspective see Bigianti (Citation1980, 1984). On the PCI in Arezzo and the province of Arezzo see Repek (Citation1998).
6. See Marino (Citation1991), Gallerano and Flores (Citation1992). Especially important, for the polemical reaction it produced, is the work of Aga-Rossi and Zaslavsky (Citation1997).
7. Bertolotti (Citation1991, XV). Otherwise, the author adds, ‘the history of the workers’ movement would end up being a puppet theatre in which the working classes were handled on the stage by able and omnipotent puppeteers’.
8. A notable example of a study which takes a local perspective is Battini (Citation2004). Giorgio Galli, in the preface of the 1977 edition of his classic Storia del Pci had already mentioned the need to write a history of the PCI ‘different from those so far published’ that would consider ‘its social impact, unique to the history of Italian parties – and the abundant material that documents it (from the labour struggles … to the minutes of meetings from the grassroots organizations)’; Galli (Citation1977, V).
9. The Partito socialista di unità proletaria (PSIUP), the Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity, obtained 14.7% of the vote while the DC, with a civic list, gained 16%. Shortly thereafter, in the elections for the constituent assembly of the 2 June 1946, results were confirmed. For a list of the results of the municipal elections in the province of Arezzo see the Electoral Archive of the Region of Tuscany: http://ius.regione.toscana.it/elezioni/Elezioni/Comunali/Arezzo/aaconsulprova1.html. For the results of 2 June 1946 see the website of the Ministry of the Interior: http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php?tpel=A
10. 18 November 1947. ‘The Speech by Comrade Togliatti to our Milanese Comrades’, l’Unità, front page.
11. L. Longo, December 2, 1947. ‘The causes of anxiety’, l’Unità, front page.
12. 14 January 1948, l’Unità, front page.
13. The Fronte del popolo – People's Front – obtained 77.65% of support, only three points away from the combined votes of the Socialist and Communist Party in the elections of the Constituent Assembly of 1946, which corresponded to the results obtained by the Socialist Unity list, a local version of the PSLI. The PCI had thus not lost votes. All results of the elections of 18 April 1948 can be found on the Ministry of the Interior website: http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php?tpel=C&dtel=18/04/1948.
14. 8 August 1948, L’Unità.
15. See ‘Il problema della cooperazione’, a document belonging to the leadership of the PCI of San Giovanni Valdarno, written in 1950, which states that cooperatives fulfilled a key role in the miners’ struggle and that the funds they accumulated amounted to ‘hundreds of millions’. From the archive of the Democratic Party of San Giovanni Valdarno.
16. In the Biblioteca Centrale Arezzo, ‘Repek’ archive, Folder ‘1950’. Document by the National Secretariat of the party from the Archive of the PCI in Rome.
17. Minutes from the meeting of the municipal committee of San Giovanni Valdarno, February 27, 1950. In Archive of the Democratic Party of San Giovanni Valdarno.
18. This type of solidarity harked back to the tradition of the socialist workers’ movement of the 1920s, largely imitated by the PCI in many contexts after the war (particularly through initiatives of the UDI – Union of Italian Women) see Ventrone (Citation2008, 134).
19. Bulletin of March 17, 1950. In Archive of the Democratic Party of San Giovanni Valdarno.
20. Camera Confederale del lavoro territoriale del Valdarno superiore (Citation1988, in the cover sleeve).
21. The following day l’Unità recounted the overall judgement on the entire affair by highlighting the fact that the result was the product of a strenuous battle conducted by the Communists: ‘Satisfactory ending to the Valdarno dispute after a long and heroic struggle.’ Underlining in the original text.
22. Piattaforma politico organizzativa per il III Congresso provinciale del P.C.I. Arezzo, 29–30–31 dicembre 1950 – Politico-organisational platform for the III Provincial Congress of the PCI Arezzo 29–30–31 December 1950 – in central library of Arezzo, File ‘Repek’, volume ‘1950’. According to the report of the Federation the year 1950 had been difficult from the point of view of political and union struggle but it had been very positive overall since the great mobilisations of the sharecroppers and the miners had increased the influence of the party. Party enrolment in the province had reached 28,312, the greatest number up to that point.
23. All results of the elections of 7 June 1953 can be found on the site of the Ministry of the Interior: http://elezionistorico.interno.it/index.php?tpel=C&dtel=07/06/1953
24. Interview cited in Andreini and Dringoli (Citation1992, 250).
25. Camera Confederale del lavoro territoriale del Valdarno superiore (Citation1988, 2).
26. See, for example, Raspadori (Citation2006).
27. It is appropriate to use the expression ‘transmission belt’ to describe the tight relationship existing at the time between the Communist Party and the CGIL. See Groppo (Citation1991).