Autonomia Operaia was an Italian leftist movement
particularly active from 1976 to 1978.
It took an important role in the autonomist
movement in the 1970s, aside earlier organisations
such as Potere Operaio, created after May
1968, and Lotta Continua.
== Beginning ==
The autonomist movement gathered itself around
the free radio movement, such as Onda Rossa
in Rome, Radio Alice in Bologna, Controradio
in Firenze, Radio Sherwood in Padova, and
other local radios, giving it a diffusion
in the whole country.
It also published several newspapers and magazines
which were circulated nationally, above all
Rosso in Milan, I Volsci in Rome, Autonomia
in Padua and A/traverso in Bologna.
It was a decentralized, localist network or
"area" of movements, particularly strong in
Rome, Milan, Padua and Bologna, but at its
height in 1977 was also often present in small
towns and villages where not even the Italian
Communist Party (PCI) was presentThere was
also an armed tendency known as autonomia
armata (armed autonomy).People such as Oreste
Scalzone, Franco Piperno, professor in Calabria
University, Toni Negri in Padova or Franco
Berardi, aka Bifo, at Radio Alice were the
movement's most well-known figures.
The movement became particularly active in
March 1977, after the police in Bologna killed
Francesco Lo Russo, a member of Lotta Continua.
This event gave rise to a series of demonstrations
in various parts of Italy.
Bologna University and Rome La Sapienza University
were occupied by students.
On orders from Interior Minister Francesco
Cossiga the carabinieri surrounded Bologna's
university area.
This repression met with some international
protest, in particular from French philosophers
Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles
Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who also denounced
the Italian Communist Party's (PCI) opposition
to the University occupation.
The PCI was supporting at this time Eurocommunism
and the historic compromise with the Christian
Democrats.
== The clash between the PCI and Autonomia
==
On 17 February 1977 Luciano Lama, secretary-general
of the CGIL, the trade union closest to the
PCI, gave a speech inside the occupied La
Sapienza University.
During the speech, the autonomi and the CGIL's
security organization had a violent clash,
that resulted in Lama being chased away.
This confrontation prompted the expulsion
of the students by the police.
The clash between the PCI and Autonomia reinforced
the more radical current within Autonomia.
The creative current, which included extravagant
components, such as the Indiani Metropolitani
movement, found themselves in a minority.
Some of the autonomi decided that the time
had come to alzare il livello dello scontro
(escalate of the conflict), in other words,
to start using firearms.
== Autonomia and armed struggle ==
Especially after the more effective prosecution,
following the Moro Affair in early 1978, many
autonomi went underground, reinforcing groups
such as the Red Brigades, the Nuclei Armati
Proletari (NAP) (a group active mainly in
Naples prisons, where many autonomi members
had been incarcerated), the Squadre Proletarie
di Combattimento, the Proletari Armati per
il Comunismo (PAC), Azione Rivoluzionaria,
the Unità Comuniste Combattenti and Prima
Linea, spread mainly throughout northern and
central Italy.
Also over 200 small, localised, armed groups
were briefly active before suppression and/or
amalgamation with the second generation of
the much larger armed organizations, such
as Red Brigades or Prima Linea (Front Line),
between 1978 and 1982, a period in contemporary
Italian history known as the "Years of Lead"
(Anni di Piombo).However, Autonomia Operaia
was not related to and certainly did not direct
the Red Brigades, as was claimed by the prosecution
at the 7 April 1979 trial of Antonio Negri
and other arrested intellectuals and activists
involved in Autonomia Operaia and Potere Operaio
during the 1970s.
This fact was recognized by the Italian legal
system when all charges of membership and
direction of the Red Brigades were dropped
on appeal.
Nevertheless, the myth still persists today,
mainly due to some unscrupulous journalism,
that Autonomia Operaia and the Red Brigades
were one and the same organization.
Overall, it would be better to think of Autonomia
Operaia as a decentralized network or archipelago
of various types of very localized autonomist
social movements and organizations, than one
integrated social movement at the national
level.Following the increase and generalization
of repression throughout the entire extra-parliamentary
left during the early 1980s, when thousands
of activists were imprisoned in carceri speciali
(special prisons for terrorist and Mafia prisoners),
most of the movement disbanded.
At the beginning of the 1980s, a few of them
entered Democrazia Proletaria, a far-left
party which in the 1970s and 1980s ran for
local, national and European elections, achieving
however little success.
Nevertheless, the movement began to revive
in the second half of the 1980s, when occupied
social centres (centri sociali ocupati) started
to become widespread in the main Italian cities.
However, the new Autonomia is profoundly different
from the Autonomia Operaia of the 1970s, although
there is some continuity in both movement
structures, especially the free radio stations
and some long-term squatted social centres,
such as the CSO Leoncavallo in Milan, and
intellectuals, such as Toni Negri and Oreste
Scalzone.
They have recently returned from their flight
in Paris and elsewhere during the 1980s and
1990s, along with some 200 other autonomists.
== See also ==
Autonomism
Years of lead (Italy)
Potere Operaio
Lotta Continua
Movement of 1977
== External links ==
Storia di Autonomia
Documenti politici
Mozione del Convegno di fondazione
== References ==
