The bloody July of 1960: 11 dead and hundreds injured against the reactionary government of DC and MSI

65 years ago
The revolt began in Genoa. Then Reggio Emilia revolted, and the police, on the orders of Prime Minister Tambroni, killed five young men. Then another five in Sicily. Eventually, the government fell.

July 1960 was a crucial month in the history of the Republic. Those three days of fire—Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—were particularly significant. That is, July 6, 7, and 8, 65 years ago. Days of blood, of struggle, of heroism, of police and government wickedness . In the end, 11 people died and hundreds were injured. The high price of sending home a reactionary government cobbled together by the Christian Democrats with the support of the fascists of the MSI. The head of the government was Fernando Tambroni, a fairly anonymous supporter of Fanfani, but he had agreed to lead a right-wing government, after Fanfani himself and Giovanni Leone refused. It was his government that granted Almirante and Michelini's MSI permission to hold its national congress in Genoa . It would be presided over by the hierarch and baron Carlo Emanuele Basile, sentenced to death in 1947 for collaboration and later pardoned.
Genoa's dockworkers rebelled. They took to the streets. The future President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, held a fiery rally calling for revolt. On June 30, Tambroni's police charged the protesters; the dockworkers resisted, took refuge in Piazza de Ferrari, and fought back the police. Tensions were high throughout the country. Old partisans took to the streets, along with a young generation of young people born just before the war. The newspapers called them the striped shirts, because in those years almost all young people, not only in Italy, very often wore crew-neck, canvas shirts with horizontal stripes of various colors. Among them were many well-known names. For example, Achille Occhetto , Petruccioli, and Bertinotti. Many were communists. But there were also socialists and radicals. They were the soul, and in part also the driving force, of that revolt that put a lid on the 1950s and opened the doors to a new decade.
On July 6th, it was Rome's turn. The left, led by the PCI, organized a demonstration at Porta San Paolo, also known as the Pyramid, the site where, on September 10th, 17 years earlier, a group of young Communists, Socialists, Christian Democrats, and Action Party members, along with a handful of army representatives led by Colonel Montezemolo, had attempted to resist the Nazi advance after the armistice with the Allies announced two days earlier. In the writing of Marisa Rodano, then a PCI leader and a former partisan, she recounts that long day and the charges of the mounted Carabinieri led by Raimondo D'Inzeo, who two months later would win the gold medal in the equestrian competition at the Rome Olympics. The following day, the 7th, was the day of the massacre. In Reggio Emilia, the CGIL ( Italian General Confederation of Labour) declared a general strike. The prefect, on Tambroni's orders, banned the demonstration, ordered a closed rally in the Verdi Hall of the Ariosto Theater, and received orders from the Prime Minister to use firearms if necessary. At 4:30 PM, the Verdi Hall, which seats 600, was packed. Twenty thousand people crowded at the exit. Three hundred workers from the "Officine Meccaniche Reggiane " (Reggio Emilia mechanical workshops) broke away from the crowd and headed toward the city center. Peacefully, the police attacked them. First with tear gas, then with rifles and machine guns.
The first to fall is Afro Tondelli. He finds himself isolated in the center of the square, after a charge. A policeman kneels down, takes aim with his gun, and shoots him down. Tondelli is 35, the fifth of eight brothers, eight like the Cervi brothers. He falls. He shouts to his companions who are helping him: “They wanted to kill me. They aimed at me like a hunter.” Then silence. His eyes widen. He’s dead . Lauro Farioli is 22. He’s in Piazza San Francesco. He sees a wounded comrade and tries to help him, but doesn’t have time. A burst of machine gun fire. They called him Modugno, I think because of his moustache and a certain resemblance. Marino Serri, 41, a former partisan, used to herd sheep with his six brothers as a boy. He sees the police firing at chest height. He shouts: “Murderers!” They respond with lead. He dies instantly. Ovidio Franchi is a young man. He's 19 years old, and he's there with his younger brother. He, too, is helping a wounded comrade when he's killed with a bullet to the head. The last to die that evening is worker Emilio Reverberi. He was 39. All five were members of the PCI.
By the end of the day, it was estimated that the police, led by Deputy Commissioner Giulio Cavani Panico, had fired 182 machine gun shots, 14 rifle shots, and 39 pistol shots. He was tried and acquitted. The left rose up in protest. The next day, there were demonstrations throughout Italy. In Palermo and Catania, the police fired again, killing five more people. Another farmer had been killed in Licata on July 5th. On July 9th, all of Italy took to the streets. In Reggio , 100,000 people attended the funerals of the five. The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Cesare Merzagora, demanded that the police and Carabinieri retreat to their barracks. He also begged the unions to halt the demonstrations. On July 16th, 1960, Catholic intellectuals close to the Christian Democrats demanded that Tambroni be ousted. On July 18th, Tambroni resigned. The MSI congress had been banned.
The battle is won, but at what price, at what price. Singer-songwriter Fausto Amodei wrote a beautiful song that we're publishing. And it ends with those famous lines: "Dead men of Reggio Emilia, come out of the grave, come out and sing the red flag with us." All of Italy sings it. Even Pasolini wrote about those days. Outraged. Those tragic days marked the beginning of the 1960s, it's true, and for twenty years Italy would be a country growing, gaining rights, and implementing reforms. This was before the winter of the 1980s, which lasted almost half a century, and is still going on, and brought the chill of a government led by the heirs of Almirante's MSI, defeated in Genoa. It would take another generation of striped T-shirts. And those ideals, that courage, that working class built on thought and steel.
l'Unità