For its July issue Freedom of course led with the most infamous event of the moment, and as ever was not shy in its take, headlining a short, wry report with ‘Cause and Effect.’

The assassination, known for sparking the series of events that led to World War One, was worldwide news and, with the dogged reluctance to let go of stereotypes that we’ve all come to know and hate, the press leapt into action accusing anarchists of being behind it all.

Freedom gave this notion short shrift, although it should be noted that the movement was not always entirely averse to supporting forms of nationalist-led violence, particularly when an imperial power was riding roughshod over a smaller opponent. Fellow-feeling for underdogs is commonly the main cause. Malatesta had attempted to fight in the Anglo-Egyptian war of 1882, Freedom had taken the Boers’ side in 1899, and of course in the modern day many anarchists have been supportive of causes ranging from Irish liberation and Ukrainians’ desire not to live under Putinism to the right of Palestinians not to be bombed and starved.

In this case, a certain sympathy for the cause of Bosnia and Herzegovina in freeing itself from Austrian rule is present even as the main thrust of the argument is to distance anarchists from a problem caused directly by the jingoism and greedy expansionism of nationstates.

Revolt in Italy

I wouldn’t usually pick out two articles, but the July 1914 issue has some particularly noteworthy events both internationally and for anarchist history. Preparations for an international anarchist conference I’ll merely flag for movement history buffs, but a report by Errico Malatesta on an insurrection which had taken place the previous month in Italy – now known as the Red Week – can’t pass without a full reprint. Syndicalists were prominent in the rebellion which was, as is so often the case, let down by the weak spines of social democrats.

-Rr

Cause and Effect

The assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg is a consequence, if we are to believe the Star, of his “unbounded ambition”, an ambition which was the cause of the Balkan troubles. Whether this be so or not, one thing is perfectly certain, that tyranny is always open to the attack of the tyrannicide; and ambition has cost many a ruler his life, both since and before the days of Caesar.

It seems almost incredible that any man of sense in this twentieth century can deem it possible to “annex” nations, and dragoon whole populations under the brute rule of militarism, without arousing the hatred of some fiery spirits who will strike back at all costs. As Prinzip and Cabrinovitch were Nationalists, we may take it that “patriotism” inspired the deed, and we must leave it to the jingoes of all nations, with their cry of “my country, right or wrong”, to decide how much responsibility they feel in the matter.

We only know that the Daily News and the Chronicle, after vainly trying to connect the affair with the Anarchists by stating that the bomb was obtained from an Anarchist group, have lowered their voices on discovering that the said bomb was made in the Serbian arsenal at Kragujevac”. The Liberal press must be quietly shocked to find,that Cabrinovitch used a State-manufactured bomb, and that it was thrown by a Nationalist.

One other point is worth noting. The Daily Mail, by some extraordinary accident, printed the truth from the very first by announcing that the assassination had nothing to do with the Anarchists.

The General Strike and The Insurrection in Italy

The events which have taken place recently in Italy are of the greatest importance, not so much in themselves, but as an indication of the disposition of the Italian people and of what we can anticipate in the near future.

The immediate cause of the outbreak was a massacre of unarmed demonstrators by the gendarmes of the town of Ancona.

For over a year the revolutionary and Labour organisations of all political shades had been carrying on an agitation in favour of several victims of military despotism and for the abolition of disciplinary battalions, to which are sent all young soldiers known to hold anti-monarchial and anti-bourgeois opinions. The treatment is barbarous, and the unhappy young men are submitted to all kinds of moral and physical tortures.

As the meetings and demonstrations were held all over Italy, but on different dates, they seemed to make but little impression on the Government; and the Trades Council of Ancona proposed, therefore, to organise manifestations in the whole country on the same day, that day to be the date of the official celebration of the establishment of Italian unity and the Monarchy. As on these occasions great military reviews are always held, the comrades thought that the Government would be obliged to postpone the review in order to hold the troops ready to preserve “order,” and the attention of the,whole public would be drawn to the object of the demonstration.

The idea put forward by the Ancona comrades was everywhere received with enthusiasm by all the opposition, parties. The Minister ordered the police to prevent any public demonstrations. Of course, that did not deter us. In fact, we had counted on the police prohibition to give more publicity to the demonstration and to instigate the masses to resistance.

To stop the people who were leaving a meeting-hall from going to the central square to demonstrate, the gendarmes fired on the unarmed crowd, killing three workers, and wounding twenty more. After this massacre the gendarmes, frightened, rushed to the barracks for shelter, and the people were left masters of the town. Without anybody even mentioning the word, a general strike was soon complete, and the workers collected at the Trades Council to hold a meeting.

The Government tried to prevent the events of Ancona from being telegraphed to other parts of the country; but nevertheless by-and-by the news became known, and strikes broke out in all the towns of Italy. The two Federal Labour organisations of Italy, the General Confederation of Labour, which is reformist, and the Labour Union, with revolutionary tendencies, proclaimed a general strike, and the same was done by the Railwaymen’s Union.

These strikes and demonstrations in several towns provoked new conflicts with the police, and new massacres. At once, without any common understanding, one place ignorant of what the other was doing, as communications were broken off, the movement assumed everywhere an insurrectional character, and in many places the Republic, which meant for the people, the autonomous Commune, was proclaimed.

All was .going splendidly; the movement was developing, and the railway strike, spreading on all lines, paralysed the Government; the workers were beginning to take measures of practical Communism in view of reorganising social life on a new basis; when suddenly the Confederation of Labour, by an act which has been qualified as treachery, ordered the strike off, thereby throwing the workers into confusion and discouraging them.

The Government was not slow to profit by this condition, and began to restore “order.”

If it had not been for the betrayal of the Confederation, though we could not yet have made the revolution for lack of necessary preparation and understanding, the movement would certainly have assumed larger proportions and a much greater importance …

In every way these events have proved that the mass of the people hate the present, order; that the workers are disposed to make use of all opportunities to overthrow the Government; and that-when the fight is directed against the common enemy — that is to say, the Government and the bourgeoisie — all are brothers, though the names of Socialist, Anarchist, Syndicalist, or Republican may seem to divide them.

Now it is up to revolutionaries to profit by these good dispositions.

~ E. Malatesta