ITALIAN ANARCHISTS IN LONDON (1870-1914)

278 Pages·2006·9.17 MB·Italian

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ITALIAN ANARCHISTS IN LONDON
(1870-1914)

Submitted for the Degree of PhD
Pietro Dipaola
Department of Politics
Goldsmiths College
University of London

April 2004
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Abstract

This thesis is a study of the colony of Italian anarchists who found refuge in
London in the years between the Paris Commune and the outbreak of the First World
War. The first chapter is an introduction to the sources and to the main problems
analysed. The second chapter reconstructs the settlement of the Italian anarchists in
London and their relationship with the colony of Italian emigrants. Chapter three deals
with the activities that the Italian anarchists organised in London, such as
demonstrations, conferences, and meetings. It likewise examines the ideological
differences that characterised the two main groups in which the anarchists were divided:
organisationalists and anti-organisationalists.
Italian authorities were extremely concerned about the danger represented by the
anarchists. The fourth chapter of the thesis provides a detailed investigation of the
surveillance of the anarchists that the Italian embassy and the Italian Minster of Interior
organised in London by using spies and informers. At the same time, it describes the
contradictory attitude held by British police forces toward political refugees. The
following two chapters are dedicated to the analysis of the main instruments of
propaganda used by the Italian anarchists: chapter five reviews the newspapers they
published in those years, and chapter six reconstructs social and political activities that
were organised in their clubs.
Chapter seven examines the impact that the outbreak of First World Word had on
the anarchist movement, particularly in dividing it between interventionists and anti-
interventionists; a split that destroyed the network of international solidarity that had
been hitherto the core of the experience of political exile. Chapter eight summarises the
main arguments of the dissertation.
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Contents

Acknowledgements p. 4

List of Abbreviations p. 5

List of Figures p. 6

Chapter 1. Introduction p. 7

Chapter 2. Exile in the History of Italian Anarchism: London, an Overview p. 21

Chapter 3. Italian Anarchist Groups in London p. 38

Chapter 4. The Surveillance of the Italian Anarchists in London p. 112

Chapter 5. Italian Anarchist Newspapers in London p. 157

Chapter 6. Politics and Sociability: the Anarchist Clubs p. 210

Chapter 7. The First World War: the Crisis of the London Anarchist Community p. 238

Chapter 8. Conclusion p. 255

Sources and Bibliography p. 264
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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Carl Levy, for his indispensable advice and
guidance throughout the thesis. I would like also to thank Piero Brunello and Claudia
Baldoli for important suggestions during the research.
The scholarships offered by the Art and Humanities Research Board
(Postgraduate Award 2000-2001) and by the Institute of Historical Research (‘Isobel
Thornley Research Fellowship, 2001-2002’) have made this research possible. I am
particularly grateful to Barbara Dolce for her indispensable help. Morgan Falconer and
John Reynolds have given substantial support with my written English.
Special thanks to Peter Eade, Matteo Favaretti, Tiziana Siffi, Romina Vegro, and
the mythical 97 St. Asaph road. Finally, special thanks to my family in Italy:
Costantino, Velica, Ruggero, Davide and Niccolò.
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List of Abbreviations

ASMAE Archivio Storico Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome

AL Ambasciata di Londra
Pol. Int. Polizia Internazionale

ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome

CPC Ministero degli Interni, Casellario Politico Centrale
PS Ministero degli Interni, Divisione Generale di Pubblica
Sicurezza

IISH International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

PRO Public Record Office, London

HO Home Office
CRIM Criminal Court of Justice

b. Busta

f. Fascicolo
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List of Figures

T. 3.1. Table of Italian anarchists in England 1870-1914 p. 92

Illustrations

Ill.3.1. Leaflet distributed on occasion of the celebration of the First of May by p.106
the Anarchist-Communist groups.
Ill.3.2. Leaflet distribuited on occasion of the celebration of the First of May by p.107
the La Libera Iniziativa group.
Ill.3.3. Leaflet promoting the opening of the Università Popolare Italiana in 1902.p.108
Ill.3.4. Leaflet promoting the opening of the International University in London p.109
in 1905.
Ill.3.5. Programme of courses at the International University in 1905. p.110
Ill.3.6. Leaflet in favour of Ettor and Giovannitti. p.111

Ill. 4.1. Malatesta's code. p.117
Ill. 4.2. Leaflet against the spy Gennaro Rubino. p.152
Ill. 4.3. Photograph of Ennio Belelli, Enrico Defendi, Luigia Defendi, p.153
and Giulio Rossi.
Ill. 4.4. Picture of Giulio Rossi,Luigia and Enrico Defendi. p.154
Ill. 4.5. Malatesta's leaflet against Belelli. p.155
Ill. 4. 6. Leaflet issued by the Malatesta Release Committee. p.156

Ill.5.1.Leaflet announcing the publication of La Rivoluzione Sociale. p.208
Ill.5.2. Programme of a soirée to raise funds for the newspaper L'Internazionale p.209

Ill. 6.1. Picture of Ferruccio Mariani, Cesare Cova and Felice Felici. p.232
Ill. 6. 2. Flyer advertising the theatrical play La Congiura. p.233
Ill. 6.3. Programme of a social evening in New Cross, London. p.234
Ill. 6.4. Balance sheet of the International Working Men’s Society in 1909. p.235
Ill. 6.5. Programme of concerts at the Athenaeum Hall in 1899. p.236
Ill. 6.6. Flyer advertising Malatesta's lecture in July 1906. p.237

Ill. 7.1. Leaflet promoting a rally in favour of Masetti. p.254
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List of Figures

T. 3.1. Table of Italian anarchists in England 1870-1914 p. 92

Illustrations

Ill.3.1. Leaflet distributed on occasion of the celebration of the First of May by p.106
the Anarchist-Communist groups.
Ill.3.2. Leaflet distribuited on occasion of the celebration of the First of May by p.107
the La Libera Iniziativa group.
Ill.3.3. Leaflet promoting the opening of the Università Popolare Italiana in 1902.p.108
Ill.3.4. Leaflet promoting the opening of the International University in London p.109
in 1905.
Ill.3.5. Programme of courses at the International University in 1905. p.110
Ill.3.6. Leaflet in favour of Ettor and Giovannitti. p.111

Ill. 4.1. Malatesta's code. p.117
Ill. 4.2. Leaflet against the spy Gennaro Rubino. p.152
Ill. 4.3. Photograph of Ennio Belelli, Enrico Defendi, Luigia Defendi, p.153
and Giulio Rossi.
Ill. 4.4. Picture of Giulio Rossi,Luigia and Enrico Defendi. p.154
Ill. 4.5. Malatesta's leaflet against Belelli. p.155
Ill. 4. 6. Leaflet issued by the Malatesta Release Committee. p.156

Ill.5.1.Leaflet announcing the publication of La Rivoluzione Sociale. p.208
Ill.5.2. Programme of a soirée to raise funds for the newspaper L'Internazionale p.209

Ill. 6.1. Picture of Ferruccio Mariani, Cesare Cova and Felice Felici. p.232
Ill. 6. 2. Flyer advertising the theatrical play La Congiura. p.233
Ill. 6.3. Programme of a social evening in New Cross, London. p.234
Ill. 6.4. Balance sheet of the International Working Men’s Society in 1909. p.235
Ill. 6.5. Programme of concerts at the Athenaeum Hall in 1899. p.236
Ill. 6.6. Flyer advertising Malatesta's lecture in July 1906. p.237

Ill. 7.1. Leaflet promoting a rally in favour of Masetti. p.254
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Chapter 1

Introduction

This dissertation investigates the activity of Italian anarchists in London from
the second half of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the First World War.
Many Italian anarchists conducted their political activity in exile, wandering
throughout Europe and overseas. These peregrinations and the settlement of Italian
anarchists in several European and overseas countries were part of the long tradition of
political exile that characterised the history of Italian socialism from its beginning until
the downfall of Fascism and the end of the Second World War. Indeed, since the
beginning of the Risorgimento, the most charismatic exponents of Italian socialism had
to spend long periods of their lives in foreign countries. Giuseppe Mazzini, who was
forced to reside abroad for about thirty years, represents the historical exemplar of the
Italian political refugee. However, almost all principal figures of Italian socialism and a
myriad of lesser known activists shared the same lot and experienced exile. According
to Donna Gabaccia’s analysis of the biographies collected in Franco Andreucci and
Tommaso Detti’s Il movimento operaio:

Over a third of Italy’s most prominent pre-war labour activists fled into exile
one or more times. Except for a handful, all were men. Anarchist exiles were
57 percent in 1870s, 63 percent in the 1880s, and 21 percent in the 1890s.
During the 1890s and early 1900s, socialist exiles increased rapidly to 74
percent.1

This fact had a remarkable influence on the development of socialist ideas both
in Italy and in other countries, since one of the most important consequences of
nineteenth century exile was the dissemination of revolutionary ideas in Europe and
overseas.2 As underlined by Degl’Innocenti:

1 Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London: UCL Press, 2000), p. 109.
2 ‘Nell’800 gli esiliati politici sono i vettori classici delle idee rivoluzionarie attraverso l’Europa e
l’oltremare. Essi conservano in genere una grande mobilità e una grande disponibilità all’azione ovunque
si trovino in esilio. La dinamica e la diffusione delle idee socialiste rientra nello schema classico di un
movimento a doppio senso: da un lato i rifugiati politici diffondono le loro convinzioni nei paesi che li
accolgono, da un altro chi rientra da un asilo coatto o volontario importa le idee e le esperienze con le
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Il socialismo delle varie scuole si forgiò in gran parte nel mondo dell’esilio e
trasse da questo l’incentivo verso la massima diffusione prima all’interno
dell’Europa (...) e poi dall’Europa verso le Americhe lungo gli itinerari
dell’emigrazione.3

Exile affected profoundly the Italian Socialist and Communist parties in the first
half of the twentieth century. Many leaders of Italian left-wing parties matured
politically during the anti-Fascist emigration, and this experience influenced their
activity after the war.4
For almost a century, the Italian anarchists played a central part in this
experience:

Some labour activist exiles (like those of the Risorgimento) also formed their
own distinctive diasporas, allowing us - for example - to speak of Italian
anarchism as a transnational ideology unbound by migration and spreading
wherever Italy’s anarchists went. 5

The Italian anarchists spread their activities in many countries all over the world:
in the majority of European countries, as well as in the United States, in Argentina, in
Brazil, in Egypt, in Tunisia and in the Balkans.6 Giuseppe Fanelli introduced
Bakuninism in Spain where he organised the first section of the First International in
1864.7 Between 1885 and 1889 Errico Malatesta and Pietro Gori played a significant

quali si è familiarizzato’ (George Haupt, ‘Il ruolo degli emigrati e dei rifugiati nella diffusione delle idee
socialiste all’epoca della Seconda Internazionale’, in Anna Kuliscioff e l’età del Riformismo, Rome:
Mondo Operaio, Edizioni Avanti!, 1978, pp. 59-68).
3 Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, L’esilio nella storia contemporanea, in Maurizio Degl’Innocenti (ed.),
L’esilio nella storia del movimento operaio e l’emigrazione economica (Manduria: Pietro Lacaita editore,
1992), p. 26.
4 ‘...se i leader dei partiti di sinistra e di centrosinistra dell’Italia post-fascista si sono affermati come tali
nell’esilio, se dall’esilio provengono parte cospicua dei gruppi dirigenti dei partiti da noi considerati, se
larga parte dello schieramento politico italiano è soggetto nel dopoguerra a una dialettica che risente
fortemente e in qualche caso in maniera determinante (si pensi al frontismo) delle esperienze maturate dai
partiti dell’antifascismo militare del ventennio, tutto ciò vuol dire che l’esilio antifascista ha nella storia
d’Italia contemporanea ruolo meno marginale di quello cui vorrebbe relegarlo certa odierna storiografia
revisionista...’ (Fedele Santi, L’esilio nella storia del movimento operaio e l’emigrazione economica, in
Maurizio Degl’Innocenti (ed.), L’esilio nella storia del movimento operaio, pp. 185 – 203).
5 Donna Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, p. 107.
6 See: Carl Levy, ‘Malatesta in exile’, in Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 15, (1981), p. 246.
7 ‘Era éste un hombre como de 40 años, alto, de rostro grave y amable, barba negra y poblada, ojos
grandes negros y expresivos, que brillaban como ráfagas o tornaban el aspecto de cariñosa compasión
según los sentimentos que le dominaba. Su voz tenía un timbre metálico y era susceptible de todos las
inflexiónes apropiadas a lo que expresaba, pasando rápidamente dal acento de la cólera y de la amenaza
contro explotadores y tiranos, para adoptar el del sufrimiento, lástima y consuelo, según hablaba de las
penas del explotando, del que sin sufrirles directamente les comprende o del que por un sentimiento
altruísta se complace en presentar una idea ultrarevolucionaria de paz y fraternidad’. (Anselmo Lorenzo,
El proletariado militante, Mexico: ed. Vertice, 1926, pp.19-20). See also Max Nettlau, La Première
Internationale en Espagne (1868-1888), (Dordrecht: D. Reide, 1969). A recollection of Fanelli by
9

role on the development of anarchism in Argentina.8 Giuseppe Ciancabilla, Luigi
Galleani and Carlo Tresca were active in the United States: the first from 1898, the
second from 1901 and the third from 1905.9 Giovanni Rossi, one of the last
representatives of utopian anarchism, founded the Colonia Cecilia in Brazil in 1890.10
In Geneva, Luigi Bertoni was the director of Il Risveglio-Le Reveille, ‘uno dei maggiori
organi dell’anarchismo internazionale’11 and one of the most long-lasting anarchist
newspapers: it was published for forty years from 1900 to 1940.12 The Internationalist
Niccolò Converti went to Tunisia in order to avoid twenty months’ imprisonment
because of his collaboration in Malatesta’s newspaper La Questione Sociale in 1887.
There he founded and directed L’Operaio. Organo degli anarchici di Tunisi e della
Sicilia. With the advent of Fascism, Luigi Fabbri expatriated to Uruguay, in
Montevideo, where he published the periodical Studi Sociali.13 Gigi Damiani lived in
Brazil from 1899 to 1919.14 There, he published the newspaper Barricata and was
politically active until his expulsion to Italy. Camillo Berneri escaped to France because
of persecution by the Fascists; then he fought in the Civil War in Spain where he was
assassinated in 1937.

Malatesta in: ‘Giuseppe Fanelli’, Pensiero e volontà, n. 11, 16 September 1925. Republished in: Errico
Malatesta, Pensiero e volontà e ultimi scritti, 1924-1932 (Geneva: Edizioni del “Risveglio”, 1936), pp.
187-193.
8 Osvaldo Bajer, ‘L’influenza dell’immigrazione italiana nel movimento anarchico argentino’, in Gli
italiani fuori d’ Italia: gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei paesi d’adozione 1880-1940 (Milan:
Franco Angeli, 1983), pp. 531-548; Zaragoza Ruvira, ‘Anarchism et mouvement ouvrier en Argentine à
la fin du siècle’, in Le mouvement social, n. 103, April-June 1978, pp. 14-17.
9 Ciancabilla was exiled to Zurigo in 1897 and later to France. In 1898, he was in the United States, where
he founded L’Agitatore. For a period he directed La Questione Sociale, afterwards he founded L’Aurora
and in 1902 the weekly La Protesta Umana. Rivista di scienze sociali, letteratura ed arte. Luigi Galleani
suffered several periods in prison. In 1894, he sought to organise an anarchist association in Genoa and
Sampierdarena. Condemned to three years’ imprisonment under art. 248 (‘associazione a delinquere’), he
was sent for 5 years of forced domicile to Pantelleria, from where he was able to escape, with the help of
Niccolò Converti, in 1898. He went to Cairo and then to London, from where, after few months, he
departed for the United States in 1901. Director of La Questione Sociale, in 1903 he founded La Cronaca
Sovversiva.
10 See Giovanni Rossi, Appello per la fondazione di colonie socialiste sperimentali, in Pier Carlo Masini,
Storia degli anarchici italiani da Bakunin a Malatesta. 1862-1892 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1972), pp. 337-341.
Gosi, R. Il socialismo utopistico. Giovanni Rossi e la colonia anarchica Cecilia (Milan: Maiozzi, 1977).
11 Leonardo Bettini, Bibliografia dell’anarchismo. Periodici e numeri unici anarchici in lingua italiana
pubblicati all’estero (1872-1971), vol. I, tome 2 (Florence: CP, 1976), p. 245.
12 For the political emigration in Switzerland see also: Stefania Ruggeri, L’emigrazione politica
attraverso le carte della polizia internazionale conservate presso l’Archivio Storico Diplomatico del
Ministero degli Affari Esteri, in Carlo Brusa and Robertino Ghirirghelli, Varese: emigrazione e territorio:
tra bisogno e ideale. Convegno internazionale. Varese 18-20 maggio 1994 (Varese: Edizioni Latina,
1994). Marc Vuilleumier, Les exilés en Suisse et le mouvement ouvrier socialiste (1871-1914), in
Degl’Innocenti (ed.), L’Esilio, pp. 61-80. On Bertoni see: Giampiero Bottinelli, Luigi Bertoni: la
coerenza di un anarchico (Lugano: La baronata, 1997).
13 Luce Fabbri, Luigi Fabbri. Storia di un uomo libero (Pisa: BFS, 1996), pp. 175-203.
14 Edgar Rodrigues, Os anarquistas: trabalhadores italianos no Brasil (Sãn Paulo: Global Editora, 1984).