“Italians First”: Workers on the Right Amidst Old and New Populisms Gilda Zazzara Ca’ Foscari University of Venice Abstract https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms This article deals with the Italian working-class attitude to vote right-wing, seen in a long-term perspective, in particular in the northern and more industrialized regions. It stresses the fact that the left-wing parties reached their largest majority among working-class voters only for a short period. The end of the long cycle of factory conflicts of the 1970s on the one side, and the crisis of the “local political subcultures”—Catholic and Communist—in mediating the relationship between the working class and the central State on the other, marked the outbreak of a new political phenomenon: the establishment of the Lega Nord party in the 1980s. This party has been able to shift progressively from identity-based claims and secessionist proposals to xenophobia and the demand that a priority be accorded to Italian workers on the labour market. In the most recent years workers’ support for the Lega Nord has been contended by a new populist competitor, the Five Star Movement, whose ability to intercept a widespread “working-class malaise” will be tested in years to come. Workers (of the North) on the Right , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at It is no longer a secret or taboo: in the new millennium, when northern Italian workers go to the polls—the majority of the country’s five million industrial and construction workers are concentrated there—they vote for right-wing parties.1 Perhaps due to a naive understanding of class voting, or the steadfast memory of a once strong labor movement (the Italian working-class struggle was excep- 15 May 2018 at 18:16:15 tional both in its political engagement and sheer persistence), this issue has , on almost always been perceived in terms of “abandonment,” if not an outright “betrayal” of the Left. Whether the workers betrayed the Left or vice versa, the fact remains that in recent years the grass roots of the Center Left and its principal party, the Partito Democratico (PD), are found among the public sector (a particular stronghold being teachers) rather than the self-employed; white-collar rather than blue-collar workers; pensioners rather than those who are still employed; Cambridge University Press . but above all, more in the Center and South of the country than in the North. In particular, the working-class vote seems to be split along a territorial divide: The workers in the northern regions (Lombardy and Veneto first and foremost), where the industrial working class was concentrated, now vote mostly for right-wing parties. But which Right has managed to grasp a significant slice of the working- class vote? As we will see better below, the working-class right-wing party in https://www.cambridge.org/core International Labor and Working-Class History No. 93, Spring 2018, pp. 101–112 # International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2018 doi:10.1017/S0147547917000370 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547917000370 Downloaded from . 102 ILWCH, 93, Spring 2018 Italy has been the Lega Nord (LN); one of its leading exponents went so far as to define it “the new labour party.”2 Founded on local concerns, ethnic and identity-based claims, and secessionist proposals, LN is a right-wing populist, but not fascist, party.3 In more recent years it has shifted its position toward issues of sovereignty, centred on violent controversy against immigration, European austerity policies, fiscal pressure, and the universal welfare state. In this way, LN has managed to tap into the apprehensions of all the social https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms groups impoverished and disadvantaged by the economic crisis and globalization. In the past, there had also been some working-class consensus towards Forza Italia (FI), the personal political party established by entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi. However, despite efforts to validate an “Italian dream” of social mobility and “the self-made man,” Berlusconi has always been viewed by the working class as an employer, thus not to be trusted completely. Of less importance—at least in the North—have been the parties to Berlusconi’s right, even when they harken back to the traditions of social fascism. Recently, the Neo-Fascist party Casa Pound Italia (CPI) has sought visibil- ity and consensus among workers by siding with them in some local protests against industrial closures and restructuring. One such episode was in Terni, a small town in central Italy, home to one of the largest public steelworks in Italy—privatised during the 1990s, and eventually sold to the multinational , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at ThyssenKrupp.4 In 2014, ThyssenKrupp announced it was laying off five hundred workers. CPI attempted to join the protest with the slogan “Nationalise the Terni steelworks,” but failed to establish a true relationship with the workers.5 Indeed their action led to widespread anti-fascist protests in the town.6 Nonetheless, a mere analysis of voting and party policies would hardly con- 15 May 2018 at 18:16:15 stitute an exhaustive exploration of this rightward shift among industrial , on workers and the working class more generally: It is indeed difficult to position populist movements along the traditional right-left axis or to interpret rising abstention from voting—after years of exceptional turnouts, the gap between Italy and the majority of European countries has narrowed.7 More recent qualitative analyses paint a picture of widespread “working- class malaise” fuelled by a mixture of factors both material (growing job insecu- Cambridge University Press . rity, economic impoverishment, loss of rights) and cultural (depreciation of manual labor, erosion of working-class identity, the disappearance of forms of class sociality). The profile of the typical Italian worker, especially younger workers, is characterised by feelings of apathy, solitude, fear, and frustration. One investigative journalist revealed widespread use of narcotics among workers, which was a response to this personal anxiety, but also a means of maintaining the standards of productivity demanded by employers.8 Since the global financial crisis there have been several cases of suicide among despairing 9 https://www.cambridge.org/core job seekers. The deterioration in human relations and solidarity in the workplace can be seen firstly in the mistrust, if not open hostility, expressed towards immigrant https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547917000370 Downloaded from . “Italians First” 103 workers—more recently their identity has become confused with that of the ref- ugees disembarking daily on the coast of Sicily. Factories with high numbers of foreign workers witness a mixture of “social passivity, widespread individualistic behaviour and unquestioning acceptance of working conditions.”10 While overall trade union membership has increased, thanks to pensioners and public sector employees, there has been a clear fall in membership among industrial workers.11 Though workers turn more and more to the unions for fi https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms scal, legal, and social security services, their engagement in matters related to policy and negotiation have receded. A survey carried out in 2006 by the Confederazione generale italiana del lavoro (CGIL), the principal left-wing union in Italy, registered overwhelming right-wing leanings among workers in the North as well as clear preferences for unions without political affiliations, but with a more collaborative approach towards employers.12 It seems that it is precisely politics that has lost its appeal among workers, even among those communities that have been involved in conflicts or protests—often carried out in open disagreement with trade unions.13 It seems possible today to fight for acquired rights or job security without investing in the struggle with values that goes beyond the immediate circumstances. The Italian Case , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at If northern Italian workers vote mostly for the Right and prefer apolitical trade unions, what can we say has become of the Italian case? During the 1960s and 1970s, Italy was the scene of a series of labor struggles that were among the most militant and tenacious in the West. The strongly politicized Italian trade union movement had an exceptional capacity for mass mobilization. The key position of workers and the authority exerted by wage earners were corner- 15 May 2018 at 18:16:15 stones of the political discourse both for the historical Left—whether , on Communist or Socialist—and the vast constellation of the “New Left.” However, Italy was never a “nation of workers” like Great Britain or Germany. Industrial development occurred late, developed quickly, and was subsidized but spread unevenly across the territory. The workers’ movement and socialism started in the countryside, among share-croppers and farm laborers, and with decidedly local connotations and a strong avant-garde Cambridge University Press . intellectual component. In the very apt words of one communist historian: “ideas (in Italy) came faster than machines and capital.”14 An important role in the development of the workers’ movement was played by the imbalance between the North—where the first industries were established and the first entrepreneurial capitals were created—and the extended southern reaches of the country—plagued by an economy based on large agricultural estates, political corruption, and organized crime. Addressing his fellow Communists Antonio Gramsci had already identified https://www.cambridge.org/core the “southern issue” as “one of the fundamental policy problems facing the nation’s revolutionary proletariat”15—for decades it remained a non-negotiable cornerstone of Italian trade union policy.16 Between the two world wars, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547917000370 Downloaded from . 104 ILWCH, 93, Spring 2018 authoritarian modernization under fascism consolidated the industrial mono- poly of the North West (the so-called “industrial triangle”) and interventions of the State in the economy.