Italian Stalinist Leaders Back State Repression

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"If you are looking for a mole in the Ministry of Justice we'll give you one with a name and surname: Giovanni D'Urso."

The Red Brigades, who uttered these defiantly mocking and provocative words, on 15 January left their dishevelled "mole", , their prisoner of 33 days, tied to the back seat of a stolen Fiat 127 only a stone's throw away from the Ministry of Justice and the headquarters of the Christian Democratic and the Communist Parties.

Giovanni D'Urso, in response to a threat to his lite, tola the Red Brigades everything he knew about the organisation of Italy's repressive forces.

And this is a lot, since Giovanni D'Urso was one of the heads of the section of the Ministry of Justice responsible for the administration of the special high security prisons in which leaders of the Red Brigades, Prima Linea and other of Italy's guerrilla groups are held.

Two of D'Urso's close colleagues in this work have been assassinated in the last two years.

It is widely believed to have been information provided by D'Urso which led to the assassination on December 31 of General Galvaligi a Carabinieri (para-military police) officer recently given responsibility for the special prisons.

One of the reasons the Red Brigades gave for releasing D'Urso was his "cooperation with proletarian justice"

The other reasons given were that the Brigades' demands had been met.

In the first place the most detested of the special prisons, Asina, was closed down during the kidnapping. Galvaligi and captive d'Urso Second, after a major riot led by Red Brigade prisoners in Trani-one of the other jails-on December 28 had been put down by force, the prisoners committees in Trani and Palmi jails were allowed to pronounce on the fate of D'Urso.

D'Urso's captors had said that he was the prisoner also of 00 102009 ionnAroo0 indiuor oul : 100 *2 17 32 iM).

w/tar •18 mida the "terrorist" political prisoners, and after the sentence of death was passed, it was to be the prisoners who decided whether it should be carried out.

The prisoners in Palmi and Trani jails pronounced for leniency in recognition of D'Urso's provision of useful information.

'At the same time the prisoners, through contacts with MPs of the libertarian Radical Party demanded . the release from jail of Gianfranco Faina, leader of the Revolutionary Action group who was suffering from lung cancer.

And at the same time they released two communiques for the press justifying the sentence of death on D'Urso and explaining their decision to commute it.

The demand for these communiques to be published by the bourgeois press then became the condition established by D'Urso's captors for his final release.

For a few days in thé middle of January the whole of Italy argued about whether the communiques should be published.

Divided

Italian capitalist society divided at every level. Its main political party the Christian Democrats held out publicly for "firmness" but were internally deeply divided.

The governing coalition was more publicly split between the "doves" of the Socialist Party who. published all the Red Brigades' statements in their paper Avanti and the Republican Party whose hawkishness towards the Red Brigades was equalled only by the CommunThe CP even railed against the Christian Democrats for being "soft" on terrorism and particularly denounced the closure of Asina jail.

The Red Brigades also divided the press owners and the journalists.

The statements were published at once by the left dailies Manifesto and Lotta Continua (which has subsequently ceased publication for lack of funds) as well as Avanti.

And in the end several major. bourgeois papers also succumbed to the pressure to publish or be responsible for D'Urso's death.

Grotesque

These included Il Messagero (Rome) and Il Secolo (Genoa) but not La Stampa (Turin) which is partly owned by Colonel Gaddafi, through his holdings in Fiat, nor the proCP papers L 'Unita and Paese Sera.

The journalists' trade unions came out against the refusal to publish but remain divided about what line to take on the case of Mario Scialoja, the journalist on the weekly L 'Espresso, who was arrested for abetting terrorism after publishing a long interview with the Red Brigades.

Perhaps the most grotesque public divisions provoked by the Red Brigades tactics were those between widows of the victims Red Brigade assassinations wild sectied cised statements to divide roughly 50-50 between hawks and doves.

In the debate in parliament after D'Urso's release tempers were so frayed that at one point a Communist deputy threw a beer glass at a Radical accusing him of being an agent of the Red Brigades!

Prime Minister Forlani tried to minimise the disorder of the bourgeoisie by saying that the division between hawks and doves was "only natural" and everyone was basically right.

But he knows he can't go on pleasing everyone for long.

And he knows too that despite his panegyric of the government's "firmness" it in fact looked on helplessly in the last six weeks as authority in Italy seemed almost to pass to a group of political prisoners and elusive "terrotists"

It is little wonder that once again major sections of the bourgeoisie continue to lose faith in Italy's parliamentary democracy.

Serious danger

During the kidnapping, leading generals of the army and the Carabinieri gave addresses to a military college in which they foreshadowed independent action by the armed forces to combat the dangers of "liberalism"

If a military coup is not imminent in Italy it is nonetheless a serious danger facing the working class.

The actions of the Red Brigades expose the pitiful weakness and disunity of the bourgeoisie but they do nothing to prepare the working class and oppressed masses for an alternative solution to that of Christian Democracy or military dictatorship.

The Red Brigades should be defended against the state but politically opposed for this disastrous policy.

But they are not responsible for the fact that the main workers' parties themselves not only provide no alternative-but in the case of the dominant CP actually vie with the bourgeoisie to see who can be most repressive.

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BRIGATE 0550.