Fasci Siciliani - Rising Tensions

Rising Tensions

Nonetheless, Giolitti acknowledged the need to stifle the agitation. From May 1893 onwards, leaders of the Fasci were arrested occasionally and police and military reinforcements were sent to Sicily. In the autumn of 1893 the leadership lost control over the Fasci and the popular agitation got out of hand. Peasant squatters seized land, violent crowds demonstrated for work and against local misgovernment, tax offices were burnt down and clashes with the police grew more frequent and bloody. The violent social conflict almost rose to the point of insurrection. The proprietors and landowners asked the government to intervene.

However, his attitude could not be maintained. Landowners were infuriated by the unwillingness of the government to use force, while the peasants were annoyed by the unwillingness to redistribute land from the latifundia. Landowners matched the strike with a lockout, and many peasants, probably a majority in the strike centres, were left without tenancies when the planting season ended in mid-December. In December 1893 the failure of the Giolitti government to restore public order gave rise to a general demand that Crispi should return to power. Giolitti had to resign on November 24, 1893, as a result of the Banca Romana scandal.

In addition to the unrest in Sicily, a wave of rioting spread through Italy in August 1893, triggered by the killing of a number of migrant workers in the salt pans of Aigues Mortes in southern France escalated into a more generalized working-class revolt supported by anarchists an violent riots in Rome and Naples. Italy seemed to be slipping to a revolution. By the time Crispi returned to power in December 1893, Italy appeared to many to be on the brink of collapse. Crispi promised important measures of land reform for the near future. He was not blind to the misery and the need for social reform. Before 1891 he had been the patron of the Sicilian working-class and many of their associations had been named after him. Colajanni, the chief architect of Giolitti’s fall by exposing the Banca Romana scandal, was first offered the Ministry of Agriculture, which he refused, then sent to Sicily on a mission of appeasement.

Crispi’s good intentions got lost in the outcry for strong measures. In the three weeks of uncertainty before the government was formed, the rapid spread of violence drove many local authorities to defy Giolitti’s ban on the use of firearms. In December 1893, 92 peasants lost their lives in clashes with the police and army. Government building were burned as well as flour mills and bakeries that refused to lower their prices when taxes were lowered or abolished. Eleven people were killed on December 10, 1893, in Giardinello after a rally that asked for the abolition of taxes on food and disbandment of the local field guards (guardie campestri). The protestors carried the portrait of the King taken from the municipality and burned tax files. Another 11 protestors were killed in Lercara Friddi on December 25.

These disorders were not the product of a revolutionary plot, but Crispi believed otherwise. On the strength of dubious documents and reports, Crispi decided there was an organised conspiracy to detach his own Sicily from Italy; the leaders of the Fasci were in league with the clerics and financed by French gold, and war and invasion were imminent.