From “state protection” to “private defence”. Strikebreaking, civilian armed mobilisation and the rise of Italian fascism

Strikebreaking – in terms of both work replacement and auxiliary police functions – was a veritable obsession for significant sectors of the Italian middle classes in the aftermath of the Great War and fuelled forms of armed political mobilisation. Within a broader framework the chapter focuses on the two paradigmatic cases of Bologna and Milan in the immediate post-war years (1919–20). The approaches of the contribution are threefold. First it shows how the founding of strikebreaking groups reflected the crucial role played by work replacement and anti-strike activities in shaping outlooks and mentalities in broad sectors of Italian society. Second it illustrates the contradictory and hesitant approaches of state institutions and shows how they contributed to turn civic mobilisation into vigilantism. Third the chapter claims that post-war forms of bourgeois mobilisation can be fully appreciated only by situating them within a longer tradition of armed civilian cooperation between the state authorities and discrete social sectors, especially in the case of major strikes involving public services. This long-term interpretative perspective offers new insights into the origins of the crisis in the Italian liberal state and ultimately can help to explain the consensus enjoyed by the armed fascist reaction.