Florence: 500,000 march today against the war
Martin Thomas, in Florence | 09.11.2002 23:49
The protest was called as part of the European Social Forum, held here from 7 to 10 November, but the great majority of the demonstrators were Italian. Contingents started to assemble at 11am, four hours before the scheduled start of the march. The crowd was far too big to fit into the scheduled finishing area. Marchers filled the streets for miles around. As I write, it is 8pm, and the streets of the city are still full of demonstrators making their way home.
It is hard to get an overview of a demonstration of such size. There were large contingents from the most militant of Italy's big trade union federations, CGIL, and hundreds of thousands of young people. I never got anywhere near the head of the demonstration to check on this, but it was due to be led by a contingent of Fiat car workers, who are currently organisingst rikes against 8000 planned job cuts.
On the march as at the European Social Forum itself, there seemed to be as many young women as young men.
The message of the demonstration was simple and clear: No war. Politically it was dominated by the red flags and
banners of Rifondazione, the Party of Communist Refoundation. There were many other groups, of course. Some demonstrators came from the youth wing of the Democratic Left - what was the majority of the old Communist Party - but none from the DL itself that I could see. I saw a contingent with a big banner, "With Iraq, against imperialism", but only a dozen or so people behind it.
Songs - Bandiera Rossa, the Internationale, and others - dominated the demonstration, rather than chants.
Banners and placards denounced the Berlusconi government and its attacks on workers' rights. Many demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and wore keffiyehs to show solidarity with the Palestinians, but I saw none of the sour, calculating "hate Israel" agitation common on the British left.
I came across a joint Palestinian-Jewish contingent. The "Two Nations, Two States" pamphlets I was carrying were welcomed. I talked to a young Italian Jewish woman, a lapsed member of Rifondazione, now studying in London, who had returned to Florence for the Social Forum and to see her family. Yes, she had been on the anti-war demonstration in London. Yes, she had seen the "Keep Palestine Tidy" stickers, showing a Star of David being binned, and been sickened by them. In Italy it is different.
"Third-Worldism" and populism of various sorts are common enough on the Italian left. Flags carrying the image of Che Guevara were common on the demonstration. But this is a generous populism, an enthusiastic identification with struggle, not a curdled chauvinism.
The Italian left does not have the same culture of paper-selling as the British or even the French. Although Rifondazione flags dominated the march, I saw not a single person selling their daily paper Liberazione. At the point where we set up our Workers' Liberty stall - though not elsewhere on the demonstration - there was a concentration of paper-sellers from Socialismo Rivoluzionario, ex-Trotskyists who are, I believe, the largest revolutionary group in Italy outside Rifondazione. Aside from that, hardly anything.
Florence, 9 November
On the march as at the European Social Forum itself, there seemed to be as many young women as young men.
The message of the demonstration was simple and clear: No war. Politically it was dominated by the red flags and
banners of Rifondazione, the Party of Communist Refoundation. There were many other groups, of course. Some demonstrators came from the youth wing of the Democratic Left - what was the majority of the old Communist Party - but none from the DL itself that I could see. I saw a contingent with a big banner, "With Iraq, against imperialism", but only a dozen or so people behind it.
Songs - Bandiera Rossa, the Internationale, and others - dominated the demonstration, rather than chants.
Banners and placards denounced the Berlusconi government and its attacks on workers' rights. Many demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and wore keffiyehs to show solidarity with the Palestinians, but I saw none of the sour, calculating "hate Israel" agitation common on the British left.
I came across a joint Palestinian-Jewish contingent. The "Two Nations, Two States" pamphlets I was carrying were welcomed. I talked to a young Italian Jewish woman, a lapsed member of Rifondazione, now studying in London, who had returned to Florence for the Social Forum and to see her family. Yes, she had been on the anti-war demonstration in London. Yes, she had seen the "Keep Palestine Tidy" stickers, showing a Star of David being binned, and been sickened by them. In Italy it is different.
"Third-Worldism" and populism of various sorts are common enough on the Italian left. Flags carrying the image of Che Guevara were common on the demonstration. But this is a generous populism, an enthusiastic identification with struggle, not a curdled chauvinism.
The Italian left does not have the same culture of paper-selling as the British or even the French. Although Rifondazione flags dominated the march, I saw not a single person selling their daily paper Liberazione. At the point where we set up our Workers' Liberty stall - though not elsewhere on the demonstration - there was a concentration of paper-sellers from Socialismo Rivoluzionario, ex-Trotskyists who are, I believe, the largest revolutionary group in Italy outside Rifondazione. Aside from that, hardly anything.
Florence, 9 November
Martin Thomas, in Florence
e-mail:
martin@workersliberty.org
Homepage:
http://www.workersliberty.org.uk