Speaker 1: In July twenty twenty one, over four hundred workers at
Speaker 1: the DK and Car Parks factory on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: Florence were told that they would lose their jobs. In response,
Speaker 1: workers seize the factory, and in the past four years
Speaker 1: their demands have developed beyond just stopping the redundancies, but
Speaker 1: to restart in production under workers' control, building ecological goods,
Speaker 1: and promoting green, community controlled energy. And as if that
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, since twenty twenty three, the factory has also
Speaker 1: become the site of the annual Festival of Working Class Literature.
Speaker 1: The third installment at this festival will take place this
Speaker 1: year in April twenty twenty five. This is Working Class Literature. Sorry,
Speaker 1: before we start, just a quick note to say that
Speaker 1: we're only able to continue making these podcasts, both Working
Speaker 1: Class History and Working Class Literature because of the support
Speaker 1: of our listeners on Patreon. If you like what we
Speaker 1: do and want to help us with our work, join
Speaker 1: us on patreon dot com slash working Class History, where
Speaker 1: you can get benefits like early access to episodes, exclusive
Speaker 1: bonus content, discounted books, merch and more. For instance, Patreon
Speaker 1: supporters can also listen to both episodes about the Festival
Speaker 1: of Working Class Literature now and also have access to
Speaker 1: our two Patreon only series, Radical Reads and fireside Chat
Speaker 1: link in the show notes. On the fourth of April
Speaker 1: this year, a weekend of readings, discussions and performances will
Speaker 1: be held in Florence at what will now be the
Speaker 1: third annual Festival of Working Class Literature, and as in
Speaker 1: previous years, the organizers are encouraging people from all over
Speaker 1: the world to attend. However, while literary festivals are usually
Speaker 1: rooted in spaces linked to publishing or academia, and often
Speaker 1: bankrolled by businesses looking for nice pr to cover their
Speaker 1: involvement in genocide or environmental destruction, this festival is very different.
Speaker 1: Held at the former GK and Car Parts factory in
Speaker 1: Campubisenzio on the outskirts of Florence, it emerged from the
Speaker 1: struggle of over four hundred workers who were made redundant
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. So to tell the story of
Speaker 1: this festival, it's essential first to tell the story of
Speaker 1: those workers and their struggle.
Speaker 2: Everything is started in July twenty twenty one, but there
Speaker 2: is a kind of prep well. In some way we
Speaker 2: must go back to something that happened not in Florence,
Speaker 2: but in England.
Speaker 1: This is Alberto Brunetti, an Italian working class offer and
Speaker 1: one of the main organizers of the festival.
Speaker 2: GKN is a British company and they are a corporational
Speaker 2: working in the automotive field. But in two thoy eighteen,
Speaker 2: the relevant and productive because they were not really in
Speaker 2: a bad economic situation corporation was acquired by another corporation, Merors.
Speaker 2: It is a stranger player because Melros is not really
Speaker 2: working in the automotive They are more kind of financial player.
Speaker 2: What they do is to buy companies to relocate plants,
Speaker 2: maybe in Eastern Europe after firing workers, and then they
Speaker 2: sell again the factories, so they don't really produce. They
Speaker 2: earn money more in finance and real estate. So it
Speaker 2: seems as soon as after Merrors acquired the GKN they
Speaker 2: started to close the plants in Europe in the UK
Speaker 2: as well, because they close Berminga and also plants in
Speaker 2: Germany and also Florence or better cant be business that
Speaker 2: is quite close is the industrial area north to Florence.
Speaker 1: This kind of company which produces nothing but merely invests
Speaker 1: and speculates around commercial real estate, or acts as a
Speaker 1: consultant helping companies quote unquote maximize efficiency is an increasingly
Speaker 1: common feature in today's global capitalist economy.
Speaker 3: His main slogan is to buy, to improve, and to resell.
Speaker 3: So you have to understand that to improve means cutting
Speaker 3: jobs closing plants in order to gain financial profits from
Speaker 3: productive groups.
Speaker 1: This is Dario Salvetti, a worker the former GKN factory
Speaker 1: and spokesperson for the factory active Here, Dario explains how
Speaker 1: the company tried to trick workers to keep them away
Speaker 1: from the factory while they tried to close it down.
Speaker 3: It was Friday, nine July twenty one. We received a
Speaker 3: day off, a collective day off holiday. The excuse was
Speaker 3: that the production of Featle was slowing down a little bit,
Speaker 3: so everybody could stay at Homb for one Friday. While
Speaker 3: we were at Homb, we'll receive the mail in which
Speaker 3: they told us that the plant was shut down suddenly
Speaker 3: and totally, and that we were invited not to come
Speaker 3: back to our job place nevermore. After one hour, we
Speaker 3: decided to gather in front of the factory and retake
Speaker 3: our presence inside the factory, and we started what we
Speaker 3: call permanent assembly. We were forty under workers at the time.
Speaker 3: Now we have remained one hundred and twenty. It's now
Speaker 3: more than three years that we go on with the
Speaker 3: permanent assembly of the workers. So to sum up, the
Speaker 3: history of kN is a history that contains a lot
Speaker 3: of histories. You could say that it's the history of
Speaker 3: the transformation of a productive factory into real estate investment.
Speaker 3: Is the history of the loss of jobs inside the
Speaker 3: automotive sector. Is the history of the impact of the
Speaker 3: financial international funds and the finance civization of the economy
Speaker 3: on the productive forces.
Speaker 2: Now is also the history.
Speaker 3: Of the longest workers resistance. For what we know, at
Speaker 3: least in the history of the Italian working class movement.
Speaker 1: The workforce at the GKN factory is almost entirely male,
Speaker 1: the only woman being Titsiano Dibiazio, who worked with the
Speaker 1: cleaning tractor. Here she explains how she joined the factory,
Speaker 1: her role in disciplining union members, and how the company
Speaker 1: retaliated when she refused to do so.
Speaker 2: In da.
Speaker 4: I started working at CHICKN in twenty twelve, working for
Speaker 4: an external contractor, and I was the only woman working
Speaker 4: in the workshop. I was responsible for coordinating the cleaning services,
Speaker 4: so every morning I had to rush to make sure
Speaker 4: the production areas were sided up, Otherwise the first shift
Speaker 4: workers who started at six would complain about finding everything
Speaker 4: in this array. When I had the interview to join
Speaker 4: the factory, the managers from GKN and the executives of
Speaker 4: the subcontracting company were present. My main responsibility was personnel
Speaker 4: management and acting as an intermediary with a labor consultant
Speaker 4: and the GKN management. There were three contracts, cleaning services,
Speaker 4: goods handling, and quality control. The cleaning services were mostly
Speaker 4: handled by women, while the other two were almost entirely
Speaker 4: carried out by foreign workers, mostly Romanian and Albanian men.
Speaker 4: They told me it wouldn't be easy dealing with them
Speaker 4: because before me they had been a man and it
Speaker 4: hadn't gone well at all. So they thought a woman
Speaker 4: might be more suitable because women are supposed to be
Speaker 4: treated with special respect. No one would say to a woman,
Speaker 4: I'll wait for you outside, or i'll beat you up
Speaker 4: when you go out. At that point in time, I
Speaker 4: was also useful because they told me they needed to
Speaker 4: get rid of a few problematic people. These were the
Speaker 4: ones who had been unionized so for every minor infraction,
Speaker 4: I had to report it and issue disciplinary actions so
Speaker 4: that after the third one they could be fired. At first,
Speaker 4: I played that role because I desperately needed paycheck, and
Speaker 4: especially because they were sexist and misogynistic. They played a
Speaker 4: lot of pranks on me. Over time, I got to
Speaker 4: know my colleagues, and I started to see them not
Speaker 4: just as men, but as workers, just like my husband,
Speaker 4: just like my father, workers who if one of them
Speaker 4: got fired, would be ready to go on strike all together,
Speaker 4: and I had to be on the company's side. I
Speaker 4: couldn't strike with them. I began to wonder why they
Speaker 4: were so aggressive towards me. Was it because I was
Speaker 4: a woman or because I was their boss. I didn't know.
Speaker 4: I just knew that I stopped reporting, and those who
Speaker 4: once didn't even call me by my name, they only
Speaker 4: called me that woman. Later on started calling me Titiana. Strangely, soul.
Speaker 4: The factory managers started calling me that woman. So in life,
Speaker 4: one way or another, there's always someone who calls you
Speaker 4: that woman. Then, after a few years, there was a
Speaker 4: change in the subcontracting agreement, meaning the services were given
Speaker 4: to another company. Since I had become a problematic figure
Speaker 4: for the client. They asked the new company to downsize
Speaker 4: me and force me to resign. For a while, I
Speaker 4: even cleaned the toilets, but I never give them the
Speaker 4: satisfaction of resigning.
Speaker 1: When the layoffs at GKN were announced, Titsiana was one
Speaker 1: of the hundreds who lost their jobs. She immediately got
Speaker 1: involved in the struggle and is an active member of
Speaker 1: the factory collective to this day. Speaking at an event
Speaker 1: at the GKN factory in twenty twenty four, Titsiana explains
Speaker 1: how quote, gender discrimination is still strong in our society,
Speaker 1: and so for me it was important to stay in
Speaker 1: that place. I don't want to give up, and I
Speaker 1: want to continue to represent that world of different genders
Speaker 1: in this exemplary struggle end quote. Another thing that should
Speaker 1: be noted is that, unlike much of the coverage in
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, the workers at the EXGKN factory do
Speaker 1: not describe their continued presence inside the factory as an occupation. Instead,
Speaker 1: they use the phrase permanent assembly.
Speaker 3: So it's not the question of what we do prefer,
Speaker 3: but it's a question of what it is and what
Speaker 3: it is not.
Speaker 2: If you think about an.
Speaker 3: Occupation of a factory, you could think about a factory
Speaker 3: that is functioning very well and the workers decide to
Speaker 3: block the factory. This is not our case. We were
Speaker 3: working and the private capital decided to fly away from
Speaker 3: our factory and to leave the factory as a black hole,
Speaker 3: without any kind of direction, without any kind of productive mission.
Speaker 2: You could say.
Speaker 3: So in this case, the Italian work workers movement has
Speaker 3: tried to define the most legal way in order to
Speaker 3: put our bodies into the factory, in order to defend
Speaker 3: the factory from what we call the localization, from taking
Speaker 3: away the productive means. We are exercising our own right
Speaker 3: to stay in a trade union assembly inside our workplace.
Speaker 3: But this is an assembly that is not ending, is
Speaker 3: a permanent assembly. So it started the nine July twenty
Speaker 3: one and it's going on till the moment we think
Speaker 3: that the job places are safe and we can start working.
Speaker 1: And indeed, when the workers say that since the ninth
Speaker 1: of July twenty twenty one, there's been a permanent workers assembly,
Speaker 1: they really main permanent.
Speaker 3: There is the trade union garrison. We are twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day, every day, Christmas Day, Easter Day, and yes,
Speaker 3: since the nine July twenty one there's always been a
Speaker 3: shift of people in the garrison from six morning to
Speaker 3: two o'clock in the afternoon, from two o'clock in the
Speaker 3: afternoon till ten pm, ten pm in the night till
Speaker 3: six am in the morning. We are always there because,
Speaker 3: of course, our permanent assembly and our permanent presence to
Speaker 3: the garrison is at the moment the only guarantee that
Speaker 3: the factory will not be dismantled.
Speaker 1: The ability of the workers can be be sent. So
Speaker 1: to react so quickly and effectively to the redundancies was
Speaker 1: because they were extremely well organized, both as members of
Speaker 1: the Film Metal Workers Union with a strong history of
Speaker 1: activity inside the factory, but also in the wider community
Speaker 1: outside of it as well.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of links before the shutting down
Speaker 3: of the factory.
Speaker 2: Partly it was the result of the tradition of.
Speaker 3: This area of Italy, very partisan, anti fascist and radical
Speaker 3: democratic tradition that we have in this area. Partly it
Speaker 3: was because we succeeded for at least twenty years to
Speaker 3: defend the social rights of the workers in order that
Speaker 3: our degree of exploitation inside the factory was less than
Speaker 3: another factory. This has got an impact on your life
Speaker 3: because if you work from Monday to Friday, and when
Speaker 3: you stop to work, you're not completely exhausted. You have
Speaker 3: the time, and you have also enough wage to do
Speaker 3: other things in your life. So we were a factory
Speaker 3: full of active people, active in every direction, football trainers,
Speaker 3: volunteers in medical assistance, social activists. So when the factory
Speaker 3: was closed, there were a lot of people that they've
Speaker 3: closed our factory, not just the people that were working
Speaker 3: inside the factory. There was a whole movement that fought, Okay,
Speaker 3: they're closing the factory that is supporting us, the factory
Speaker 3: that is always full of solidarity movements and with social links.
Speaker 1: These links between the GKN workers and the wider working
Speaker 1: class and social movements in the region also had a
Speaker 1: profound effect on Alberto, who remembers one of those early mobilizations.
Speaker 2: After receiving the dismissi a letter, workers and the union
Speaker 2: declared the general strike. They only in two scanny with
Speaker 2: speeches in Piazza Santa Croatia in Florence. I realized it
Speaker 2: was something important. I already knew a few of the
Speaker 2: gk AND workers because they were very active this worker
Speaker 2: where they still had the reputation. In two scanny for
Speaker 2: their engagements in politics, and I could earn Dariosti, that
Speaker 2: is the spokeperson of the workers. He said something that
Speaker 2: really struck me because it was more or less what
Speaker 2: I was already trying to do with my work as
Speaker 2: a writer. No, it was talking with the journalists and
Speaker 2: he said, we are not here to tell you our stories.
Speaker 2: We are here to our own story. And this drug
Speaker 2: me a lot. You know. It was my kind of
Speaker 2: manifesto for a working class. I was something that I
Speaker 2: was said for years in my books, and now it
Speaker 2: was real. It was not something the past. It was
Speaker 2: something that was real and now, very often i've been
Speaker 2: I was writing on the blue collars of the past.
Speaker 2: Like my father that was a welder or not working
Speaker 2: in the they had a sanctuary now and now we
Speaker 2: had he had this conscious self conscious workers strongly engaged
Speaker 2: in defending their wages, talking especially with the much alive language.
Speaker 2: It was amazing. They were talking like winner, They were
Speaker 2: strong and powerful. It was amazing. Absolutely, it was something
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen very often. I was really strang everybody
Speaker 2: in during this summer. It was a kind of summer
Speaker 2: or love of the working class after years in which
Speaker 2: everybody said that the working class doesn't exist, all we're
Speaker 2: all middle class, all these kind of rhetorics. You know,
Speaker 2: it's true that the political imagicary of the working class
Speaker 2: has been defeated many years ago, in the beginning of
Speaker 2: the eighties in Italy, and since then there was not
Speaker 2: a single not such a strike so strong. And it came,
Speaker 2: and it was amazing because they were really greet these
Speaker 2: jickn workers all together. Even the school boys in the
Speaker 2: were singing their hunt them Ocupiamolaamola.
Speaker 1: Is the song that we played at the start of
Speaker 1: this episode, and it's frequently sung demonstrations of GKN workers
Speaker 1: in Florence. The song is actually adapted from one song
Speaker 1: by fans of the local football team Fiorentina, with the
Speaker 1: lyrics change to be about the GKN workers struggle. The
Speaker 1: mobilizations of GKN workers and their supporters brought huge numbers
Speaker 1: onto the streets, and in doing so they brought the
Speaker 1: working class back into the public imagination.
Speaker 2: September twenty twenty one to bring forty thousand people to
Speaker 2: march through the street of Florence. It was impressive, forty
Speaker 2: thousand people for a worker mobilitation I realized that in
Speaker 2: two months the GKN workers in Florence had reconstructed the
Speaker 2: working class imaginery. There was the fitty four twenty five years.
Speaker 2: I was sent to do the same with my books
Speaker 2: like a writer, but in ten years I couldn't do
Speaker 2: nothing really in relationship to them. Then in two months,
Speaker 2: working in a collective way, they have done much more
Speaker 2: than me, because I was working alone as a writer,
Speaker 2: even if I'm a working class writer. But this loneliness
Speaker 2: is the is the loneliness of the long distance writer,
Speaker 2: while they power is the power of the qualitive action.
Speaker 3: So it was really powerful for Alberto.
Speaker 1: The strength of the GKN mobilization allowed for a kind
Speaker 1: of working class imagination that he had been trying to
Speaker 1: produce in his writing. This kind of imagination can be
Speaker 1: seen and how the GKN workers have more recently gone
Speaker 1: beyond demanding better redundancy pay or their old jobs back,
Speaker 1: but rather the wholesale renewal of production under workers' control
Speaker 1: to build ecologically sustainable goods like pedal powered cargo bikes
Speaker 1: and solar panels, with a view to promoting democratic, community
Speaker 1: controlled renewable energy.
Speaker 3: As that here explains, you don't have to imagine that
Speaker 3: one day people have gathered in a meeting and have
Speaker 3: started to say, okay, let's reconverse the factory. It has
Speaker 3: been a process, in a process in which we have
Speaker 3: just answered the vacuum that the capital has created against us.
Speaker 3: The layoffs were declared in July twenty one. The Italian
Speaker 3: law gives seventy five days for the conversion of this
Speaker 3: procedure of layoffs in a definitive decision. We had time
Speaker 3: to stop these decisions since till the September twenty one.
Speaker 3: We call it three big demonstration. The biggest one was
Speaker 3: with forty thousand people, and the Florence Labor Court declared
Speaker 3: illegal the procedure of layoffs against us. So the ownership
Speaker 3: was condemned not to avoid the layoffs, but to repeat
Speaker 3: the legal procedure of layoffs. But what happened is that
Speaker 3: they had burned their fingers on the first procedure of layoffs,
Speaker 3: so they didn't restart with the layoffs, and they decided
Speaker 3: probably to leave us in a kind of limbo. So
Speaker 3: in September twenty one we were not fired officially. We
Speaker 3: were completely arid with all the full rights we also
Speaker 3: received for a period of the wage, so we received
Speaker 3: the wage without working, but we were left in a
Speaker 3: vacuum because there was nothing to do. They didn't bring
Speaker 3: back the production to us. So we were in a factory,
Speaker 3: a factory that is also a quite new factory with
Speaker 3: a lot of new machineries, and so in this vacuum,
Speaker 3: we had to refink on how we could restart the
Speaker 3: factory with another industry plan. Our first industry plan in
Speaker 3: December twenty one was just a proposal general social proposal
Speaker 3: in which we told the government, the Telian government, why
Speaker 3: don't you nationalize this factory and other factories of the
Speaker 3: automotive in order to create a big sector of production
Speaker 3: of public means of transport, in order to do a
Speaker 3: real transition from the private automatic sector to a real
Speaker 3: ecological sector that is not shifting from gas car to
Speaker 3: electric car, but it's shifting is shifting from private car
Speaker 3: to public means of transports. Of course, they didn't give
Speaker 3: us any answer, and it was not possible for us
Speaker 3: to achieve this plan by our own because it was
Speaker 3: a social general plan. In January twenty two, another ownership,
Speaker 3: private ownership came a new owner both the factory, but
Speaker 3: it was something very suspicious in our ideas, because this
Speaker 3: owner was the former advisor of the GKN, of the
Speaker 3: whole owner. This owner didn't say I'm firing you. This
Speaker 3: new owner said, I don't have capitals, I don't have works,
Speaker 3: but in some months I.
Speaker 2: Will bring I will bring to you new investors.
Speaker 3: So the trick could be to let us there in
Speaker 3: the vacuum, waiting for GODO, waiting for something that we
Speaker 3: don't know who, we don't know what to do. Weit
Speaker 3: so in order that the struggle would expire for tiredness,
Speaker 3: we didn't aspire. We called for other demonstration together with
Speaker 3: the climate movement. There was another big demonstration in March
Speaker 3: twenty two with thirty thousand people, and in October twenty
Speaker 3: two it was quite clear and official to us that
Speaker 3: there was no industry plan. There was no real intention,
Speaker 3: probably of this new owner to reindustrialize the factory. So
Speaker 3: this time we had to create our own plan, not
Speaker 3: a general plan, but a plan of a standing alone factory,
Speaker 3: so not a factory of the automatic center, but a
Speaker 3: factory as a single productive cell. It was not easy,
Speaker 3: but we decided to try to produce some finished goods
Speaker 3: like the cargo bikes and the photogo type panels in
Speaker 3: order to have some finished goods that we could bring
Speaker 3: by our own to the market to convert the factory,
Speaker 3: a former automatic factory to an ecological factory. Of course,
Speaker 3: because this plan was made by our own, this plan
Speaker 3: should be also based on different social forces, not a
Speaker 3: new big private owner, but our own co operative. So
Speaker 3: we formed an embryo, an embryo of a workers cooperative.
Speaker 3: We called it for a public popular shareholding campaign that
Speaker 3: collected the bookings of one million, three hundred thousand euro
Speaker 3: stocks option. But it was not enough because the ownership
Speaker 3: of all the area, of all the factory that is
Speaker 3: a very big factory, is.
Speaker 2: Something too big to us.
Speaker 3: We cannot rebuy the factory and we cannot and we
Speaker 3: don't want to because it's not our idea that the
Speaker 3: workers have to reby with their own.
Speaker 2: Money the factory.
Speaker 3: So we have presented a law has been passed from
Speaker 3: the regional government in which the regional government could create
Speaker 3: a public consortium to take the control of the area.
Speaker 3: So this kind of example, this kind of model is
Speaker 3: what we have called a social integrated factory. Social integrated
Speaker 3: factory means the area is public the production is under
Speaker 3: the control of the cooperative, so of the decision of
Speaker 3: the workers assembly that is gathering into a cooperative. There
Speaker 3: is a social kind of control from below, because we
Speaker 3: have thousands and thousands of popular shareholders that are made
Speaker 3: by associations, by other cooperatives, maybe by some public institutions
Speaker 3: like universities. And also the production is a green production,
Speaker 3: and the solar panel production is linked with the energetic
Speaker 3: communities that we would.
Speaker 2: Like to spread in the whole country.
Speaker 3: And the cargo bike production could be linked to the
Speaker 3: delivery cooperatives that are trying to transform the delivery, the
Speaker 3: urban delivery, especially in something that is not so explotting
Speaker 3: as it is nowadays in our cities. We have arrived
Speaker 3: with this kind of model, not in one day, not
Speaker 3: just deciding that this is the model. It was not
Speaker 3: a theoretical discussion. It was answering the fact that to
Speaker 3: let us get exhausted by the struggle, the private capitally
Speaker 3: has just escaped living a black hole as a factory,
Speaker 3: and using against the factor that in this society the
Speaker 3: private capital is the only one that can decide life
Speaker 3: and death of production.
Speaker 1: This plan was something which emerged directly from the conditions
Speaker 1: of the GK and workers struggle. It emerged from the
Speaker 1: strength and resolve that so inspired Alberto during those first
Speaker 1: protests in the summer of twenty twenty one. And it
Speaker 1: would be shortly after those protests that these ideas of
Speaker 1: struggle and literature and the working class imagination would crystallize
Speaker 1: into something more concrete for him.
Speaker 2: After these forty thousand people parade more or less a
Speaker 2: month later, it was already fall twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 2: got an invitation from the Working Class of Writers Festival
Speaker 2: in Bristol. That was I first the first working class
Speaker 2: a literal tool festive and in Europe I was invited.
Speaker 2: It was a great opportunity for me because I was
Speaker 2: happy to go back to Bristol, the city where I
Speaker 2: wore work as an emmigrant worker from Southern Europe more
Speaker 2: than twenty years ago, and in which I learned a
Speaker 2: bit of English or cleaning the toilets and working as
Speaker 2: a kitchen assistant. And it was the place in which
Speaker 2: I discovered the British working class literature that was so
Speaker 2: important to me for my work later on.
Speaker 1: The experience is that Alberta mentions here about his time
Speaker 1: living and working in Bristol makeup his novel Down and
Speaker 1: Out in England and Italy, translated and published in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one by Scribe Publications. The book actually got a
Speaker 1: very unsympathetic review in the British right wing rag the
Speaker 1: Daily Mail. In that review, the journalist describes Alberta as
Speaker 1: a quote very sweary, grizzled old Italian lefty end quote.
Speaker 1: Will include a link to the book in the show notes.
Speaker 1: The Working Class Writers Festival in Bristol was an excellent event,
Speaker 1: but for Alberto there was also something missing from it.
Speaker 2: Was a great opportunity, but I also could feel the
Speaker 2: distance from the kind of workers' atmosphere that we had
Speaker 2: in Italy in that days, because we had a mobilitation
Speaker 2: that means a fight inside the class strike. In some way,
Speaker 2: Bristol festival was more a kind of cultural thing. So
Speaker 2: I had the idea that we should organize a festival
Speaker 2: in Florence, not for the workers, but with the workers.
Speaker 2: That means that the workers should be leaders in these things.
Speaker 2: In some way. I start to spoke with a few
Speaker 2: of them, and this idea was some way interesting. But
Speaker 2: they were also fighting for something that, according to a
Speaker 2: lot of them were more important, of course their wages. Okay,
Speaker 2: so some people say to me, yes, it's good. Other
Speaker 2: told me yeah, but we have fishly to fight for
Speaker 2: the wages. So with a few workers they were we
Speaker 2: organized something that was called cultu rat convergence convergence autale.
Speaker 2: It was a kind of a small group within the
Speaker 2: workers collective. At the beginning, they were only organized small
Speaker 2: event or even big one, but cultural event like a
Speaker 2: book presentation. Brook talks about literature just in this big
Speaker 2: square close nearby the factory, the GKN factory. My idea
Speaker 2: was still that one to organize not a small talk
Speaker 2: or a book presentation, but a huge festival. But it
Speaker 2: took time because it's not something that you can do
Speaker 2: it out of the blue. No, So we started. We
Speaker 2: managed finally in twenty twenty two to create a working gloup,
Speaker 2: a kind of new cultural convergence group, putting together a
Speaker 2: few workers from the GCKN collective and then some other
Speaker 2: workers of the publishing industry, plus several activists of the songs.
Speaker 2: That is the kind of society of mutual aid. It's
Speaker 2: something that had a longer tradition in the past, the
Speaker 2: last century. In Italy. So we put all these people
Speaker 2: together to work to build a new festival, and I
Speaker 2: was asked to be the so called artistic director. This
Speaker 2: kind of cultural marketing neologies. So I engaged myself to
Speaker 2: create a program in order to give shape to the
Speaker 2: fifth edition of the Working Class Literature Festival in Italy.
Speaker 1: However, more conventional literary festivals usually get some kind of
Speaker 1: financial backing from either publishers or big money sponsors. The
Speaker 1: Festival Working Class Literature had neither. Instead, the festival relied
Speaker 1: on the solidarity of social movement institutions.
Speaker 2: It wasn't easy. He mentioned the songs about Archie Tuscana.
Speaker 2: Archie is a deeply rooted organization in Tuscany. You find
Speaker 2: an archie in every small village in Tuscany, and they
Speaker 2: are kind of, I would say, places that in some
Speaker 2: way nearly a pub in a way more social center, okay,
Speaker 2: but belonging from the left and the labor movement, and
Speaker 2: you find a lot of them all around Florence. We
Speaker 2: had all this network of a small archie and strongly
Speaker 2: related to the place, to the territory, coming out from
Speaker 2: even before from the resistance a year and then from
Speaker 2: the sixties, the labor of struggles and so on.
Speaker 1: However, solidarity obviously took the form of huge amounts of food.
Speaker 2: And this network mutual aid was already giving strength to
Speaker 2: the mobilization. And they also enabled us to organize the festival,
Speaker 2: because you need money to do things, unfortunately, and we
Speaker 2: don't have money, so how to organize something like that.
Speaker 2: I think that we receive this help from these community
Speaker 2: centers with kitchen managable by very quite old women in
Speaker 2: their seventeen some times with great using kitchen skills. They
Speaker 2: start to cook for popular dinner with the goal to
Speaker 2: rise money for the festival. So there were these women
Speaker 2: that start making thousands of these m or tele mujelani.
Speaker 2: There are kind of ravioli stuff with potatoes and then
Speaker 2: they are topped with the meat sous kind of ragou,
Speaker 2: sometimes even a ship or ragu that is quite heavy,
Speaker 2: but it's typical to complete designs, so it's very good.
Speaker 2: And they were cooking or to say, pantegoralic quantity of
Speaker 2: this tortelli with ragu, organizing dinner of solidarity. I think
Speaker 2: that these women have been very helpful for the festival
Speaker 2: of working class literally but also for the resistance funds
Speaker 2: of the workers. And in some way it's possible that
Speaker 2: the help of these women something that the young people
Speaker 2: in the meurors offices could not really understand. Through these people,
Speaker 2: these women, we went outside their game. Their plan was
Speaker 2: to close plant and firing the workers, but they didn't
Speaker 2: realize that close to the plants there was a community.
Speaker 2: These workers were not single alone character as they teach
Speaker 2: you in the business school. These workers were real flesh
Speaker 2: and bones people with connection of solidarity around them, not
Speaker 2: only from the left, even from small sometimes Catholic parishes,
Speaker 2: or there were also relationship with sports for instance. So
Speaker 2: there were different communities involved all around the GKN workers
Speaker 2: in Florence, and this communitary helped is something that allowed
Speaker 2: the worker to fight and us with the worker to
Speaker 2: organize a this festival.
Speaker 1: The tortelli mugelani was just one of the local dishes
Speaker 1: which these women cook to raise funds for the festival.
Speaker 1: Another was proposed Limprunetta.
Speaker 2: Peposo is the kind of meat that is cooked with
Speaker 2: a lot of pepper inside the wine for many many
Speaker 2: hours and it's quite heavy, something that if you eat
Speaker 2: then you must sleep. I remember once there was a
Speaker 2: kind of celebration because the chicken and workers at the
Speaker 2: organize a kind of meeting just to thank all the
Speaker 2: social centers community centers in the province of Florence that
Speaker 2: supported their struggle. It was kind of nearly wadding with
Speaker 2: these people coming from the countryside to the center of
Speaker 2: Florence well dressed for once. It was funny because Dario
Speaker 2: salvated the spoken parson of the world because said that
Speaker 2: the English managers wanted to serve us, and you fed us.
Speaker 2: We thought that we would die of anger because of
Speaker 2: the bosses, but by instead you make us nearly die
Speaker 2: with a big liver with the old proposal. So that
Speaker 2: told them thanks.
Speaker 5: For the help, but you nearly killed us with the proposal.
Speaker 2: It was funny. So that's how we raise the money
Speaker 2: to organize the festival.
Speaker 1: The funds raised from the enormous amount of labor from
Speaker 1: those women who cook Tortelli, Muceelani and proposed ultimately made
Speaker 1: that first event in April twenty twenty three possible. And
Speaker 1: the theme of that first festival was the past.
Speaker 2: There was a key word that was genealogy, because this
Speaker 2: was our idea to go back to the roots of
Speaker 2: our tradition, because we were something new in Italy and
Speaker 2: there was no working class, a little to in Italy.
Speaker 2: According to the critics, till more or less fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: ten years ago out something like this happened out of
Speaker 2: what So the first edition of the festival was genealogy,
Speaker 2: just to show everybody from where we were coming.
Speaker 3: Let me say this that the first edition we had
Speaker 3: three thousand and five hundred guests.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to say guest has to do
Speaker 2: with the world. That is not really appropriate, because it
Speaker 2: seems that if you are a guest, you go to
Speaker 2: visit someone just for an act of cultural consumption. I
Speaker 2: don't think that that was the purpose of our festival.
Speaker 2: It was an act of political.
Speaker 5: Engagement, absolutely so it was absolutely different from all the
Speaker 5: cultural festival that are quite spread everywhere in Italy.
Speaker 1: One way this difference manifested was in how into why
Speaker 1: the festival was with the fate of the workers in
Speaker 1: Camp be sent and how they similarly came on the fire.
Speaker 2: One week before the festival, there was a street demonstration
Speaker 2: in which we had enough people, not that much, not
Speaker 2: like in September. The idea was of this street parade
Speaker 2: was the workers were under siege, you know, by the management,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to break this siege through the demonstration.
Speaker 2: My feeling after the parade that it was that we
Speaker 2: failed to break these siage. One week after it was
Speaker 2: the time to kick off the festival, we arrived with
Speaker 2: a very low mood, tired. We also receive emails from
Speaker 2: the property. They were using classes words and also it
Speaker 2: was a more kind of threat. It was not easy.
Speaker 2: The owners of the plant did then not really lay
Speaker 2: out the red carpets for us during the first edition.
Speaker 2: Just one day before the first day of the festival,
Speaker 2: the workers they receive an email from the owners of
Speaker 2: the plant telling that all the people coming to the
Speaker 2: festival Working Class Literal will be prosecuted. It was funny
Speaker 2: because this pushed a lot of people to come to
Speaker 2: support us.
Speaker 1: Darius similarly remembers the boss's response to both the recent
Speaker 1: demonstration and the first Festival of Working Class Literature.
Speaker 3: Demonstration had a big impact, But it was like if
Speaker 3: it was something that.
Speaker 2: The capital and the power was used to.
Speaker 3: Okay, if these people want to protest just one day
Speaker 3: in the in the streets is not a problem. But
Speaker 3: we'll do where they will do their own demonstration where
Speaker 3: they will change the chances logan. They will, yeah, will
Speaker 3: be a little bit of traffic jam because they will
Speaker 3: invite the streets with thousands of people.
Speaker 2: But it's okay, it's okay, it's routine.
Speaker 3: Then then the demonstration will pass and nobody will remember
Speaker 3: about the demonstration. One week after this big demonstration, we
Speaker 3: did the festival and it was crazy, the reaction of
Speaker 3: the capital. I have seen a lot of time the eighth,
Speaker 3: the class eight, from the one that's in the top
Speaker 3: against the ones that are in the bottom of the society.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of time this kind of eight.
Speaker 2: But that peculiar eight that I saw spreading for the.
Speaker 3: Festival gave us the idea that we were eating a
Speaker 3: big point.
Speaker 2: And the point is that how you there? How you there?
Speaker 3: Fucking peasants? You know a little bit like in in
Speaker 3: in the song of Joleno, Are you there fucking peasants?
Speaker 2: Okay, you can, you can take the streets, you can
Speaker 2: do them.
Speaker 3: You can't say your fucking slogan with your stinky demonstration.
Speaker 2: But how you there to speak, to write and to
Speaker 2: remember that you have your own.
Speaker 3: History, your own literature, your own ability to tell the history.
Speaker 1: The John Lennon song that Daria is referring to here
Speaker 1: is the nineteen seventies classic working class Hero, which contains
Speaker 1: the lines you think you're so clever and classless and free,
Speaker 1: but you're still fucking peasants. As far as I can see,
Speaker 1: a working class hero is something to be. As Dario
Speaker 1: and Alberta both explain, there was a sense that by
Speaker 1: holding a literature festival inside the factory, the peasants were
Speaker 1: not staying in their place. However, the second installment of
Speaker 1: the factory would suffer an act of sabotage that went
Speaker 1: beyond legal threats and public denunciations.
Speaker 2: The worst thing that happened, I don't know who where
Speaker 2: the people that did this. In some way it happens
Speaker 2: is that before the festival, unknown individuals broke into the
Speaker 2: industrial side by night and they were able to destroy
Speaker 2: the power plant of the factory. So the factory was
Speaker 2: in the darkness with no power, no electricity, and it's
Speaker 2: not really easy. I've been told to destroy a power
Speaker 2: plant in an industrial plant. It's not like your house.
Speaker 2: It's quite complex. You must know where to put your hands.
Speaker 2: With no power, you cannot do events and microphone are
Speaker 2: not working, so we had to go outside. The festival
Speaker 2: was all outdoor in the square in front of the factory. Luckily,
Speaker 2: the municipality of camping business prened us the public usage
Speaker 2: after this kind of intimidation that was more kind of
Speaker 2: mafia style act. I don't know where these people, we
Speaker 2: had no proof. We don't really know. We just know
Speaker 2: that there was no power, that's it. And so we
Speaker 2: had to reorganize everything. There was no stash for where
Speaker 2: to find the quick stash. We decaid to rent the
Speaker 2: track in order to use the flatbed as a stash.
Speaker 2: And it was funny because there was a great solidarity.
Speaker 2: For instance, the owner of the track, once he learned
Speaker 2: that it was the GK and workers asking for the track,
Speaker 2: he gave them for free for three days, so we
Speaker 2: had Greek solidarity on the one hand. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: still this violence of the power. For instance, there was
Speaker 2: a drawne just spying us from above for three days.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it was the law. But there
Speaker 2: were some bad guys turning around ourself, people with kind
Speaker 2: of faced more like gangster movie. Okay, just taking photos
Speaker 2: with mobiles and so on. That is something that doesn't
Speaker 2: happen to you if you go in a middle class
Speaker 2: festival to talk about culture. You know, isn't it.
Speaker 3: So you could think that workers that do have so
Speaker 3: big ideas of a festival gathering thousands of people would
Speaker 3: be some kind of heros for the present society. This
Speaker 3: present society that always say that you have to be
Speaker 3: multi skilling, converting yourself. We were workers without wages able
Speaker 3: to organize a festival that is impacting.
Speaker 2: On thousands of people.
Speaker 3: So we were showing that we are good workers, that
Speaker 3: we are people that should be hired not fired.
Speaker 2: But that was not the case. It's fun if you
Speaker 2: tried to do a festival with the working class for
Speaker 2: the working class in the field of culture, that's what
Speaker 2: you get. Drown and bad guy around you, someone unknown
Speaker 2: cut your power. They tried to cut the power to
Speaker 2: a working class festival. It's amazing. No. I think in
Speaker 2: some ways also that means that we were effective, that
Speaker 2: we were a threat for them. Otherwise, why all these energy?
Speaker 1: Yet despite all these difficulties, the festivals have been a
Speaker 1: huge success.
Speaker 2: I remember that the beginning there were not many people.
Speaker 2: Then after thirty minutes there was a long, long queue
Speaker 2: and we had hundreds of people coming inside, middle class people,
Speaker 2: working class people, families with children, teachers, researchers, students, activists,
Speaker 2: all people of any kind of age, any class, but
Speaker 2: all full of solidarity. And it was it was strong.
Speaker 2: We really break the siege. We want that match. At
Speaker 2: least after the parade we were not able to win
Speaker 2: after the festival. At least we won and we could work,
Speaker 2: the worker could breed. We had lots of great repelds
Speaker 2: from the press, even because it was something new. Nobody
Speaker 2: had done something like that to bring culture, books writer
Speaker 2: inside the factory, because factory, according to the bosses, they
Speaker 2: have to be and close are. But in the sixties,
Speaker 2: our fathers they had a strong fight and they also achieved.
Speaker 2: The right to culture is something that every big factory
Speaker 2: must acknowledge, the right to culture. It's not professional for mention,
Speaker 2: culture means theater means violin, music plays.
Speaker 1: Statuto. The laboratory that Alberto mentions here is a piece
Speaker 1: of legislation in Italy. The outlines workers' rights in the
Speaker 1: country past in nineteen seventy protected workers around a number
Speaker 1: of things like disciplinaries and the right to join a
Speaker 1: trade union. The immediate context for this was a huge
Speaker 1: wave of militant strike action taken by Italian workers in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine in what was known as the Hot Autumn.
Speaker 1: We'll cover the Hot Autumn in more detail in our
Speaker 1: upcoming series on the Italian struggles of the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting here is that the Statorto de laboratory
Speaker 1: doesn't just include bread and butter economical workplace rights, but
Speaker 1: that the struggles of those workers, as Alberta mentioned, also
Speaker 1: won the right to culture, as outlined in Artcle eleven
Speaker 1: on cultural, recreative and welfare activities.
Speaker 2: According to us is the bread and the roses. So
Speaker 2: our festival was the roses part and while the owners
Speaker 2: were not even giving the money for the bread.
Speaker 1: That's all we have time for in today's episode.
Speaker 2: Join us.
Speaker 1: In part two, we'll discuss what went on at the
Speaker 1: previous festivals, including conversations with two participants, the authors, Anthony
Speaker 1: Cartwright and Claudia do Rastanti. We'll also be discussing this
Speaker 1: year's festival and the future of the GK and workers struggle.
Speaker 1: As always, the factory collective and festival organizers are encouraging
Speaker 1: people from all over the world to attend, so if
Speaker 1: you have an interest in working class writing and the arts,
Speaker 1: do think about making it over to campub sensor this year.
Speaker 1: Entry to the festival is free, just turn up and
Speaker 1: take part, and if you like to support the struggle
Speaker 1: at GKN, then do consider making a contribution to their
Speaker 1: solidarity fund. Full details for all of this in the
Speaker 1: show notes. It's only support from you, our listeners, which
Speaker 1: allows us to make these podcasts, so if you appreciate
Speaker 1: our work, please do think about joining us at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash working Class History link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: In return for your support, you get early access to content,
Speaker 1: as well as ad free episodes, exclusive bonus content, discounted
Speaker 1: merch and more. And if you can't spare the cash,
Speaker 1: absolutely no problem. Please just tell your friends and family
Speaker 1: about this podcast and give us a five star review
Speaker 1: on your favorite podcast app. If you'd like to learn
Speaker 1: more about the festival, with the GKN Struggle or any
Speaker 1: of the authors that we speak to in these episodes,
Speaker 1: then do check out the web page where you'll find images, videos,
Speaker 1: a full list of sources, further reading and more link
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters
Speaker 1: for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jameson D. Saltzman, Jazz,
Speaker 1: Fernande Lopez Ojeda, and Jeremy Kuizimano. Our theme tune for
Speaker 1: these episodes is Occupiamola or Let's occupy it, as sung
Speaker 1: on a GK and workers demonstration in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Many thanks to Real News for letting us use their recording,
Speaker 1: and you can find a link to the documentary it's
Speaker 1: taken from on the web page for this episode. This
Speaker 1: episode was edited by Tyler Hill. Anyway, that's it for today.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed the episode and thanks for listening.