Italian Confederation of Labour

The Italian Confederation of Labour (CGL) enters the account as a labor confederation seeking an agreement with the government to restore public liberties and the rule of law. Its political intervention came in a period when labor organizations faced mounting pressure and the socialist movement was divided over how to respond.

Role and Political Intervention

On June 1, 1922, at the CGL’s request, the socialist parliamentary group voted for the Zirardini agenda, which bound its deputies to seek an accord with the government for the restoration of public liberties and the re-establishment of law. The episode shows the confederation using parliamentary channels to pursue a political settlement; the evidence does not establish that it controlled the deputies’ wider strategy.

A Divided Labor Movement

The agenda did not resolve the dispute within socialism. The party’s maximalist leaders rejected it, accusing the reformist wing of collusion with the bourgeoisie. As left administrations fell across the province of Novara, the conflict over accommodation unfolded alongside the erosion of local political power. The CGL’s appeal for an accord therefore appears within a labor movement whose political representatives could not agree on how to defend public and union liberties.

The Wider Climate of Pressure

The surrounding account describes organized labor as much broader than the confederation alone. Socialist and peasant organizations, including rural leagues with their own hiring offices and control over agricultural work, formed part of a contested landscape in which strikes and political liberties were at stake. In the summer of 1922, the Labor Alliance proclaimed a general strike in defense of political and union freedoms, while fascist leaders used the crisis to threaten action against a state they called impotent. These events establish the pressure surrounding the CGL’s parliamentary appeal, but do not show that the confederation itself directed the strike.