Red Fog

Modena's cobbled streets and medieval squares were curtained in thick morning mist. Toward Adolfo Orsi's iron foundry 10,000 workers carrying red flags advanced in long columns. Police were there to meet them. The marchers swung away from the foundry toward Orsi's two other factories. The police, leaving 30 men to guard the foundry, followed the marchers. Too late they discovered that they had been outmaneuvered: the foundry was the main objective after all. The workers rushed the gates 1,000 strong, while others circled the foundry to climb over the back walls. Police reinforcements arrived and an armed battle was joined. Casualties: six workers killed, 80 workers and two policemen wounded.

Organizer of the strike, 37-year-old Arturo Galavotti, is boss of Modena's labor and of its Communist Party. A townsman calls him "one of the harshest among the harsher members of the Communist Party." Galavotti has been disrupting Industrialist Orsi's factories with "hiccup strikes" (successive stoppages in one department after another). Last month Orsi closed the foundry, blamed rising production costs. At Galavotti's insistence, he offered to reopen this month. Orsi refused, however, to rehire 30 workers whom he called Communist troublemakers. Galavotti turned down the offer. Orsi stood pat, refused to postpone the reopening of his foundry.

Result: six new Red martyrs. Into Modena's streets crowded 150,000 spectators, and 50,000 with 5,000 red flags followed in the cortege. Red Boss Palmiro Togliatti delivered an oration: "A society which doesn't provide work for all its components is a cursed society. Cursed are those who hold reins of power in this cursed society. Cursed are those who reject with armed violence, with murder and massacre the humblest request a man can make: a request to work . . . These acts cry to God for vengeance."

In Rome, a visiting British M.P. wondered why those who held the reins of power in Modena had not tried to stop the strikers without shooting. "Why do you never use water hoses?" he asked Minister of the Interior Mario Scelba. "They make people ridiculous without hurting them." Answered Scelba: "You see, we have no water in so many places."

At week's end, the Orsi foundry announced that it would reopen with 80 workers, including all 30 of the ousted Communists. Everybody realized that, for the moment at least, Communist Galavotti had won the battle in the fog.

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