Clamorous Defect

Italy's huge Communist Party, rejoicing only a few months ago in its great strength in the labor movement and its substantial minorities in the rural areas, last week was in shambling retreat.

The Fiat election, in which 49,600 workers at Italy's biggest plant overthrew ten years of Communist leadership (TIME, April 11), started a chain reaction. In the industrial north, the anti-Communist rebellion swept through plant after plant, winning elections outright in some, scoring big gains in others. At Milan's Officina Mecc`anica (truck bodies), the Communist vote plummeted from a secure 80% last year to a minority 37%. Most significant yet was last week's vote at the Falck steel works in Sesto San Giovanni, an industrial suburb of Milan known as Italy's Little Stalingrad.

Last year 4,900 of 7,000 steel workers voted for the Communist-led C.G.I.L. union; last week more than a thousand of them deserted the Communist cause and switched their votes to give the anti-Communist C.I.S.L. a majority. After the Fiat defeat, the Communists blamed their troubles on U.S. withholding of offshore procurement orders. Last week, defeated again, they were silent. "I wonder what the propaganda boys will now invent to explain away and justify this new clamorous defeat." crowed C.I.S.L. General Secretary Giulio Pastore.

New Opposition. Outside the cities, the Communists were faring even worse. In nationwide elections, Italy's farmers were asked to choose administrators of a newly created agency to distribute medical and sickness benefits in rural areas. As usual, the Communists, who appreciate the political leverage of such handout jobs, organized house-to-house canvassing, plastered posters all over village walls, set up hundreds of meetings.

But this time, matching them meeting for meeting, was 44-year-old Christian Democrat Deputy Paolo Bonomi and his national federation of dirt farmers. Italy's farmers, like most farmers everywhere, are conservative. But not even the Communists were prepared for the landslide that buried their candidates. With the count nearly complete, the Reds had won only 142 out of 7,649 communes. Even in the Red strongholds of Tuscany and Emilia, the Communists took only 18 out of 603 posts. The anti-Communists got a surprising 98% of the vote.

New Stalingrad. Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti could do nothing about his defeat on the farms. But he had to do something about his defeat in the factories. He hastily assembled the Central Committee and announced a "critical inquiry" of Communist union policy. In an attempt to check the rebellion with a show of strength, the Communists picked Genoa, where their power in the unions is almost undisputed, and succeeded in all but closing down the port.

In the little town of Carpineti in Emilia, a frustrated Communist named Guerrino Costi peered through an inn window at a party of celebrating antiCommunists, fired several shots into the crowd, killing two. When cops grabbed him, Costi said: "I wanted to teach a lesson to the parish priest and the Christian Democrat reactionaries."

The lesson took, but not as Costi planned. In the next few days, many comrades in the area turned in their party cards in revulsion. Among them were two Communist councilmen who explained: "This murder has deeply disturbed our conscience. It has shown that hatred and slander lead to sad consequences."

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