Fausto Gullo and Reform Movement

THE WAIT

25 July 1943: The fall of fascism

EXPECTATIONS

21 April 1944: The second Badoglio govt.-Fausto Gullo is elected Minister of Agriculture

THE GULLO DECREES

Legislative decree no. 279, 19 October 1944.Concessions of uncultivated lands to farmers.
[Published in the official gazette-special edition] 4 Nov 1944,no. 77.
Umberto di Savoia, prince of Piedmont, Lt. General of the Kingdom.
By virtue of the authority vested in me, in accordance with decree of 25 JUNE 1944,n.151 ; and decree of 30 October 1943, n.2/b ; decree of 29 May 1944, n. 141; based on deliberations by the council of ministers on the proposal set forth by our minister, Secretary of state for agriculture and forestry,in collaboration with the ministry of Interior, law and order, finance , industry,commerce and labor; we have endorsed and published the following:

Art. 1-All farmers legally associated in cooperatives or other similar organization, can obtain land allotments from the private and public sector which are uncultivated or insufficiently utilized in relation to their potential, the agricultural needs of the area and the cultural needs of the cooperatives in relation to the agricultural needs of the nation.

Art. 5-The duration of the concessions may not exceed four agrarian years.

AUTUMN 1944:FIRST OCCUPATION OF LANDS

In Autumn of 1944, an important event in the struggle for agrarian reforms took place. Spontaneous occupation of lands and local experiments with self-government grew into a general organized protest inspired by the legislation promoted by the Communist Minister of Agriculture, Fausto Gullo. He attempted, through a series of decrees enacted during July of 1944, to break the existing equilibrium between the classes of the rural south. Being an experienced lawyer, Gullo presented these proposals as being of minor importance. Nevertheless, during such a critical period for the reconstruction of the Italian state, these events were in reality the only attempts by the political left at agrarian reforms.

The Gullo legislation, in fact, was very complex and could be summarized as follows:-Reforming of the agrarian laws that guaranteed to the tenant-farmer at least 50% of the agricultural production; Permission to occupy farm lands left uncultivated or badly utilized given to cooperatives engaged in farming; indemnify the farmers by encouraging them to sell their products to state operated warehouses, renamed granaries of the people; automatic extensions of all agrarian contracts to prevent the land owners from dismissing the farmers at the end of the growing season;; special laws prohibiting the use of intermediaries between the farmers and landowners intended to eliminate, in the agricultural south, the infiltration by criminal elements, such as the [gabellotti] in Sicily, or the field merchants of Lazio. Clearly this legislation had some utopian aspects such as the abolition of middlemen which appeared unrealistic short of a socialist revolution. Nevertheless, this legislation was enthusiastically received by the southern Italian farmers for at least two reasons. The first was the legal aspects of the reforms wholeheartedly adopted by the farmers , accustomed to fight for their birthrights since ancient times. For once, their interminable battles for justice were championed by a state that was no longer their enemy, bu one who transformed into law some of their most important petitions. The second reason was based on the premise that the new laws, forcing the farmers to unite in cooperatives and political units in order to reap the benefits of the laws, represented the strongest incentive for collective action.Gullo's intent was not to divide the farmers, but to unite them and encourage them to blend their personal strategies in a collective effort to defeat their traditional fatalism and isolation. These concepts gave his legislation an aura of geniality.

The effort to ensure the enactment of Gullo's reforms reached an apex in Autumn of 1946. The struggle emerged simultaneously on many fronts: on the agrarian contracts, the uncultivated lands, taxes and communications, which resulted in a remarkable increase in farmers joining trade unions and political parties. Between 1944 and 1949, according to moderate estimates, 1187 cooperatives ,with a total membership of 250,000 members, obtained more than 165,000 hectares primarily in Sicily , Calabria and Lazio . In spite of this extraordinary movement, the struggle ended in defeat. Some of the principal elements of Gullo's reforms such as the abolition of middlemen could never be enforced practically. Even the more moderate decrees allowing the occupation of uncultivated lands and revision of agrarian contracts were only modestly successful and of short duration. The cause of this defeat was the hostile attitude of the liberals and Christian democrats in the government.When the Gullo's decrees were debated by the full council of ministers in Autumn of 1944, the DC[Christian democrats] and the PLI[ liberals] imposed a series of modifications. The most important of these was that the local committees who ruled on the legality of land occupations be made up of the President of the Court of Appeals, by a representative of the landowners, and by a member of the farmers union. This structure deliberately created a majority decidedly prejudicial to the farmers, unless overruled by some forward looking Magistrate [ a rarity in the South of Italy of those times].

The statistics coming out of Sicily illustrate the brutality of this situation: The petitions of the farmers accepted by local authorities numbered 987 and covered 186,000 hectares of uncultivated land ; the petitions rejected by the authorities were 3822 covering 820,000 hectares. The people opposed to the agrarian reforms in the south would not have so blatantly prevailed if the Communist party leadership had been more supportive. As previously observed, Togliatti favoured the Gullo reforms and the massive mobilization of the farmers that ensued, as long as they did not disturbe his alliance with the Christian Democrats.

Once the farmers began to question the laws and the structure of the govt, to affirm their rights to farm lands, to confront the DC on the politics of the gvt in the south of italy, no one expected the Communist leadership to encourage and support the zeal for agrarian reforms proposed by their own Minister of Agriculture.

THE LET DOWN

2 July 1946:

the II De Gasperi government :-Fausto Gullo relinquished the Ministry of Agriculture to the Christian Democrat Antonio Segni and took up the Ministry of Justice.
2° Governo De Gasperi:

THE STRUGGLE

The attempt by Fausto Gullo to reform the southern Italian agricultural sector, as we have seen, did not meet with great success. The new CD Minister of agriculture, the wealthy Sardinian landowner Antonio Segni, revoked some of his predecessor's legislation by special decrees in Sept 1946 and Dec 1947. Article 7 of the first decree allowed the landowners to retake the land from all farmers that had violated the rules under which the land had been allocated. As soon as the left wing parties were voted out of office, this article was used by the landowners to initiate a vast legal offense against the farmer's cooperatives. Much of the land obtained by the farmers in the winter of 1946-47 was lost in the following year. Through these maneuvers, Segni was able to ingratiate himself with the southern elites who helped the CD win the elections of 48 and recover the terrain lost previously in the agricultural south. In spite of this,the problems of the south remained as before. The greater part of thebest farmlands remained in the hands of the few, and too many people possessed no land at all. The only progress registered in this period was the extensive use of DDT in the reclamation of malaria infested lands in Sardinia, Sicily and Maremma Toscana in 1944 with the help of the ALLIES . At this time, the national policy was no longer favourable to the farmers as had been in previous years when the left wing parties were still in the govt,Gullo was Minister of Agriculture, and it seemed possible to create a post war Italy more socially just. The mobilization of 24 Oct 1949 exceeded all expectations; 14,000 farmers took part in it coming from the eastern provinces of Cosenza and Catanzaro. Entire towns participated in these demonstrations ;From the nearby hills several groups of farmers, some on foot,others on horseback, with women and children in toe, descended on the planes waving banners in sign of encouragement. Upon arriving on the estates of the landowners, the farmers began to meticulously define the boundaries of the land, proceeded to divide it amongst themselves, and began to prepare the land for cultivation. Alarmed by this new wave of land seizure, a group of CD congressmen from Calabria traveled to Rome to ask for a forceful police intervention. Scelba's special police [the Celere], started immediately for the Calabrese towns arriving in Melissa on the 28th Oct, a town north of Crotone, and quartered for the night at the house of a local landowner,Baron Berlingieri. The farmers had occupied a property in Melissa called Fragala, half of which had been ceded to the town in 1811 by Napoleonic legislation. The Berlingieri family, nevertheless, had over time, usurped the entire property, On the morning of the 29th of Oct, the police reached the estate and attempted to drive away the farmers from the land by force.......

[*] Paul Ginsborg, HISTORY OF ITALY FROM THE POST-WAR PERIOD TO TODAY, 1996 Einaudi .