The Years of Lead (anni di piombo)
Neo-fascist bombings and left-wing terrorism, including the kidnapping and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro, bring years of political violence.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
- Italy — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
On 12 December 1969 a bomb at a bank in Piazza Fontana, Milan, killed 17 people. Police first blamed anarchists; one, Giuseppe Pinelli, fell to his death from a police station window. Later investigations pointed to neo-fascists linked to parts of the secret services, but trials dragged on for decades without definitive convictions. Further neo-fascist bombings followed, culminating in the bombing of Bologna railway station on 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
From the early 1970s, far-left groups, above all the Red Brigades, kidnapped and murdered businessmen, police, judges and journalists. On 16 March 1978 they kidnapped Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democrats and architect of a deal with the Communists, killing his five bodyguards. After 55 days, during which the government refused to negotiate, his body was left in a car in central Rome on 9 May. By the early 1980s, mass arrests and “repentant” informers broke the armed groups.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
- Italy — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Many on the left, and many judges and historians, argue that neo-fascist massacres such as Piazza Fontana and Bologna were part of a "strategy of tension" to frighten Italians into accepting authoritarian rule, with the complicity of elements of the intelligence services.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
- Italy's Divided Memory — John Foot, Palgrave Macmillan (2009)
Others stress that the Red Brigades and other far-left groups killed police officers, judges, journalists and politicians in the name of revolution, and that parts of the left were slow to condemn them. Both forms of terrorism, they argue, must be remembered.
- A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 — Paul Ginsborg, Penguin (1990)
Why it matters today
The Years of Lead left a deep distrust of the state, because many of the worst bombings were never fully solved and some investigations exposed cover-ups by parts of the secret services. Families of victims still campaign for the truth. The era also explains why Italians of a certain age are wary of political extremism, and why the Moro affair still feels like a national trauma.