Pinelli – victim of right-wing terrorism

Giuseppe Pinelli, the anarchist railway worker on the circumstances of whose death Dario Fo’s play is based, was far from being a passive victim of events as might be inferred from some of the dialogue, and that may have contributed to his demise, writes Stuart Christie. A youthful anarchist partisan during the war and active in the post-war Italian anarchist and labour union (anarcho-syndicalist) movement, Pinelli was secretary of the Milan Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), set up the previous year.