Social Unrest and the “Hot Autumn” of 1969 in Italy

Politicians who were voted into Italy's parliament in the 1960s and 1970s had much to answer for. Italy's working class was fed up—with dangerous working conditions, long hours, low pay, expensive and uninhabitable housing, poor benefit packages, and more. Mobilizing, the working classes began to march and strike. Left-wing organizations, furthermore, were flourishing and gaining power, including those on the Far Left, favoring revolution over reform. The autumn of 1969 in Italy is known as the “Hot Autumn” of working class and student protest, as unrest had reached a height. On October 15, fifty thousand workers demonstrated in Milan, and on November 28, one hundred thousand engineers demonstrated in Rome. Other disturbances and changes were afoot as well. This was the time, for example, of feminist agitation, so that in November a law legalizing divorce in Italy was passed.

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