Organisationalists and anti-organisationalists

During the 1890s the enclave of Italian anarchists in London grew and the relationships among political expatriates became more complex. The anarchists embedded themselves in the expanding community of Italian economic migrants. On their arrival, new refugees found an established colony and therefore could settle more easily. The arrival from the 1880s of a new wave of expatriates, mainly from France, revitalised the colony. In 1888, the embassy was notified about the transfer to London of five individualist anarchists from Paris: Alessandro Marocco, Vittorio Pini, Luigi Parmeggiani, Giacomo Merlino and Caio Zavoli. They were ‘more dangerous as a group of thieves rather than as a political group’. However, their political relations were of some importance and in Paris they had produced several inflammatory publications. In 1889, Malatesta and the members of the editorial committee (Luisa Minguzzi, Emilio Covelli and Francesco Pezzi) moved the printing of L’ Associazione from Nice to London. At the end of December 1889, the consulate's informant reported that Galileo Palla – ‘well-built and with a black thick beard’ – had travelled from France to London with the young Venetian cook Vittorio Del Turco and the waiter from Magenta Giuseppe Stoppa. In 1891, a list of the anarchists in London included: Matteo Benassi (nicknamed ‘Gobbo’) from Carrara, unemployed; Pietro Bianchi, described as a very witty person from Lucca; Cesare Carpanetti, a forty eight year old from Imola; Demetrio Francini; Luigi Parmeggiani, shoemaker; Giacomo Marchello from Turin, a baker; Francesco Prodi, a waiter; Luigi Rosati, plaster figure maker; Ludovico Scacciati, a famous swindler; and Francesco Vittorio (Ciccio) from Siena, forty year old ice-cream seller. The following October, the ambassador reported that anarchists expelled from Belgium and Switzerland had qualitatively strengthened the local group. In 1892, the Florentine Agresti arrived in London from France where he had been particularly active. In September 1894 Francesco Cini, Germano Polidori, Raffaele Ferlaschi and Pilade Cocci also arrived. Other anarchists in London in 1894 included Giuseppe Verga, a Milanese army deserter and cabinet-maker, and Franco Piccinielli, the owner of a barbershop where anarchists used to meet. Isaia Pacini, a tailor, moved to London in 1895 on expulsion from Switzerland where he had lived for ten years. Pacini was a native of Pistoia and had escaped the city in 1885 after being sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for publishing an anarchist manifesto against the monarchy.