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A NATIONAL campaign has been launched to protest against attempts to crush the anti-capitalist movement in Italy. Around 80 people demonstrated outside the Italian Embassy in London on Thursday of last week.

THE ITALIAN state has attempted to clamp down on the anti-capitalist movement since the success of the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence in November. It arrested 20 activists in the south of Italy the week after the ESF. Socialist Worker spoke to Antonino Campenni, one of those arrested, about the campaign against the crackdown:

THE ITALIAN state has arrested 20 activists after the successful European Social Forum in Florence. They have charged with "subversion against state authority". These included Antonino Campenni of the Cobas union national executive, and Francesco Caruso, one of the leaders of the "disobbediente" group. Antonino spoke at a Globalise Resistance meeting in London last year.

WE PRINT some of the e-mails we received from our readers about the recent European Social Forum (ESF) and the million-strong anti-war demo in Florence, Italy.

UP TO a million people marched against war through the Italian city of Florence last Saturday. All day they arrived to swell the city to two or three times its normal size. The march was a dense, colourful and energetic show of total opposition to any attack by Bush and Blair on Iraq.

It was 80 years ago that fascism first came to power, and it happened in Italy. There is a myth that Benito Mussolini seized power after his March on Rome and the occupation of the city by his fascist shock troops. Fascist columns did assemble at four points near the city – but they were lightly armed, ill fed and left standing in the rain.

THE EUROPEAN Social Forum (ESF) in Florence, Italy, vastly exceeded even the most optimistic predictions. It did not just succeed-it was a political triumph. Around 60,000 people took part in the three days of meetings leading up to the anti-war demonstration. People came from every continent, and from 105 countries. There were students and trade unionists, unemployed people and pensioners, activists and campaigners.

THOUSANDS of people from across Europe are heading for the European Social Forum in Florence in Italy next week. They will be taking part in one of the biggest international gatherings of campaigners and activists Europe has seen. The forum culminates in a major Europe-wide anti-war demonstration next Saturday, 9 November.

ONCE AGAIN the 1960s are back in vogue - the music, the films and the imagery. Over the past few years a number of films from the period have been re-released - The Italian Job, Blow Up and Alfie. But there was a time in the 1960s before the swinging started. This period is brilliantly captured in a series of films made in the early 1960s labelled by critics as the "British new wave".

MILLIONS OF workers struck across Italy on Friday of last week in the second general strike the country has seen in six months. They were protesting against attacks on workers by the right wing government of businessman and friend of Blair, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi wants to make it easier for bosses to sack workers.

IT WAS not just in London that people took to the streets to protest against war last weekend. Other demonstrations around the world included 5,000 marching in Washington in the US, 50,000 in Madrid in Spain and 3,000 in Athens in Greece. In Rome in Italy 100,000 took part in a demonstration which had a major anti-war theme.

IF YOU want to know more about modern Italy then read See Naples and Die, the new book by socialist Tom Behan. It is about the Camorra, the powerful organised crime group that dominates the southern Italian city of Naples. The Camorra has grown because of the huge unemployment rate in the Campania region - 23.3 percent overall and 28 percent in Naples.