Biography of an Industrial Town, Terni, Italy, 1831–2014 by Alessandro Portelli (review)

This is a creative, complex and magnificent book: creative for its expert and emotionally moving utilization of stories and events told to Portelli by 280 "narrators" over a 40 year period, complex in its analysis of the at once continuous and disrupted events and time periods it covers, and magnificent in the manner and style which Portelli employs to bring this all together.

For those readers and researchers who are in tune with oral history, the above acclamations will come as no surprise. Alessandro Portelli is most assuredly a household name among oral historians. Indeed, his name may very well be on the entrance to the door. For decades now, he has "gathered a little knowledge" on subject matters ranging from the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the Nazi massacre, on 24 March 1944, of 383 Italian prisoners in so-termed "retaliation" for the deaths of 33 German soldiers by Italian resistance fighters, to the historical and contemporary lives and struggles of generations of Harlan County denizens to, here, the citizens, the steel and textile workers and to the socialists, the communists, the resistance fighters, and the fascists of Terni, Italy, from 1831 to 2014. By any measure, this is a body of work that is unmatched in the field of oral history. It is inspirational.

When asked, I was eager to review this book. First, it provided an opportunity to engage with Portelli and his particular brand of oral history, e.g. the book is composed largely of successive excerpts from his interviews, cogently strung together via historical and political observations, analyses, and where important, "corrections" to his participants' narratives. Second, I was also drawn to it by the seeming parallels between the importance and the historical trajectories of the steel industries in Terni and in my hometown, Hamilton, Ontario.

With regard to my second point, I found at least three significant connections. First, although evolving in patently different economic, political, social, cultural – indeed, national – circumstances, the steel industry came to dominate – became hegemonic – in the lives and politics of both cities. In the case of Terni, the steel company by the same name arrived in the late 19th century (as it did in Hamilton) and by the 1930s was the most powerful employment, economic, and political player in the region. (Again, as with Hamilton.) In Terni's case, this hegemonic position was, in no small part, aided and abetted by fascist rule, including determining who could work at the steel company and who could not (e.g. no jobs if you were a member or in close association with members of the Communist and Socialist parties). Second, the last three decades tell the tale of the pervasive decline of the steel industry in both cities. In the case of Terni, the seeds of this decline began to flower, ironically, in its hegemonic moment when its raison d'être – making steel almost exclusively for governments who were maintaining the industry for employment and political reasons – could no longer be sustained. From the 1950s onward, but picking up steam in the 1990s through the early 2000s, production was slimmed down, divisions were sold off to foreign investors and the city of Terni underwent a painful and largely unsuccessful – for steel workers and the Terni working class at least – forced march to a promised post-industrial renaissance.

The third connection lies with the workers – the working classes of Terni and Hamilton, in both instances, steelworkers, with at various moments larger working-class support. For example, in 1946 and 1981 in Hamilton, and in 2004 in Terni, steelworkers went on strike to protect their jobs and their ways of living. In 1946 Hamilton steelworkers won the day and, I would argue, thereby blocked the way back for employers and governments desirous of industrial relations as they were in the 1920s through the 1930s. In the 1981 strike they managed a draw in what was over the ensuing years to become a bitter and protracted...