Editing Errico Malatesta (section)

== Biography ==
=== Early years ===
Errico Malatesta was born on 4 December 1853<ref>{{cite ODNB|author-last=Gibbard |author-first=Paul |date=2005 |title=Malatesta, Errico |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/58609 }}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |author-last1=Lotha |author-first1=Gloria |author-last2=Promeet |author-first2=Dutta |date=18 July 2020 |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Errico-Malatesta |title=Errico Malatesta |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica Online |access-date=15 September 2020 |archive-date=26 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026194809/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Errico-Malatesta |url-status=live }}</ref> to a family of middle-class landowners in Santa Maria Maggiore, at the time part of the city of [[Capua]] (currently an autonomous municipality renamed [[Santa Maria Capua Vetere]], in the province of Caserta), at the time part of the [[Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]]. More distantly, his ancestors ruled [[Rimini]] as the [[House of Malatesta]]. The first of a long series of arrests came at age fourteen, when he was apprehended for writing an "insolent and threatening" letter to King [[Victor Emmanuel II]].<ref>{{cite book |author-last=Guérin |author-first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Guérin |title=No Gods, No Masters |volume=1–4 |publisher=AK Press |year=2005 |isbn=9781904859253 |page=349 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g4YncZ8MgRsC&pg=PA349 |access-date=18 March 2016 |archive-date=11 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140111115535/http://books.google.com/books?id=g4YncZ8MgRsC&pg=PA349 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-last=Benewick |author-first=Robert |chapter=Errico Malatesta 1853–1932 |title=The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780415096232 |page=202 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-jnaCUyzjMQC&pg=PA202 |access-date=18 March 2016 |archive-date=11 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140111143037/http://books.google.com/books?id=-jnaCUyzjMQC&pg=PA202 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In April 1877, Malatesta, [[Carlo Cafiero]], [[Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky]] and about thirty others started an [[Banda del Matese|insurrection in the province of Benevento]], taking the villages of [[Letino]] and [[Gallo Matese|Gallo]] without a struggle. The revolutionaries burnt tax registers and declared the end of the King's reign and were met with enthusiasm. After leaving Gallo, however, they were arrested by government troops and held for sixteen months before being acquitted. After [[Giovanni Passannante]]'s murder attempt on the king [[Umberto I]], the radicals were kept under constant surveillance by the police. Even though the anarchists claimed to have no connection to Passannante, Malatesta, being an advocate of social revolution, was included in this surveillance. After returning to [[Naples]], he was forced to leave Italy altogether in the fall of 1878 because of the intense surveillance, beginning his life in exile.<ref name=Joll174>{{cite book|author-last=Joll |author-first=James |author-link=James Joll |title=[[The Anarchists (book)|The Anarchists]] |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |date=1964 |pages=174}}</ref>

=== Years of exile ===
[[File:Élisée Reclus, by Nadar, retouched.jpg|thumb|Prominent French anarchist [[Élisée Reclus]], a friend of Malatesta]]
He went to Egypt briefly, visiting some Italian friends but was soon expelled by the Italian Consul.<ref name=Joll174/> After working his passage on a French ship and being refused entry to Syria, Turkey and Italy, he landed in Marseille where he made his way to [[Geneva]], [[Switzerland]] – then something of an anarchist centre.<ref name=Joll174/> It was there that he befriended [[Élisée Reclus]] and [[Peter Kropotkin]], helping the latter to produce ''[[La Révolte]].'' The Swiss respite was brief, however, and after a few months he was expelled from Switzerland, travelling first to [[Romania]] before reaching Paris, where he worked briefly as a mechanic.<ref name=Joll175>{{cite book|author-last=Joll |author-first=James |author-link=James Joll |title=[[The Anarchists (book)|The Anarchists]] |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |date=1964 |pages=175}}</ref>

In 1881, he set out for a new home in London. He would come and go from that city for the next 40 years.<ref name=Joll175/> There, Malatesta worked as a mechanic.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TEEiCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51|title=The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880-1917)|isbn=9781846319693|last1=Paola|first1=Pietro Di|year=2013|publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=23 January 2022|archive-date=23 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220123074157/https://books.google.com/books?id=TEEiCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51|url-status=live}}</ref> Emilia Tronzio, Malatesta's mistress in the 1870s, was the step-sister of the internationalist [[Tito Zanardelli]].<ref>{{cite book |url=http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/2586/1/Italian_Anarchists_in_London_1870-1914.pdf |title=Italian Anarchists in London |page=54 |author-last=Dipaola |author-first=Pietro |date=April 2004 |access-date=28 August 2013 |chapter=The 1880s and the International Revolutionary Socialist Congress |archive-date=7 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907103041/http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/2586/1/Italian_Anarchists_in_London_1870-1914.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>
With Malatesta's consent and support she married [[Giovanni Defendi]], who came to stay with Malatesta in London in 1881 after being released from jail.<ref>{{cite journal |ref={{harvid|Sur les traces de Malatesta 2010}} |url=http://acontretemps.org/spip.php?article282 |title=Sur les traces de Malatesta |language=fr |trans-title=In the footsteps of Malatesta |date=January 2010 |journal=A Contretemps |access-date=1 September 2013 |archive-date=24 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131224111544/http://acontretemps.org/spip.php?article282 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Malatesta attended [[1881 London Social Revolutionary Congress|the July 1881 Anarchist Congress in London]]. Other delegates included [[Peter Kropotkin]], [[Francesco Saverio Merlino]], [[Marie Le Compte]], [[Louise Michel]] and [[Émile Gautier]]. While respecting "complete autonomy of local groups" the congress defined propaganda actions that all could follow and agreed that "[[propaganda by the deed]]" was the path to social revolution.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rbph_0035-0818_2006_num_84_4_5056 |page=965 |author-last=Bantman |author-first=Constance |title=Internationalism without an International? Cross-Channel Anarchist Networks, 1880–1914 |journal=[[Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire]] |year=2006 |volume=84 |issue=84–4 |access-date=30 August 2013 |doi=10.3406/rbph.2006.5056 |archive-date=24 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924214037/http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rbph_0035-0818_2006_num_84_4_5056 |url-status=live }}</ref>

With the outbreak of the [[Anglo-Egyptian War (1882)|Anglo-Egyptian War]] in 1882, Malatesta organised a small group to help fight against the British. In August, he and three other men departed for Egypt. They landed in [[Abu Qir]], then travelled towards Ramleh, [[Alexandria]]. After a difficult crossing of [[Lake Mariout]], they were surrounded and detained by British forces, without having undertaken any fighting. He secretly returned to Italy the following year.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/malatesta/lifeofmalatesta.html |title=Life of Malatesta |author-first=Luigi |author-last=Fabbri |author-link=Luigi Fabbri |date=1936 |website=Anarchy Archives |access-date=9 August 2013 |archive-date=29 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161229110412/http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/malatesta/lifeofmalatesta.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In [[Florence]] he founded the weekly anarchist paper {{lang|fr|La Questione Sociale}} (''The Social Question'') in which his most popular [[pamphlet]], {{lang|it|Fra contadini}} (''Among Farmers''), first appeared. Malatesta went back to Naples in 1884—while waiting to serve a three-year prison term—to nurse the victims of a [[cholera]] epidemic. Once again, he fled Italy to escape imprisonment, this time heading for [[South America]]. He lived in [[Buenos Aires]] from 1885 until 1889, resuming publication of {{lang|fr|La Questione Sociale}} and spreading anarchist ideas among the Italian émigré community there.<ref name=Joll175/> He was involved in the founding of the first militant workers' union in Argentina and left an anarchist impression in the workers' movements there for years to come.<ref name=Joll175/>

Returning to Europe in 1889, Malatesta first published a newspaper called {{lang|it|L'Associazione}} in [[Nice]], remaining there until he was once again forced to flee to London.

=== Arrest in Italy ===
[[File:Malatesta.png|thumb|Malatesta around the 1890s]]
The late 1890s were a time of social turmoil in Italy, marked by bad harvests, rising prices, and [[peasant]] revolts.<ref name=Joll175/> [[Strike action|Strikes]] of workers were met by demands for repression and for a time it seemed as though government authority was hanging by a thread.<ref name=Joll175/> Malatesta found the situation irresistible and early in 1898 he returned to the port city of [[Ancona]] to take part in the blossoming anarchist movement among the dockworkers there.<ref name=Joll175/> Malatesta was soon identified as a leader during street fighting with police and arrested; he was therefore unable to participate further in the dramatic industrial and political actions of 1898 and 1899.<ref name=Joll175/>

From jail, Malatesta took a hard line against participation in elections on behalf of liberal and [[socialism|socialist]] politicians, contradicting [[Saverio Merlino]] and other anarchist leaders who argued in favor of electoral participation as an emergency measure during times of social turmoil.<ref name=Joll175/> Malatesta was convicted of "seditious association" and sentenced to a term of imprisonment on the island of [[Lampedusa]].<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Joll |author-first=James |author-link=James Joll |title=[[The Anarchists (book)|The Anarchists]] |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |date=1964 |pages=175–176}}</ref> 

=== Escape and later life ===
He was able to escape from prison in May 1899 and he made his way home to London via [[Malta]] and [[Gibraltar]].<ref name="Joll176">{{cite book|author-last=Joll |author-first=James |author-link=James Joll |title=[[The Anarchists (book)|The Anarchists]] |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |date=1964 |pages=176}}</ref> His escape occurred with the help of comrades around the world, including anarchists in [[Paterson, New Jersey]], London and Tunis, who helped arrange for him to leave the island on a ship of Greek sponge fishermen, who took him to [[Sousse]].<ref>{{cite journal|author-last=Carminati |author-first=Lucia |date=2017 |title=Alexandria, 1898: Nodes, Networks, and Scales in Nineteenth-Century Egypt and the Mediterranean |journal=Comparative Studies in Society and History |volume=59 |pages=127–153 |doi=10.1017/S0010417516000554 |s2cid=151859073}}</ref>

In subsequent years, Malatesta visited the United States, speaking there to anarchists in the Italian and Spanish immigrant communities.<ref name=Joll176/> Home again in London, he was closely watched by the police, who increasingly regarded anarchists as a threat following the July 1900 assassination of [[Umberto I of Italy|Umberto I]] by an Italian anarchist who had been living in Paterson, New Jersey.<ref name=Joll176/>

In 1902, the founding congress of the [[Unión Obrera Democrática Filipina]] - first national trade union federation in the Philippines - adopted Malatesta's book ''[[Between Peasants]]'' as being part of the political foundation of the movement.<ref name="gue">Guevarra, Dante G. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=V3hVIawEXVUC&pg=PA17 History of the Philippine Labor Movement]''. Sta. Mesa, Manila: Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations, [[Polytechnic University of the Philippines]], 1991. pp. 17–18</ref>

=== Return to London ===
By 1910, he had opened an electrical workshop in London at 15 Duncan Terrace Islington and allowed the jewel thief George Gardenstein to use his premises. On 15 January 1910, he sold oxyacetylene cutting equipment for £5 (£500 at 2013 monetary values) to George Gardenstein so that he could break into the safe at H. S. Harris jewellers Houndsditch. Gardenstein led the gang that mounted the abortive Houndsditch robbery that is the precursor to the [[Siege of Sidney Street]]. Malatesta's cutting gear is on permanent display at the City of London Police museum at Wood Street police station.<ref>City of London Police museum.</ref>

While based in London, Malatesta made clandestine trips to France, Switzerland and Italy and went on a lecture tour of Spain with [[Fernando Tarrida del Mármol]]. During this time, he wrote several important pamphlets, including ''L'Anarchia''.<ref>{{cite book |author-last=Malatesta |author-first=Errico |date=1974 |orig-date=1891 |url=http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/malatesta-anarchy-1891/ |title=Malatesta's Anarchy |translator-first=Vernon |translator-last=Richards |location=London |publisher=[[Freedom Press]] |isbn=9780904491111 |access-date=27 September 2012 |archive-date=23 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120923163745/http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/malatesta-anarchy-1891/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Malatesta then took part in the [[International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam]] (1907), where he debated in particular with [[Pierre Monatte]] on the relation between anarchism and [[syndicalism]] or [[trade union]]ism. The latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and would create the conditions of a social revolution, while Malatesta considered that syndicalism by itself was not sufficient.<ref name=Amsterdam>{{cite web|url=http://www.fondation-besnard.org/article.php3?id_article=225 |title=Extract of Malatesta's declaration |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928002329/http://www.fondation-besnard.org/article.php3?id_article=225 |archive-date=28 September 2007 |language=fr}}</ref>

After the [[First World War]], Malatesta eventually returned to Italy for the final time. Two years after his return, in 1921, the Italian government imprisoned him again, although he was released two months before the fascists came to power. From 1924 until 1926, when [[Benito Mussolini]] silenced all independent press, Malatesta published the journal ''Pensiero e Volontà'', although he was harassed and the journal suffered from government censorship. He was to spend his remaining years leading a relatively quiet life, earning a living as an electrician. After years of suffering from a weak respiratory system and regular [[Bronchospasm|bronchial attacks]], he developed bronchial [[pneumonia]] from which he died after a few weeks, despite being given 1,500 litres of oxygen in his last five hours. He died on Friday 22 July 1932. He was an atheist.<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Misato |author-last=Toda |title=Errico Malatesta da Mazzini a Bakunin |language=it |trans-title=Errico Malatesta from Mazzini to Bakunin |publisher=Guida Editori |date=1988 |pages=75}}</ref>