The Red-and-Black Anarchist Flag: History, Meaning and Origins

The historical origins of the anarchist flag are controversial and debated, but the different theories are rarely supported by adequate documentary evidence. Thanks to Massimo Ortalli of the Historical Archive of the Italian Anarchist Federation, I was able to consult the catalogue of workers’ flags. This book contains several studies and historical investigations into the flags that accompanied workers throughout their struggles for emancipation.

The Circled A, a Symbol of Anarchism

The circled A is probably the most recognizable graphic symbol of anarchism today, but its origins are much more recent than those of the black flag and the red-and-black flag.

Its emergence as an anarchist symbol is documented in April 1964, when the bulletin of the Jeunes Libertaires in Paris proposed a simple sign that could be adopted by the different components of the anarchist movement. The idea came from Tomás Ibáñez, while René Darras gave the symbol its graphic form.

The goal was primarily practical: to create a sign that could be quickly drawn on walls and posters while at the same time providing the different anarchist tendencies with a common visual symbol.

The French proposal initially had only limited circulation. The turning point came in 1966, when the Libertarian Youth of Milan, following a proposal by Amedeo Bertolo, began regularly using the circled A on leaflets and posters. From Milan, the symbol gradually spread first throughout Italy and then, particularly in the early 1970s, across the rest of the world.

The circled A is often interpreted as combining the A of anarchy with the O of order, recalling the Proudhonian conception of anarchy as a form of order not based on authority. This symbolic interpretation, however, should not be confused with its historical origin: the documentation currently available does not confirm any anarchist use of the circled A before 1964.

The Exhibition of Workers’ Flags

On 14 March 1981, the exhibition “Un’altra Italia nelle bandiere dei lavoratori” (“Another Italy in Workers’ Flags”) opened at the National Museum of the Risorgimento in Turin. It was the result of historical research focused on the subordinate classes. The exhibition was followed by an international conference on “Workers’ Culture in Industrialized Society”, held in Turin from 27 to 30 May 1982.

A few months later, the second edition of the exhibition catalogue, “Un’altra Italia nelle bandiere dei lavoratori”, was published with a foreword by President of the Italian Republic Sandro Pertini and an introduction by Norberto Bobbio, President of the Piero Gobetti Study Centre.

The Catalogue of Flags Seized by the Fascists

From the foreword and introduction to the book, we learn that the exhibition and catalogue focused on 190 flags discovered by Carla Gobetti in 1978 at the Central State Archive. These were flags considered subversive that had been seized by the Fascists and displayed in the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution. Following their rediscovery, the workers’ flags were separated from the other Fascist materials and have since been preserved and exhibited at the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento in Palazzo Carignano, Turin.

In the catalogue, the photographic collection of flags is preceded by a section containing studies devoted to the banners. The essays were written by scholars Guido Quazza, Aldo G. Ricci, Silvana Pettenati, Ersilia Perona Alessandrone and Luciano Boccalatte. In particular, the essay “Una lettura delle bandiere operaie” (“A Reading of Workers’ Flags”) is especially useful for reconstructing the use of colors and slogans on workers’ banners from 1848 through the Biennio Rosso and the rise of Fascism.

The Colors of Workers’ Flags

The essay “Una lettura delle bandiere” by Ersilia Perona Alessandrone, director of the Piedmontese Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society, contains a section devoted to the colors of the flags. Thanks to this study and its bibliography, it is possible to reconstruct much of the history of revolutionary flags.

The Red Flag

According to Jean Jaurès¹, the first use of the red flag during a popular uprising occurred on 10 August 1792 during the storming of the Tuileries Palace, where King Louis XVI was staying. In 1831, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, miners soaked a flag in the blood of a sacrificial lamb before setting out on their march². The red flag also prevailed during the French Revolution of 22 February 1848³, which led to the establishment of the Second Republic. The red color of the flag divided socialists and bourgeois republicans. In a speech by Lamartine, the new government made the tricolor the symbol of the new Republic while discrediting the socialist red flag. The subsequent uprising of June 1848 marked the definitive opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Even Giuseppe Mazzini had to justify the use of red during the uprisings of 1848 that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic in 1849. Later, during the Seven-and-a-Half Revolt in Palermo in 1866, the red flag was raised over the town hall in place of the Italian tricolor⁴. It was only in 1870, following the capture of Rome and the Breaching of Porta Pia, that republicans also adopted the red flag, feeling betrayed by the annexation of the Papal States to the Kingdom of Italy⁵.

The red flag was also the symbol of the Paris Commune of 1871. On 18 March it was raised over the Hôtel de Ville, the Paris city hall occupied by the revolutionaries.

The Black Anarchist Flag

The black flag was used in Lyon during the Canut revolt of 1831. The textile workers took control of the city while carrying a black flag bearing the red inscription Live working or die fighting.

After the defeat of the Paris Commune, black also acquired a powerful meaning of mourning and remembrance for fallen revolutionaries. A fundamental moment in its identification with anarchism came during the Paris demonstration of 9 March 1883, when Louise Michel carried a black flag. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, black gradually became one of the distinctive colors of the anarchist movement.

It was also carried by Roman anarchists during clashes with the police on 1 May 1891 in Piazza Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome.⁶

In her writing Why the Anarchist Black Flag?, Emma Goldman explains that black is a symbol of negation: the negation of the flags of nations. Black is also a symbol of anger at the crimes committed by states. It represents mourning for the victims of national wars and for the oppression of workers. But black can also be a positive symbol of determination, strength, fertility, beauty and hope.

The Origins of the Red-and-Black Anarchist Flag

Following the Rimini Conference of 1872, which marked the formation of the Italian Federation of the International Workingmen’s Association, by the winter of 1873–1874 the conditions seemed ripe for an insurrection. Italian anarchists established contacts with republicans and formed the National Committee for the Social Revolution. The committee’s final proclamation declared: “Fellow workers! The moment has come to avenge all the oppression we have suffered! The banner under which we must rally and win is red and black. It means: Death to tyrants and peace to the oppressed!”⁷

The first appearance of red-and-black cockades occurred during the attempted insurrection at Castel del Monte on 11 August 1874⁸.

The first documented appearance of a red-and-black flag and cockades in the same colors dates from only a few years later. On 8 April 1877, the Matese Band, which included Carlo Cafiero and Errico Malatesta, entered Letino carrying a large red-and-black flag, which was raised on the cross standing in the village square⁹. In 1880, during a commemoration of the Paris Commune in Rimini, demonstrators succeeded in carrying the red-and-black flag to the Arch of Augustus, one of the city’s most important monuments.¹⁰

After these events, the red-and-black flag remained a symbol of the anarchists. Pietro Gori would remember and dream of it while imprisoned in Livorno in July 1890.¹¹

The Red-and-Black Flag of the CNT-FAI

According to Abel Paz’s reconstruction, on Monday 27 April 1931¹² a meeting was held at the construction workers’ union to organize the May Day demonstration. One of the issues to be decided was which flag should be adopted for the demonstration. At the time there was a dispute between the anarchist group Bandera Roja, which had proposed the creation of a Federación Comunista Anarquista Ibérica and placed trade-union and workers’ issues at the centre of its activities, and the more radical and ideologically oriented Bandera Negra group.

It was García Oliver, from the Bandera Negra group, who proposed adopting the red-and-black flag, overcoming a dispute that had lost much of its meaning following the establishment of the Republic in 1930. May Day 1931 marked the first time the red-and-black flag was flown at a CNT-FAI demonstration.

Notes

1. Jean Jaurès, Storia socialista della Rivoluzione francese, vol. IV, La caduta della Monarchia, Milan, Coop. Libro popolare, 1954, p. 315
2. Gwyn A. Williams, Introduction to John Gorman, Banner Bright, London, Allen Lane, 1973, p. 1
3. Maurice Dommanget, Le drapeau rouge e la rèvolution de 1848, Paris, Spartacus, 1948, p. 27
4. Renzo Del Carria, Palermo 1866: Una insurrezione senza speranza, in Rivista storica del socialismo, Year IX, no. 27, January–April 1966, especially pp. 163–168
5. Il pensiero romagnolo, Year XXX, no. 43, 11 November 1922
6. I fatti del 1° maggio 1891. Dal rapporto del Questore di Roma al Procuratore del Re, in Luciano Cafagna, Anarchism e socialismo a Roma negli anni della “febbre edilizia” e della crisi (1882–1891), in “Mov. op.”, Year IV, no. 5, September–October 1952, p. 780
7. Elio Conti, Le origini del socialismo a Firenze, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1950, p. 166
8. Aldo Romano, Storia del movimento socialista in Italia, vol. III, Milan–Rome, Bocca, 1954, p. 161
9. Pier Carlo Masini, Storia degli anarchici, pp. 119–121, 126
10. Andrea Costa to Vollmar, 27 March 1880
11. Pietro Gori, Sogno, in Opere, vol. I, Prigioni, La Spezia, Pasquale Binazzi editore, 1911, p. 75
12. Abel Paz, Durruti e la rivoluzione spagnola, vol. I, Pisa, 1999