Origins: the late 1870s and Tito Zanardelli

Repression of the social conflicts that erupted across new and old European nation-states during the 1870s and early 1880s led to waves of political refugees who swelled the communities of expatriates already present in London: French, German, and Russian in particular. Following the fall of the Paris Commune and its bloody aftermath in 1871 around 3,500 men, women and children fled to England. A few years later, hundreds of militants fled Germany to escape persecution under Bismarck's anti-socialist law of 1878. In Russia, the killing of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 sparked violent reaction; more than 225,000 Jews left the country, driven by pogroms and repressive regulations. The majority went to the United States but a good number found shelter in the East End of London.

In Italy, Giovanni Passanante's failed attempt on the life of King Umberto I on 17 November 1878 led to a surge in repression against the International. The assassination attempt caused the fall of the Cairoli-Zanardelli government. Agostino Depretis constituted a new cabinet in which he was both Prime Minister and Minister of Interior. Government repression denied the Italian Federation of the First International political importance or legitimacy – it was legally considered to be an ‘association of malefactors’. Therefore its associates were considered members of criminal organisations unconnected to politics and, consequently, they were ‘persecuted almost at will as criminals and outlaws’. Although the government's judicial offensive did not succeed in its aim of outlawing the International, the repression destroyed the organisation and virtually put paid to the Italian Federation of the I.W.A. Many Italian anarchists chose exile over imprisonment; some of them eventually reached England, often after passing through several countries on the way.

The beginnings of anarchist militancy in London's Italian community emerged with the arrival of Tito Zanardelli in the city following his expulsion from France in 1878.

Born in the northern Italian town of Vittorio Veneto in 1848, Zanardelli began his political life in the Republican Party. Mazzini's ideas, particularly regarding the education of the working classes, had a strong influence on him. Zanardelli oscillated between reformist socialism and anarchism throughout his life; he ‘probably never accepted the premises that impelled Costa, Malatesta and Cafiero to argue a dialectical incompatibility between their vision of a future society and that envisaged by a Mazzini or a Garibaldi’.