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In November 2003, the regional organisations of Italy's Cgil, Cisl and Uil trade union confederations jointly organised a day of protests against terrorism in Tuscany, following accusations of collusion between some union members and the Red Brigades terrorist group. Representatives of most political parties participated in the protests, which included demonstrations in Florence, Arezzo and Pisa.
On 24 October 2003, on the same day as a general strike was underway (IT0311102N), police forces arrested an alleged leader of the reformed Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) terrorist group, following the murder of a railway police officer in March (IT0304103N). The arrest allowed investigators to identify and arrest many other suspected members of the Red Brigades, and some of the people arrested turned out to be members of the General Confederation of Italian Workers (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Cgil). This led some figures close to the governing parties apparently to insinuate possible collusions among the trade union organisations and terrorist groups.
On 19 November, the organisations of Cgil, the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacato Lavoratori, Cisl) and the Union of Italian Workers (Unione Italiana del Lavoro, Uil) in the Tuscany region, where most arrests of Red Brigades suspects took place, called a day of protest against terrorism in order to refute the accusations of collusion. The main demonstrations took place in Florence, Pisa and Arezzo.
A few days before the protests took place, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi invited all the political parties, of both the governing majority and the opposition, to take part in the demonstrations in Tuscany. The invitation, which was welcomed by all the political parties - with the sole exceptions of the Northern League (Lega Nord) and Communist Refoundation (Rifondazione Comunista) - made 19 November an opportunity to confirm the role played by the Cgil, Cisl and Uil union confederation in the fight against terrorism and in its isolation.
The leaders of Cgil, Cisl and Uil, as well as representatives of the Tuscan authorities and political parties, spoke at the end of the demonstrations in Florence, Arezzo and Pisa. In Florence, Luigi Angeletti, the general secretary of Uil, reiterated the unions' opposition to any kind of terrorist action: 'these terrorists are not part of our world even if some of them are trade union members.' Speaking in Pisa, Gulgielmo Epifani, the general secretary of Cgil, stated that 'the terrorists who turned out to be trade union members used our confederations to hide themselves. Trade unions represents all the values that terrorism intends to attack, and are thus its enemy'. Savino Pezzotta, the general secretary of Cisl, speaking in Arezzo, warned about a new form of terrorism - 'a form of rebellion which is painful and not symbolic and about which we know very little in order to isolate and fight it'.