From: JRmundialist@compuserve.com

To: Mailing list

Subject: The Radical Party

The Radical Party - does it really exist?

For several years I have been intrigued by the vision of the Radical Party. This small group began in Italy in 1965, where the peculiar financing arrangements for political parties enabled it to have a good deal of financing, which enabled its leaders to indulge in a Europe-wide campaign of publicity to establish it as a federal Continental party. That it managed to do, with a subscription that, at least on paper, was markedly higher than that for most political parties. So it might have looked to a bright future.

However, it also developed what some might consider a near-Utopian set of policies and principles, calculated to attract idealists of the left and anarchic wings, with its small membership valiantly storming the barricades of fear and prejudice everywhere. But its few thousand members have proved extraordinarily elusive. They publish Party programmes and they have addresses, but they do not seem to respond to enquiries, nor to address themselves directly to others. At the Rome treaty conference on the International Criminal Court I was able at least to talk to one at them, but he was too busy to do more than say hello and then promptly disappeared.

The party is, declares its 1998 booklet, "transnational, nonvilent, transparty, libertarian, gandhian, democratic, liberal-socialist, anticlerical, antiprohibitionist, federalist, lay, ecologist, European federalist, anti-authoritarian, liberal, anti-partyist [whatever that means for a party!], and-bureaucratic, in a word RADICAL."

Since I share a good many of those adjectives, it attracted me. Specifially, the Party in 1998 was working for the universal abolition of the death penalty, creation of a permanent International Criminal Court, antiprohibitionist on drugs it wanted to adopt a neutral language for international communication, freedom for Tibet and democracy for China.

All, or almost all, thoroughly good things. One of its more prominent members, Emma Bonino, has since risen to the height of being a European commissioner, although with the present cloud hanging over the Commission that may be less of a recommendation. Much of the activity over the past thirty years listed in the Party booklet concerns attacks on the laws against soft drugs and that can be seen as a responsible attempt to escape from the huge association of such drugs and crime. But it may seem to pander to the weakness of those electors whose desire for drugs is greater than any wish to improve society in other ways.

Nevertheless, the Radical Party's activity on behalf of Chinese dissidents, and of those condemned to death, and for other good causes, notably against the linguistic imperialism (of English and other overbearing languages) is notable and praiseworthy. The Party has clearly proved to be a force for good in Europe and we can only hope that it does exist and will continue to do so. Perhaps the members are all so busy with their campaigns that they can only communicate with the rest of us by issuing Booklets every year or so.

John Roberts