ABSTRACT: We reprint here the second paragraph of a long information file dedicated to the VIIth Congress of the Italian Liberal Party [PLI] (Rome, December 9-12, 1955). In this paragraph there is ample information on the "secession" of the "left wing liberals" who found the PRLDI, or, Partito Radicale dei Liberali e dei Democratici Italiani (Radical Party of Italian Liberals and Democrats).

The paragraph is subdivided into five sections: 1)* The resignation of the liberal left from the PLI; 2) The name of the new party; 3) The Radical Party's programme (in four points); 4) the organisational activity of the PR; 5) Judgements on the birth and programme of the PR; Conclusion. In this last section a negative judgement is expressed, but justified as being the Catholic point of view of the "lay position" expressed in both the Liberal Congress and by the Radical headquarters. The laicism of the two parties "is entirely unacceptable" because it "generalises a few sporadic cases of power exceeding all limits" and because it is in "open conflict" with the "powers" that are within the competence of the Church "by dint of the mission" that is its own not less than by "history and law" [Lateran Pacts]. The publication is splendidly completed with an attentive bibliography and a wealth of press reviews.

(AGGIORNAMENTI SOCIALI, February 1956)

While at the EUR [1]* the VIIth Congress of the PLI was underway and there was talk of the secession of "Villabruna" [2] and "other left-wing liberals", these latter were meeting in Rome at Palazzo Bancani in Piazza Teatro di Pompeo and "founding the PRLDI" or the "Partito Radicale dei Liberali e Democratici Italiani".

1) The Resignation Of The Liberal Left From The PLI

Before reaching this point, on the basis of what they had decided in the assemblies of Turin (1) and Florence (2), they had tried to come to an agreement for a friendly settlement by proposing to the centre and right-wing factions to postpone the congress and constitute a "joint committee for running the party" which would be invested with all executive powers.

Of course, the Hon. Mr. Malagodi [3], secure in the provincial pre-congressional successes of his faction, "decisively rejected this proposal". In the face of this refusal, the Hon. Mr. Villabruna tried to induce Minister Martino [4] to act as a mediator and to persuade the PLI's Secretary, but "this attempt too went unheeded" (3). In such a situation there was nothing left for the left-wing liberals to do but put into effect what they had decided upon in their previous meetings and to establish a new political party.

The "first step" taken to this effect was "to resign from the party", and this was done almost simultaneously on December 8 by "Vice-President Arangio Ruiz", "31 National Councillors", and by "other prominent figures of the PLI" (4).

Particularly important is the "document of collective resignations" signed and presented by the 31 National Councillors, because it contained the reasons that had impelled the signers to leave the PLI and attempt to establish a new party. We shall repeat here its "essential features" (5).

"From the unconditional desertion" of the Public Education Ministry, "to the approval of the illiberal and unconstitutional regulations for" the Military Courts, "the PLI has entirely denied its fundamental task of guarding the institutions of the modern liberal state. The party itself has been definitively subjugated by the will of powerful" monopolistic groups "and its policies have been degraded to the conscious and open defence of" particular interests and restricted categories.

"Thus it has not only mortified the liberal idea and split the party, but it has brought about the fall of the entire democratic alliance, broken the essential solidarity of the lay parties, sabotaged from within the policies of the centre-left, and destroyed the possibility of constructive policies of democratic justice capable of confronting the impetus of the extremists.

"The party has changed into" an obedient tool of a restricted oligarchy, "into a mere apparatus of bosses. The very" preparations for the congress "took place under the sign of a gross alteration of the bases of representation.

"The PLI can therefore no longer take under its roof those whose political morality consists in the unyielding defence of general interests and the passionate defence" of political and social liberties. "The soul of liberalism, its open and reformist spirit will henceforth find itself on the outside of a party whose only liberalism by now is contained in its name".

2) The Name Of The New Party

On the day after their officially leaving the PLI, the 31 resigning councillors, along with the rank and file representatives (5a) (in all about one hundred people) met at Palazzo Bancani and held the "constituent assembly of the new party", during which Leone Cattani [5] illustrated the reasons for which it had been decided to form a broadly-based party which would gather together liberals and democrats and would make its valid presence felt among the large Christian Democratic and Socialist/Communist groups (6).

With regard to its name, everyone agreed "in substance on the denomination" of "Radical", but to many that adjective did not sufficiently indicate that the new party remained faithful to liberal and democratic ideals while postulating, at the same time, a broader range for liberal action. For this reason the other designations were added which in time will probably fall into disuse, leaving only the shorter name of "Radical Party" (7).

3) The Programme Of The Radical Party

The PR's programme is clearly delineated in the "appeal" to the country made by the Party's founders at the end of the Roman assembly.

This document begins by "declaring" that "the condition of Italian political life, ten years after the Liberation, fills the liberal and democratic conscience with discontent and disquiet" because "the fall of the dictatorship was followed by a democracy weak in defending the authority of the state from confessionalism and the extremists, as well as being incapable of realising the spirit of the Constitution, whence came the need of creating "a new politics capable of reviving vigour and hope to the development of Italian society" (8).

The "points of the new party's programme" (which the Radicals propose to "confront and begin to solve within four or five years") are the following (9):

a) The struggle against economic privileges and monopolies.

The PR proposes to fight against the "privileges" and against the industrial, commercial and land "monopolies" to break their overbearing political clout and thus permit the development of a truly free economy.

b) Reduction of the inequalities existing among the citizens, the social classes and the Regions.

The activities of individuals must not be impeded by the aggressive force of the organised groups and the "points of departure" of the "citizens" must be made as uniform as possible with the gradual reduction of inequalities in the various classes and Regions of the country.

c) Tax reform and control of public expenditures.

It is the task of a democratic state not only to eliminate waste and submit the "public expenditures" to the effective "control of Parliament", but also to reform radically the "tax system" by making the taxes clear and definite, accentuating their "progressive character", relieving the burden of the less well-off classes and reorganising and broadening the sector of direct taxation.

d) Organic intervention of the state in economic life.

The state has the right and the duty to "intervene organically and permanently" in economic and social life, not only in order to defend the unprotected categories, but also to insert into democratic life those popular classes which still remain outside it and are therefore risk being or are subjected to the call and the discipline of illiberal apparatuses.

e) School reform and the primacy of state schools

School reform must eliminate the excessive concern with the "humanities", develop technical and scientific studies, put an end to the "indolence of confessionalism" and give back "dignity and primacy to the state schools".

4) Organisational Activity of the PR

"The PR's assembly", after having approved the political programme rather than nominating, as had first been announced, a promotional committee of about 80 members with a 7 or 8 member executive and a president (Arrange Ruiz's or Messineo's names had been mentioned) (10) "elected a triumvirate" composed of Villabruna, Carandini and Pannunzio [6] with the tasks of giving the party an initial organisational structure, of taking charge of propaganda and of beginning as well as leading to a conclusion the negotiations for a "cartel of all the lay political forces", meaning the PRI [Republicans], the Partito Sardo d'Azione [Sardinian Action Party], the "Community" of Olivetti and that of "Unità Popolare" (11) [Popular Unity].

On December 11 at the Cola di Rienzo Theatre the new party held its "first meeting" during which Villabruna, Cattani, Paggi and Carradini held forth.

Before a fairly large public (about 2,500 people), Villabruna described the reasons of the break with the PLI; Cattani illustrated the need of uniting to oppose "clerical-Fascism and clerical-centrism"; Paggi said that it was time that lay democrats openly defended their ideals as did the Catholics and Communists - ideals that consisted "in inserting workers into the state, in the revitalisation of the state schools and the actuation of the constitutional norms"; Carandini affirmed that the PR opened a clarifying phase not only for the PLI but for all the democratic forces by means of a "cartel" of the lay democrats" which was the modern element of reform in Italian society, reconciling liberalism and social democracy with a constructive and persevering action (12).

After the meeting the provisional Executive Committee undertook the "task of rapprochement and the exchange of ideas" that was expected to bring about the establishment of the "cartel of the lay forces" - a "very important task" as well as a complex, slow and delicate one because, as Salvatorelli observed, "no efficacious political action can be concluded today without a broad and careful initial sowing capable of procuring very precise directives for action and an ample and secure popular base" (13).

Thus on "December 22 the first meeting" took place in Rome of representatives of the PR, the Partito Sardo d'azione and the "Comunità" movement. Unità Popolare sent no representatives because this group gravitates around the PSI [Socialists] and is decidedly contrary to the four-party coalition while the Radicals would not for the moment be against the present coalition government (14).

With regard to the meeting in Rome it is interesting to read the "Comunità's clarification of their position" which appeared in the movement's organ and is probably the work of the engineer Adriano Olivetti. In it they complain, among other things, of the way the "the liberal left has constituted a party, the name it has taken, the polemical lay accentuation which it seems to want to make the most important aspect of its struggle" and it predicts a "series of concrete problems" which will set off the discussion and on which an agreement will possibly be reached (15).

The provisional Executive Committee of the PR also is following the "current political problems" and recently (January 11) took a position on the question of the election laws, pronouncing itself against the election alliances "condemned by recent experiences" and "denouncing as illiberal and anti-constitutional" the regulations that on the national level excludes the participation of lists which have not reached a total of 500,000 votes, and asks Parliament to discuss very soon the bills, that have been waiting for some time, on the limitations of propaganda and election expenses (16).

5) Judgements On The PR's Birth And Programme

"The judgements on the PR's birth and programme" vary according to the sources from which they come and the individuals who pronounce them.

From the very start the PRI declared itself distinctly in favour and, in homage to the contacts already under way for establishing the "cartel of lay forces", abstained from sending an official representative of its own to the inauguration of the PLI [Liberals] congress (17).

The Hon. Pietro Nenni [7] saw in this schism a new sign of the crisis that was troubling the democratic centre - a crisis which he considered positive as long as the new party would make its contribution to "the direct inserting of the workers into the management of the collectivity's interests [and] the great structural reforms", and would avoid "the tendency to polemics in the encounter of the Catholic and Socialist masses" (18).

The Hon. Giuseppe Saragat [8] indicated that he was "quite perplexed" if not sceptical with regard to the PR and refused to adhere to the "lay cartel" expressing his fear that the PR would remain teetering between a "tendency to the formation of fronts and a rigorously democratic one" (19). This accusation of "frontism" was immediately rejected by the Radical leaders as lacking in all and any foundation (20).

Mario Missiroli considers the split of the Liberals to be "an almost inevitable consequence of" of Liberal doctrine which "contains within itself both terms of the dialectics of history and of life, of conservation and of progress", and he predicts that "the two parts will end by coming close together", so much so, that "some will ask themselves if their divorce was really necessary... and they will have to conclude that if the divorce was not necessary, this does not mean that it was not useful, if it will have helped to show by experience that this is the very method of liberalism, its need of certain positions imposed by daily theory and practice" (21).

According to Vittorio Gorresio, it would be a serious error to consider the split in the PLI as simply a sign of men militating in the same political party who were unable to suffer each other and who ended by becoming conscious of that there could be no conciliating between the conceptions that they respectively professed. The reasons go much deeper", he says, "and the meaning in a certain sense is a much happier one: we are not dealing, in fact, with the usual tedious case of personalism, a disease which is very prevalent in our political life, but in the light of a general political situation that merits the most attentive interest".

Such a situation, according to Gorresio, would be marked by "crises of both the right (PNM [national monarchists], PMP [popular monarchists], MSI [neo-Fascists] and the centre-left (PRI and PSDI [Social Democrats]) who appear in a phase of decline or stasis rather than in one of expansion - a phase that offers the most suitable terrain for building the "popular front".

"For this reason", Gorresio concludes, "the alternative that the PR founders offer, who aspire to a »cartel of the so-called lay forces , may be the last one capable of saving the Italian electorate from being levelled into a Marxist front. In this sense the friends of the Hon. Mr. Villabruna would be the bearers of great benefits to our country" (22).

Both Missiroli's predictions and Gorresio's judgements seem very optimistic to us even if one cannot deny them a basis of truth or probability.

CONCLUSION

We cannot end this chronicle without calling our readers' attention to the repeated affirmations of laicism made at the congresses of both the Liberals (23) and the Radicals. It is true: for the most part they limited themselves to speaking of the "state's autonomy", of the "primacy of state schools", of "defending the state and the schools from confessionalism", etc. But these expressions, in the light of liberal doctrine and in view of the concrete political situation in Italy today, and on the lips of the disciples of Cavour, Croce, and the "Friends of »Il Mondo ", can mean nothing other than that antiquated, 19th Century laicism which wanted the influence and power of the Church to be "expelled from public life" and confined within the walls of the temple and the sphere of individual, private life.

Now this "lay position", from the Catholic point of view, is entirely unacceptable: a) because it arbitrarily generalises a few sporadic cases of power getting out of bounds which are often highly questionable and which, in any case, the Catholics are the first to deplore; b) because it is in open conflict with those powers which are the due of the Church even in social life, by dint of the mission given to it by its Founder, as well as by history and law, both natural and positive (Lateran Pacts).

It is superfluous to point out that this "attitude of incomprehension", if not outright hostility, taken by the Liberal and Radical Parties towards "the rights of the Church, must be kept in mind by Catholics" (by all "true" Catholics) "when they make their political choices".

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AUTHOR'S NOTES * (numbers in parentheses)

1) Cf. »Aggiornamenti Sociali , (Nov.) 1955, pp. 460-62 (no.723).

2) »La Giustizia , October 26, 1955, p.1; »Il Mercurio October 29, 1955, p.24.

3) »Il Corriere della Sera , Nov. 11 and 15, 1955, p.1

4) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 9, 1955, p.1

5) »La Stampa Dec. 9, 1955, p.1

5a) "The new party's greatest following" is found in Piedmont, above all in Villabruna's constituency (Turin); in Lombardy various figures have joined who were already members of the PLI (the engineers Arangio Ruiz, Vittorio Olcese, Claudio Belloni, Aldo Bassetti; the university professors Alfieri, Pugliese, Cantarella, Viscardi; in Venetia, Tuscany (primarily Florence) and Campania there are the largest cells; in Molise all the young people who had participated in the political propaganda courses organised by the PLI (cf. »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 10, 1955, P.1) have gone over to the PR. It is still hard to calculate the "numerical strength of the Radical Party": Malagodi in Milan has spoken of "200 Liberals" who, after ten years in the party, have discovered that they are Radicals; one should remember too that only 815,923 out of 28 million people voted Liberal in the last national elections (June 7, 1953).

6) »La Stampa , Dec. 10, 1955, p.1

7) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 10, 1955, p.1

8) »La Stampa , Dec. 11, 1955, p.1

9) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 11, 1955, p.1

10) »La Stampa , Dec. 10, 1955, p.1

11) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 11, 1955, p.1. Cattani, at the constituent assembly, also hinted at "the possibility of talks with the PSI", but only afterwards, that is to say, once the PR had developed to the point that the talks could take place on a level of complete equality. This makes it understandable "that Villabruna denied" having met with Sandro Pertini, the vice-secretary of the PSI, with the view to reaching an agreement on the coming municipal elections (cf. »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 10, 1955, p.1, January 12, 1956, p.5).

12) »Il Corriere d'Informazione , Dec. 12-13, 1955, p.1

13) »La Stampa , Dec. 13, 1955 p.1

14) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 14, 1955, p.1; »La Stampa , Dec. 20, 1955, p.1; »Nuova Repubblica (organ of

"Unità Popolare" published in Florence), Dec. 25, 1955, p.1.

15) »Comunità , Dec. 1955, pp. 1-3. However, the outcome of the encounter must have been positive because on January 18 the "Provisional Executive Committee of the PR" announced that having completed the task entrusted to it for giving the party its initial organisation and "having concluded agreements with converging kindred groups", called a "national assembly" in Rome for February 4-5 to approve the party statute and prepare an immediate plan of work »Il Mondo , January 24, 1956, p.1.)

16) »Il Corriere della Sera , January 12, 1955, p.1.

17) »La Stampa , Dec. 10 and 12, 1955, p.1. Pacciardi was present at the inauguration on his own initiative and unofficially.

18) »Avanti! , Dec. 11, 1955, p.1.

19) »La Giustizia , Dec. 12, 1955, p.1.

20) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 14, 1955, p.1.

21) »Il Corriere della Sera , Dec. 11, 1955, p.1.

22) »La Stampa , Dec. 9, 1955, p.1. See also: M. Paggi, "Perchè nasce in Italia un nuovo partito politico" ("Why Is A New Party Being Born In Italy?"), in »Il Mercurio , Dec. 24, 1955, p.7; V. De Caprariis, "Speranze e Volontà" (Hopes and Desire), in »Il Mondo , Dec. 13, 1955, p.1.

23) With regard to the "Liberals" it is useful to remember other highly indicative expressions of Malagodi's "Report". He calls the PLI "the general staff of liberty in Italy" (p. 5) and affirms "that the best form of a state, a society and an economy for Italy today and tomorrow is the liberal form, and to it belongs the future" (p. 5). As for religion and the Church, Malagodi explains: "We respect the work of the Catholic Church and other confessions, and we postulate their complete freedom of expansion, always as long as they do not try to limit the freedom of others" (P. 62); "We are just as opposed to the authoritarianism of confession or of class as we are to anarchic forms of laissez-faire or abstract and unmotivated reformism" (p. 8); "We want schools that are free from the influence of confessions and of parties..." (p. 13).

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES * [numbers in brackets]

1) EUR - The initials of Esposizione Universale di Roma, a modern section of Rome originally built under the Fascists as a world's fair ground.

2) Villabruna, Bruno - A prominent PLI figure of the Fifties and one of the founders of the Radical Party.

3) Malagodi, Giovanni - (London 1904 - Rome 1991) - Secretary of the Italian Liberal Party (PLI) from 1954 to 1972. A moderate.

4) Martino, Gaetano - A PLI leader and Foreign Minister at the time.

5) Cattani, Leone - A prominent PLI figure of the Fifties and one of the founders of the Radical Party.

6) Pannunzio, Mario (Lucca 1910 - Roma 1968) - Italian journalist. Liberal. Managing editor of the daily »Risorgimento Liberale from 1943 to 1947, after which he founded the weekly review »Il Mondo which under his direction for seventeen years became an unexcelled model of modern European journalism. A member of the Italian Liberal Party, he was then a founder of the Radical Party which, however he helped liquidate when the centre-left was formed.

7) Nenni, Pietro - (Faenza 1891 - Rome 1980) Italian statesman, first a Republican and from 1921 on a Socialist. Managing director of the party daily »L'Avanti , forced into exile in France in 1930 he reunited the branches of the PSI (Socialists) and in 1934 brought about a pact for united action with the PCI (Italian Communist Party). In 1943 he was PSI party secretary and then again from 1949 to 1964. Vice Prime Minister (1945) and Foreign Minister (1946 - 47). Author of the agreement with the PCI, he was defeated in the 1948 elections. Received the Lenin Peace Prize. Gradually he assumed an independent position and in the Sixties worked for a centre-left government with the DC (Christian Democrats); in the centre-left government he was Vice Prime Minister (1963 - 68) and Foreign Minister (1968 - 69). Named Senator for Life in 1970.

8) Saragat, Giuseppe - (Turin 1898 - Rome 1988) Socialist, exiled in Austria under Fascism. Minister of the first Bonomi government in 1944, President of the Constituent Assembly in 1946. In 1947 he led the Socialist right-wing in a split from the PSI to form the PSLI (Socialist Party of Italian Workers) and then the PSDI (Italian Social Democratic Party). He was Vice Prime Minister and President of the Republic from 1946 to 1971.