ABSTRACT: At the first Radical Party Congress (Rome, February 27, 28 and March 1, 1959) the limitations already are evident of a party that, three years after its establishment, has not managed to give itself modern structures and to promote political action outside the circle of Radicals connected with »L'Espresso (1) and the conferences of »Gli Amici del Mondo [The Friends of Il Mondo] (2).
In asking each member of the party to speak out with total sincerity, after three years of no intra-party debate, Pannella affirmed that most of the reasons have been lost for which the party had been hailed as a "new party for a new politics": in particular, structures had not been created suitable for attracting and organising, or arranging for the organisation of the young and emerging forces that were looking to the party with confidence. The Statute is antiquated and inadequate (text no. 3490); the "Study Committee" has not been set up which was meant to be the party's propelling organ; the federalist issue has been set aside while European nationalisms have been getting dangerously stronger; talk of denouncing the Concordat has been dropped. But most of all there are no leaders capable of taking on the responsibilities of running the party, of doing so on a basis of a daily organisation, thus stimulating local forces to seek within themselves the reasons and the resources, the financial ones inclu
ded, they need for their own activity instead of continually coming and demanding them of the central party organs. In the past three years much of the old energy has been lost due to weariness, lost confidence, frustration: it is now essential that every one declare what party responsibilities he is ready to take on. For his part, Pannella affirms that he is completely available, without false modesty, to take on whatever jobs are necessary. It is to be hoped that his speech will not be taken to be an "attempt to get things organised" in the worst sense. And finally, the PR should be capable of offering Communists in a crisis, or Catholics if they should wish, a roof over their heads, an effective tool for political commitment and struggle, without being ashamed of "the desire to enrol new members".
(Transcription of Marco Pannella's speech to the First PR Congress, Rome, February 27, 28 and March 1, 1959)
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Dear Friends,
I confess that up until an hour ago I did not manage to have a clear idea of what exactly our Congress was going to be, and during the usual pre-congress meetings with several friends I had emphasised this uncertainty very much, this incapacity of mine to imagine what, after three years of separation, this Radical assembly could hope to produce psychologically, but also in real substance for the future of the Radical Party and of the struggles which, even independently of the party, are close to the heart of each one of us. But as soon as Prof. Pesante had spoken a few words, in the silence that suddenly came over the hall at his promise of sincerity, and then during La Malfa's (3) speech, I had the proof that even after so many postponements, our Congress has a real capacity to produce, but on one condition: that each of us with complete sincerity, with clarity, without being afraid of saying here the things that in preceding months he may have said in moments of discouragement - that each of us shoul
d come here and offer his party comrades, the companions of his battles, this assurance, this serene will of not behaving for tactical reasons, but of openly saying what he thinks. And since there is no doubt that in these disheartening months moods have often had the upper hand over political will and intelligence in many of us, I believe it would be a good thing to verify in this Congress how deep is our desire to be a party, and if to be a party we need that slightly forced optimism - permit me to say this in agreement with Prof. Pesante - that one can see in the report of the Commission. I have a different idea when it comes to evaluating the previous years. I sincerely believe that at least 80% of the individual hopes that were entrusted to the Radical Party when it was founded, perhaps 80% of the individual hopes during these three years have had a poor response. I will try to enumerate a few of them, but I must also say that if many have gone back on their words to me, if many of my hopes ha
ve gone unrealised, I still believe today with the same certainty, the same serenity as before, that the Radical Party must, in fact, be a party, must be present in the country's political life, has a particular job to do which is its and its alone, and without which the Italian democracy and the Italian left would suffer serious consequences in their attempts at revival. But no optimism, because optimism, like all states of mind, is not convincing and is not definitive.
I would certainly be able to say that the slogan "a new party for a new politics" has failed to produce one thing if we look at the events of recent years: the new party. Because would you call this party of ours new? I admit that by way of »Il Mondo and »l'Espresso and all the Radical intellectual circles, important innovations have been furnished to political life, but I deny that our party's structures and the relationships it has established with the outside are really anything new. And that is a very serious matter, because it was not I who invented this slogan "a new party for a new politics", nor was it my contemporaries who, because of their age as well as their political experience, felt how important it was to offer the country not merely clearer ideological and programmatic discourses, but also a new way of organising the citizens for political battles, for any political battles whatsoever. It was precisely these friends, our promoters - Villabruna (4), Carandini (5), Valiani (6), Paggi - a
ll these friends who managed to give the necessary impetus to the establishment of our party, who felt the need of insisting on this point. There is no new party, but I am convinced that we can still create one. I am, for example, convinced that the proposed Statute is not the statute of a new party, but one which "bongré malgré" is the statute of any Italian political party; it is an old statute for an old party; for which reason let me say clearly that I certainly do not intend to block the debate, as the Radical Party's constituent congress did, on statutory questions. But one thing I nevertheless would not be disposed to accept: that this statute, which will be put to the vote no matter how it is worked out and enunciated, must have a two-thirds majority in order to be changed. I simply request this guarantee because I am certain that in the future we will be able to propose newer organisational structures for our party, and I don't want our party to be handicapped by the knowledge of having a Statute th
at can't be touched except by means of a pre-constituted majority. Let us say it clearly and get rid of this subject: this old statute that is being proposed we can and do accept with a few minor changes, but it is a statute that does not resolve the problem of the structures of a new movement in our country, whereas it was our hope to succeed within a year (because we imagined that the party congress was going to be held within a year) in having new organisational proposals. All of us or none of us are guilty for this outcome, but certainly it is a factor to be kept in mind. These are matters that may appear to be organisational side issues and they are not: I am aware that they are neither organisational or side issues. As of now I ask this assembly, so that our friends who may be interested in this may remember it, to give us this minimal guarantee for the prospects of renewing the statute and structures of the Radical Party in the future.
In the provisional statute mention was made of something which we approved of - it was the Study Committee which was a very new concept in running a political party in Italy. This is something else which has gotten lost along the way without even much effort being made to save it. In losing the Study Committee we lost a chance which I do not consider to have been lost forever but which nevertheless has been lost. We are like all the other political parties, we have not managed to organise politically, within the sphere of our organisational structures, that enormous number of intellectuals who seemed to have been shaken out of their laziness or their scepticism about the life of the country and seemed ready, by means of the Radical Party, to commit themselves to concrete responsibilities of political management. The Study Committee has been lost. The Study Committee which was not an Office of Studies but an organ of political management and it was not an organ of anything. Because I must say in all s
incerity that I am convinced that if we have had some conferences in some measure owing to the party such as those of the »Amici del Mondo , it is not because the party's Study Committee worked but only because a few people to whom we owe so much of our lives in this period - our friends Rossi (7) and Piccardi (8) and others - had the strength to organise these conferences and to give the country an example of the efficacy of Radical Party intellectuals, of Radical politicians.
Another chance that we lost - I felt it particularly because it regarded either my contemporaries or younger friends with whom I yet have much in common - is that of being a party which every day really managed to organise for its actions people new to political life, whether young or not. This was another of our hopes, in a situation where all the other parties had consumed their leaders, in which a great part of the people enrolled in the parties, while working for these organs saddened by the Italian life these traditional parties exemplify, had lost their dignity and sense of the nobility of politics. Well then, we managed to give some hope to those who wanted to be an example of civil political life but were not disposed to bend to the yoke of any party.
Friends, if we had to insist that under the aegis of the Radical Party bigger and bigger groups of youths or new people (this last is more interesting) are drawn together, we would be making it up. If anything, we have lost a few members. And this, I say once again, is something we must face up to, because in my opinion even in facing up to it the reasons for the life and presence of the Radical Party are not nullified. I believe that a great part of the discouragement that there has been among us very often has been due to pure and simple weakness of character, lack of will power and the fragility of the reasons that one joined the Radical Party for, because not even the total of all these reasons put together can invalidate the political arguments that are the basis of our activity and our will to be together.
There is another thing that we have lost, and I say it straight out: I seriously believe - and in this I know that perhaps I am not in accord with the far greater part of the Congress - that the federalist element is a necessary one for a minority party of the Italian left: not a European element which doesn't interest me. Nevertheless, I believe that if we do not suffer from false modesty it is correct to say that in Italy the problem is to denounce the Concordat in order to resolve the problem of Church and State. It is right to denounce the Concordat in a country where the Church counts so much or seems to count so much. So then, I believe that we should not be afraid of looking ridiculous when we affirm that what is occurring in our country is definitely occurring today - and often occurring in the same way - in the other European countries. And that is to affirm that what is occurring in our country - monopolies, weakness of the state with regard to the ruthless force of groups within the state - i
s because there is not really any longer an economic market, a moral market, a civil market that is truly a national market. And thus the state that acts like a centralised and national state just as we see it before us, is something that substantially blocks the renewal of political positions, whatever they may be. In fact, I believe that we Radicals can also learn something from the French experience: we can learn because the limits of Mendes-France - the limits of men at bottom so near to the Italian Radicals in their character and feelings - consisted precisely in inserting himself into the essentially isolationist or nationalist and power traditions of France which, unlike Italy, had solid traditions in the French Jacobin left. These are the limits which tripped them up then and which are tripping them up now. Mendes-France cannot deny that he evoked the spectre of De Gaulle, because it is the French left that had newly evoked in their political struggles French "grandeur", the "grandeur" of the Frenc
h state, all of these being notions that take up the cudgels with all will for basic renewal in the political life of European citizens.
We have perhaps seen great laziness on this count, in my opinion, and we must reflect on it again. It is certainly true that no party is less federalist than we are, in the present state of things, because no party in its political discourses so radically excludes as we do this European dimension of the political and civil situation. And this, my friends, is a great error, I think. I do not believe that today one can impute to those who propose a federalist initiative the idea that European culture is one thing and so we must keep together. I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a certain logic which, since we do not want the prefects, since we do not want either a certain type of decentralised state or a certain type of centralised state, we become aware that there exists a logic for all the centralised states as such, of non-federal states, which brings to the Italian or the French situation its own kind of Fascism, its own totalitarianism, its own authoritarianism. In Europe the situation bec
omes more serious every day.
I do not believe I am indulging in easy prophecies if I say that in Spain and Portugal, for example, it will not be long before the dictatorships fall because the European right wing, the European reactionaries have finally managed (along with help from a certain mood that is circulating in Europe) to create in those countries alternatives to Franco and Salazar which are not democratic but oligarchic alternatives, which are military alternatives as in Portugal and the monarchist alternatives we all know in Spain. Franco and Salazar become weak again, and in the Europe in which we will have the De Gaulles, in which we will have the Spanish monarchy, in which we will have the great opposer to represent the Portughese state by way of a claim to greater democracy, you will see how the grip will become tighter in Italy too. Things depend much less on the Church alone than we believe. There is another general logic that carries weight in our country and it is the logic of Europe, the logic of the other Europe
an national states. Do you believe that the creation of democracy [...] is not part of our business? Cardinal Ottaviani (9) has already written some letters in France which lend support to these new orientations. Do you believe that one can worry about the political unity of Italian citizens - the way in which this unity can find content and initiatives - without awareness of what is happening in Europe?
We must, my friends, be aware that we are a minority, that we do not have the problems of administering power and that we do not even have the tactical problems - we would only have them in an arbitrary way - of stirring things up everyday in the life of the country. We have a different kind of problems because we are what we are, and I don't think it is at all abstract to ask the Radical Party (and I hope the Radical Party understands this) to perform a necessary action in qualifying itself as federalist. I wouldn't want to be accused in turn, as the whole country accused the Radicals of being abstract when they brought up the question of Church and State like tiny gadflies around an elephant. Well then, I wouldn't want the same accusations to be made to me from inside the party because I am proposing that we study the need for qualifying our party as clearly European federalist. However, why is it that despite all this I am convinced our party must continue its efforts? Because I believe that the frie
nds who have guided us until now are friends who are capable of accomplishing anything [...], I believe that we "average" Radicals are not up to doing much for the party and that these three years, in any case, have taught something even to those who have been guiding us - probably that the party is not an enormous one, anyone can propose to do a [...], but that a party requires the same peculiar passion, has the same punctual deadlines, needs the same precise efforts that the management or the organisation of a newspaper may require. A party requires leaders that love that kind of work, that love, organisationally as well, living the life of a party every day. I believe, Pannunzio (10), that if you have managed to present us and all of Italy with »Il Mondo , it is not only because you have a certain ideal kind of culture and positions, but also because you were formed by the newspaper life, among journalists, that you love this tool, you believe in it, your past is in it and this is what you best know how t
o do. All leaders know best the things they were trained in, and young or not, I believe that in any case those new to politics, those who have entered the game in the last seven, eight, or ten years, only after the Resistance in any case, are people who believe in the existence of a newspaper and its way of life, in the existence of organisations, of associations, whether partisan or not. This problem is extremely simple and banal. From its proclamation one should understand what the Radical Party is. Friends, as a party, it is still nothing at all. What exists are we Radicals, there is in the country an ideal assembly of Radicals who have various tools for working and influencing Italian life. What are these tools? What is the final equilibrium for which this assembly too acts and carries weight?
They have precise names: one tool is »Il Mondo , another is »L'Espresso , and yet another is »Gli Amici del Mondo which is nevertheless so different from »Il Mondo itself. Another tool may be this impalpable organisation of free-lance journalists, Radical journalists, who everywhere and in all possible ways manage to carry weight and to represent us to some degree. Several years ago we discovered that we have one last tool, modest, limited, which we ought to be able to use just as we use the others in the country's political life, and this is called "a party". A party, friends, follows a logic different from the logic of living day by day to which you have been accustomed by your education. How many times have we had discussions with the directors here in Rome on questions which seemed trifling! I have heard said: The party congress is postponed because the Socialists are holding theirs - let us see what happens; it is better not to create a press agency because who knows if the newspapers will print
these items; it is useless to imagine that we can find the money, because the money is a sacrifice that people we know, two or three people, manage to give us. This is an inexact, wrong, extremely wrong way of looking at the party (interruption) [...] of our friend on »La Stampa (11) in Turin, with our friend from the »Corriere della Sera (12), or friend X from »Avanti (13) for a day or two we accept publishing every evening what the Hon. Mr. Pacciardi feeds to the press through his news agency which will cost him more or less 10,000 lire a month, (interruption) But I think that we must make these people everywhere face this refusal. (There are, friends, perhaps fifty news agencies in Rome - excuse the parentheses - and often an agency is composed of a single deputy's messenger who has the ability to write down in half an hour a text or a speech of his deputy's and to circulate it in certain circles. It can start off as simply as that.) It is possible that the press will practice a conspiracy of silence
in our regard, day by day, but for this to be certain we must make it face the problem by pronouncing daily our [...] our political will. A party, friends, cannot express opinions once a week, or once a month; it must express them when the country, the political association, asks them to express it. The sense of a party cannot and must not lie in being only and above all a financial disbursement centre, but rather the party's centre can and must be every day a centre for indirect political guidance. Every day the party may make judgements on facts that seem unimportant but which make up the political life of the country day by day. A party is also made up of a certain strenuous internal dialectic, of a certain democratic mechanism. It is not to moralise that I [...] but it is a problem that exists. There must be organs of management which have daily responsibility, which pose the problem of confidence or no confidence. There must be organs of management which meet and obtain majority or minority votes, not f
or major or minor friendships. If for personal reasons someone cannot be a party executive there's no harm, he is not an executive, he cannot be an executive. The party has it rules, which are its own, clear, limited, modest, humble rules, just like the editorial department of a newspaper does where if one day, for personal reasons, an editor cannot go to work of two months, that person, without any blemish to his dignity and his ability, ceases to be an editor of that paper. These are the things which make up a party. They are little things. The money, this other great problem, is above all a problem of morals and custom. I think one cannot be a Radical without being aware that the party's centre does not necessarily have to give money to its periphery. Italy is not Rome, the economic forces, the economic circles, whether retrograde or not, exist strewn and constellated throughout Italy. The problem of modesty, the problem of honesty, the problem of independence that so often keep our friends from seeking s
ubsidies in their cities and provinces are the same problems that the party centre can and must have. And so the day in which in Turin or Milan, in Rome or Bari, one does not succeed in getting any money - well, at that moment it is perhaps unjust and superficial to ask Rome - as a rule - to take those steps which sometimes injure a person's dignity, which have not been taken, which have been considered impossible to take in the provinces. However, I must also [...] another condition: there is a way, there is a possibility of asking for money, of asking for financial energy without losing one's dignity. I think that if a party, a central organ, knows that this problem exists, accepts it and nominates someone to take on this responsibility, this person in the long run can procure for the Radical Party - aside from the sacrifices of which I spoke earlier - at least that minimum contact with that minimum of decent interests that do exist in our country and that can secure for us that little bit of oxygen which
is our daily need.
Therefore, friends, I know the risk which in the opinion of some of you I am certainly running by talking about organisation, a discourse that gets lost in a lot of little details. I advise you and warn you and beg you however to pay attention. Every time a problem is real it is political, and if I remember correctly what has happened in recent years when I have occasionally happened to arrive at your headquarters or to share in your battles either in Rome or in the provinces, I remember that these were the things I heard repeated every day: and if they had the dignity of personal discourses and personal confessions, if they would have at the congresses the dignity to make political requests and the dignity to make political diagnoses. I heard no one, or almost no one, despite all the friends I listened to, say "I no longer feel like a Radical because the party's political line doesn't work", but I heard many say "how can we be a party whenever we have this little problem or that other little problem".
When in chorus we hear that the problems are these, precisely these, there must surely be a way to express politically this collective mood, this sum of little things that announce their presence and seem to paralyse us. I have told you clearly what it is we can learn from the past and I am not the least afraid that they can attribute ulterior motives to me, because the ulterior motives that it might be possible to accuse me of are primary motives, clear and direct. I think that to solicit responsibilities is a duty when one has the will and the chance to maintain them. And so I want to inform those who in the past, in the face of analogous circumstances, have considered it possible to attribute to me - to me or to other friends - ambitions for leadership posts in the party, and I am very happy to say it in this assembly too: it is not ulterior motives, it is what I consider to be my duty, and I tell you most clearly that I shall ask the party and each of you individually to give me your vote of confidence o
r no confidence on several posts that can involve the life of the party leadership. Therefore no ulterior motives, but a custom which I wish were followed a little bit more among us too: when one criticises others one must have the courage to say "perhaps I am willing to undertake to do these things and pay this price". What will not do is the weariness with which one criticises and the weariness too with which one habitually applauds. This is a party which is seeing the confirmation of the reasons which gave it birth and it is in danger of wearing itself out for side issues. These side issues do are not interesting; Italian political life has shown us to have been right during all these years; we have had our losses and perhaps the commission was wrong in not naming them explicitly and expressly; but this does not matter, we still have the possibility of going on. The speech of La Malfa, the speech of De Martino (14) are the speeches we hear every day from our friends of other political circles. They expres
s the awareness that a Radical Party is by now a necessary and solid component of the life of the country and of the democratic left.
One more monition: in the Radical Party's potential for growth there are other things we must keep in mind. I do not intend to speak of them all, but only to call them to mind. I believe in reflecting on how the Communist crisis, that has surely taken place and in circles very near to us, has not in the least had repercussions in our favour (as a party), one can take the measure of [...] with respect to our future engagements. If we are a party that is also interested in the aftermath of the encounter between the Socialists and the Catholics, if we are a party that is preparing for the aftermath of the Communist Party crisis, we must ensure the existence of party structures and political life that can provide a refuge for those who arrive at the same political conclusions as we do, and that this refuge is our house. I believe this to be the problem that has presented itself to some of the ex Communists. Without naming names, I think it may present itself to this or that deputy of the democratic left, as
you well know. I also believe that this problem could also arise not for some Catholic schismatics - I don't believe in Catholic schisms - but for the exhaustion which will come about for the force of Catholic democratic potentials in Italy. There are a lot of "worn out" people and many possible "novices" for Italian politics. If the party wants to attract and prepare them it must truly be a new party, an active one. It can be such. And that is why I am present at this Congress: because if had not believed it I would not be here making my criticisms as well as my proposals. I would be, as so many others are by now, outside the Radical ranks in order to take their torments outside the Radical ranks, as is only right. The tormented exist in the same way as pacifists exist [...] At bottom it is not so terribly serious in itself if some of the tormented have lost their way; the essential thing is not to lose those who we aim to keep and those we aim to acquire. A party has, and must have, the desire to make new
proselytes, new adepts. This has been rather wanting: I would say that as Benedetti (15) wants to get new readers for »L'Espresso , the party, as an instrument of Italian political life, must have the desire for new members, must have the will to be a stronger organisation. I hope this Congress will succeed in instilling this, and in instilling it in each one of you.
----------------------------------------------------------------TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
1) »L'Espresso - A popular weekly review of politics, culture and economy founded in Rome in 1955.
2) Gli Amici del Mondo - The Friends of Il Mondo - A group of informally organised intellectuals - roughly equivalent to Britain's Fabian Society - connected with the weekly review »Il Monodo who debated pragmatic Italian problems rather than ideological questions.
3) La Malfa, Ugo - (Palermo 1903 - Rome 1979) Italian statesman, one of the founders of the Partito d'azione (Action Party) in 1942, he later joined the Republican Party (1948) and changed its physiognomy in the attempt to make of it the modern liberal party connected to the forces of production. He was the party secretary from 1965 to 1975 and then its president. He has held several ministerial posts and has been vice prime minister (1974 - 1976). He was one of the fathers of commercial liberalisation after the war.
4) Villabruna - One of the founders of the Radical Party.
5) Carandini, Nicolò - Scion of a noble Roman family, he was Italy's first ambassador to London after the war and one of the founders of the Radical Party.
6) Valiani, Leo - (Fiume 1909) - Writer, historian, Italian statesman. A Resistance leader, he was in 1943 one of the founders and most prominent leaders of the Partito d'Azione. A contributor and editorial writer for »Corriere della Sera . Named Senator for Life in 1980.
7) Rossi, Ernesto - (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian statesman and journalist. A leader of »Giustizia e Libertà [an anti-Fascist movement] he was arrested and convicted by the Fascists in 1930. He remained in prison or in confinement until the end of the war. With A. Spinelli he wrote the »Manifesto di Ventotene and led the European Federalist Movement in the fight for a united Europe. He was among the founders of the Radical Party. An essayist and journalist, he promoted from the pages of »Il Mondo a lively campaign against clerical interference in political life, against the economic potentates, industrial and agrarian protectionism, the concentration of public and private power, etc. His articles were collected into famous books (»I padroni del vapore etc.) After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962 and the ensuing rupture with the managing editor of »Il Mondo M. Pannunzio, he founded the review »Astrolabio from whose pages he continued his polemics. During his last years he establishe
d close ties with the "new" Radical Party with which he collaborated in launching the "Anti-Clerical Year" in 1967.
8) Piccardi - An attorney and political essayist, expert in juridical and institutional problems, who was one of the founders of the Radical Party.
9) Cardinal Ottaviani - An extremely eminent Catholic conservative (he died in 1979) who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a great antagonist of the Second Ecumenical Council.
10) 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.
11) La Stampa - The Fiat-owned Turin newspaper.
12) Corriere della Sera - The Milan newspaper generally considered to be the country's most authoritative and prestigious.
13) Avanti! - The official Socialist Party newspaper.
14) De Martino, Francesco - (Naples 1907) - Historian of law, university professor, statesman. Secretary of the PSI (Socialist Party) from 1964 to 1966 and from 1972 to 1976. Promoted the short-lived Unified Socialist Party (PSU) which fused the Socialists with the Social Democrats. Vice Prime Minister (1968 - 1972). After the Socialist's election defeat of 1976 he was replaced by Bettino Craxi in the famous meetings at the Midas Hotel in Rome.
15) Benedetti, Arrigo - (Lucca 1910 - Rome 1976) - Italian journalist and innovator of journalistic models from the beginning of the Fascist period. With the weekly »Omnibus , which was submitted to the rigours of Mussolini's censorship, he developed the techniques and editorial policy of the illustrated magazine. After the war he was managing editor of »L'Europeo and, most of all, he founded and ran »L'Espresso (1955-1963).
