ABSTRACT: Without claiming to offer a historical and political analysis, the file on the Radical Party compiled by the ADP furnish, notwithstanding some imprecision, a useful documentary basis for the chronological presentation of the major events regarding the Radical Party from 1955 to 1975.

For a more thorough analysis of this period in Radical history, other documents must obviously be utilised that are contained in the RADICAL PARTY ARCHIVE, and in particular "The New Radicals" (1318 > 1327).

(ADP - Political Documents Archive - The Italian Documents Publishers, 1975).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE BIRTH: December 11, 1955

The Radical Party - originally called the Radical Party of the Italian Democratic Liberals - was officially born December 11, 1955 during an assembly at the Cola di Rienzo Cinema in Rome. On the eve of the National Congress of the PLI [Italian Liberal Party] called for December 8, the national councillors of the party's left wing and several members of the old liberal centre signed an agenda in which it was stated that "after a thorough study of the political situation" the councillors had "decided to resign from the Liberal Party". They criticised the leaders of the PLI for "having subjected the party to the will of powerful monopolistic groups" and of "having debased its politics to defending special interests and categories", thus reducing the party, which had been "re-born in the Resistance and the battle against dictatorship and oppression", to a "mere apparatus at the service of a master, thus betraying "the glorious tradition of the Risorgimento" and the "noble hopes and vigorous proposals for re

newal" which had given rise to its re-constitution.

The dissident liberals, headed by the Hon. Mr. Cattani, who had been a minister under De Gasperi, and who, in reference to the recent attitudes of the PLI, reached the point of saying "I smell the odour of Fascism", thus constituted the new party on December 11 together with the decisive contribution of the right-wing faction of Popular Unity group (Piccardi and Valiani) and of the group of intellectuals contributing to the pages of "Il Mondo" [a well-known weekly, ed.] (Pannunzio, Carandini, Paggi, Pavolini, Libonati, to whom there was added Ernesto Rossi some time later).

The new political group, which was welcomed by the parliamentary left, especially by the PSI, excited hopes in some qualified youthful circles: thus there adhered to the PR the Ferrara, Sforzi, Pannella and Ungari group which had rallied round the periodical "Critica Liberale".

The politics of the new party at first showed itself to be directed at an independent search for a new ideological and political impetus on the part of the lay forces in the face of the massive presence of the Christian Democrats and the Communist hegemony on the ranks of the left. But there was no lack of immediate disagreements in the party among the proponents of that direction and those on the other hand, often coming from the Popular Unity group, who were more favourable to an opening towards the PSI. In the very first months of the PR's life - whose actions were almost exclusively entrusted to articles in "Il Mondo" and "L'Espresso" - that quarrel turned out to be decisive for the future developments of the new group. It was up to Piccardi in January 1956 to write in "Il Mondo" that "if one wants to exert effective political activity, one can not escape from an alternative: Anyone who believes that it is the task of a Socialist party to be the principal tool for transforming society should enrol d

irectly in the PSI, because any eventual dissent on this party's customs and its directives are a part of its inner dialectics; anyone, on the other hand, who is not of this opinion has no other choice but to find himself another political function".

In substance he was making an appeal for unity to the dispersed forces of the old Partito d'Azione to put them at the centre of a group of lay democrats of the left. Guido Calogero, in a letter published in "Il Mondo", assigned two primary functions to this propelling centre: to become from the start "the best centre for studies of reform reform and social and political planning" and at the same time "to work on the side for the organisational structure of the party itself".

The first goal seemed easy to realise, it being a question of a group of men of exceptional cultural and scientific value with the experience of the "Amici del Mondo" [Friends of the World] assemblies behind them, who also in the following years gave a precise orientation to the discussions of the most burning issues of Italian society with the indications they gave to the democratic left concerning the principles and practices for reaching a solution. But the second goal with its organisational character was more problematic, to the degree that no data were known on membership, even though later there was talk of 2,000 registered members.

The initial programme of the PR, as it appeared from the interests of the two Radical periodicals themselves, aimed at: a characteristic position for Italy in NATO and a re-launching of Europe; at the relations between Church and State and citizens of the State; at the efficiency of the public administration and the technical and cultural education of young people; at a battle against monopolies and "the centralisation of economic power in a few hands"; at the dismantling of the privileges based on the corporative structure; at aid "to the bottom layers of the populace who, not being organisable politically or in unions, are almost totally deprived of all economic and juridical protection: at the problems of agriculture and the mass of farm workers; at "the great unresolved problem of the Risorgimento"" for the conquest of political and moral leadership in Italy by receiving its impulse from "the prevalence in broad sectors of the West" of Radicalism, Labourism, and Liberal Socialism.

The first party organ to be established was a Secretariat with Pannunzio as secretary and Libonati, Paggi, Rossi, Valiani and Piccardi.

The PR had at first three strong points: its inspired weeklies, "Il Mondo" in particular; the modest party structure; and the Rome PR headquarters under the hegemony of the Cattani group. Noteworthy was the position of the Carandini group in Milan and also that of Villabruna at Turin which however was judged to have a meagre electoral and party following. Considered to be prestigious elements within the group were also Galli, Lili Marx and De Matteis in Rome, whereas no slight influence on the political orientation was exerted by the directors of the UGI [Unione Galiardico Italiano] Ferrara, Spadaccia, Rendi, Previtali and the more politicized figures Pannella and Roccella coming from the university organisation. The position of these latter, however, was polemical towards the "Mondo" group and they demanded that the party remain firmly independent from it in its judgement.

FROM 1956 TO 1957

During its first two years of activity, aside from the programmatic aspects mentioned above and which began to affect the political journalism of the democratic left, even the Catholic elements, what distinguished the party particularly was its more and more accentuated lay attitudes consummated in the autumn of 1957 in the quarrel over the Bishop of Prato which for some time dominated the Italian political debate. But Radical activity during the same period was marked above all by severe polemics concerning building-site speculation, especially in Rome, where the direct target of Radical accusations was the "Immobiliare", a company in which ecclesiastical circles were not involved. "L'Espresso" with its articles written by Gianni Corbi was particularly active in this latter fight.

With regard to the lay campaign which found Ernesto Rossi in the front line, the goals of the Radical Party were the following: "the defense of the State against any confessional incursions; true equality of all religions before the law; abolition of the system putting all schools on a par with state schools for the concession of licenses, diplomas and university degrees; completely lay instruction on all levels of the public schools; freedom of propaganda for birth control; divorce regulated according to the norms reigning in the most civilised countries".

1958

In this condition, and with the internal quarrels concerning relations with the PSI dropping off, the Radical Party faced the May 25, 1958 national elections with an agreement that the major Radical candidates would appear on the lists of the Italian Republican Party [PRI] according to particular criteria carried out on behalf of the PR by Max Salvadori. The 1958 election was not a success for the Radicals and none of the six deputies elected from the Republican lists was a Radical. While certain Radical circles were somewhat disgruntled because they felt that the PR had the right to at least one seat, Pacciardi's right wing of the PRI imputed their lack of success to an "imprudent alliance with the disunifying ex Action Party elements, champions of an out-of-date anti-clericalism".

1959

The first Radical Party National Congress was held in Rome in the hall of the Artists' Association in Via Margutta from February 27 - March 1, 1959. The PR's position was illustrated on behalf of the party Executive by Arrigo Olivetti. The PR had introduced two new elements in Italian politics: the first, distinctly political, was to accuse and fight the Christian Democrats to the very end; the other was methodological and consisted in studying thoroughly the programmatic questions. After having recalled all the PR's struggles to find its way in preceding years, Olivetti claimed for his party the merit of having aroused important critical revisions within other parties, thus promoting a new alliance among the Radicals, Republicans and Popular Unity beginning with the 1958 elections which "was a first attempt to unite the lay groups in hopes of a later alliance of the democratic and Socialist left". The debate was practically limited to those who maintained it would be more useful to change the party int

o a movement that would allow its members the chance to act as members of other, kindred parties which would have greater hopes of putting across Radical proposals, and those who believed the PR had its own function which it could not renounce "especially in view of the important coming battles against clerical-Fascism", which they considered binding after the formation of the Segni (1) government supported by the Parliamentary right including the MSI [neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement, ed.]

Furthermore the congress debated on the country's economic development and the relations between Church and State. On this latter issue various orators pointed out the need to maintain a firm lay position without indulging in useless and damaging anti-clerical excesses. The intra-party quarrels regarded the management of the party and the "crystallisation" of the executive posts. The younger members and Eugenio Scalfari were particularly active on this, the latter also being worried about delimiting the spheres of influence of various Radicals in view of the country's coming election battles.

At the end of the congress a motion was passed (unanimously except for a few abstentions) which dwelt on the analysis of the political situation, pointing out that "the clerical and conservative forces, after the failure of Fanfani's (2) timid and inadequate attempt to begin a policy of paternalistic reform, had decided that the moment was ripe for realising that alliance with the far-right and anti-constitutional wing which had for so long been supported by Catholic action and the economic right wing."

The motion concluded with noting with satisfaction "the Republicans' abandoning of the old centrist majority, the independence reached by the Socialist Party, the liberation of the most vital part of the Social Democrats from the seductions and ambivalences of ministerial propping and that today, in the face of greater dangers and aggressive adversaries, the country has available a complex of democratic-left political forces capable of waging to the end the fight for the independence of the state, for economic development, and for the intellectual and moral elevation of Italians".

The Congress ended by electing the National Council which, in turn, provided for electing the new executives who were: Boneschi, Cagli, Calogero, Carandini, Cattani, De Matteis, Fonda, Savio, Gatti, Leone, Libonati, Arrigo Olivetti, Oneto, Paggi, Pannunzio, Piccardi, Rossi, Scalfari, Serini and Villabruna. The party Secretariat was made up of Piccardi, Libonati, Arrigo Olivetti and Vice Secretary Eugenio Scalfari. This latter, together with Piccardi, assumed in effect the control of the party.

Slowly there began to develop within the Radical Party an orientation favourable to convergence with the PSI: its promoters were Scalfari and Piccardi himself, who at first had been one of the most vehement supporters of the Party's independence in opposition to the other sectors originating in Popular Unity. Against this trend stood Cattani, Carandini and Pannunzio with the entire "Il Mondo" group. Reservations against the new trend were also expressed by the "North and South" group (Compagnia and De Caprariis), the younger members headed by Ungari (who were among the promoters of the party schism), the Ferrara and Rodotà group who were called the "Radical right" and which were flanked by the ideas of Leo Valiani holding that the relations between the Radicals and the Socialists were to be set up and graduated according to Atlantic [Pact] policies and the general solidarity among the Western democracies. The "Il Mondo" group, the Radical right and figures such as Paggi and Valiani converged in their

opposition to Radicals joining the mass organisations controlled by the Communists.

1960

Nevertheless the Radical Party presented a united front in the general municipal elections of November 6, 1960 on the PSI list after a political agreement, and saw 61 of its candidates elected to city councils in the big cities.

This partial electoral success of the PR's executive cadres reopened the quarrels concerning the running of the party and the search for positions of strength for an eventual future seat in Parliament made them more marked. Particularly involved in this fight - and on the general line to follow - were Cattani and Piccardi in Rome and Scalfari and Carandini in Milan. Added to this was a sudden quarrel of Ernesto Rossi with the centre-left, and a few months later against Kennedy's policies which the majority of the Radicals supported.

1961

In this general situation the Pr's National Congress was held in Rome on May 26-28, 1961 which formally divided the party into three factions: one led by Marco Pannella which held that "the conquest of power by the conservative right or the clerical-Fascists in Europe" involved policies that recognised that "the Communist Party would necessarily become a great democratic force necessary for breaking the conservative balance"; another faction led by the major figures of the university sphere, worried that the Pannella line would end by destroying the independence of the bodies representing the students and reduce them to tools of the party factions, put the accent on the value of the liberal cultural and political tradition, but tending, as Giovanni Ferrara particularly sustained: a) towards the continuation of the dialogue with the Catholics in view of the formation of a centre-left majority; b) towards making the Radical Party the corner-stone of the democratic left to be gathered into a great alliance

from the PSI to the PRI with special attention given to the democratic lay forces. The ideas of this minority faction found, furthermore, a considerable number of sympathisers among the third and largest faction, in that sector, to be precise, that identified with the leaders of the old liberal left (Pannunzi, Paggi, Libonate, Villabruna, Olivetti, Cattani, Cagli and Serini) who ruled over the group of "notables" of the Radical movement and emphasised the formula of a Republican Front divided into two groups, one inspired by democratic-lay ideals and the other by Socialist ones.

The other part of the largest faction, led by Leopoldo Piccardi and Eugenio Scalfari, and which included the most committed of the marginal executives, the city councillors elected on the Socialist list and some residues of Popular Unity, indicated that it conceived the PR's role as rather like that of the bourgeois wing of the Socialists in pursuing "political action with an independent ideology and programmes whose logical outcome was for the rest the eventual confluence of the Radicals in Socialism favoured by a repetition of the 1960 election agreement" towards which this Radical sector decisively tended to the exclusion of all other kinds of alliances.

Despite the conflicting positions the Radical Congress ended with unity expressed for the idea of "renewal in a democratic sense of Italian society and its structures" which presupposed the PR's traditional programmes that by now were being advanced by all the Italian left. Unity was also achieved because of the attention everyone was giving to the coming national elections that then took place April 28, 1963.

In the voting the majority motion, expounded by Carandini, won 75 votes; that of the right-wing minority signed by Ferrara, Rodotà, Craveri, Jannuzzi, Gandolfi and Mombelli won 21; that of the left-wing minority presented by Pannella, Spadaccia, Rendi, Cattaneo, Roccella, Gardi and Sacerdoti won 35. Due to the voting system employed, this latter motion also won some votes from exponents of the other minority. On the other hand a part of the majority faction voted for the list presented by the right-wing faction which thus obtained 22 seats on the new National Council; 75 went to the majority list, 3 to the left-wing minority. The National Council grew from 72 to 100 seats. Forty nine of the councillors of the old NC were reconfirmed in their seats. Thirty nine elements were introduced into the majority list, among the many of the party's city councillors, most of them pro Socialist.

In its first meeting on March 3, the National Council elected a political executive drawn purely from the majority list in which there predominated elements of the old liberal left. The party Secretariat was entrusted to the triumvirate Olivetti, Libonati and Piccardi while Scalfari was confirmed as Secretary.

The climate of unity was however soon tarnished by strong disagreements over several actions initiated by Piccardi and Scalfari. In particular, in July 1961, there was an open quarrel of the "Il Mondo" group with the decision of the National Secretariat to make the Radical Party join the League of Democratic Municipalities that was ruled by the Communists and considered to be a "frontist organisation in character". But a more clear-cut split emerged in the meeting of the Central Executive in November 1961 which was also devoted to examining the prospective alliances in view of the coming elections. On that occasion two ideas were counterpoised: the first, supported by Piccardi, saw an agreement with the PSI as obligatory for the Radicals made necessary by the positive results obtained by both parties in the municipal contest of November 1960; the other, expounded by Cattani, wanted the party to remain free of any permanent tie inasmuch as its basic policy had to remain that of being an alliance of all t

he democratic left.

To this reason for dissent there was added in December 1961 the "Piccardi Affair" as a result of the accusation published by Renzo De Felice in his book "Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo" ["The History of Italian Jews Under Fascism"] that Piccardi participated in an Italo-German conference on the theme "Race and Law" held in Vienna in 1939. Piccardi defended himself by declaring he was cleared of any charges by a commission investigation to which he had submitted voluntarily in 1945, and by denying that he had actively participated in drawing up the introductory report to the conference.

On December 12, 1961, the PR Executive found itself having to face this question because, among other reasons, Piccardi had sent a letter of resignation to all the executive organs of the party. One part of the Executive maintained that they ought merely to take note of the resignations, thus rejecting the proposal of those who wanted an explicit declaration of solidarity with Piccardi. Since everyone insisted on maintaining his position and since furthermore there was disagreement on the basic political issues, the National Secretariat and the Central Executive resigned.

1962

The complex situation was studied by the National Council of the party during the June 20-21, 1962 session whose work opened after a difficult compromise was reached: the various groups had committed themselves to not bringing up the Piccardi affair, and these, together with his major supporter, Ernesto Rossi, were to abstain from participating in the National Council. In effect, the NC, avoiding all mention of the Piccardi affair, confronted the issues of the centre-left and the Radical position with regard to that formula. Scalfari, proposing himself as the new majority leader and toning down the extreme accents of the Piccardi-Rossi line, re-affirmed the need of ever-closer ties between Radicals and Socialists in view of the fight to be waged in favour of realising the centre-left policy.

This idea was vehemently fought by Leone Cattani who, calling back to mind the independent ideas of the Radical Party, warned against facile enthusiasm for the new political course that could put the party's very existence in danger. But others, while rejecting the idea of unity with the Socialists, pronounced themselves in favour of establishing a republican front.

With the confrontation of the two lines, the Council barely managed to pass a unified motion (54 to 51) proposed by the Carandini and Ferrara-Rodotà-Jannuzzi groups which was averse to an organic alliance with the PSI and in favour of a wide democratic left alliance. The success of the motion, that seemed destined to remain in the minority, also because of the effect of the resignations from the Radical Party announced on January 10, 1962 by the editor of "Il Mondo", Mario Pannunzio, and the editor of "L'Espresso" Arrigo Benedetti, was favoured by the abstention of Marco Pannella's Radical Left faction which stated that it was not interested in the Council's political battle but only in convening a new National Congress which they considered the only place suitable for defining the party's basic directions. The National Council, in which Scalfari and Villabruna had joined ranks for an organic alliance with the PSI, accepted the request for a special congress formulated by the extreme left faction whose

attitude turned out to be decisive for the establishment of the new majority, and in the end invited Pannunzio and Benedetti to rejoin the party.

The party's executive organs came out of the Council totally modified: the resigning triumvirate (Libonati, Olivetti, Piccardi) was followed by a Cattani Secretariat, whereas the Executive's Piccardian members were replaced by Calogero, Valiani, Carandini, Paggi, Cattani, Simonelli, Antonelli, De Matteis, Leone, Libonati, Olivetti, Virgilio, Dragone, Scalfari, Oneto, Villabruna, Ferrara, Gatti, Marx, Rodotà, and Luzzatto.

After February 16 when the party Secretariat announced that the Radicals were in essence satisfied with the formation of the new government but expressing some reservations with the school policy that had been stated and the presence in the ministry of certain men "notoriously adverse to the centre-left or who only supported it tepidly", the conflicts within the party began to sharpen again. Secretary Cattani was forced to call another meeting of the National Council for March 23. During this session Eugenio Scalfari proffered a letter of resignation from solidarity with Piccardi. All attempts to exorcise a party schism because of a personal case turned out to be vain.

The National Council began on March 24 with a severe report from Cattani who claimed that Piccardi's presence was incompatible with the ideals and traditions of the Radical Party. Immediately afterwards, Piccardi defended himself rejecting the accusations made against him and affirming his long fight against Fascism. These two speeches set the theme and the limits of the debate that followed which went on for two days. Without even waiting for any kind of vote to be taken, Cattani, followed by the "Il Mondo" group, concluded his reply by announcing his resignation from the party. This fracture was followed by many individual resignations based on political reasons and weariness of the internal situation. Thus the Piccardi-Villabruna-Rossi group found themselves the masters of the Radical Party. The National Council, which is to say the part of it that remained, elected a new Central Executive composed of Ascarelli, Balestrieri, Bodrero, Cagli, Carbone, Dragone, Gardi, Garofalo, Ghersi, Lo Pane, Mellini

, Piccardi, Roccella, Rossi, Sorentino, Teodori, Turone, Veneziani, Villabruna and De Maio who, in turn, entrusted the National Secretariat to the Hon. Mr. Bruno Villabruna.

According to Pannella there was no doubt that among Italian statesmen only the Hon. Mr. Amendola, who had proposed a single Italian leftist party, had shown that he grasped the full breadth of the critical problem of renewal and Socialist unity in the lay spheres to the left of the DC.

On June 30 the PR Executive disseminated a communique in which it expressed hope that the 4th Congress of the League of Municipalities which was to begin the next day in Florence would end with the strengthening of the League and the confirmation of unity among democratic administrators.

In a communique dated August 19, the Radical Executive emphasised that twenty years of politics based on the practice of accords with the Christian Democrats or the prospects of dialogue with the Catholics had weakened the left, aggravated its divisions, furnished "alibis and cover for the clerical party, that it was by now time to look for a basis for renewal of the unity of the democratic left and that, precisely in regard to this fundamental goal, there were no possible short-cuts: "the policy of collaboration and dialogue with the Catholics - in the opinion of the PR - only serves in the last analysis to delay the victory of democratic and Socialist ideals".

In seeking a new unity for all the Italian left, the Radicals tried to keep open a dialogue with a sector of the PCI, which however did not give much importance to the now meagre substance of the Radical organisation. The PR's few remaining cadres in subsequent months tried to put the spotlight on their existence as a movement of opinion by calling to attention to the problems of the malfunctioning of the state administration and principally to the question of divorce which had come back to centre stage politically with the presentation by the Socialist Deputy Loris Fortuna of a divorce bill which, however, was limited to a few special cases.

1966

To emphasise their own commitment to the problem, the PR executives in the spring of 1966 organised debates on divorce in several large towns of the peninsula inviting the Hon. Mr. Fortuna as well as representatives of the major Italian parties. But the Radical initiative did not find much favour in some Communist spheres.

During the municipal elections of June 12, which involved several large cities, the PR wanted to test itself by putting some of its own candidates on the list of the PSIUP [Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria, or the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity, ed.].

On August 25, following polemics raised by the Communist and Communist-line press, the party Executive put out a communique denying that there had been or could be any points of collaboration between the Radicals and the Hon. Mr. Pacciardi's "New Republic" movement. And then, with regard to certain statement made in the Communist organ "L'Unità", the Executive explained that although the PR was without doubt a minority group it was by no means dissolved nor had disappeared from the national political scene. "If the thesis in this regard that was stated in "L'Unità" were true", the declaration continued, "it would mean that the representatives of the Communist Party would have been collaborating, as has often occurred in recent years, with a non-existent political group".

1967

The Radical Party began 1967 with a quite intensive anti-clerical propaganda campaign, wall posters in particular,

which would characterise its activity for the twelve months. The slogan was, in fact: "1967 - The Anti-Clerical Year". The two major issues were the introduction of divorce and against tax evasion by the Holy See. And on these themes the Radicals promoted conferences and round tables in various parts of the country.

During the visit to Italy of the Polish President Ochab, on April 6 the PR sent its greetings to the representative of this traditionally friendly nation which for years within the Socialist sphere expressed aspirations for peace and democracy. In particular, the greetings were meant to express the concern of Italian lay democrats for the "claims of the clergy" in Poland where the proposals of a concordat were not beeing advanced in, teh opinion of the Radicals, in terms of more freedom for all, but of demandss, privileges, and guarantees on the part of a particular organisation.

On April 19 the PR's National Secretary, Marco Pannella, brought an action for defamation against the author of an item published in No.15 of the PSIUP's weekly "Mondo Nuovo" and against the "responsible editor" (3) of the publication itself conceeding the widest faculty for proof. The article affirmed that Pannella, during the demonstrations in Rome that accompanied the visit of the American vice president [Hubert] Humphrey had watched from the balcony of the headquarters of "Nuova Repubblica" in the company of youths belonging to this movement and had mocked and provoked the demonstrators. A communique released by the PR Executive explained that Pannella found himself there for a debate on divorce and that among the eleven PR members who were arrested on bail and accused for clashes with the police "there was also Pannella who was detained at Rome's First District police station from 20 hours until past 24 hours". The communique recalled the long collaboration of the two parties which also took the fo

rm of election agreements and claimed that the article in "Mondo Nuovo" was the most recent episode of a campaign the periodical was against the lay actions of the PR.

From May 11 to 14 the PR's Congress was held in the Sala Bossi in Bologna with the participation of over 200 delegates. The theme of the congress was: "The Radicals For A Lay Alternative". National Secretary Pannella held the opening report which was not only an affirmation of the need to fight for a truly lay state but also for a study of problems that regarded

the unity of the left and the anti-militarist fight. The speaker also talked of the completely new statute that the out-going Executive was proposing to the assembly, based on the following points: a federative party and structure (the regional federations transformed into independent parties); completely open and published party budgets; the only congressional decisions binding on members to be those passed with a three-fourths majority; freedom from all party discipline for elected candidates from the moment in which they begin to function as representatives of the people; party congresses to be held at fixed times and places.

Pannella reiterated the his opposition to the centre-left formula, but also to sectarian judgements against the leftist groups participating in the government. The Hon. Mr. Boldrini of the PCI also made a report on the left-wing's foreign and military policies; the Hon. Mr. Ballardini of the PSU [Partito Socialista Unificato] on the affirmation of civil rights and the politics of the left; the Hon. Mr. Anderlini, independent Socialist, on the goals and alignments of the left's economic policies.

The work of the congress involved the meetings of three commissions charged respectively with an internationalist policy of the European left, with civil rights and with the new party statute.

On the issues of international policy there prevailed an orientation in favour of the PR's initiatives in the fight against militarism, also in consideration of the difficulty that a minority party would encounter in contributing directly on the diplomatic level. There was some resistance and criticism of the norms of the new statute stating that congressional decisions would be binding on party members only if approved by three-fourths of the delegates and that requiring publication of the budgets.

During the second day of the congress, the Hon. Mr. Loris Fortuna of the PSU made a speech in which he agreed that there were problems common to the entire Italian left but he was not optimistic about the chances for common, united action in the short term. According to this speaker, the reasons for the "present lack of unity and general confusion" were to be found in the differing conceptions of the fight for peace and freedom and even of the lay state. Latching on to the question of divorce, Mr. Fortuna stated that for this issue too, "aside from the agreements that had so laudably been shown, if there were no acceptance of a common fight for an independent and lay state which, instead, was put into question "on the one hand by the

Church's propensity for Papal encyclicals, and on the other hand by the concession to the so-called Catholic left of a separate administration for religious marriages, reserving the introduction of divorce only for civil marriage, the unity of "divorce reform" itself would remain meaningless.

Senator Tullia Carrettoni of the Independent Socialist Movement, made a speech emphasising the need for a real confrontation of ideas in order to work out a common platform, based however not "on the politics of events", but on "the politics of choices". A working out of this kind would, according to the speaker, have to pass through the general renewal of the entire left, judging as useful the contributions of "bellicose groups" and of "small parties" like the Radicals as well.

At the end of the discussions on the various reports and speeches, there was a vote on the final documents concerning the issues discussed and a final motion. This motion, passed with two votes contrary and two abstentions, called upon "all democratic citizens to support the overcoming of nationalism, of clericalism and of militarism in the country, as well as the fight for civil rights, prospects in which the Congress had identified and confirmed basic tools for an effective transformation of society and the state."

In renewing the officers, the journalist Gianfranco Spadaccia was elected Party Secretary in place of the out-going Marco Pannella who was not able to continue in the post. Elected to the Executive were: Marco Pannella, Angiolo Bandinelli, Carlo Oliva, Aloisio Rendi, Massimo Teodori, Franco Sircana, Lorenzo Strik Lievers, Luigi Del Gatto, Giovanni Bombaci, Giuseppe Loteta, Stanzani, Luca Boneschi, Domenico Baroncelli, Leonida Balestrieri; Gianfranco Donadei, Marcello Baraghini, Silvio Pergamano, Gianni Lanzini, and Stefano Silvestri.

Andrea Torelli was elected as party Treasurer. In an interview with "L'Astrolabio", Marco Pannella showed his satisfaction for the space given in the press and "even" on radio and television to the party's National Congress. Referring to the work and conclusions of the congress, Pannella emphasised that "there had been discussion of a new party for civil rights that has emblazoned on its programme for immediate struggles, as a political condition and qualification, goals such as divorce, sexual education (and freedom), conscientious objection, total freedom of the press, of demonstrations and thought, denunciation of the Concordat, the liberation of the family, the schools and social security".

Pannella also wanted to make clear how the Congress, as an alternative to the present regime, indicated almost unanimously "the anti-clerical, the anti-militarist and anti-bureaucratic fights as the particular choices of the PR in the common strategy of the left". As a consequence the congress had unanimously expressed its opposition to the centre-left; furthermore, Pannella continued, "the objective of a united alternative to the DC appeared to us to be connected to a less parliamentarian and official vision of the country's complex political situation".

With regard to the new statute Pannella affirmed that it represented "an open, federative and libertarian party, and thus profoundly unitarian, not only for the value we give to political objectives we have chosen, but for the method and structure through which they are proposed and pursued".

On May 19 the PR Executive made an appeal in which "in view of the serious international situation we call upon all democratic forces to renew the anti-militarist and pacifist struggle in Italy with the goal of transforming military structures into civilian structures for peace".

Also on May 19, the PR's national youth commission announced its adherence to the protest demonstration "against the unjustified invasion by American troops of the demilitarised zone on the border with North Vietnam".

On May 24 a meeting was held on one of the terraces overlooking the Altar of the Fatherland [better known in English as the Victor Emanuel Monument, ed.]. Pr representatives, writers and journalists, democrats, pacifists and anarchists participated in the event which took for its theme "So that there may be no more wars nor unknown soldiers".

The communique released by the PR stated that the purpose of the demonstration and the debate was "to furnish concrete evidence of how democratic forces can express themselves and work for peace while maintaining complete respect for the Constitution exercising their own civic duties and rallying round the most serious and decisive pages of our history and our traditions".

On July 11, 1967 it was announced that the IVth Radical Party Congress would be held in Florence from November 3 to 5, 1967 on the general theme "The Left Against the Regime". The following speakers had agreed to address the Congress: The Hon. Luigi Anderlini, independent Socialist, member of the Chamber of Deputies' Budget Commission; the Hon. Renato Ballardini of the united PSI-PSDI and the president of the Chamber's Commission on Constitutional Affairs; the Hon. Arrigo Boldrini of the PCI, member of the Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies; The reports of the three members of Parliament would regard respectively the economic policy of the left, the policy of the left in the area of civil rights, the foreign and military policy of the left.

On August 3, 1967 "Agenzia Radicale" gave ample coverage to the forthcoming IVth Party Congress making it clear above all that "in setting the date the Executive had held to the final decisions of the IIIrd National Congress (Bologna, May 12-14, 1967) and to the norms of the new statute that provides for a yearly congress at a fixed date in the first week of November.

On the premise that "the debate would have to take up again and develop the results of the IIIrd National Congress which had definitively won important new departures for the party, and confirming the new political line that the Radicals had already tried out in preceding years", "Agenzia Radicale" summed up the conclusions of the Bologna Congress, and that is: a) "the fight for civil liberties that has made the Radical Party one of the promoters and major protagonists of the fight for divorce and which has seen it actively occupied with the constant insistence on democratic legislation in support of conscientious objectors against the authoritarian ordinances and structures that survive and consolidate themselves in the schools, the behaviour of the police, the public administration, places of work, in the very organisations for free time recreation themselves; b) the anti-clerical battle; c) internationalism and federalism; d) anti-militarism and pacifism".

After stating that the Bologna Congress "had also affirmed the policy of a lay alternative, democratic and Socialist, which the party has been coherently following since February 1963 and the decided opposition to any form of collaboration or of dialogue with either the clerical party or the Catholic forces that accept directly (the Christian Democratic left) or indirectly (ACLI - Italian Association of Christian Workers) the

concept of Catholic political unity which finds expression in the Christian Democrats and the support the ecclesiastical hierarchy affords to this party", the Agency underlined how "with the new statute approved by the IIIrd National Congress, the party provided itself with norms of organisation and democratic functioning that constitute an absolutely new departure in Italian political organisation".

The Radical organ clearly stated the goals of the IVth Congress in writing that after a long period of almost five years in which the continuity and the re-launching of the party were entrusted above all to the independent work of the sections, the innovations of the congress's conclusions required a collective commitment to debate and political action that could not be considered to have been completed at the Bologna Congress. To become aware of this it was enough, on the one hand, to compare the decisions of the IInd Congress of 1961, and on the other hand to see and keep in mind our enormous organisational difficulties. The November Congress would have offered an opportunity to advance the progress of Radical political activity at the same speed as the development of the debate begun at Bologna. The IVth National Congress was intended to be another basic step in the work of reorganising the party and its programme of action. Precisely because of the delay in its being held, the Bologna Congress had

almost had the role of a Radical second constituent assembly, above all involved in the work of deciding on the great battles and new statutory norms. It was necessary to choose those national initiatives which, in the spirit of the statute, would constitute a common commitment of all Radicals until the end of 1968. And finally, it was necessary to define the specific and original contribution of the left as well as to create the basis of a complete enforcement of the statute by ensuring the development and success of the membership campaign which the Executive launched with this document at the same time as the congress was called.

On August 10 "Agenzia Radicale" came out with a special issue revolving around the slogan "1967 - The Anti-Clerical Year" where, besides the strictly anti-clerical polemics, several other evidently predictable positions were clarified regarding divorce, the Concordat and school problems.

On September 1 three executives of the Radical Party were charged with "publicly offending the head of a foreign state and unauthorised demonstrations". They were the PR Secretary Gianfranco Spadaccia and Profs. Aloisio Rendi and Angiolo Bandinelli. Charged together with then was Carlo Silvestro, one of the youths who had participated in a demonstration organised by the Radicals against the Greek regime and King Constantine.

On September 20 the agreements made among the speakers of the parliamentary groups of the Chamber majority were judged negatively by the Executive Council of the Radical Party. The latter in a communique emphasised that since "in the order of priority established for the Parliament's work the Fortuna bill for instituting divorce in Italy was ignored: [we] bring to public attention this further proof of the lack of independence and responsibility in the face of the need for a renewal in a lay sense of our country which was furnished by the speakers of the Republican and Socialist parliamentary groups". The Radical Executive Council appealed to all lay democrats, and in particular to the PSU, the PRI and their voters, members, executives or members of Parliament, for a timely and decisive disavowal of "this behaviour, thus restoring to the parliamentary debate its dignity in the face of the persistent attempts of prevarication and sabotage practised by the forces of the clerical regime".

The IVth National Congress of the PR was held in Florence on November 4-5 on the theme "The Left Against The Regime".

Party Secretary Spadaccia began his speech affirming that the evolution of Italian politics in recent years, even aside from the substance of the Italian state itself as it was presented in the Constitution, justified the name of regime given to the situation at that time, and was due to the hegemony of the DC in Italian political life and to the subaltern role of the left. The Radicals, Spadaccia continued, by promoting the alternative of the entire left as a group to the DC and the clerical state, made themselves the spokesmen of the need for renewal of Italian society. The recent reform of the party in a federative sense was to be understood in this lay and libertarian framework. The Congress then heard the reports of the Hon. Messrs Boldrini, Ballardini and Anderlini on economic policy, international and military policy, and civil rights. These were read by three delegates to the congress because the three MPs had not been able to attend in person. The second and last day of the Congress revolved ar

ound three reports made by Pergameno, Pannella, Felice Accame, Boneschi and Carlo Oliva.

"Agenzia Radicale", in a note on the end of December 1967, commented favourably on the agreement made between the PCI and the PSIUP for the presentation of common candidates for the Senate. The note said that the Radicals were not accustomed "to underestimating the problems of alliances, unlike other leftist minority groups". However, the note explained, within the leftist alliance there still remained open problems of method and content that the left would have to face.

1968

At the beginning of February 1968 the PR's Executive Commission decided to present in the 1968 national elections independent lists for "civil rights, for divorce, and for creating a moral and lay state". Besides well-known Radicals the lists were to include representatives of pacifism, divorce and religious minorities along with the journalists Jannuzzi of "L'Espresso" and Loteta of "L'Astrolabio".

"Notizie Radicali" of February 14 carried an article which not only reported the PR's refusal to have its executives as candidates on the lists of other leftist parties, but also a clear-cut condemnation of the declaration of Italian bishops inviting Catholics to vote for the DC en masse.

In the following days the presentation of the lists "for civil rights" which, after a controversy with the Ministry of the Interior, took on the PR symbol. The PR Executive Commission, noting this situation, published a pre-election document in which it again proposed for the Vth Legislature the issue of a united Italian left as an alternative to the DC, criticised the policies thus far followed by the leftist parties, in particular by the PSU and the PRI, for their meagre attention to the questions of creating a moral and lay state. On March 29 it was made known that in all the electoral districts, except for Milan, Rome and Pescara, the Radical Party would stand by the PCI and the PSIUP.

In relation to the election results for the legislature of March 19, the National Secretary of the Radical Party published on May 23 a declaration in which it affirmed that the vote had determined a further radicalisation to the left of Italian politics which the Party considered to be a positive and coherent consequence of the radicalisation of the political fight that had previously been determined in the country. The leftist parties, the communique affirmed, had taken advantage of this situation and obtained a result that, rather than being a premium for their policies, was the expression of the leftist voters' clear desire for a leftist alternative. Whereas the unified Socialists - the communique continued - had rightly paid a high price for their collaboration with the clerical forces, the PCI and PSIUP were wrong in considering this result a success for their policy of dialogue. On the contrary, the vote showed that only a clear political battle for an alternative in the country could create the

conditions for an advance of the left.

PSI and PSIUP had advanced on all fronts, but their successes were more marked and clear where the workers' struggle had been taken up again. If there could be no doubt of the influence that this revival of the workers' struggle and the agitation of the mass students' movement had on these results, the communique continued, less apparent but not less important was the Catholic dissent which was born and developed along the declared lay lines of the new left. Equally important, if hard to evaluate, was the belief of the Radical Party Secretary that the divorce battle had allowed thousands of citizens to become aware of the injustice of their civil condition. A proof of this, according to the party, was furnished by the success of the preferential votes obtained by Fortuna in the PSU lists in Milan,

an indication considered significant when compared "to the insuccess of his party". The communique concluded by asking the leftist opposition not to neglect the meaning of the blank votes.

The results of the elections for the legislature were then examined by the Radicals in a conference held in Milan on May 25.

On June 2, on the occasion of the military parade in Rome, a group of young Radicals organised a demonstration against the armed forces. As a consequence police agents took 14 youths into custody on bail, among them Gianfranco Spadaccia, Secretary of the Radical Party, who were subsequently charged with publicly insulting the armed forces. The Radical Party released a communique affirming among other things that it had sent a mandate to its lawyers to place charges with the judiciary for the behaviour of the police on June 2 and called the attention of the other parties to the episode, asking them for solidarity. "It is in no way admissible", the communique stated, "that a party, even if not represented in Parliament, should be limited in so clamorous and illegitimate a way in its activities to the point of finding its headquarters under police custody and free access to it denied". (The party headquarters was located in Via XXIV May where a part of the incident took place.)

On August 21, after the invasion of the Soviet Army and other Communist countries of Czechoslovakia, Marco Pannella of the Radical Party Executive declared that the aggression of the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact satellites against Czechoslovakia was above all an aggression against Socialism and all revolutionary and libertarian ferment in the world, as well as a betrayal of the Vietnamese people against imperialism and colonialism. "This aggression confirms that the armies of the so-called Socialist republics are, like all other armies, nothing but instruments of civil war, oppression and authoritarianism against the people and against the fight for emancipation of the great libertarian and Socialist masses of the world". Pannella continued by affirming that just as in Greece the American military and ruling classes had used NATO as the essential tool for imposing the dictatorship of the colonels, so the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia had proved itself to be not the expression of the will and the need f

or defense of the Socialist peoples, but a tool of anti-Socialist oppression and aggression. Pannella ended by asking the left to condemn unanimously and to fight without quarter those responsible for "this shameful and criminal enterprise by standing by the Czechoslovakian people in its fight for creating a Socialist society for freedom and against imperialism in all its forms, against authoritarianism, militarism, and the dogmatism that tragically seem to be making inroads everywhere in the world."

On August 26 several representatives of the Radical Party began a hunger strike in support of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. On the same day a party communique took hopeful notice of "the comforting news arriving from the negotiation under way in Moscow with the legitimate representatives of the Czechoslovakian State and Communist Party" asking the political forces and democratic public opinion not to demobilise at the moment in which at the negotiating table it is necessary for the forces of the Socialist ranks to clearly admonish the representatives of the Soviet state. The communique added that in Italy and in France " the just decisions of the Communist parties" strengthened the popular and Socialist character of the condemnation of the action of the Warsaw Pact countries. The Radical Party, in conclusion, asked the left not to limist itself to "just declarations and analyses" but to immediately allow organised demonstrations of the democratic masses.

Marco Pannella, the journalist Marcello Baraghini, the student Antonio Azzolini, and the school teacher Silvana Leonardi, on September 28, after returning from Sofia where they had organised a demonstration against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact countries, told of their adventures in a press conference held at Radical Party headquarters in Rome. Pannella emphasised that the action, organised in connection with the "War-Resisters' International" of London, had been completely successful on the technical as well as the political level and observed that the other demonstrations, organised at the same time in three other capitals of countries occupying Czechoslovakia, had been concrete in nature, in total contrast to the extreme prudence with which Italy, the PCI and the PSIUP had indicated their dissent. The action of the Italian Radicals had nevertheless provoked the intervention of the Bulgarian police which had first taken them into custody and then expelled them from the country.

In relation to these facts, the Hon. Mr. Loris Fortuna, of the PSU steering committee in the Chamber, on September 26 had requested the release of the Italians in a query made to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On the same day a delegation from the Radical Party had gone to the Bulgarian Embassy to explain to the representatives of the Bulgarian government the meaning of the demonstration of the four arrested people.

From November 2-4 the Vth National Congress of the Radical Party was held in Ravenna. The larger number of speakers, even while recognising in principle the opportuneness of political action taken together with leftist parties, rejected the possibility of binding themselves in a permanent way to any of these parties of which, on the contrary, they criticised the centralised structure, the inelastic nature of the relationship between the base and the leadership, the dogmatism and the too slow assimilation of the concrete problems of the country. The delegates to the congress decided to give a federative structure to the party to allow freedom of action to the various local groups, limiting themselves in the final motion to fixing the fundamental lines of action: the fight for civil rights, divorce, birth control. The congress maintained the need for articulated action "against the regime which is supported by the bourgeois clerical forces, by private neo-capitalist structures, by state capitalism and co

rruption." In particular, the rejection of state capitalism was indicated as an element for diversification by the parties of the Marxist left. The Congress also took under consideration the declared intention of "Azione Cattolica" [Catholic Action] to adopt the referendum as a tool for the abrogation of divorce in case Parliament should decide to adopt it. Apropos of this, the delegates almost unanimously approved a document declaring that in the case of the referendum institution being approved, recourse would be made to public vote for the abrogation of the Concordat. On the same issue, it was decided to send a message to Carlo Arturo Jemolo inviting him to resign from the commission nominated by the Leone government for the study of a simple revision of the Concordat. At the end of its work the Congress, on the suggestion of the out-going Secretary Gianfranco Spadaccia, elected Mauro Mellini as National Secretary, one of the prime promoters of the Italian League for Divorce. The new Treasurer elected was

Angiolo Bandinelli while, besides the ex national secretaries Pannella and Spadaccia, the National Executive was composed of

-----------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Segni, Antonio (1891-1972) Christian Democrat, jurist and statesman, he was twice prime minister and later President of the Republic.

2) Fanfani, Amintore (1908 -) Christian Democrat, erstwhile prime minister and party secretary.

3) Responsible editor - A position required by Italian law for all publications of an editor who takes legal responsibility for all items appearing in the publication but who otherwise does not participate in producing it.