ABSTRACT: Without claiming to offer a historical and political analysis, the file on the Radical Party compiled by the ADP furnishes, 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).

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1969

On April 16, during a press conference, Mellini proposed a national referendum for the abrogation of the Concordat between the Italian state and the Catholic Church. The Radical leader announced that this initiative would be adopted as soon as the Chamber had approved the law putting into effect art. 75 of the Constitution on abrogative referendums which had already been passed in the Senate. Mellini further more announced that the collection of necessary signatures would begin "at once" by the "organisations of the people who share certain judgements on clericalism in our country". Mellini concluded by stating that thee anti-concordat position was shared by various politicaL groups". The VIth Radical Party Congress was held in Milan on November 1-3. Many members and representatives of the PCI and the PSIUP participated. When the work ended, a large majority passed the policy motion expounded by Marco Pannella which emphasised the need to go ahead with the action to abrogate the Concordat between Sta

te and Church and to develop the anti-militarist initiative as well as taking up again the action against the anti-divorce faction. It then confirmed the definite condemnation of the centre-left and all forms of collaboration with the DC which it defined as "clerical-classist" and ended by underlining the fight for civil rights in order to end oppression and exploitation. Angiolo Bandinelli was elected Party Secretary; Roberto Cicciomessere, treasurer; and members elected to the Executive were Teodori, Pannella, Mellini, Ramadori, Strik Lievers, Del Gatto, Rendi, Pesci, Spadaccia, Landi, Sabatini, Pergamo, and Dessy.

Radical Party Secretary, Angiolo Bandinelli, emphasised on November 15, 1969 that as soon as the law was passed establishing the referendum the Radical Party would present a request for a popular referendum to abrogate the Concordat. And he added that this initiative intended to represent a popular alternative to diplomatic negotiations with the Holy See which were destined to end with a strengthening of the concordat system which Fascism established with the clerical power on which it was based. As a result of the suicide of Giuseppe Pinelli during his interrogation at Milan's police headquarters as a suspect in the December 12 bombing attacks, the PR Secretary Bandinelli asked that full light be thrown not only on the terrorists and their instigators, but also on the methods of police interrogations, arrests, and searches, and he criticised the declaration of the police official Calabresi who stated that Pinelli's gesture was equivalent to an admission of guilt.

1970

In a subsequent declaration made on January 7, 1970 together with the ex party secretaries Pannella and Spadaccia, Bandinelli affirmed with regard to those accused of the terrorist attacks that there was "manifestly (a continued) degrading of the accused to mere passive objects of an objective, even if not intentional, manipulation of truth", thus reinforcing the doubts about the operation of the police and the judiciary. The Radical Party, the declaration concluded, thus officially requested "that the duties of democratic defense be immediately respected in substance, leaving aside any use of tactics that risk becoming an unacceptable co-existence with a system that should rather be decisively denounced and replaced with a more clearly constitutional and republican legitimacy".

A communique of the party's National Secretariat made known that on February 11, 1970, in response to an appeal from the Radical Party and the Italian Association for Religious Liberty (ALRI), in about 30 Italian cities anti-Concordat demonstrations were held for the first time. Besides the National School Union CGIL and the PSI's and PRI's national youth federations, there participated Catholic groups and periodicals such as "Questitalia" and numerous grass roots circles and associations throughout Italy.

Furthermore, three days earlier the party had affirmed that as soon as the negotiations for a four-party government would open (on February 7, in fact, Rumor's one-party DC government had resigned) it would request the quick approval of a popular referendum to abrogate the Concordat between Church and State.

With another note on March 9, having denounced the "Vatican's blackmailing pressure" on the composition of the new government and on the divorce question (see: political activity), the Radical Party maintained that the most ample support and stimulation had to be given to the daily struggle of the Italian Divorce League (LID) whose competence it would be in the final instance to evaluate "any solution on this fundamental issue which might result from the negotiations for a government". But if to resist was a "new idea" for the Italian ruling classes - the note continued - for public opinion it was now time to pass to the counteroffensive, to contest the Holy See's "having abused the ecclesiastical jurisdiction concerning matrimony and having installed a de facto clerical administration of divorce by means of multiplying annulments".

With regard to the formation of the new Rumor government announced the previous day, Party Secretary Bandinelli on March 28 released a declaration in which he said that the crisis that "unluckily" had concluded with the new four-party government was more than anything the crisis of a twenty-year-old political balance in which the DC and its methods of classist and clerical administration of Italian society had been fundamental. The composition of the new government, he added, was only a momentary halt in the Christian Democratic regime's crisis inasmuch as it would be more difficult every day to repress with violence or trials the movements for renewal and struggle which were shaking up the country and of which the LID, a united mass movement, was a "truly extraordinary example".

On May 9 and 10 the VIIth Special Congress of the Radical Party was held in Rome, convened by unanimous decision of the Executive with the aim of studying the situation in view of the regional and local elections on June 7. The report was made by Marco Pannella who, after criticising the fact that in the electoral campaign in progress the mass information media were being reserved only for the parties represented in Parliament with the ensuing exclusion of other political groups, went on to analyse the attitudes of the various parties on the issues to which the Radicals were committed and he evaluated positively the attitude of the PSI with regard to the Concordat. After an intensive debate that lasted two days, the Congress decided not to present its own list of candidates nor to put candidates on the lists of other parties, but to ask the voters to cast blank ballots. This decision, it was emphasised, was in no manner to be taken as an anti-election or anti-parliament position, but as a demonstration

that the Radical Party intended to fight politically for, among other things, effective democratic rules and for the respect of the citizens' constitutional and civil rights. The Congress's concluding motion, passed by a very big margin, established however, that in consideration of the position taken by the PSI on the questions of divorce, the abrogation of the Concordat and conscientious objection, the Radical National Secretary should propose to the PSI "a platform of demands that, if accepted, would authorise the party Executive itself to commit the Radicals to fight side by side with the PSI during the present election campaign". The Congress established a deadline of May 15 for the verification of this subordinate hypothesis. And finally, the Congress also voted a motion denouncing the exclusion from radio and television election propaganda of all the political groups other than those represented in Parliament.

On May 12 this document was shown to the Speaker of the Chamber, the Hon. Mr. Sandro Pertini, by a PR delegation which - as the PR communique explained - also emphasised that the action undertaken by the party "against what by now is a real and true syndicate of parties" was meant to safeguard the potential functions of the Parliament" from the degrading of the crystallisation of power in a corrupting and essentially regime-oriented equilibrium".

Just as the Congress had decided, on May 16 the political secretaries of the PR and the PSI reached an agreement for the regional and local elections of June 7. This was made possible by their agreement on several qualifying points despite their independence and the difference in their respective political positions. It was to be translated into PR support for the PSI's election campaign and their recommendation to vote for the PSI list. The two parties had come to an agreement on the following needs: 1) to bring to a rapid close the passage through Parliament of the divorce bill with the registration of the law itself as the first point on the Senate's order of the day and with the proceeding of the debate up to the conclusive vote with no interruptions and before the suspension of work for the summer holidays; 2) to fight against any claims against the independence and lay nature of the state and in that sense to develop the debate in the country; within this framework were included the personal adher

ence for some time of more than 30 Socialist members of Parliament to the "Committee for the Support of the Campaign for the Referendum to Abrogate the Concordat" promoted by the PR as well as the LID's campaign to collect signatures for this purpose in agreement with the Radicals; 3) to propose the immediate revision of the criteria for access to the political broadcasts of the RAI-TV [Italian state radio and tv, ed.] to guarantee a democratic confrontation among all the political forces; for this purpose the two parties would take all necessary steps so that before June 7 there should be a broadcast reserved for the extra-parliamentary groups; 4) achieve urgently legal recognition of conscientious objection with the ensuing commitment from Socialist Parliamentary groups to accelerate the commission debates and to bring the bills on conscientious objection back into the main hall in any case before the end of September.

With regard to the significance of the agreement, Pannella stated to the ADN-Kronos [a news agency, ed.] that it brought about the confrontation "between the most authentic Socialist and unitarian contents of the two parties and the emergence of alternative prospects to the current, old equilibrium of the regime". On divorce, on the Concordat, on conscientious objection, "on correct democratic behaviour", he added, this conference went beyond a limited exchange of election collaboration for all the movements of radical reform.

On June 5 the PR made an appeal to the National Executive of the PCI, PSIUP, PSI, PRI, PLI and PSU to commit themselves from that very moment on - independently of the election results - to a "lay armistice" for the passage of the divorce bill. The Radical Party, in fact, recognising in a government crisis the principal weapon at the disposition of the anti-divorce forces for trying to block the end of the debate and the holding of a vote on the bill, asked the lay and pro-divorce movement to "fight against the prospects of such a crisis after June 7 and before the divorce bill was passed.

And the government crisis was in fact opened on July 6, 1970 when Rumor resigned. On the same day the representative of the Radical Executive, Marco Pannella, commenting on the sudden resignation of the government, declared that "a cold, mad determination" seemed to have reunited "those who demanded some kind of anti-Socialist satisfaction" with those who, a few days before the vote on divorce in the Senate, could "offer the Vatican a reasonable hope of burying" this lay reform. The Radicals, who had fought in the election campaign with the PSI, found confirmation - according to Pannella - of the precision of their choice, inasmuch as "decisive responsibility" weighed on the PSI, as well as on the mass of the people and all of the Italian left.

The PR made an appeal to the lay parties to define, on the occasion of September 20 and in view of the divorce debate, their essential goals, and to correct the method with which the the "Vatican party" had been confronted from the time of the Resistance until that moment. In this appeal, National Secretary Bandinelli proposed: the strengthening of the initiative for the referendum to abrogate the Concordat; the presentation in Parliament of a bill to revise the Constitution and abrogate art. 7, and to request the Executive by Parliamentary motion to renounce unilaterally the Lateran Pact [i.e., the Concordat, ed.] as no longer corresponding to the requirments and needs of the state.

A declaration regarding the agreement among the various political groups on the divorce issue (cf. Divorce) was signed by Secretary General of the PR and the members of the Executive on October 8. Recalling that the anti-divorce deputies could not avoid fearing a defeat after the October 1 vote, the declaration affirmed that the agreement reached among the lay parties still allowed for hope of achieving a positive vote in the Senate, even if it did not overcome the serious inconvenience of leaving the problem hanging for weeks and months without a demonstrated necessity, and even if it spoiled to a degree the exemplary clarity with which until that moment the fight for divorce had been conducted. Still with regard to the divorce question, the Radical Executive, meeting on October 12, emphasised its conviction of the need to take up again immediately on a popular level of the fight for divorce and against the Concordat.

The VIIIth Radical Party Congress opened on November 1 in Naples in the presence of about 80 delegates and representatives of the lay movements who identified their policies with the PR. National Secretary Bandinelli declared, speaking of the question of "divorce and the libertarian and lay actions for 1971", that at the moment in which the battle for divorce reached its end, the fight to abrogate the Concordat already counted on the support of seventy members of Parliament and of 23,000 citizens who had signed the demand for the abrogation of the Lateran Pact.

On the morning of November 2 it was proposed that the collection of the 500,000 signatures for the referendum to abrogate should be conducted by the LID in collaboration with the unions in their members' places of work, whereas in the afternoon a commission over which the LID president Mauro Mellini presided examined the question of the abrogation of the Lateran Pact. In conclusion, the discussion on the following day centred around revision of the Concordat and women's liberation which was still the object of unacceptable conditioning. The final motion, unanimously approved on the night of Nov.3, indicated the realisation of the following goals in 1971: 1) the continued organisation of the referendum to abrogate the Concordat; 2) to promote combating and abrogating the February 11 holiday [commemorating the Concordat, ed.] and action to reject religious instruction in the schools; 3) to strengthen the party's anti-militarist commitment by sponsoring the Fifth Anti-Militarist March (and to consider the

advisability of transferring it from the Milan-Vincenza route to Sardinia preferably in reference to the anti-authoritarian fight of the Sardinian Radical group), to convene the Third Anti-Militarist Congress and to guarantee the commitment to connections with foreign and international organisations; 4) to impose the discussion of the conscientious objection bills before the entire Parliament by introducing the amendment sanctioning the detraction of expenses for civilian service from the Ministry of Defence's budget; 5) guarantee the publication of a "white paper" on the military structures and colonial procedures in the region of Sardinia; 6) organise the precise instruments of common action with political groups outside the Party, such as the LID, the ALRI, the liberal left, the FGR [Federazione Giovanile Repubblicana, or Republican Youth Federation, ed.] and libertarian groups. When the congress finished its work it elected the new Executive organs; National Secretary, Roberto Cicciomessere; Treasurer,

Marco Pannella; National Executive Board, Bartoletti, Sabatini, Pannella, Spadaccia, Mellini, Bandinelli, Sircana, Rendi, Cancellieri, Lancini, Pesci, Corsale, Spaccialbelli, Turone, Landi, Teodori, Pergamento, Dessy, Spadaccia. The new National Secretary Cicciomessere then proposed the names of the new Executive Commission which was ratified by the Congress: Bandinelli, Mellini, Spadaccia, Sabatini, Pesci, Cancellieri, and Rendi.

On December 3 a Radical Party delegation presented to the Public Prosecutor's office of the Republic an accusation against the CEI [Italian Conference of Bishops] and its bishop members for interference in the divorce question (cf. The CEI and Divorce). In one of its communiques the LID affirmed that in the accusation there was emphasised the clear violation of art. 43 of the Concordat, par. 2, (which forbade clerics to join as well as to act in favour of any political party) and of art. 327 of the Penal Code (for inciting disdain for the parliamentary institutions).

1971

Still within the framework of the fight against divorce and the revision of the Concordat, on January 7, 1971 the PR Executive, meeting in Sulmona, decided to call a permanent assembly of the grass roots which from January 18 on would assure "an essential contribution to the fight for the revision of the Concordat". "Lay unity", explained a communique released on that occasion, "is an irreplaceable arm in this battle. It is the duty of the parliamentary lay front of the traditional democratic forces to guarantee this as they have already done for divorce".

Still with regard to the anti-divorce referendum, the PR reacted promptly to the news which said that the directors of the CEI, at the conclusion of the Council's work, had decided to support, in effect if not officially, the groups fighting for the abrogation of the divorce law. On February 8, in fact, Marco Pannella declared that any commitment in that sense of "religious, ecclesiastical or assistance organisations and of Catholic action must be considered a patent violation and practical denunciation of the Concordat". Thus Pannella, making reference to that part of the CEI communique which accused the Baslini-Fortuna law of being among the worst in the world and of causing the downfall of the Italian family, announced that he had sent that document to the Rome office of the Public Prosecutor inasmuch as such interference could constitute a patent violation of the law. On the same occasion the Radical representative recalled that on February 14 in Milan there would be a great anti-Concordat demonstra

tion which would be "the first, objective reply to the Italian bishops if they really are going to commit themselves to the road of illegality and prevarication".

In a communique released March 16, the PR made known that it was ready to send the Public Prosecutor of the Rome Court of Appeals "a denunciation against the president of the ONMI [Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia - a maternal assistance organisation, ed.], Angela Gotelli, and against the Rome prefects who during the Sixties were systematically responsible for the shameless exploitation of mothers and children. The denunciation did not fail to emphasise as well the very particular comportment of the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office during the period in question". Then protesting for the way in which the Petrucci trial was being terminated (which the PR was later to bring to the attention of the General Public Prosecutor's Office), the communique pointed out that the ONMI did not even present itself as a civil plaintiff and that the Hon. Mrs. Gotelli, from the day in which she took office, "systematically ignored and covered-up the most serious accusations" made against the various clerical executives

and the institutions that were given assistance subcontracts.

The reasons that had induced the Radical Party Secretary Roberto Cicciomessere and Mauro Mellini of the party's National Executive to make a denunciation to Judge Infelisi and send a copy to the General Public Prosecutor's Office of the Republic on the public assistance scandal, were clarified in a communique of the Radical Party released on April 16. After having referred to the "provoking attitude" of the Hon. Mrs. Gotelli, national president of the ONMI, who, "with the support of notes written by the Rome Vicariate and the "Osservatore Romano" [the Vatican daily, ed.], said that she was being persecuted by Judge Infelisi, the communique went on to state that this attitude "must be firmly repulsed and countered" and to denounce the serious crimes of these public assistance gangsters who reign in all the public assistance structures, not only in Rome, operating a systematic despoiling of hundreds of billions at the expense of the state and the collectivity, of the poorest classes who most need aid, fo

r the only evident purpose of keeping control of a machine necessary for the power of the DC and the Vatican".

That the basis of this real and true clerical assistance racket was in its employment for the goal of the power of the DC and the ecclesiastical spheres was made amply clear by the letter contained in the PR communique, which was also included in the denunciation. This letter, sent by Mayor Darida to the Hon. Messrs. Fanfani, Forlani and Jervolino in March 1963, contained a reference to rumours of the possibility that Dario Morgantini would be removed from the post of special commissioner of the Roman ONMI federation and affirmed that this implied an attack by another party faction on the Fanfani group and an open attempt to take possession of an agency called, without mincing words, "a too-important tool" in view of the coming national elections.

"In the same letter", the communique concludes, "it was also affirmed that the federation "is politically a very important organisation managed by one of our faction" and that "on the eve of the elections everyone has become conscious of the importances of this tool and a furious battle has been started to get possession of it. This attempt has been facilitated by the nomination of the Hon. Mrs. Gotelli to the central presidency of the ONMI"".

On the following day a PR communique expressed the party's satisfaction for the decision of the Constitutional Court allowing propaganda for contraception. The declarations of the National Secretary Roberto Cicciomessere and the Treasurer Marco Pannella affirmed that decision was a great victory for the masses and that the party would support the bill for the new law regulating education in democracy and clinical assistance for abortion presented by the Women's Liberation Movement.

The PR made known on March 23 that it had not been invited to participate in the PSIUP congress, "a party with which in the past we have had moments of close collaboration", and they indicated among the possible motives for not being invited the participation in the Social Proletarian Congress of Jean Havelka, head of the Czechoslovakian delegation and one of the most rigid adversaries of the Prague Spring. According to the Radical communique, any member of the PR who had been named to participate in the PSIUP Congress would not have failed to denounce the "unworthy presence" of Jean Havelka.

With regard to the order of the day passed by the Chamber on April 17, 1971, which invited the Italian government to promote bilateral negotiations with the Holy See to modify the Concordat, Roberto Cicciomessere declared that the demand for the government to open negotiations for the revision of the Concordat, with disdain for the legitimate request for the repuiblican Parliament to ascertain its constitutionality previously, is a scandalous confirmation of the illiberal division of power between Christian Democratic clerics and Communist Party bureaucrats". The PR's National Secretary then re-confirmed that the goal to be intransigently pursued by the PR on a united and grass roots level would be the referendum to abrogate the law instituting the Concordat even if reviewed and up-dated.

In defining "a just, obligatory and necessary action", the presentation of this request for a referendum to abrogate the laws regarding crimes of opinion and of unions - a request which was also signed by the PR - the Party's Secretary and Executive, however, harshly denounced the complete lack of representatives of the PCI and the unions in the Supreme Court of Appeals.

According to the Radicals, the non-adherence of the Communists was a very grave confirmation of the Communist Executive's aversion to any initiative which did not behave or conform to a subaltern model of mobilisation and instrumentalisation, and to the participation in and responsible administration by the great popular masses of the creation of an democratic and Socialist alternative. The non-adherence to the initiative of the democratic magistrates was in fact explicitly due to diffidence towards the use of a tool such as the referendum, that is to a less delegated participation in the legislative function on the part of the people. For the same reason the PCI would oppose the campaign for a referendum to abrogate the law putting the Concordat into effect (which had been signed by tens of thousands of Communists) and would impede the large popular demonstrations on the issue of the Socialist and proletarian international; and for the same reason again, that is to say for the needs of a policy that ha

d increasingly to assume characteristics of summitry and oligarchy, the PCI would align itself, recently, with the positions of those who "had wanted a phantom and indecorous parliamentary debate to liquidate the clash between clerics and the laity on the Concordat issue, which is to say on the relationships between the great democratic, Socialist masses of Catholic and non-religious extraction". With regard to the unions, the Radical communique affirmed that there absence could only be attributed to "a persistent subservience towards the top levels of the PCI or the DC".

On May 10 the PR Secretary filed a denunciation for false testimony against the Vice Police Chief of Rome, Giovanni Zampano, "for having affirmed" in the course of a trial held by the Fourth Section of the Rome Court "that the PR is responsible for incidents which occurred at an assembly of Gen. Di Lorenzo's during the last national elections".

As a sign of protest against the indifference that the parliamentary lay parties were assuming towards the groups collecting signatures for a referendum to abrogate the divorce law, PR representatives burned their election certificates on June 11 in Piazza Navona. Subsequently commenting on the deposition with the Supreme Court of Appeals of the signatures obtained in favour of the anti-divorce referendum, Pannella emphasised that first of all referendum against divorce was unconstitutional inasmuch as it was inadmissible that fundamental rights of religious and civil conscience should be submitted to majority rule; and secondly, that the referendum had been invalidated from the start by the highly illegal way in which it had been requested, by violations of the Concordat, and frequently by precise violations.

With reference to the Church's intention of "promoting, organising and running a referendum to abrogate the Fortuna-Baslini law", the national secretary of the PR had on his part already expressed the hope (ADN-Kronos, of June 8, 1971) that the Senate was not to be excluded from "its responsibility to hold a debate on the fundamental issue of the relations between State and Church", and he had judged "unthinkable" that the Parliament should allow the government in such circumstances to begin negotiations with the Holy See to confirm the Concordat and the Treaty.

On July 27 a communique announced that the PR intended to promote all further initiatives so that the Anderlini bill would be rejected by the left in the Italian Parliament, inasmuch as that provision belonged to the realm of "those good intentions that the Italian left had been already affirming for years and which were being irremediably surpassed and made vain by the situations and the logic of events". Furthermore the communique announced that the Radicals and anti-militarist groups would continue to fight of a real anti-militarist law for conscientious objection which was up to the needs and to the democratic struggle which demanded at least a reduction of military expenditures contemporarily and in equal measure with the objections.

Subsequently (9/22), during the debate in the Chamber on the Anderlini bill, the League for the Recognition of Conscientious Objection organised a debate at Radical Party headquarters. Pannella called absurd and illogical the faculty that was being attributed to the Ministry of Defense to set up a commission to check up on the validity of the motives adduced by conscientious objectors; this would lead to punitive inquisitions rather than to recognition of the objectors.

On August 21 the PR organised a protest demonstration for the third anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. This was announced in a party communique in which, besides making a harsh criticism of the action of the "united armies of the Socialist countries", it exhorted Italian democratic public opinion to demand liberty for Czechoslovakian political prisoners and to denounce "the hard and anti-popular repression of Husak and his accomplices".

At the beginning of October (October 7, 1971), following the declaration ("Il Messaggero", October 10, 1971) of the speaker of the DC Parliamentary group, Giulio Andreotti, and of the Communist Natta on the divorce referendum, the polemics on this touchy problem were re-ignited. The position of the Radical Party was to denounce "the clerical-Fascist operation on divorce and the referendum which demonstrates how the historical agreement between Catholics and Communists, or rather clerics and PCI bureaucrats, can only be realised on the basest level of negotiations for power with the definitive renunciation of lay and democratic values". Emphasising that it was a false idea to think that the Fortuna law could be improved, the PR recalled that to block the actuation of a refernedum meant abrogating the law that was to be the object of popular consultation (according to art. 39 of the law establishing the referendum), in this case the Fortuna law.

According to the PR, the negotiations going on between the DC and the PCI and the DC were a confirmation of the idea of the referendum as a kind of blackmail which the Church was using to obtain the annulment of the divorce law and to negotiate the revision of the Concordat from a position of strength. In this situation the PR appealed to the PSI, considering it the decisive factor in blocking this maneuver. An editorial that appeared in "L'Unità" [the official Communist daily , ed.] said that "the calumnies were a piece of political charlatanism on the part of certain people who knew perfectly well that without the PCI and its policies capable of leading to dialogue and an agreement with democratic Catholics, there would have been no divorce in Italy". The PR simply expressed its conviction that the PCI's policy on divorce, the referendum and the relations between Church and State were "opportunistic and hazardous, not authorised by any PCI congress nor by the Central Committee".

On October 13 the party Executive met and decided to call the Xth Congress for October 31 on the theme "without a lay party no alternative of the left nor a libertarian Socialist society can be created". At the Congress there were supposed to be representative of non-Radical lay parties as well as activists from the women's Liberation Movement (MLD), the LID and the Association for Religious Liberty in Italy (ALRI).

At the meeting Mellini maintained the need of a congress directed at the strengthening of the PR and at consenting public opinion and militant circles to become aware of the need of giving the PR their fully responsible support and adherence. Mellini's position referred particularly to an article by Marco Pannella which had appeared in "Notizie Radicali" where he proposed that the congress consider the possibility of the party's dissolving itself. According to Pannella the party was in danger of being overwhelmed by the success, so unexpected by many, of its proposals and political methods and so to become - due to its insufficient numbers at the time - "an involuntary batcher for the claims to an alternative to the regime, and an excuse for the latter's corporative, authoritarian, populist and pro-clerical involution".

The Xth Radical Congress began its work on October 31 in Rome. In Marco Pannella's introductory speech, after having proposed considering whether or not the party's reasons for and possibilities of existing had not been surpassed, he summed up its almost ten years of activity by affirming that they had had positive results. Pannella recalled the numerous Radical initiatives from the divorce fight to the one against the Concordat to the formation of a first "substantial anti-militarist nucleus" which "had not existed since the beginning of the century".

Speaking of the attacks against the PR and the LID by the Communist press, he stated: "In recent years, after the message of tolerance of John XXIII, we have been in favour of a conciliatory republic, if by this is meant, as we believe, the acquisition of lay and libertarian values by Catholics too. Instead, what is being proposed to us today is a neo-Concordat republic founded on the encounter with the power of the Church and the Christian Democrats at their top levels".

Speaking after Pannella, Loris Fortuna maintained the need of carrying on the lay battle to the very end to avoid perversion of the divorce law.

On the second day the debate continued to consider the reports of Pannella and of Roberto Cicciomessere; the idea of dissolving the party was rejected by a majority of the delegates. Ex Party Secretary Mellini, in particular, asserted that by now the PR represented positions with roots in the country of resistance and opposition to the left's resignation in the face of Radical power. "It is thus impossible," he added, "to even think of dissolving the party, because these positions would in any case persist, but without the Radical Party structure they would be weakened and defeated". Only a single delegate, Antonino Tamburlini, agreed with the idea of dissolving the party and asked the party to consider joining the PSI.

At the end of the Congress (November 3, 1971) the concluding document was published which, rejecting any idea of dissolving the party, announced the commitment to actuating the statute and to strengthening the party's policies and organisation. After applauding the LID for its work in opposing the [anti-divorce] referendum, the Congress took note of the attitude of the lay parties in Parliament, the PCI first of all, which had in substance been co-responsible for the initiative; consequently the PR considered that the referendum should be held and confronted - if the Constitutional Court should consider it tenable. In conclusion, the document emphasised the urgent need of strengthening the party as the essential presupposition for struggle, without which its fights would be mere testimonials or moral acts "politically and irremediably lost".

The Congress also provided for the renewal of the following executive posts: Angiolo Bandinelli was named new Political Secretary; Ramadori was elected as Treasurer; the new Executive and the members of the Commission were also elected.

December 22, on the occasion of the presidential election, the PR released a communique in which it accused the lay parties of disagreeing only on the choices of DC men and factions as a point of obligation for them, while they appeared to be unanimous in believing any clear and public lay political line for the election of the president of the republic to be impossible. The communique ended with proposing Nenni, Pertini, La Malfa or Branca as the men to vote for.

1972

From January 4-6 1972 a meeting of the Executive was held in Chianciano. During the meeting it was decided that "given the impossibility of continuing to entrust the battle for an alternative to the system and the regime to the top-level bureaucrats and party apparatuses of the left, the Radical Party indicates the elections as a moment of confrontation with political realities and the problems that the development of democracy brings about". In this regard the PR announced that it would present election lists of its own candidates for the first time since its constitution. Therefore it asks all groups and militants to get ready for the presentation of the list in collaboration with the lay movement for civil rights too.

The communique then dealt with several aspects of the presidential election and emphasised that these elections had confirmed that those parties which ought to have advanced the lay tradition and its positions were substantially dependent on the comprehensive strategy of the clerical sphere as well as the classist and corporative aspects represented by the DC. On January 17 the PR energetically expressed its position with regard to the publishing of a CEI document on the abortion question. The PR underscored the absolute need for legislation that liberalised the responsibility of maternity in order to put an end "to the crimes perpetrated daily in our country on millions of women receiving no assistance". The PR also took issue with regard to the conviction of the ex nun Pagliuca (January 15, 1971) and the accusation against several party representatives, among them Pannella and Loteta (January 25), for calumny, contempt of court and defamation towards the presiding judge of the Rome Court of Assizes. O

n the anniversary of the Lateran Pact, the PR published an appeal asking lay and democratic citizens to show their firm opposition to "the holiday which imposes on society and the State the celebration of a totally anti-democratic, illiberal and anti-Socialist pact between Fascism and the Catholic Church" (February 11, 1972).

On February 29, in relation to the government crisis which had brought about the early dissolution of Parliament (see: The Andreotti Government - Activity), Marco Pannella, of the PR's Executive Committee, released the following declaration to the press: "Clearly, from now on, it will always be possible in Italy to govern despite and against Parliament. Establishing a personal government of his own, whose legitimacy we totally disown, President Leone has created an enormously serious precedent: he ceases to be and cannot claim to be above all parties, as the Constitution demands, and to guarantee the constitutional unity of the country... The majority law of 1953, known as the swindle law, today appears to be an example of high democratic ethics. The deterioration of the Italian situation appears to be all the more grave as the left appears to have assumed the responsibility for not adequately opposing such an operation this time... By now we are in a situation where the regime's democratic quotient is

almost reduced to zero. The heirs of the National Fascist Party and the danger to the republic are not Almirante's [leader of the neo-Fascist MSI, ed.] Zouaves, but the DC..."

This declaration provoked (April 15, 1972) the denunciation of the Hon. Mr. Durand De La Penne for defamation of the Head of State. Party Secretary Bandinelli declared that despite this the Radicals would not give up the fight against a government they considered to have been illegally constituted.

Meanwhile the polemics over conscientious objectors began all over again with regard to the case of the 24 youths belonging to the PR, the MLD [Women's Liberation Movement], the Non-Violent Movement and the Young Socialist's Federation (March 23). The PR released a communique in which it denounced "the new act of repression against non-violent Radical anti-militarists" and called attention to the fact that among the other defendants was the ex party secretary Cicciomessere who was being held in the Peschiera military prison, "a victim of particularly oppressive measures of persecution with the evident intention of forcing him to react in natural and understandable ways which would allow for new trials and serious accusations against him.

In relation to the formation of the new government after the May 7 elections, an article in the "Nuova Repubblica" noted that "the instinct of self-preservation and the call to reason ought to advise Saragat to favour Andreotti's efforts to constitute a middle-road government that did not preclude the Socialists... Such a choice would mean taking the calculated risk of a certain return of the Socialists to the government who would be forced to accept the presence of the Liberals in the coalition or else submit to Communist blackmail.

"To compromise Andreotti's proposal today" the note continued, "would mean burning the bridges for good of a Socialist return to reason, on which hypothesis Nenni (1) was working, possibly with good chances of success.

"The majority of the DC and the democratic lay parties, by favouring Andreotti do not close the door to the Socialists but deprive the Socialists of the weapon of a "diktat" which would be humiliating for both the DC majority and the democratic lay parties.

"If Andreotti fails" the "Nuova Repubblica" affirmed, "it will not be an eschatological one-party government that is born, but the spectre of new elections which Forlani allowed us to glimpse in the meeting of the DC executive cadre. It would not be hard for the DC fundamentalists to convince the public that dissolution of Parliament was the fault of those parties that did not favour Andreotti's efforts. The intermediary groups would be crushed under the DC steam roller. Not even the MSI would escape the disaster, in whose ranks would remain only the old faithfuls. On the left the PCI would gain the million votes that were lost in the May 7 election".

On July 17 the PR organised a press conference to illustrate the programme of the "Sixth Anti-Militarist March" which was to go from Trieste to Aviano from the 25th of the month to August 4. Marco Pannella listed the reasons behind the march that year: the affirmation and defense of the right and duty of conscientious objection; the abolition of military servitude in Friuli-Venetia Julia; the affirmation of the principle and method of non-violence; the rejection of all military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact in particular; the conversion of military structures and expenditures into civilian ones; the commemoration of those who fell in the first World War; Italy leaving NATO; the abolition of military courts; the promotion of the civil rights of soldiers. During the course of the demonstration, in which many exponents of the PSI and other pacifist organisations took part, the PR more than once denounced the behaviour of the police force which, it said, "had tried to provoke the anti-militarists in every

possible way in order to have grounds to break up the march".

On September 29 Pannella made public a series of initiatives promoted by the RAdical Party tending to sensitise public opinion and create a vast movement to support non-violent conscientious objectors: the broadening of civil disobedience to include non-payment of the taxes corresponding to the military and justice budgets until the last prisoner for the crime of conscientious objection was freed; the liberation of Valpreda (2) and his comrades; a collective hunger strike in Rome and many Italian cities from October 1, and, finally, an effort of the PR, in agreement with other non-violent movements, in the Chamber groups and the speaker's office, to obtain guarantees and definite assurances of a precise date for the discussion and vote on bill for conscientious objection. Other protest demonstrations were organised by the PR against the concession of naval bases on the island of La Maddalena to the U.S.A. (October 7, 1972).

A party communique released October 10 made known that the Eleventh Party Congress would be held in Turin from November 1-4 on the subject of "Re-founding or Dissolution".

On October 27 the PR - and in particular Marco Pannella and the conscientious objector Gardin - made a harsh comment on the decision of the Justice Commission of Palazzo Madama [the seat of the Senate, ed.] to postpone until mid November the discussion of the bill to legalise conscientious objection. Pannella and Gardin had been holding a hunger strike for 27 days in protest: "Having reached the 27th day of our hunger strike", the two Radical activists declared, "and in the face of an ever more arrogant and maddening irresponsibility of Parliament towards one of its fundamental duties, we must note the fact that it is showing itself to be an ever more necessary and urgent priority to keep solidarity to the end with our comrades in prison. Therefore, although deeply surprised and pained that in a country considering itself democratic it should be necessary even today to pay such a high price to defend a minimum of humanity and justice, we are bound to confirm our decision to carry this form of battle to

its extreme consequences or until the achievement of our goals".

For the PR the decision of the Defense Commission "means that this bill is in danger of not being approved for years, that every year more centuries of imprisonment will be imposed and that hundreds of comrades will languish in military prisons in conditions and numbers that were not imaginable even under Fascism". To overcome this situation, the Radicals then affirmed, it is necessary that: "a) the Senate Defense Commission put on the agenda three weekly sessions for the discussion of the bill so that the debate can return to the hall of the Senate by November 25; b) the debate in the Senate (which will require at most two days) ends by December 1; c) the Chamber does not begin its Christmas holiday before having voted on the bill: there are still three weeks available. This", the communique concluded, "is technically possible. But politically either one doesn't want to or can't do it. We repeat, however, our initial and unyielding demand in principle that a sufficiently authoritative and credible sou

rce should guarantee a fixed date by which Parliament, after 25 years, will commit itself to voting on the statute for conscientious objectors".

The Eleventh Radical Congress began its work in Turin on November 1 with a report by Party Secretary Bandinelli who indicated that the "Congress hinges on the alternative of the "re-founding or dissolution" of the Radical Party. This alternative thus required a Congress of mediation and of deep study of the real situation and the tools available and cannot give way to emotional choices".

An essential condition for avoiding the dissolution of the party was stated by the executives themselves as being the possibility of reaching the level of one thousand registered members: Bandinelli reported that this result had been reached and surpassed. Next the PR secretary took up the divorce and referendum question calling "incredible and absurd" the attitude of the leftist leaders who were concerned only with avoiding the referendum or postponing it for a year while the changes in the Constitutional Court after the May 7 elections threatened to put into question again the constitutionality of art. 2 of the Fortuna law. In such a situation "the only clean way that respects the Constitution and the popular sovereignty of the republican institutions" would be that of the referendum, to be faced at once, in June 1973. To be put on record were the speeches by Cicciomessere, Pannella and Fortuna that followed.

On the second day of the Congress the commissions occupied themselves with subjects connected to the question of whether or not it was opportune to keep the party going. The commissions' discussions revolved around three principle topics: the party's anti-institutional project; the referendum; the organisation of the party: civil rights. Then there was discussion of Pannella and Gardin's hunger strike which had by then reached its 36th day. Everyone agreed this was enough for achieving the goals that had been set. At the end of the Congress the Radicals decided not to dissolve the party but, on the contrary, to begin a vast membership campaign to reach five or six thousand members within two or three years. The goals to be pursued were those contained in the actions already followed by the Radicals, in particular: abrogation or reform of the Concordat; abrogation of the Rocco code (3) and in particular several specific crimes (defamation, instigation to military disobedience, limitations to the right of

association); abrogation of military courts; abrogation or reform of the laws on financing clerically-directed educational agencies or schools.

The will to actuate the referendum programme emerged by concentrating organisational efforts to the utmost, limiting their number and combining related arguments into single contexts. The need was also underlined to build the party with the effective contribution of the members who, for the rest, also had the right to belong to other parties. In fact, a study made from a sampling of the new members showed that 18% had dual memberships of which 38% belonged to the PSI, 31.8% to the PRI, 11% to the far left, 9.5% to the PCI and 9.5% to the PLI.

At the end of the Congress the new Secretariat was named, composed of out-going Secretary Bandinelli and of the conscientious objectors Cicciomessere and Gardin.

During the demonstration organised by the PR on November 8, coinciding with the Senate debate on the conscientious objection bill, the Radicals repeated their dissatisfaction with the project approved by the Senate's Defense Commission and they underlined the constant activity of the party in the fight to approve the bill.

On December 15 a Radical Party communique commented thus on the Chamber's vote in favour of the Marcora bill: "A new fundamental civil principle has been acquired today, hard won after at least twenty years of struggle. The sickening coalition which already had revealed itself in the Senate and which today the Chamber worsened, between the government, the Christian Democratic majority, neo-Nazis, paleo-Fascists of the national right wing has succeeded in blocking the vote on an adequate, civil, loyal, democratic law whose need was advanced by all the democratic groups and many groups and deputies of the DC such as Francanzani, Sobrero, and Cabras. Any amendment in that sense was in fact rejected by the decisive votes of Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Pino Rauti and their colleagues. In that way Parliament today approved a law that attempts to block the effective exercising of that right to conscientious objection which it was finally obliged to vote on: a law that presents aberrant and inadmissible aspects on the

constitutional, democratic and technical levels.

"The Radical Party and the non-violent movement", the communique continued, "applaud first of all the Hon. Mr. Francanzani who assured to all the forces favourable to conscientious objection, and first of all to the anti-militarist, non-violent objectors, a rigorous, honest and efficacious representation, and he conducted a linear and courageous Parliamentary fight. The PR recognises the amply positive, united and loyal attitude of the Socialist Party - and in particular the Hon. Messrs Servadei, Orlando, and Magnani Noya - in seeking the working out and passing of a much better law than the one that was passed; they recognise the democratic value of the amendments proposed by the Hon. Mr. Bandiera of the PRI and of its opposition to the principles and to the clerical-Fascist ranks that formed around the government's thesis. They can however not avoid emphasising the reticent and resigned attitude, as inadequate as it is conniving, of the Communist Party and the independent left.

As soon as the outcome of the vote was known, several representatives of the Radical Party, including Secretary Bandinelli, sent a telegram of thanks to the Speaker of the Chamber [Sandro] Pertini for his constant and vigilant attention "to seeing that the Parliament did its duty in voting on conscientious objection". (see: conscientious objectors).

Other demonstrations were promoted by the PR for granting the anarchist Valpreda provisional liberty (December 27), against the arrest of a conscientious objector (January 12, 1973) and against the Concordat (January 15, 1973).

There was a lively reaction of the Radicals on January 9 with regard to the government's bill on drugs which they called "of low technical quality". The attorney Mellini of the party Executive declared that the provision, while lightening the penalties for users, established a system of conditional liberty for the citizen who could be punished simply for being suspected so that "in practice there is being introduced the crime of being suspected".

1973

On February 10, 1973 the Radical Party Secretary Alberto Gardin was arrested for conscientious objection. In October of the previous year he had held a 39-day hunger strike together with another Radical, Marco Pannella, to solicit the passage of the bill legalising conscientious objectors. "Once again," declared a Radical Party communique released apropos of this, "the military prosecutors show that they do not take any heed of the will of Parliament and arrest anyone who, according to the norms of the law for conscientious objection, having presented a request for substitute civilian service, cannot be accused of any crime, pending the decision of the minister". Thus according to the Radicals it was "a clear attempt by the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Republic to intimidate" and discourage conscientious objectors. The Radical lawyers Giuseppe Ramadori, Lucia Severino and Mauro Mellini presented an accusation for omission of acts of office and false arrest against the authorities who had ordered

the arrest.

For the anniversary of the signing of the Lateran Pact on February 11, the Radical Party called a series of demonstrations in many cities throughout the country. In Rome the party's initiative was supported by political and religious groups (from "Lotta Continua" to "The Women's Liberation Movement", from the "Grass-Roots Communities" of Oregina and Trevis to the Waldensians, from the Liberals and Republicans of the left to a vast sector of the PSI). In a Rome theatre were heard religious sermons rich in biblical references to contradict the politics of Mammon. The Presbyterian Giorgio Spini called the clerical apparatus the "court chaplain of the capitalist world"; several dissenting Catholics denounced the Concordat as an instrument of "clerical power". Representatives of Protestant Christians also deplored the persisting validity of "Fascist laws on the admitted cults" which followed from the Lateran Pact. Among the laity, the Radical Mauro Mellini produced the evidence that "the Italian State is no

t capable of sustaining negotiations with the Holy See". The projected referendum on the question of divorce, he added, would in effect be a referendum on the Concordat and the same tone was taken by the assemblies held in all other cities.

Meanwhile the arrests continued of Radical Party exponents opposed to the military draft. On February 17 it was the turn of Roberto Cicciomessere, of the party's National Secretariat, for whom an order of arrest was issued by the Military Prosecutor of Bari. There was the usual party communique: the Executive made a strong protest against the "untenable and illegitimate provision" which, for the Radicals, was tantamount to a kidnapping of Cicciomessere who was guilty of nothing more than his anti-militarist and non-violent political activity.

On March 7, 1973, the Radical Party's National Secretary, Angiolo Bandinelli, released some declarations with regard to the news of the government's intention to dissolve the neo-Fascist group "Avanguardia Nazionale" [National Vanguard]. "All the leftist press", Bandinelli said, "has expressed great satisfaction at this news, but we do not share the enthusiasm, primarily because we do not like special laws, the violation of the basic right to free association, dissolutions by decree, whatever their justifications may be". According to Bandinelli, the "paleo-Fascists" ought to be beaten by political battle and not struck at by decrees. Besides these reserves based on principle, Bandinelli added that the Radicals had the suspicion that this sudden anti-Fascism of the Andreotti government and the Christian Democrats was a cover for other intentions: "It will be easy to use this Scelba law for other things, first of all to strike at the anti-Fascists of the extra-parliamentary left. Then too,l it serves to

give gratuitous certificates of democracy to the very forces which in Italy today represent the continuity of the Mussolini regime". The Radical Party did not participate in the united celebrations of the anniversary of the Liberation on April 25.

In announcing this in a communique, the Radicals explained their initiative affirming that the "anti-Fascist style" of the moment was distracting attention from the serious problems and the great crisis the country was going through. "The corruption and disintegration of the institutions" according to the Radicals was not the fault of Almirante and his "thugs". What ought to be the object of reflection and political action was the new confrontation between the opposition and the majority, between right and left, between progress and conservatism, between the alternative forces and the Christian Democrats.

"Only by acquiring in Italy too this clear and distinct contraposition", the communique concluded, "will it be possible to reinforce the institutions and democracy, to gauge what is dead and what is still alive instead of Fascism, aside from the street violence, to make it clear to the public and to celebrate the anniversary of the Liberation in a perspective that is not false or rhetorical".

On July 8, 1973 the XIIth Special National Congress of the Italian Radical Party concluded in Rome. The work ended with an announcement of two particularly interesting decisions: there would be a rapid start of a campaign for referendums to abrogate all the unconstitutional laws, and a new daily paper would soon be born.

The Congress was convened for a very precise purpose: to discover whether there was among members and adherents a sufficient state of mobilisation for confronting a battle such as the one to abolish unconstitutional laws - a battle which promised to be exceptionally arduous if not downright reckless. According to the Radicals the Congress showed that this probe had given positive results. "The Congress", said Marco Pannella, "not only confirmed unanimously the decision taken in Turin in November of 1972 concerning the referendum campaign, but revealed with satisfaction the adherence of many other leftist groups to this expected fight even if with different emphases and suggestions for modifying this or that aspect of our undertaking". And to this undertaking there adhered primarily many exponents of the PSI, the PRI and the PLI, among them Loris Fortuna, and then "Lotta Continua" , "Il Manifesto", and "Avanguardia Operaia" [three small far-left parties, ed.], the LID, the Women's Liberation Movemen

t. Furthermore in Congressional circles there were some who interpreted a telegram sent by Giacomo Mancini [PSI] as a precise commitment or, at least, a message of encouragement for the initiative. The engineer Franco Mancini was called upon to co-ordinate the work of the committee.

With regard to the newspaper which was supposed to have seen the light of day by the end of September, a committee of journalists and activists was formed to organise a subscription campaign. At that moment the Radical Party had a bulletin called "Notizie Radicali" that came out twice a month with a circulation of 10,000 copies.

The forecasts emerging during the Congress gave the new paper a circulation closer to 40,000 copies or more. The new paper would have the advantage of coming out together with "Lotta Continua" and "Il Manifesto" [two left-wing papers bearing the same names as the parties they represented, ed.]. "With this paper" Marco Pannella said, "we intend to make a contribution to the creation of a unitarian organ as an alternative to the regime, in which all the anti-regime forces can speak out with the utmost independence and reducing costs and risks as much as possible. These costs and risks would be almost insuperable if each alternative movement wanted to have a complete publishing structure of its own".

The summer of 1973 was one of hard work for the Radicals. On the one hand there were the complex organisational and financial problems posed by the referendum operation which had been launched in July during the party's special XIIth National Congress; and on the other hand there was the Trieste-Aviano anti-militarist march on July 25 - August 4. For six years this was a traditional event not to be missed by militants and sympathisers of the anti-militarist rally and this year it was to be held without the fear of incidents caused by the far right wing as had happened the year before.

But the Radicals were doubtless far more apprehensive about the new initiative which for the next three years was to mark their political commitment. That is to say, the series of popular referendums for teh abrogation of the laws applying the Concordat, the "authoritarian and Fascist" norms of the penal code (including the crimes of abortion and the use of light drugs), the repressive norms of the miliary code and those establishing military courts and prisons, the laws for public financing of clerical schools and assistance agencies, and the laws limiting freedom of the press.

To unleash against the regime "still bearing the clerical-Fascist imprint" a wave of popular referendums that were grass-roots political initiatives, the Radicals maintained, could if nothing else set in motion "at the very time when they were dying of suffocation" those alternative mechanisms that could strengthen the minorities of libertarian or Socialist dissent.

On September 8, during a press conference held at the party's Rome headquarters, Marco Pannella presented the sample issue of the new Radical daily "Liberazione" whose appearance had been announced during the last party congress. Pannella explained the two immediate aims of "Liberazione": to block the attempt to distort the divorce law, which was the fruit of a top-level agreement among the bigger lay parties, and to fight so that the referendum would be held in a regular manner. Pannella announced that all the extra-parliamentary lay parties and many Republican, Socialist and Communist representatives had already expressed their adherence to this initiative. "The task of the new daily", Pannella said, "will be to excite a vast movement of opinion."

With regard to the problems more directly connected to the new paper's existence, the Radical leader said that "Liberation" would go onto the news stands only because of "the support and contributions already given and promised by a group of friends and comrades". The initial decision was to print 50-60 thousand copies with the possibility of increasing them. The six permanent editors and the journalists working for the paper did so without receiving any pay whatsoever. Whenever the funds necessary to bring it out should be lacking, "Liberazione" would suspend publication.

For the anniversary of November 20 the Radical Party called a series of demonstrations "for the defense of divorce against the maneuverings of the regime parties to bury the Fortuna law, and for the referendums to abrogate the freedom-killing and Fascist laws". During the main demonstration held in Rome, numerous party representatives and those of the Women's Liberation Movement held forth. Among those adhering to the action was "Farnesina Democratica" (4) and the Republican left, and the Chilean ambassador to Rome, Carlo Vassalo, was invited to attend. On that occasion the Radicals stigmatised the attitudes of the DC towards the Chilean situation and the lack of a reaction from the Italian left towards that attitude. The PR affirmed that the coup d'etat in Chile seemed to have provoked an even greater acceleration of the processes of compromise, of giving way, and of the regime between the opposition and the left on the one hand and the clerical party on the other".

The Radicals' concern for the imminent sentence of the Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of the divorce law were expressed in a document approved at the end of a meeting of the Radical Executive held in Rome September 22 and 23. In this document it was affirmed, among other things, that the court's decision was bound to be "a reason for concern to all democratic and lay groups, for the pro-divorce ranks, and for all the groups and organisations involved in the fight for civil rights", in that there were so many symptoms, in the opinion of the Radicals, that led one to think that "the mad campaign to find a way to calm the fears of the referendum to abolish the Fortuna law" could produce such an abolition through an unfavourable sentence by the Constitutional Court. The document revealed that "while the political operation consistent with the substitution of the divorce law with another law pleasing to the DC and the Vatican seemed to be more and more difficult to put into effect", to insist

assiduously on the need to avoid the referendum was equivalent to inciting the Constitutional Court, to putting pressure on it, "to lend a hand to the suppression of divorce".

The Radical Party Executive made an appeal to all lay and democratic jurists to make themselves heard in support of "the unequivocal constitutional legitimacy of divorce by denouncing the action of those who in continuously seeking expedients to avoid the referendum were seriously compromising the possibility of a judgement by the Court". The document expressed complete solidarity with those who saw in this their civil right to divorce being put into jeopardy and emphasised that the referendum to abolish the Concordat was the "only adequate and effective reply to the clerical maneuvers to re-establish the monopoly of the Catholic Church in matrimonial matters".

The proposal of Sen. De Martino [PSI] to make modifications to the Fortuna law was criticised on October 29 in a Radical Party communique which for this reason convened for November 1 in Verona, at the same time as the party's National Congress, the Presidency, the National Secretariat and the National Committee of the Divorce League and the League for the Abrogation of the Concordat (LIAC).

And so on November 1 the Radical Party opened its XIIIth National Congress in Verona, rallying in the big hall of the Palazzo del Gran Guardia a great many of its 1,470 members from all over Italy.

Members of the federated movements also attended, such as the divorce league and the conscientious objectors. From the claims of the feminists to the tenacious resistance of the conscientious objectors, the Radical Party gathered a notable quantity of dissident attitudes. Its adherents marched from Trieste to Aviano passing in front of army barracks. They sat down in groups before the Pescheria military prison and they crowded around the Verona Military Court. This all took place in the open air, whereas at the Congress, National Secretary Angiolo Bandinelli stated that if the slender numbers of his party could not have any decisive weight on Montecitorio or Palazzo Madama [the seats of the Chamber and the Senate respectively, ed.], this was not very important for the moment, the party did not for this reason live in isolation: "We are an extra-parliamentary group, not an anti-parliamentary group". This meant that the intentions of the Radicals could coincide with the initiatives being furthered now by

this deputy, now by that one following a current of empathy.

Angiolo Bandinelli made the report to the Congress. "Against the regime, against the DC", because the alternative and the renewal of the left, by way of the popular referendums, was the goal of the Congress. The party stated that it was ready to present to the High Court of Appeals within a few weeks a series of requests for abrogative referendums: two of them regarded the Concordat, the first to abrogate the general law putting into effect the Concordat between Church and State, and the second to abolish the norms regarding the ecclesiastical annulment of marriages under the Concordat; one to cancel the norms of the Fascist penal code, including those that punished the crime of abortion; two for military codes and courts; three regarding freedom of the press.

The Radicals, counting on the adherence of other groups, proposed collecting the half million signatures required by the Constitution within the first six months of 1974.

Apropos of the thesis of Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer on the "historic compromise", (5) the National Secretary of the Radical Party said he did not understand all the clamour and polemics this had excited. "This is a thesis", he maintained, "that appears to be the consequence of the entire political line pursued by Berlinguer, a line that does not even aim at the Communists' entering the government but only at the perpetuation of the balance of power of a DC that preserves the monopoly on the government and a PCI that preserves that of the opposition". In these conditions, Bandinelli believed, the only alternative would be the Radicals.

The principle task emphasised by the Radicals at the conclusion of the XIIIth Congress was however that of initiating the campaign for the referendums at the beginning of 1974. While the number of referendums remained undefined, it was clear that the lay "crusade" against "the DC regime", against Berlinguer's [PCI] historic compromise, against the attempt to bury the divorce law and against De Martino's [PSI] acquiescence was not to be stopped by any obstacle whatsoever. All of these were goals judged to be unrenouncable by all Radical militants at the price of the party's very survival.

After a thorough study and a debate that, one could say, put to a hard test the physical resistance of the congress delegates, the commissions confirmed the party's decision to call a referendum for the abrogation of art. 17 (transcriptions of the total sentences) and art. 22 (the annulment of pre-Concordat canonic marriages inasmuch as the sentence of transcription also has effect on civil marriages), and this as a reply to the "easy" annulments to which the Church had recourse with Paul VI's "Motu proprio" in order to compete with the Fortuna divorce law.

The request for other referendums to abrogate Concordat matters regarded, among other things, the articles concerning "the recognition of the civil effects of ecclesiastical institutions and cult agencies", the teaching of Christian doctrine in the schools and the state subsidies to clerical schools in conflict with the Constitution which established that religious schools had to be run "without [financial] burdens for the State".

Then there were innumerable articles of the penal code which the Radicals wanted abolished by popular referendum. Apart from norms relating to crimes of abortion included under the category of "crimes against the integrity and health of the race", there were to be removed the violations offending the honour and prestige of the President of the Republic, defamation of the Republic, of the Armed Forces, of the Italian nation and of the flag and other emblems of the State as well as affronting public employees and resistance to public officials. Vast too was the range of norms of the military penal code and the military judicial regulations that the Radicals would have liked to abolish, from the crime of mutiny (consisting in the persistence of attitudes and complaints) and that of "seditious activity through demonstrations and clamour".

Once the ambitious referendum project was launched the Radicals confronted its political and organisational problems - enormous if compared to their slender forces. Except for the extra-parliamentary groups of the left and some fractions of the PSI, PRI and PLI, it was not clear even to the party leaders which political forces were willing to support the Radical battle. In an interview, Gianfranco Spadaccia, the vice secretary, maintained that the problem was to set in motion a mechanism that would be able to go over the heads of the top party circles and unions and to reach those popular masses that were certainly not insensitive to the acquisition of some fundamental civil rights. Also unsolved was the problem of financing a lay and libertarian campaign led by a party that was only just managing to survive and half of whose members were in arrears in paying their dues.

Marco Pannella, in turn, announced his own disengagement from the responsibility of leading the party in order to advance independently the battle for "the defence of old hopes that were still alive and current".

Received by the Congress as "a handing over of the Roman group to the new generation" (Pannella proposed Giulio Ercolessi, a youth barely twenty years old, as party secretary) the speech of their leader appeared to many as inopportune because it came at a moment when the Radical Party had more need than ever of his greatest energy in order to gain more credibility on the outside.

The Verona police's refusal to allow the November 4 anti-military demonstration to be held outside the Peschiera prison was rejected by the Congress. The Radicals then decided to begin a political-constitutional action for legal recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors and to publicly advertise their ideas everywhere. Nevertheless, in order to avoid possible incidents and after long negotiations with the police, they sent only a small contingent to demonstrate outside Peschiera.

On November 23 the Radical Party announced that the Community of St. Paul had decided to join the action for a referendum to abrogate the Concordat that the Verona Congress promoted. "This undoubtedly important and clamorous decision" wrote "Liberazione", the Radical newspaper that had only just seen the light of day, goes hand-in-hand with the other equally positive ones which are reaching the Committee from other ecclesiastical communities and religious minority groups from all over Italy. Alongside such name as Gerard Lutte, Don Marco Bisceglia, Tony Sansone and Aurelio Sbaffi as well as the Rome Communities of St. Saba, St. Alexis, Colle di Mezzo and Monte Mario, there are also the youth federations of the Jewish community and at least ten Catholic communities and the Waldensian Church of Verona, whereas the "November 7 Movement" that associates several hundred parish and other priests who dissent from the hierarchy's authoritarian line, guarantee their support even while not feeling able to become

formal promoters of the action".

The party's national secretary commented favourably on the Constitutional Court's decision confirming the constitutionality of the divorce law. In a communique on November 24 he expressed "his satisfaction" that for the second time the Court had rejected the objections to the Fortuna law as unconstitutional. "The will of the laity that had intended to subject itself to clerical blackmail," the communique stated, "had no effect on the Constitutional Court". According to the Radicals it was now necessary to reject the blackmail that aimed at nullifying the effect of the Fortuna law by parliamentary measures. "The delay in the confirmation of the lay parties' will" the communique added, "to face the referendum, has put in danger the destiny of divorce before the Court and threatens now to compromise the outcome of the battle too by exposing the parties that vote for divorce to a "diktat" of the DC and the Vatican on the very eve of the referendum". Thus it was necessary for the Radicals to immediately mobi

lise democrats and the laity to defend divorce by popular vote. The norm on the Concordat of art. 34 stubbornly invoked against this "civilised reform", the communique concluded, had to be immediately eliminated together with "the indecency" of the ecclesiastical courts and their sentences of annulment by submitting them also to a popular vote.

And in the same communique there was the news that on December 4 the official request would be presented to the High Court of Appeals to collect signatures for a referendum to abrogate the Concordat between the Catholic Church and the State and of the law that authorised transcribing into the civil registers the annulments made by the Sacred Rota. This was the first of the eight referendums to abrogate "clerical, militarist and authoritarian and Fascist laws either in their origin or their contents" which the Radical Party was starting to promote.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Nenni - Pietro Nenni (1891 - 1980) one of the most important Socialist leaders of the century.

2) Valpreda - Piero Valpreda was an anarchist detained in prison for many years accused of a terrorist bombing. He was eventually exonerated.

3) Rocco - The Rocco Code was the Fascist penal code.

4) Farnesina Democratica - A democratic movement in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

5) Historic compromise - The name for the Communist Party policy of collaboration with the Christian Democrats.