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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1974

In relation to the speculations formulated in the press during January 1974, according to which the Republican Giovanni Spadolini was taking action in Parliament to avoid the divorce referendum, the Radical Party's National Secretary sent Sen. Ugo La Malfa [the PRI national secretary, ed.] a telegram on January 15 expressing concern over the rumours circulating about an attempt "in extremis" to reach a compromise on divorce "which by now could only profit the designs for disuniting and delaying the lay and pro-divorce campaign on the divorce referendum. In the telegram the Radicals expressed their perplexity over the idea that such an initiative should be forthcoming from Sen. Spadolini of all people.

On January 20, in a Roman theatre, the Divorce League held a national meeting to open its campaign for the defence of the divorce law by way of the referendum to abolish it.

This demonstration was held at the same time as the launching of the campaign to collect signatures for the eight popular referendums promoted by the Radical Party to abrogate the already mentioned "clerical, militarist and authoritarian" laws. Among the participants in the demonstration were Loris Fortuna and the Hon. Mr. Baslini, the authors of the divorce law.

Five months after the appearance of its first issue, the Radical Party daily "Liberazione" suspended publication. The reasons for this decision, which had been announced in the paper's last issue on January 30, 1975, according to the Radicals, were not only the pressing financial necessities (which yet had forced the paper to limit its circulation and to come out on a less than daily basis) but primarily the desire to make a protest. In fact, the final issue of the paper wrote that publication had ceased "in order to underline the seriousness of the attacks and the discrimination by the regime against the Radical Party, the Divorce League and the paper itself".

Meanwhile, throughout Italy demonstrations began to take place in favour of divorce. One was held in Milan on February 17 with the participation of the Divorce League and youth and student movements, in which more than a thousand people participated. Speeches were made by Loris Fortuna, Camillo Benevento, provincial secretary of the UIL [Socialist labour union, ed.], and the demonstration's organisers, Pannella and Mellini.

Numerous speakers referred to the need of a capillary campaign to illustrate the law which would vividly emphasise it as a conquest of civilisation and liberty. Several, Fortuna himself among them, underlined how the law introducing divorce into our institutions was a law that protected a right and left free the conscience of the believer with regard to the value of the sacrament.

There was no lack of attacks on the PCI, especially in Pannella's address, which maintained that this party was not fully committed to the fight to win the referendum because it was "too involved" in advancing its historic-compromise (1) policy with the DC. And besides this there were attacks on the Communist Senator Mrs. Carrettoni, guilty of having proposed modifications to the Fortuna-Baslini law and thus accused of providing "arms to the adversary."

On February 20 Marco Pannella was sentenced by the Aquila Court of Appeals to nine months in prison together with the journalists Loeta and Signorino in confirmation of the sentence for defamation imposed in the Braibanti case. The Radical leader afterwards expressed strong criticism and revealed a circumstance which, according to him, ought to have brought about a postponement of the trial. "This act", he said, "constitutes another example the institutions violating the most elementary requirements of justice as well as legality. In fact, the holding of the trial forced an amputated defence since all the defence lawyers documented their difficulties in helping the defendants due to concurring impediments to justice".

On April 11, 1974, a joint communique of the Radical Party and the LID [Italian Divorce League, ed.] protested against the exclusion of the two groups from the television debates in the series "Referendum Tribune". In the communique the two pro-divorce groups also declared their opposition to the proposal to furnish the RAI [Italian State Radio/TV, ed.] with a list of speakers from which to choose, according to the RAI's irrevocable judgement, for a series of collateral debates among "experts" on divorce. The communique furthermore emphasised that while the LID and the Radical Party were excluded, "the right to participate was given to the ultra-reactionary "Civilità Cristiana", notorious for its thugs and bruisers, which had attacked the Radical Party that was deprived of all chances to reply".

On April 19 the secretary of the Radical Party, Giulio Ercolessi, and Marco Pannella of the LID Secretariat, released a joint declaration in which they claimed that public opinion in relation to the shocking kidnapping of the Genoese judge Sossi by the Red Brigades ought to demand an adequate and immediate action by the government to save and liberate the judge. "For a democrat living in a democracy, the life and liberty of a Fascist should be even more precious than his own". The communique maintained that those who organised the kidnapping were perpetuating a habit of the regime that was by now consolidated: "Every time that it finds or feels itself in danger there are massacres or suspect and calmorous deaths". And they cited the cases of Milan in 1969 and of Feltrinelli before the 1972 election. "On the eve of the referendum", the communique continued, "the disappearance of the far-right-wing judge cannot help but be a conscious attempt to induce at least that 70% of the right-wing electorate and 30

% of the DC electorate who are in favour of divorce according to the opinion poles to return to their traditional opinions".

On April 20 the Radical Party's First Secretary, Giulio Ercolessi, and the President of the LID, Mauro Mellini, sent [Italian] President Leone a letter of protest for the "discrimination against the civil rights movements" during the referendum campaign, and they informed the President that the 30 Radical and LID militants had the intention of continuing the protest hunger strike begun five days ago until he saw fit and dutiful to receive the representatives of the Radical Party and the LID at the Quirinal [the president's residence, ed.] to redress, as the guarantor of the Constitution, the attacks against the political liberty of the Radical minority. The letter to Leone concluded by noting how in 1958, in analogous circumstances, President Gronchi received Radical Party representatives.

On the same day of April 20 the collection of signatures throughout Italy began for the calling of the eight abrogatory referendums promoted by the Radicals. In announcing the news a Radical communique stated that the signatures could be presented in the chanceries of the law courts and magistrates' courts, the offices of municipal secretaries and notaries' offices whose registers were kept at party headquarters. Demonstrations against the lack of radio and tv news about the referendum also spread to Milan. Even though they could not count on a great number of militants, the LID together with the Radical Party held their activities in the Lombard capitol with the support of all leftist groups from the PCI to the PSI and the extra-parliamentary groups who furthered the publicity. Seven Radical Party militants, the national secretary among them, set up a couple of tables at the centre of the Gallery surrounded by large posters and a megaphone that explained to passers-by the reason for this action: until

President Leone received a Radical Party and LID delegation they were not going to move from the spot, or at least they would continue an indefinite hunger strike.

During the first days of May, almost on the eve of the fatal referendum date, it was made known that several ecclesiastical figures had been accused by the Radical Party Secretary, Giulio Ercolessi, for violation of art. 98 of the election laws in having "particularly acted to support the reactionary crusade called by the CEI [Italian Bishops' Conference, ed.]". Art. 98 precisely establishes - as a party communique stated - that the minister of any religious cult who abuses his position and in the exercise of his office tries to force the electorate's votes... is to be punished with six months to three years imprisonment".

After the May 12 referendum vote, in which the pro-divorce group was victorious, the Radical Party released a statement which pointed out that everyone had given homage to those Catholics who had defied the hierarchy, doubtless at considerable personal sacrifice, and had openly dared to come out in favour of a "NO" vote [to the abrogation of the divorce law, ed.]. The statement affirmed that no one had had the courage, the firmness and the political lucidity to furnish a concrete and responsible guarantee that the ferment and aspirations of these believers would not be reabsorbed on the political and civil level nor "consigned to the certain vengeance of the hierarchy and the Church".

Pannella released in his own name a communique in which he affirmed that many other struggles were awaiting his party and that the Italian people would have to face many more "to liberate itself from a regime which, in the very week that saw this scorching defeat for it, had dangerously strengthened its position with the law on public financing of political parties and by purchasing the last independent newspapers in the country...

The abrogation of the iniquitous Lateran Pact and not its confirmation by a so-called revision, together with the abrogation of the worst military and civilian laws by means of the eight referendums will be the next unswerving step of the Radicals".

Pannella himself explained in a May 17 press conference the reasons why he had begun another hunger strike on the preceding May 3: the first reason was the demand for the "essential minimum of justice" from the RAI in assigning at least a quarter of an hour to the LID and the PR with the guarantees recognised by the election broadcasts, and the request for at least a quarter of an hour reserved for Don Franzoni in the form of an interview or a talk with the press. Pannella then said he would fast until the Head of State had accepted his request for an audience which he had presented on April 15 to inform him of the serious discrimination and the fundamentally unconstitutional situation that was taking shape. "I will also fast", Pannella added, "until Parliament does its duty of taking into consideration the law regulating abortion presented by the Hon. Mr. Fortuna in February 1973, and the social and human reality it represents and pronounces itself on the issue". Pannella then also justified his h

unger strike on the basis of defending freedom of information and of the "lay democratic and anti-Fascist line" of the newspaper "Il Messaggero". The Radical leader asked for "adequate and incontestable guarantees" that there would be no "serious and unsuitable forms of censorship and suffocation" at the expense of the Radical Party". Pannella concluded the press conference in the hope that these requests would soon be granted: "Experience as well as evidence show that we have never used the non-violent weapon of the hunger strike to obtain advantages or privileges. We have recourse to it only if we are forced to in order to re-establish rights that have been violated or denied".

"I accuse the Rome public prosecutor of having taken on a political and persecutory attitude". Thus Marco Pannella opened a press conference on May 29 at the Rome Court House. The Radical leader spoke on the eve of a trial in the Court of Assizes that saw him accused of defaming the government and the armed forces as well as instigating soldiers to disobey the laws and, in general, of instigating criminal actions. In order to understand Pannella's attitude, one should remember that on the 21 of the same month, when the first hearing in the trial was held, his defence lawyer De Cataldo had vainly requested calling many authoritative witnesses to testify, such as Fanfani [DC] Pertini, and others. On that occasion Pannella handed the journalists a document addressed to the Court and in which there was a minimal foretaste of his attitude in the trial of rebellion against this state of affairs: the Court having rejected the request for witnesses whose purpose would have been to bring alive again for the judg

es the atmosphere of 1972 (to which time the accusation referred), the trial no longer had any reason to be held and represented an act of "public violence". Consequently Pannella replied with non-violence by not appealing any eventual sentence.

But the trial was suspended: the Third Court of Assizes, accepting a request by the defence, ordered the trial documents to be sent to the prosecutor's office to determine if there was reason to extend the penal action to the members of the Radical Party Executive which had declared in the previous hearing of having co-authored with Marco Pannella all the incriminated documents. (The accusations of defamation of the various institutions were made against Pannella on the basis of a few articles that had appeared on March 29, 1972 in "Notizie Radicali", the party bulletin. The reading of this order was received with applause by the many Radicals present. At the end of the hearing Pannella declared that the political meaning of "such an exceptional judicial decision" was clear: the Rome District Attorney's office had initiated this case for political reasons and, according to the Radical leader, in a way all the more understandable on the technical and juridical level. "Therefore we will request the Superi

or Council of the Magistracy to investigate the possibility of serious professional failings in the conducting of this case".

On June 2, Republic Day, the Radicals organised their usual demonstration coinciding with the traditional Armed Forces Parade. This demonstration consisted in throwing out leaflets in which they opposed the fact that "a day commemorating a Republic founded on labour" should be celebrated with a military parade. But that was the first time when the Radical demonstration ended with arrests. In general in other years the police were content with stopping the youths who were passing out leaflets. But in 1974 six people were arrested for offending the Armed Forces. For the rest, they were immediately released on provisional liberty - one doesn't know whether due to the goodness of the public prosecutor or because of the protest sit-in immediately initiated by Pannella and his followers in front of police headquarters to demand the release of the arrested.

Episodes of this kind occurred in other parts of Italy as well. The Secretary of the Radical Party, Giulio Ercolessi, on June 17 denounced several Carabinieri who on June 9 in Trieste arrested Marino Busdachin, a member of the party's Central Committee, and three other pacifists who were distributing leaflets. According to the Radicals the Carabinieri had violated a precise political right guaranteed by the Constitution in keeping the arrested pacifists from distributing a leaflet. G Giulio Ercolessi also indicated his intention of being the plaintiff in the name of the Radical Party Secretariat.

In commenting on the results of the election in Sardinia (Cf. Political Activity), on June 18 the Radical Party Secretariat emphasised that the "strong shift to the left in the Sardinian elections is a further proof of the potential for a democratic and Socialist alternative that exists in the country". The Radicals affirmed that there was an undeniably close relationship between the success of the "NO" vote in Sardinia on May 12 and the regional elections. Besides the substantial, for the Radicals, increase in the votes for the PCI, PSI and PSDI [Communists, Socialists and Social Democrats, ed.] another significant datum issuing from those results was the fact for the first time in Sardinian history the the lay parties in toto reached the percentual levels of the referendum results "with minor and insignificant differences".

On January 26 Pannella held a press conference to explain the reasons that had led him 51 days earlier to begin a hunger strike. He recalled that the requests of the LID to take part in the television debates on the referendum campaign had been rejected: he complained that only a few publications had given news about the actions promoted by the Radicals in those years. He furthermore said that only 78 days after they had requested it did the President of the Republic decide to grant the LID and the Radical Party an audience. Pannella announced that he proposed asking the new owner of "Il Messaggero" for "confirmation of the continued lay position" of the newspaper. "We ask" he said, "for a special document guaranteeing this which we will submit in the next few days to the editorial committee for eventual corrections, and then to the new proprietor - that is to Montedison [a chemical giant, ed.] - for what they know of it. We will also ask for the pape

r to publish the entire document and a comment by the LID and the PR three newspaper copy pages long".

But Pannella was disappointed at least with regard to the audience with the Head of State: a communique from the Quirinal [the president's residence, ed.] announced on the same day that the audience had been annulled. The Radical reaction was immediate, calling the Quirinal's attitude "inexplicable". However, the next day a party delegation presented itself at the audience all the same, on the basis that the annulment had not been officially communicated to the Radical Party or the LID either by letter or telegram. The delegation representing the Radical Party was composed of Angiolo Bandinelli, Liliana Ingargiola, Gianfranco Spadaccia, and Roberto Cicciomessere, while the LID delegation was composed of Mellini, De Cataldo, De Marchi and others. Since the delegation was, of course, not received, they delivered a letter of protest to the Quirinal Secretariat. Apropos of this the Radical Party National Secretariat convened the Central Committee to formulate "a suitable reply to the President's action".

And on the 29th that extraordinary session of the Central Committee took place. On this occasion the polemics became ever harsher between the President of the Republic and the pacifists. Spadaccia affirmed that it was not true that the elusive audience had been granted by the President unofficially as Quirinal circles affirmed, because this was not indicated in any official communication. But it was true, on the other hand, that the audience had been fixed for Mellini and Ercolessi, the former representing the LID and the latter representing the party. On her own volition, Elena Croce, the daughter of the philosopher, had bent over backwards to get the Radicals the audience they had requested months ago. The Secretary General of the President's Office, Picella, according to Gianfranco Spadaccia,told her that the President was disposed to receive Marco Pannella in the hope of inducing him to desist from the hunger strike. In clarifying the reason for the refusal of the meeting, the Quirinal

press office explained that it was motivated by the sudden and one-sided decision to send an official delegation to an unofficial audience the President had "personally" granted exclusively to Ercolessi and Mellini. "Mellini and Ercolessi had nothing personal to tell the President", said Spadaccia. That is to say, the delegation intended to explain to the guarantor of minority rights the concerns of the pacifists: abortion, bills that lay dormant in Parliament for years, the vote for eighteen-year-olds, the scandals that have been covered up, etc.

The Central Committee of the Radical Party met again on July 6 and took stock of the battles being conducted by the group supported by Pannella's hunger strike undertaken along with about forty other militants. Secretary Spadaccia underscored the PSI's support of the Radical initiatives and invited them to undertake mutual actions. "With regard to the problem of abortion" he added, "there is evident dissent in all parties. For the rest, the voice of the Radicals is beginning to be heard and seconded: for example, a few days ago Pannella launched a proposal to make the penalties harsher for exporters of capital, and the Christian Democrats quickly took a stand on the issue. Not only that, but thirteen days ago activity in Parliament picked up".

According to Marco Pannella, now in his 65th day of fasting, (apparently he was subsisting on vitamins and glasses of milk with a little coffee - to be precise, four cappuccini a day), it was time to intensify the actions because if the party leaders indicated their disposition to consider certain issues, there was still not the political will to resolve them. "We don't ask for immediate concession of the things we want", he said. "For the moment we exact the fixing of a date for the debate on abortion in Parliament; that the bill on the vote for eighteen-year-olds be approved by the end of the year; in short, that the passage through Parliament and the laws that regulate it should be respected". Pannella added that it was now already July 6 and that at the end of the month Parliament would go on vacation. The Radical Party in those days would have intensified its action with public assemblies and other initiatives, not least the one of collecting signatures for a referendum: the abrogation of the law g

iving public financing to [political] parties.

Pannella also announced that he would again request to be received by the Head of State: "this time we will ask forty leading figures of the cultural world to sign the request with us. We will see if another refusal will be forthcoming. We will present Leone with a white paper, one chapter of which is also dedicated to the Presidency of the Republic".

Finally, on July 18 at 6 p.m. President Leone received Marco Pannella in a private audience.

During the conversation, which lasted 45 minutes, Pannella brought to the attention of the Head of State the need to receive the representatives of the Radical Party and the LID for an exchange of views. Afterwards the Radical Party revealed that President Leone first expressed his esteem and interest in Pannella's civil commitment, but brought to his notice that he could not grant an audience to the representatives of the Party and the LID in order not to put into question a more than decade-long practice of distinguishing the groups present in Parliament from the others.

At the end of the audience at the Quirinal, Marco Pannella made a statement in which he expressed his thanks to the Head of State and the declaration of the impossibility of the President to break with the above-mentioned decades-long practice regarding audiences. Pannella recalled that this practice had been widely criticised on all sides and that the LID and the Radicals raised an objection on principle which in practice was transmuted into a granting of the request for an audience. "The situation", Pannella concluded, "remains thus: a disagreement in all clarity and in reciprocal respect".

On the evening of the same day Pannella appeared on a television debate concerning family law approved by the Cultural Steering Committee for radio and television programmes. The LID protested against the RAI's lack of publicity regarding this broadcast. "Precisely in the course of a conversation with Director General Barnabei" the LID communique said, "Pannella had received assurances that not only the press office would do its usual publicity job on this occasion, but seeing the importance and seriousness of the theme, such publicity would have to be made suitable and not merely routine".

The Radical Party and the LOC (Conscientious Objectors' League) decided to move the annual "Anti-Militarist March" to Rome in 1974, thus departing from a ten-year tradition that saw the event take place from July 25 - August 4 first between Milan and Vicenza and then from Trieste to Aviano. Each of the "ten days against violence", as the organisers called the demonstration, was dedicated to a civil struggle that the Radicals proposed to put to the attention of the political and social forces in the country. The complete programme included the days against the violence of the Church, of the Army, of the police, of Justice, of the bosses, of false information, and against violence to youth, to women, and sexual liberty. During the "ten days", to which the Italian Socialist Party also adhered, the Radicals tried to send as many young people as possible out into the streets of Rome to enlist support for the eight referendums that they were trying to put through.

On August 1, meanwhile, there began talks of the Radical Party and LID delegations with the secretaries of the political parties. Franco De Cataldo (LID) and Gianfranco Spadaccia (PR) were received by the Secretary of the PSDI, Flavio Orlandi, and in the afternoon of the same day by Enrico Berlinguer, PCI secretary. "We solicited these talks", declared Spadaccia and De Cataldo, "in order to directly involve the responsibility of the parties in the need to fix a precise schedule for the passage through Parliament of the family law bill and the one on the vote for eighteen-year-olds".

On August 2 the Radicals officially requested with a series of telegrams the immediate removal or suspension of the Ettore Barnabei as Director General of the RAI-TV [Italian State Radio and TV, ed.] and the other top directors of the agency. It was also decided to present against the RAI representatives "a charge of swindle and neglect of official duties as civil servants and an appeal for immediate urgent precautionary measures".

According to the Radicals, the removal of the RAI executives was justified by a sentence of the Constitutional Court emitted in those very days which had confirmed that "for at least ten years the RAI-TV had acted in violation of the constitutional duties and rights of information and against the fundamental rights of the citizens". The situation had become even more insupportable, the Radicals added, because while the national press and a great part of the foreign press gave ample space to the battles of the party and the LID, the RAI-TV had practised ever more censorship of information, "complete disinformation on the level of journalistic services and all other sectors and headings".

On August 7 Marco Pannella sent Agnelli, Cefis and Girotti [all important industrialists, ed.] telegrams to request an interview, announcing furthermore that if his request were denied he would continue his hunger strike indefinitely. (He had already been striking for innumerable days). The telegram stated that the top government authorities had long since granted Pannella's requests for an audience, and that there had been meetings with the highest democratic party representatives who had adhered to the demands of the Radicals and which concerned problems within their sphere of competence. "It is clear that the responsibilities of economic power in Italy" Pannella's telegram state, "especially with regard to you, are often even greater than the formal powers of the Head of State and of the government. But for this reason too I intend to meet with you in the name of the Radical Party and the LID".

In the ambit of their contacts with party representatives, on August 12 the Radical Party and Italian Divorce League delegations were received at Palazzo Madama [seat of the Senate, ed.] by representatives of the DC, PCI, PSI and PSDI parliamentary groups. In the course of the talks the Radical Party exponents reiterated the need for rapid discussion and approval of the proposals for the reform of family law and the vote for eighteen-year-olds. As a communique informed, the delegation was received by the DC group in the persons of Speaker of the Senators Bartolomei, Vice Party Secretary Ruffini, and the Senator Mrs. Falcucci, woman delegate of the DC and the head of the Justice Commission group. With the Communist group the talks were held with Senators Giglia Tedesco, Lugnano and Petrella. The Speaker Zuccalà and Senators Rossi and Talamona participated in the talks for the Socialists and the Social Democrats were represented by the Speaker, Sen. Ariosto. The delegations also met with the vice speaker

of the Senate, Tullia Carrettoni.

On August 17, after almost one hundred days of non-violent struggle, Pannella held a press conference at Radical Party headquarters, wanting to draw up a balance of the Radical initiatives. Pannella, who finally gave up his hunger strike after exactly 94 days, said that he had stopped after having verified that the objectives of the PR and the LID had been "substantially reached".

"During these three months" the Radical exponent emphasised, "press and television have dedicated three times more space to the activities of the civil rights movement than they did in the entire decade of 1963 to 1974". Pannella then expounded the particular value of his talk with President Leone. "If the President did not feel like modifying a practice of not meeting with the representatives of political minorities, he nevertheless in practice made an innovation with respect to this tradition by receiving a private citizen for a political consultation".

And here is the list of the objectives reached after the long hunger strike that involved not only Pannella but many other militants. Abortion: the President of the Health Commission of the Chamber committed himself to conclude the report study within a year. The vote for the eighteen-year-olds: All the political groups in the Senate committed themselves to conclude the debate and the vote on the bill by the end of October, which would then be sent to the competent commission in the Chamber. Family law: the DC in its meeting with the Radical delegation "categorically excluded" any obstructionist intention and accepted the suggestion to accelerate the discussion in the commission. With regard to the RAI-TV, Pannella, while confirming the protest march set for September 20, recalled the agreement reached for giving the LID "television space" totalling half an hour as well as committing itself to preparing a programme on Catholic dissent (Don Franzoni and other "outsider" priests). Furthermore in the autum

n the campaign for non-collaboration and the fiscal strike would be launched.

From all this Pannella drew the conclusion that non-violent action was not the only efficacious arm at the disposal of the minorities in their battles. With regard to the strategy of the civil rights movement the Radical leader recalled two key factors: transform every bullying act into a political clash; and restore republican legality each time it was violated.

At the end of August the LID's National Secretary, Marco Pannella, gave an interview to the "Corriere della Sera" [the prestigious Milan daily, ed.] in which he announced the results of the Demoskope opinion poll on Radical Party initiatives. Of those questioned, 85% thought that the Radical Party project for "eight referendums against the regime" was "certain to be of use to the democratic functioning of the institutions, and in particular of Parliament"; 78% were in favour of abrogating the norms of the Concordat; 82% for the one regarding the penal code; 89% for those regarding the military code; 75% in favour of those regarding the press. This was another proof after the publication of the poll on abortion that, as a Radical Party communique stated, the party's policy on civil rights found a majority consensus that by now was much greater than on May 13. The Radical Party and the LID appealed to the left to make this policy their own as an alternative to the DC regime.

The second poll furthermore revealed that as of July 25 only 6% of Italians declared that they were aware of the existence of the Radical Party and 80% of that of the LID. That notwithstanding, 3.9% of those questioned said that they would "probably or certainly" would have voted for the Radical Party list if they had been presented. Of these 12% were Christian Democratic voters, 10% of the MSI [neo-Fascists, ed.], 10% of the PLI [Liberal Party], 19% of the PRI [Republican Party], 8% of the PSDI, 17% of the PSI, 7% of the PCI, and 8% of those who declared to have not voted at all, or to have cast blank ballots, whereas 9% were new voters.

In his interview in the "Corriere" the national secretary of the LID emphasised that the situation being what it was, the potential Radical voters would have surpassed that of the PRI or the PLI, but that for receiving instructions for an alternative to the regime, one would do better to hope for the entire left's working out a common programme of government, including the demands of the civil rights movement and furthermore using to the hilt, as the Radical Party and the country requested, the democratic tool of popular referendums.

On September 4, 1974, carrying their protest posters under their arms, three pacifists led by Marco Pannella, succeeded in getting to see the Hon. Mr. Umberto delle Fave, president of the RAI-TV. The entrance of the delegation, composed besides Pannella of Maria Costanza Lopez (Women's Liberation Movement) and by Cicciomessere and Baldassari (Radical Party) had been preceded by a demonstration of pacifists who were protesting against an order of the Rome Court which, according to them, rejected the citizens' right to demand objective information from the RAI-TV, impartiality in presenting ideas and free access to ideas of all schools of thought. A journalist had appealed to the judge for an (urgent) provision against the agency with the accusation, in essence, of not having brought itself up to the terms of the recent sentence of the Constitutional Court on radio and television broadcasts. This appeal was rejected.

The talks with Umberto delle Fave, joined after a while by Ettore Bernabei, lasted about two hours. The RAI president listened to the arguments of the delegation: from abortion to the vote for eighteen-year-olds to family law. It was indispensable, the Radicals maintained, for the RAI to confront these delicate issues with complete and objective programmes. According to the Radicals Delle Fave conceded that the RAI would deal with all these questions, but without fixing precise dates. Precisely at this point Delle Fave sent for Ettore Bernabei. In the presence of the Director General Marco Pannella made his protest for the "mystery" story that was the background for the fifteen minutes of broadcast time he had shortly before managed to "twist" out of the agency. In fact, there was talk of a surreptitious change of programme, including the one in which Marco Pannella figured, in order not to cause a polarisation of tv spectators towards the rhetoric of the hunger strike. The Radicals found that easy to f

igure out: just don't give the news to the papers. In effect there were few among the tv public who had the chance to hear Pannella. In spite of the fact that the RAI press office said "it was a perfectly normal and calm meeting", the Radicals announced that they did not intend to renounce their "March on the RAI" set for September 20.

Meanwhile, still on September 4, the Radicals' National Secretariat called the party's National Congress for November 1-3 in Milan. And in commenting on the RAI episode a Radical Party Central Committee communique "confirmed the commitments it has assumed to restore legality in the field of public information and television in contrast to the violence of the institutions set in motion by the regime not only against minorities but against the citizens in general".

And as promised, on the afternoon of September 20 the "march on the RAI-TV" took place. About 400 people preceded by a jazz band playing its music on a truck first made a short stop in Via del Babuino, the headquarters of the TV news, chanting slogans and hoisting many posters inciting the reform of the RAI and asking for the abolition of the radio-television monopoly in Italy. Shortly afterwards the marchers (besides the Radical leaders there were the union leader Camillo Benvenuto and Marco Pannella of the LID) reached the executive headquarters in Viale Mazzini. Several orators spoke from a tribune erected that morning after which the demonstration disbanded in complete orderliness.

The march was the end of two days of united battle, a Radical communique stated, for democratic information, for the constitutionality and the honesty of public information, and to support the reform of the RAI-TV's structures and administration. "The sentence of the Constitutional Court", the organisers explained, "solemnly proclaimed the illegality and unconstitutionality of radio and television information as it has for the last ten years been imposed on the country by the RAI-TV".

In Turin on the same day several dozen Radical Party members and other minority groups took part in a demonstration "to protest the past and present administration of the RAI-TV" by "symbolically occupying" for only half an hour the lobby of the RAI's administrative headquarters in Via Cernaia.

But notwithstanding the crescendo of actions, the Radicals had a great disappointment in not managing to collect the 500,000 signatures necessary for calling the eight referendums on civil rights which they had been promoting. In fact, September 30 was the deadline for delivering the signatures demanding the eight referendums to the Supreme Court of Appeals. There were less than half the required number of signatures. Angiolo Bandinelli, president of the Radical Party Central Committee, spoke of this result on September 24. He revealed that at the beginning of September 130,000 signatures had been gathered. Bandinelli affirmed that in any case wherever the Radicals were capable of mounting an organisation for the collection of signatures the popular response was massive and immediate. The number of referendums requested, according to Bandinelli, was no obstacle to the finding of adherents but rather an aid to it: about 90% of those who signed, signed all the referendum requests. "In this campaign" he sa

id, "we have encountered difficulties and obstacles of all kinds: difficulties and resistance of a political nature, such as "Manifesto", the PDUP [United Democratic Proletarian Party, ed.] and "Lotta Continua" abandoning the campaign after having repeatedly promised us their participation; the declared hostility of the PCI and, during the divorce referendum, also of the PSI; the consequent closing of the factories to our initiative", Bandinelli continued, "despite the support of the majority of UIL [Socialist labour union, ed.] leaders in all its components. But also obstacles of an institutional nature, beginning with the difficulty of getting people to authenticate the signatures collected and finally," Bandinelli concluded, "the behaviour of the RAI which completely censored news of the Radical action".

On October 13-14 the Radical Party Central Committee met for its last session before the National Congress which was called for November. The issues of the debate, introduced in a report by National Secretary Gianfranco Spadaccia, were the serious political crisis and the choices that the Congress would have to make.

Speaking in the debate, Mauro Mellini said that in the May 12 referendum the great majority of the country showed its desire to end rapidly and definitively an era which began on April 18, 1948. "The true cause of the crisis" he said, "is this contradiction between the needs for an alternative that is already ripe in the country and the apparent impossibility of giving it a consequent political outlet. One cannot escape from the crisis without starting to deal with and resolving the problem imposed by this contradiction."

In the course of the debate an ample agreement was reached, as a Radical communique affirmed, by all the speakers in considering civil rights and the institutional tool of the referendum to be the battlefield of political confrontation on which the the left had to confront the DC and the entire clerical-Fascist ranks without which the social struggles and parliamentary initiatives would be weakened.

The first confrontation was over the strategy the party ought to follow. Giulio Ercolessi, ex first party secretary, said that the Congress ought to begin again with the collecting of signatures for the eight referendums while at the same time launching a national campaign for the abrogation of public financing of parties.

Franco De Cataldo proposed that the Radical Party go ahead with the civil rights policy and the referendum initiative too while seeking the broadest possible agreement with the lay forces and, in particular, with the PSI and the PCI.

According to Roberto Cicciomessere, on the other hand, the crisis of the regime did not allow for long-term actions and intermediate measures. It required a general political response from the entire left. Therefore the Radical Party ought to propose, while continuing to pursue its own initiatives, a confrontation with the other leftist parties which would make it possible to lay down the basis of a programme and alliance as an alternative to that of the Christian Democrats. Lacking this, the party ought to mobilise starting right then and there to present its own list in the national elections taking into consideration the possibility of early elections.

At the end of the Central Committee's work a document was approved which stated among other things that "the present government crisis threatens to offer an other reason for paralysing Parliament in its controlling functions and legislative activities". The document added that "because the DC wills it, an institutional and legislative crisis is added to the economic and political one which can only be aggravated by recourse to early elections" and that "in the face of this possibility the parties of the left must not wait passively, as they did in 1972, for an eventual decision of the Head of State to dissolve the houses of Parliament but must immediately drive ahead with the passage of the reforms so that it will be clear that the one who wants to block and bury them is the same political group that in all these years has allowed the economic crisis to develop. The May 13 victory must not remain without consequences and without developments".

The XIVth Congress of the Radical Party, which had begun on November 1, 1974, ended on the 4th with the decision to present a list of its own candidates in the next elections - a decision which had to be confirmed by an absolute majority of the Central Committee. The Radical Party also pronounced itself in favour of again taking up the abrogative referendums.

Not all Radicals were in favour of the party's running in the elections. Against that motion, which Spadaccia and Bandinelli had presented, another motion was presented (drafted by Palazzo, Castiglione and Colombo) that was against the presentation of a list of candidates. But the former motion was approved with 156 votes in favour, 19 against, and 32 abstentions. Transformed into an amendment that required a special congress to be convened for the party to run in any possible election, the Palazzo-Colombo-Castiglione motion was rejected. A third motion, presented by Sonnino and Mancini, was withdrawn after its authors received "political guarantees" from Spadaccia and Bandinelli that it would be the absolute majority of the new Central Committee to decide to present a list of candidates.

Apropos of the imminent election, and in particular in the face of the possibility of early elections, the Spadaccia-Bandinelli motion committed the party organs, the Radical associations and the individual militants to mobilise from that very moment for the presentation of the Radical list. "If no new facts come up within the left, if no dynamic innovative and alternative elements are set in motion in the sense indicated in the motion, the Radical Party could not in fact neglect its duty to give political expression to the pressing needs of Italian democracy even on the political level by bringing its own initiatives into the parliamentary institutions".

Having affirmed that "the first civil right to be acquired and realised is the right to the referendum", the motion thus confirmed the validity of "the proposed abrogatory referendum approved by the preceding Congress and already attempted last year". And it gave a mandate to the party's executive organs to define the "way in which it shall be re-launched during 1975 with the modifications which it may eventually be opportune to make". The Congress's concluding document made apropos of this "an appeal to all democratic, political and union forces, in and out of Parliament, to understand the importance of this action as an element of grass roots mobilisation of vast popular participation in the process of the democratisation of the State, and so that the errors may not be repeated which have already been committed twice in the past to impede it and boycott its realisation".

In illustrating the salient points of the motion, Spadaccia maintained among other things that the creation of "a great Socialist and libertarian force was the essential condition for an alternative democratic policy of the left. The Radical Party", the Secretary added, "in strengthening its own structure intended to make an independent contribution to the prospects of this new united creation, not by agitating action which was only useful in putting pressure on the parties in Parliament, on the left and on the unions, but by promoting and carrying out struggles for liberty and liberation thus becoming the point of reference for the federative co-ordination of the new libertarian, democratic and Socialist movements on the local and national levels, and by working to create new democratic conditions and political and institutional outlets for them".

The day before Marco Pannella, the Secretary of the LID, spoke illustrating the aims of the new political movement "The May 12 League" for civil rights and liberty which he had established. He also examined the domestic and international political scene from the Radical point of view. Pannella maintained that there was going on "a real attempt at ideological fraud" on the part of capitalism which found itself in a great crisis everywhere and particularly in Europe. "It is maintained" the LID secretary said, "that the crisis in Europe has been provoked by the sheikhs increasing the price of oil. The truth is different, because the increase in the price of energy is a source of more profits for the multinational and American companies who, by acting in this way and keeping control of other energy sources, are convinced that they can maintain their power in the world for further decades". He then went on to criticise what was done in Italy in the preceding years in the nuclear energy and petrochemical se

ctors "impeding the development of a European market which the multinational and American companies fear".

Then, after affirming that in the Fifties the DC had made the army "Fascist", Pannella criticised the positions taken by the parties on the eve of November 4. "When all the parties declare that the army is healthy" he stated, "I cannot help taking my stand against this lie, because I do not know one general or one colonel who has renewed his oath of fidelity to the republican Constitution and disowned the coup leaders".

Referring to the congressional report made by party secretary Spadaccia, Pannella indicated his agreement with the need to re-propose the eight referendums. After having approved the congress's instructions for a national students' strike to push for the vote for eighteen-year-olds, Pannella said that it was necessary to organise an act of civil disobedience on the part of proprietors of small apartments and refuse to pay the special tax "considering that the tax is not paid by the Vatican real estate holdings".

Pannella then spoke of the movement he recently founded, stating that only after the Radical Congress it would take "one more decisive step" and publish a manifesto. "Ours will be a united battle of the left", he said, "to create a great Socialist movement for civil rights".

On November 5 the National Secretariat of the Radical Party in a communique expressed "its disagreement with the form and contents of the way in which the left in Parliament had acted on November 4". According to the Radicals the "recent revelations on the attempted coup" demonstrate that the Armed Forces were still "polluted with anti-republican groups", for which reason it was necessary to realise a "thorough clean-up" of military structures which must not only be done at the top levels but which had to provide for forms of control and democratic participation of everyone belonging to the Armed Forces.

The Radical communique concluded by maintaining that the position of the republican and democratic groups, which "had justified their presence at the November 4 celebration exalting the Armed Forces by insisting that they are entirely faithful to the republic", threatened to weaken the position of "those sectors of the Armed Forces, simple soldiers and non-commissioned officers, that are fighting for its democratisation and political control beginning with the acquisition of constitutional civil liberties and the right to unions, as well as those other soldiers who can be rehabilitated to republican loyalty by clear democratic proposals".

On November 9 the Radicals called on all the groups of the left to unitedly declare a national day (November 30) for the vote for eighteen-year-olds. The appeal came from Radical Party Secretary Gianfranco Spadaccia and was made to the youth federations of the PSI, the PCI and the PRI as well as to the PDUP, Avanguardia Operaia [Workers Vanguard, ed.] and Lotta Continua. The proposal foresaw demonstrations in Milan, Florence, Rome, and as far as possible in other cities. The communique that announced the Radical initiative also stated that it was necessary to defeat "the attempt of the DC and the MSI to block approval of the law lowering the voting age and it expressed hope for "obtaining unity, at least on this question".

On November 27 Pannella met with journalists, in view of the imminent resumption of his trial (December 6) for insulting various state institutions as the editor responsible for the periodical "Notizie radicali". The trial had been suspended and the documents returned to the prosecutor since, as one may recall, all the members of the Radical Executive accused themselves of the offences attributed to Pannella. Now, however, the prosecutor asked for the dismissal of the case against the members of the Executive while insisting on proceeding with the charges against Pannella.

In the meeting with the journalists, Pannella and his lawyers De Cataldo and Mellini expressed several considerations. De Cataldo asserted that the judge's decision was legally unexceptionable while considering it politically questionable. Pannella, for his part, affirmed that the trial was a very serious political attempt to mount an attack on the freedom of the press. According to Pannella, "whenever the director of a party publication is incriminated, the intention is essentially to make an individual pay for what is really the policy of the party itself".

1975

The beginning of 1975 saw the Radical Party involved in a "scandal" that was triggered off by the discovery in Florence of a clinic where, it appeared, the principal activity was abortion and this, it appeared, with the full awareness and support of the Radicals. There were even insinuations that much of the party's income came from the illicit activities practised in that clinic.

As a reaction to this, on January 13 the Radical Party brought charges against the director of the daily paper "Il Secolo d'Italia" and the weekly "Candido" which had made these claims. In the communique that announced this news it was emphasised that the Radical Party was "the only party in Italy which not only published its annual budget, but also indicated all the sources of its income". The Florentine vice prosecutor of the Republic, Padoin, stated that the responsibility for the case in Florence was to be ascribed to the Radical Party secretary, to which the latter, Spadaccia, replied by affirming that according to the most cautious estimates the clandestine abortions during that period amounted to at least one and a half million a year in Italy, and that sociological studies made on the outskirts of cities (2) had shown that [was due] to the lack of other forms of health assistance known to the mass of proletarian women.

"With regard to the middle class, it is legitimate to suppose that abortions are performed in the majority of private clinics. We ask Dr. Padoin" Spadaccia concluded, "what the Italian judiciary has done to apply the law to everyone?" But the only reply from the Florence judge was a warrant for Spadaccia's arrest which astonished the country. The Radical Party held a press conference in which participated party Vice Secretary Cicciomessere, Silvia Grillo of the MLD [Women's Liberation Movement, ed.] and Marco Pannella. On this occasion the release of all those arrested was demanded, the withdrawal of the arrest warrants and an immediate Parliamentary action to wipe out the "Fascist" norms. After claiming co-responsibility for Spadaccia's declarations made upon his arrest, Cicciomessere announced the imminent opening of CISA centres (Italian Centre for Sterilisation and Abortion, federated with the Radical Party) in various Italian cities.

Attorney De Cataldo then reported on his encounter in prison with Spadaccia whom he was defending, affirming that he was arrested for the declarations he had made to the press, "therefore because of his assumption of political responsibility". But legally this presented no problem: Spadaccia had practically confessed to a crime. "Among the aims of our party", he told the investigating judge Casini in the Florence prison, "there was also that of providing premises and physicians for performing abortions under safe and public conditions". Spadaccia declared to have carried out his political tasks which the party congress, held the previous November, had given him a mandate to do.

There was no lack of self-accusations such as that of Marco Pannella who, in an article appearing in "Il Mondo" who claimed to be associated with Spadaccia and his comrades "with objective positions of maximum responsibility in promoting the civil disobedience of an iniquitous law which claimed to condemn millions of women for criminal abortions".

On January 19 the President of the Chamber, Sandro Pertini, received a Radical delegation which expressed its intense worry for the manner and the meaning of the National Secretary Gianfranco Spadaccia's arrest and which asked Parliament to get the study going of the Socialist bill according to the commitment assumed also by the chairman of the Health Commission.

Pertini, as a Radical communique announced, declared himself disposed towards the problems presented and giving assurances of his readiness to act. But Pertini also stated that there could be no hope of passage through Parliament being rapid.

On the same day Federative Council of the party confirmed the "political co-responsibility of the entire party in the civil disobedience action staged by the Information Centre for Sterilisation and Abortion directed at a change in the Fascist law". And it decided to continue to support politically the action of the CISA itself as well as to complete the job undertaken "to support the activity of the centre and to bring about the national conference on abortion in Rome at the end of the month".

At the same time it gave a mandate to secretary to request a meeting with Prime Minister Moro and the secretaries of the democratic parties to unblock the situation that had been created after the arrest of Gianfranco Spadaccia on behalf of whom "a national campaign would be called which would include direct action of the harshest sort and with a national unity day".

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

2) Outskirts - In Italy the outskirts of the cities are generally slum areas.