ABSTRACT: It is necessary to disarm the State provocation which aims to cause a mass conflict, and which resorts to criminal choices in order to better criminalize every demonstration of justified opposition, of justified revolt and of justified dissent. Only the alternative use of nonviolent civil disobedience can disarm the violence of the regime. On page 3: "Our violent comrades": Marco Pannella (2) comments on the student movement's strategy and methods.

(RADICAL NEWS N. 84, 24 March 1977)

At a moment in which violence seems to prevail over the democratic political struggle, paving the way to that chaos and disorder that are the aim of those who, inside this regime, pursue repressive schemes, the radicals have considered it necessary to render homage symbolically to the victims of this explosion of violence; a homage which is all the more necessary and dutiful on the part of people who, like the radicals, believe that only a nonviolent answer can stop this insane spiral of State massacres, of subversive plots and of authoritarian and repressive temptations. In Bologna, where several radicals were arrested with false and infamous allegations of violences they never committed, the Radical Party as a whole participated in the funerals of the student Lorusso. But even more than the death of the student Lorusso, the accidental victim of university clashes brought about in Bologna by the choices of the director and of Minister Cossiga (3), the Radical Party wanted to officially express its grief for

the beastly assassination of brigadier Ciotta, killed in cold blood by the murderous hand of a killer. In Rome, for the same reason, our comrade Emma Bonino (4) and our comrade Walter Baldassarri visited the policemen wounded during Saturday's conflicts, bringing flowers.

The Radical Party repeats that it is necessary to isolate the subversive groups that pursue the solution of despair, armed violence and urban guerrilla warfare. But in order to do this, it is necessary to defuse the State provocation which aims to cause a mass conflict, and resorts to criminal choices in order to better criminalize every demonstration of justified opposition, of justified revolt and of justified dissent. In mass conflicts, those who want to cause disorders can enact every sort of provocation, can unleash an atmosphere of civil guerrilla war, can reinstate the climate of intolerance and conflict between the police forces and the majority of the population (a climate which had been overcome during the years of democratic struggles), can better endanger the police forces, causing them to risk their lives every day in order to create a spirit of exacerbation and social revenge in them.

By accepting the provocations, and by behaving as was expected of them, the student movement unfortunately offered Minister Cossiga and his policy based on emergency laws and repressive measures an occasion which had long since been prepared and sought for.

A truly alternative movement should on the contrary defuse the violence of the State and of the regime with the weapons of nonviolence and of the constitutional legality. We still have the possibility to do this. The Radical Party, for its part, will do so, at every moment and in all occasions, announcing that it will not accept any limitations in constitutional rights, demonstrations, or press limitations which Minister Cossiga announced and carried out in Rome and in Bologna, nor the prohibition of every public demonstration with the closing of a free radio and with the threatened closing of other ones.

This is the appeal which the Radical Party addresses the democratic movement of the police forces which has struggled, over the past years, to obtain its own union rights and a reform, urging them, in the awareness of its irreplaceable task of upholding the republican order, to resist this climate of exasperation and revenge, and to reject the suggestions of those who want to reduce it to the role of blind instrument of the violence of the system; it addresses an appeal to the student movement, asking it to operate a clear-cut separation in its responsibilities and to isolate those elements that choose to aggravate, through their violent behaviour, the policy of provocation of the regime and of its minister; to the population at large, urging it to be increasingly present, by rejecting the blackmail of terror and fear, in the squares and in the streets, in order to reinstate an atmosphere of normality and testimony security and safeness and thus ensure a democratic mass control, preventing and disarming ever

y violence, wherever it comes from.

Translator's notes

(1) AGLIETTA ADELAIDE. (Turin 1940). Currently President of the Green Group at the European Parliament. Former member of the Italian Parliament, Secretary of the radical Party in 1977 and in 1978, year in which she was chosen to be part of the popular jury at the trial in Turin against the Red Brigades and Renato Curcio. Promoter of the Turin-based CISA (Information Centre on Abortion and Sterilization).

(2) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(3) COSSIGA FRANCESCO. (Sassari 1928). President of the Italian Republic from 1985 to 1992. Deputy since 1958, under secretary (1966) and Minister (1974). Minister of the Interior (1976-78) when Aldo Moro was kidnapped, he resigned when the dead body of the statesman was discovered. Prime Minister (1979-80). As President of the republic, during the second part of his term he actively promoted changes in the Italian Constitution, participating in fierce controversies with the majority of political exponents, and overcoming the limits laid down by the Constitution. For such reasons he was denounced by Marco Pannella in August 1991 for attempt on the Constitution.

(4) BONINO EMMA. (Bra 1948). President of the Radical Party, former member of the European Parliament, as of 1976 member of the Italian Parliament. Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion) and active militant in the campaign against clandestine abortion. She was tried and acquitted in Florence. Participated in the conduction, on a national and international scale, of the campaign on World Hunger. Among the founding members of "Food and Disarmament International", promoted the circulation of the Manifesto of Nobel Laureates.