ABSTRACT: On 12th May 1977 the police charged thousands of demonstrators who were taking part in a non-violent demonstration organized by the Radical Party in Rome to collect signatures for "8 referendums against the regime" (abrogation of the Concordat, of military courts, of the crimes of thought contained in the Penal Code, of parts of the bills on mental asylums, of the bill assigning special powers to the police concerning arrests, searches and wiretapping, of the bill allotting consistent public funds to political parties and of the "Investigative Commission" - the special "court" made of members of parliament for preventive judgement on crimes committed by ministers. A young woman, Giorgiana Masi, was shot to death, while many other demonstrators were wounded. The Interior Minister denies that the police made use of firearms. But thanks to a tape which shows the police repeatedly firing against the crowd, and hundreds of photographs portraying policemen carrying weapons and disguised as Left-wing extr

emists, the Radical Party was able to prove that this was a deliberate attempt to carry out a massacre.

After such incidents and in such political climate, Marco Pannella, intervening in a party political broadcast, denounced the censure operated on the press and the violent and authoritarian plan that caused the attempted massacre of 12th May. The only way to counter this plan is to sign up for the summons of the 8 referendums, to use the weapon of pencils versus guns, and thus obtain the enforcement of the law and of the Constitution.

Before broadcasting this allocution, recorded on the previous day, the television speaker read a statement of the Committee of Inspection, quoted here below, which accused Pannella of unfairness, foul play and non-documentation in the accusations directed against the Interior Minister.

But there is more: at the conclusion of Marco Pannella's allocution, the announcer also read a bulletin from the Interior Minister Cossiga (1), in which he denies any responsibility in the accidents.

For the first time, a party political broadcast of a representative of the people is commented and contested without giving its author a chance to reply.

(Party political broadcast - May 1977 from: "Marco Pannella - Works and Speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

Bulletin of the Committee of Inspection on State television

The Presidency of the Parliamentary Committee for the general orientation and supervision of television and broadcasting services, charged with examining the contents of the "Political Debate" of Member of Parliament Marco Pannella, in compliance with the regulations in force, recorded on 25th May, and scheduled to be broadcast this evening, points out that some parts of the allocution delivered by the representative of the Radical Party contain serious and unproven accusations against the Interior Minister and the Police, in contrast with the fundamental principles of fairness, uprightness and objectivity which the parties are committed to respect in the use of party political broadcasts.

At the conclusion of the programme, a bulletin from the Interior Ministry will be aired.

Shorthand transcript of Marco Pannella's allocution

Good evening. This time we managed to obtain no more than a quarter of an hour. Party political broadcasts have been reduced to a quarter of an hour, so that the different voices which could have come through with 30 or 40 minutes of political debate would cause less damage possible to the detainees of the regime of violence and corruption.

We have very little time. I will not even pretend to finish talking at the conclusion of these fifteen minutes: I will go on speaking, to make it clear that these fifteen minutes end with a gag, to underline the fact that all those who are non-violent, who believe in the law, who disobey violence, are censored.

Persons such as these have access to state television only if they manage, with extreme difficulty, to obtain the right to talk, to be listened and seen for what they are, every six or seven months.

The situation is rather simple. You know who we are, and perhaps many of you guess who we are. The evidence of this are the 400 thousand people who gave their courageous and honest vote, probably concerned but full of hope, to the Radical Party, less than a year ago, on 20th June.

The 450 thousand censored citizens who have already signed our project for the non-violent constitutional referendums, those who have grasped constitutional pencils against "P-38" guns, and who have lined up to authenticate their signature at our tables, at our pacifist "tanks", to obtain the enforcement of the law and the Constitution, no doubt know who we are. All these citizens are censored.

The founding fathers of Socialism, not us, are particularly censored: personalities such as Umberto Terracini, who was given no more than a second to talk. L'Unità (2) was censored, to prevent Umberto Terracini, the founding father of Italian Communism, who signed this important referendum project as you have, from talking to his communist companions first of all, who are concerned, as he is, about this situation, in which the more you vote for Berlinguer (3), for communism, for socialism, for hope and honesty, the more you get people like Cossiga and Andreotti (4). They censored not us, but Riccardo Lombardi, the founding father of socialism, who was given no more than a second to talk, because, as he is censored on L'Avanti (5), he is also censored by these so-called socialists of this "P-38" in the hands of the regime represented by state television, equally divided up among socialists and men of the regime. Now we must tell you that the robbery in act might be a major one: the miracle is not the fact tha

t 450 thousand citizens are denied their rights because they refuse to shoot and kill, and because they do not use the same weapons as Cossiga and the accomplices of the alternatives to Cossiga: the miracle is that citizens cannot continue their action and reap the success we are constructing and which the regime wants to prevent. Popular referendums are a pacifist weapon: we are here to tell you that within the 1st of June the necessary signatures must be collected. The incredible thing is that according to opinion polls, 90% of you agrees with these referendums. Yet our action was not particularly avant-garde. 90% of you agree on abolishing the Concordat, the bills on mental asylums, the Investigatory Commission on the Lockheed affair, military courts, the carabinieri, the police, the army, fascist courts, the "Rocco code" (6) and the "Reale Bill" (7) .

Why then have we collected a mere 450 thousand signatures? Because they have deliberately kept you in ignorance. The communist and socialist and Christian Democrat officials of the State television, united for the occasion, have prevented the referendum project from being explained to you. They told you: the referendum concerns the Concordat. No, it is against the Concordat; but against which norms? They didn't tell you. They told you it was against norms of the penal code: yes, but against which norms? They didn't tell you, to prevent you from signing. Well, we are telling you that 450 thousand citizens, men and women, have already signed,: they are the persons who were killed on their way to sign, like Giorgiana Masi and her boyfriend, in Piazza Navona. After six hours of charges, they killed Giorgiana Masi. She was guilty only of signing for the referendums. When I came here, fearing that I would talk about the incident, as I am doing now, they were at a loss. I had announced that I would have carried a p

hotograph with me of that 12th of May. This is one of the many photographs taken. Look, can you see? Can you see these Left-wing extremists, these murderers who are killing policemen?

Look at them, we recognize them. They are carrying clubs, their face is hidden, they are thugs. Did you take a good look? We can see others. Do you want to see a P-38 gun? Here it is, in this picture. On 12th May there were hundreds of these policemen killers. But the fact is that they were policemen!!! We have the duty to say this.

The wolves are among us, the killers are coming down from the mountains, it's true! It has been so since nine years: the carnage of Piazza Fontana. Do you remember Pinelli and Valpreda? Do you remember our isolation when we said that the State was the real author of these massacres, that it's aim was to instil fear, so that it would have been entitled to exert violence more and more, to return to fascism perhaps, to defend corruption and the corruption of the Lockheed scandal against the truth of the press and of the minorities. Then came the massacres of Brescia and Peteano. Three carabinieri were killed! Last year they censored me, because I had mentioned the name of three generals: six years after the massacre, for the three carabinieri killed at Peteano, the magistracy accused some generals of the carabinieri and others.

We know that there are people who are wondering what we did on 12th May, why we carried out that demonstration, disobeying orders. But we cannot accept the violent behaviour of a State that floods the streets with people disguised as killers, whose photographs, tomorrow, will be published on the newspapers and aired by the television, as the evidence of the fact that the murderers exist. There are some murderers, of course: do you remember that terrible picture taken in Milan, portraying an extremist shooting with a gun in the middle of the street?

Think about it for a moment: was that a student, a proletarian, or wasn't he rather a person who knows how to shoot, a guerrilla? And where was he trained? In universities or in prisons? What is there behind all this? As non-violents, what should we have done? It has been said that three hours before that musical demonstration, the trade unions sent a telegram to the Interior Minister, asking him not to intervene, because that demonstration was a fair demonstration. They were socialists, democrats, intellectuals, inviting us not to call the demonstration off, not to obey a law that the Constitutional Court, in 1961, had declared to be a fascist law, and which Cossiga was trying to apply that morning.

They invited us to disobey on the 12th of May, to go there as peaceful citizens. And do you know what the real result was? We are proud of the result, albeit extremely grieved. Reward us for this: contribute your signature before 1st June, and send us money. My companions of the Party told me: remind people of the number of our current account, because we have refused a billion of funds, and we don't even have the money to print out postal forms, we can do nothing. I can't remember the number of our current account. But we ask you to send a postal order to the Radical Party, to contribute your penny - as the English say - for the things you hear and see. I was telling you that on 12th May we went to the demonstration in a merry mood, to prove that Rome could be a gay, serene and peaceful city, counting on the fact that none of us would act violently. How did things turn out? Consider the result, which, I repeat it, we are proud even if we are grieved. Out of 5200 armed policemen, out of hundreds of young pol

icemen forced to disguise as murderers, forced to appear in the streets as the wolves we were talking about, forced to apply fascist laws, to kill innocents bystanders, this is the result: one carabiniere was slightly wounded at the wrist. And there were 20-30 thousand of us! After six hours of attacks, of clashes - as they said - the only act of violence, so to say (and it is questionable whether one of us caused it), is a carabiniere slightly wounded at the wrist: one out of 5200 policemen.

We are proud of this result: we went there carrying nothing but our constitutional pencils, but they are afraid of these pencils! Every day on television they show us Curcio and Cossiga, they show us "P-38" guns, to turn us away from optimism, from goodness, from the gaiety of music, from mirth, from walking around the city and saying: we can isolate the murderers with our smile, because we are different, because we are good. They tell you none of all this. As for us, we have had one casualty, ten people wounded by firearms, dozens of people wounded by clubs, gas and tear bombs thrown against people. We will write a White Paper on the matter. Faced to this result, they wanted to make you believe that the Radicals were responsible for the death of one of them. But then, they did the same thing when we disobeyed for abortion, in order to save thousands and thousands of women from death due to abortion; we were put into prison, in the name of marriage, because we were fighting against the intolerable violence o

f the discriminatory divorce granted by the Sacred Rota (8). The same thing occurred when we were put into prison as conscientious objectors, or when we disobeyed unfair orders, when we disobeyed violence, as we would disobey if they kidnapped us. In such circumstances, we would say: "We refuse to cooperate with the violence of those who kidnap us. We won't pay a penny. We will disobey violence". But it is as if all this reality did not exist, as if you weren't supposed to acknowledge it. Within a few days, we must achieve the target of 500 thousand signatures. We ask you to go to the municipal secretariats, women and men, all of you. There are millions of you who have still not done so, because they didn't tell you that you could do so, because they want to impeach the whole project, as they have already decided to do. Had they not done this, we would already have achieved the target of 500 thousand signatures, as the law requires. But if the signatures are inferior to 700 thousand, they will invalidate the

project. In the name of Riccardo Lombardi, of Umberto Terracini, of Giorgiana Masi, in the name of hope, which is the only real value - whereas the project of a cooperation between socialists and communists and bilateral agreements are destroying salaries and people's serenity - we ask you to sign: tomorrow or after tomorrow, get organized in the factories, where you work.

I don't know how much time I am left; but as a member of Parliament there I so many things I would need to tell you, things we are not allowed to say normally. So many things to do, things that make us equal, with our confidence in the Constitution, with our hope that the regime of violence and corruption will come undone. I believe we must make an attempt to be the way we hope to be, and to sign. The women, the mothers, the grandmothers, those whom we saved yesterday, have understood, and have recovered their joy: therefore we must all sign. It is to this hope that we entrust the future not of the radical movement, but of democratic dialogue, while abominable, incredible laws are about to be passed...You have no idea of what is happening! It is possible that the few of us who know what is going on are exaggerating; but in history, in the past, in political life, those who succeeded in expressing the hopes or ordinary people, such as we are, have been suffocated and have ended up by remaining alone in facin

g the violence of those who use power, trusting that people won't react against it because it comes from the State.

I must address an appeal to the police and to the soldiers: they ignore that we are asking for a reform, in Parliament, of their civil rights, a reform that all the others are refusing them. The young carabinieri are frightened when they see those "P-38" guns, and they don't realize that the people carrying them are policemen like them, who have been forced by this regime to embody the Republic in such way. I continue to talk, and ignore whether you are still listening. The duty of a Radical is no doubts that of refusing to pretend to have finished speaking, and imagine to be communicating with those one wants to communicate with. We ask for your initiative; we rely on your initiative, on the fact that each person feels responsible. We rely on the 450 thousand, the 500 thousand, the millions of people, men and women, who do not want to kill, or to be killed; they will be the protagonists of a society of hope, and not of the Christian Democrat regime or of the "historical compromise", of violence and corrupti

on...

Bulletin of the Interior Ministry

Concerning the televised allocution of member of Parliament Marco Pannella, a spokesman of the Interior Ministry stated: "The Presidency of the parliamentary committee for the general orientation and supervision of radio and broadcasting services has already pointed out Mr. Pannella's formal and substantial foul play and his incredible behaviour. The accusations addressed by Mr. Pannella toward the Interior Minister and his obscure accomplices of exerting a policy of terror and of killing innocent passers-by, the accusation against the State of flooding the public streets with people forced to disguise as killers, to appear as wolves, would be extremely serious, insulting and slanderous if they came from another person. Coming from Mr. Pannella, they are simply indecent, rash and pointlessly provocative. The Minister and his collaborators reject them in any case, with profound indignation but also with much pity, with that sense of rebellion that comes from the memory of so many members of the police forces

that have been killed in the last months while defending order and the legality of the democratic State": The Interior Ministry's spokesman thus concluded: "In the same way as he assumed the moral responsibility for having given space to violence, infringing a legitimate prohibition of the authorities, Mr. Pannella now assumes a further serious responsibility with his insane use of a public means of information, slandering the institutions and the members of the police forces with his defamatory campaign. It is a good thing that the program was broadcasted unabridged, because citizens have thus been able to see Mr. Pannella for what he truly is".

Translator's notes

(1) Francesco Cossiga ((1928): Italian politician. Interior Minister (76-78) and Head of Government (79-80). Current President of the Republic.

(2) L'Unità: The Communist Party's newspaper

(3) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984): Italian politician. Secretary of the Communist Youth Federation (49-56), member of Parliament as of 1968, was Secretary General of the Communist Party from 1972 to 1984.

(4) Giulio Andreotti (1919): Italian politician. Minister of Interior (54), Finance (55-58), Treasury (58-59), Defence (59-66 and 74), Industry (66-68), Budget (74-76). Head of Government from 1972 to 1973 and from 76 to 79. Current Head of Government.

(5) L'Avanti: The Socialist Party's newspaper.

(6) Rocco Code: developed by Alfredo Rocco (1875-1935), jurist and politician, Justice Minister from 1925 to 1932, author of the penal and criminal procedure codes issued between 1930 and 1931, reflecting the ideological, political and economic requirements of fascism.

(7) Reale Bill: developed by Oronzo Reale (1902): Politician. One of the founding fathers of the Partito D'Azione (1942) Secretary of the Republican Party (49-64), several times Minister of Justice.

(8) Sacred Rota: The ecclesiastic Court of Appeal.