ABSTRACT: An historical interpretation of the Radical Party based

on the reconstruction of the various phases of Radical

developments from 1955 to 1977.

Index:

I From The Old To The New Radicals

II The Solitude Of A Minority

III The Campaign For Divorce

IV A Party In Search Of Its Self: From The Congress Of Refoun-

dation (1967) To The Congress Of The Relaunching (1972)

V Opposing The Regime With Civil Rights

VI For A Democratic Revolution

VII In The Country And In Parliament

("THE NEW RADICALS", The History and Sociology of a Political Movement, Arnoldo Mondadori, Publishers, October 1977)

1. THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE DIVORCE MOVEMENT WITH THE ITALIAN LEAGUE FOR DIVORCE (LID)

On October 1, 1965, Loris Fortuna, a Socialist deputy, presented a divorce bill in Parliament. That bill would have come to nothing like the others that had been presented in previous legislatures of the Italian Republic (1) if it had not been for an ad hoc popular movement that rose to support it with much wider political implications than that issue alone. The movement was the work of a group of militants organised by the Radical Party.

The Radicals had been traditionally in favor of divorce for obvious idealistic and civil reasons. Even the old party before 1961 had made many declarations and promoted debates on the subject in the name of lay principles. When the bill was presented in 1965, the new Radicals saw in it the chance to carry the issue from Montecitorio (the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, ed.) to the people of the country, to turn it from a political debate into a concrete political action. It was a question of bringing up the divorce issue for its intrinsic value and for its implications on the relations between Church and State, and not as a general statement of principle. And it was meant to oppose the resignation of a culture that considered itself a minority in a Catholic country with a direct appeal to those who in their own person could be the protagonists of a specific action set in motion by the direct interests or the general view of society inspired by a new and pugnacious laity.

Around an issue considered not yet ripe for action by the lay and leftist forces, the new Radicals considered it possible to try out new forms of organisation and mobilisation bearing new characteristics with respect to both the traditional milieu and the traditional politics of a country in which the pre-eminence of the party had always asserted itself as having a quasi monopoly on the channels of political demands. Instead, the divorce movement that was taking shape was based on a series of rather new elements: a direct appeal to those directly interested; no political or ideological discrimination; a constant relationship between direct action and action in Parliament; direct individual or collective forms of mobilisation.

From the beginning another factor turned out to be decisive for the way in which the divorce campaign was set up: the promotion of a widespread action throughout the country by the weekly "ABC", whose managing editor, Enzo Sabàto, had embraced the cause from the start. This was the decisive factor that took the debate out of respectable meeting halls and put it into the streets, thus scandalizing even the majority of the political lay group that did not want a direct appeal to the interested parties of the sort that the semi-pornographic magazine intended to make. The singularity of the new divorce movement, in contrast to those that had preceded it, was precisely the fact that the interlocutors of Fortuna, the Radicals and "ABC" were not any longer "the cultivated people" but, in a certain sense, the "common people".

On December 12, 1965 the Rome Radical group promoted the first debate on divorce in which representatives of the different sides participated and with an immediate public success that filled to overflowing the small hall of the Eliseo Theater in Rome (2). "Today an independent divorce action is possible and taking effective shape" the Radical Mauro Mellini said in his speech, "that is lively, organised, politically well oriented, directed at creating ferment in the already wide-spread feelings and convictions of the masses, to feed them with energy, to coordinate the efforts of those who are already fighting for divorce, to stimulate and encourage the efforts of the political groups determined to support the divorce cause". (3) A few months later, in a press conference, Mellini and Marco Pannella announced the formation along this line of the "Lega per l'Istituzione del Divorzio" (LID - The League for the Institution of Divorce, ed.) in a direct appeal to the country. Other prominent figures besides Fo

rtuna who participated in it were the magistrates Mario Berutti and Salvatore Giallombardo, members of Parliament Lucio Luzzatto of the PSIUP, Giuseppe Perrone of the PLI, Giuseppe Averardi of the PSDI, all on their personal initiative and not representing their parties, the scientist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso, and the jurist Alessandro Galante Garrone.

The Radrcals' iadicals' intiative immediately awakened a strong resonance in the country among the common people such as read "ABC" as well as - unexpectedly - the daily and weekly press. "L'Espresso", which since the end of the old Radical Party had tended to ignore the new group, published a long article to the subject and gave it a full-page cover entitled "Divorce Is On The Way". (4) On April 17 there was an imposing meeting of the LID in Milan at the Lyric Theater, the first mass divorce meeting and one that began a series of grass roots meetings, among them the one at Piazza del Popolo in Rome on November 13, 1966 where 20,000 people gathered from all over Italy.

The popular character that the divorce battle was taking on was indicated by the large correspondence (32,000 post cards and 4,000 letters) that Fortuna received at the Chamber on the initiative of the weekly "ABC" between October 1965 and March 1966 and which was presented to the President of the assembly during the debate on justice. If such a widely-read popular type of publication like "ABC" was the medium through which the divorce issue got to wide sectors of the common people and if it represented the principle organising tool of those directly interested, revealing the existence and the readiness for it in a real country far different from what the political forces imagined, the increase of attention on the part of these latter as well was unequivocally indicated by the presentation of a bill by the PCI in March 1967 by which time the pressure of public opinion could no longer be ignored.

As the movement grew, diversionary maneuvers were begun in Parliament to avoid debate on the divorce bill. The Republican Keeper of the Seals, Oronzo Reale, presented a bill for the reform of family law in expectation of which the Fortuna proposal would have to be set aside. And at the same time, in the face of the increasing interest of public opinion in the matter, the Catholic hierarchy got on the move, including Pope Paul VI himself who at the beginning of 1967 publicly expressed "surprise and displeasure" (5) to the Parliament which had expressed itself favorably on the compatibility of divorce with the Italian Constitutional norms.

After more than two years of activity the LID had shown itself to have a character and vitality all its own. New and unusual in the LID was not only that a small minority such as the Radicals had promoted an organisation that was open to all and destined to become a mass phenomenon, but rather the way in which members of different parties and sides had gathered together in an ad hoc organisation without having been asked to represent their parties, but as individuals interested in a specific battle. The organisation that came from this, so totally informal as to be considered as a center for action and an organising committee, progressively brought about a fusion of the components with a political origin and those of a more general provenance on the basis of their effective rather than their delegated presence, of their way of doing political work, their capacity and creativity in propaganda, organisation and applying pressure. As Coletti wrote in "Il divorzio in Italia" (Divorce in Italy, ed.) the LID

's delegations spread throughout the country bearing a different character according to the personalities of those who were leading them (6) and of the particular local character: "The Turin LID was connected to the Socialist and lay spheres; the one in Milan had a particularly broad base and tied more to the Socialist sphere in its totality rather than to individual figures; the Naples LID was highly active in its relations with members of Parliament, and the Florence one had the typical structure of a political circle, whereas the Cagliari delegation was intensely active in the capital and the various municipal centers of the island". (7)

When the first LID congress was held, in Rome in December 1967, the divorce movement had gained strength in the country and with public opinion, and it had also taken on the necessary weight and ability to put pressure on Parliament. The divorcists, instructed by their guiding Radical nucleus, had learned the techniques of pressure, and aggressiveness, applied to individual members of Parliament (with postcards, appeals, letters, telephone calls, demonstrations in the constituencies) who were comparatively unknown in Italian politics. The targets of the popular movement were not the Parliamentary groups as such, but the individual deputies and senators with a voter-representative relationship much more akin to the Anglo-Saxon tradition than to our own, all of it centred on the mediation of the parties or of the corporative interest group.

While under fire by actions of this kind, Parliament proceeded with the debate. The Communists had presented their bill, the Chamber's Justice Commission had passed the first articles and, still through the initiative of "ABC", a petition signed by 120,000 people had been delivered to the Chamber. Luciana Castellina, writing in "Rinascita" (a PCI periodical, ed.), stated: "One merit must be granted to the LID... to have demonstrated with an efficacy denied to the parties, that the divorce issue is no longer the problem of a few elite groups, but is by now a great social problem". (8) And with regard to the composition of the movement, the writer noted: "in great part simple people belonging to the most disparate social classes, coming not only from restricted circles of the big cities, but also from the provinces and the countryside. Middle class people but also proletarians, put in anguish by a difficult family situation, often the consequence of rather new processes in Italy such as greater social mob

ility and the emigration of individuals". (9)

Faced with the delays and the reticence of the lay parties, who had definitely spoken in favor of divorce, but were not up to putting their choice into action, the Rome congress opened with the question "Are we heading for divorcist candidates in the elections?" (10) proposed by the national secretary of the LID as a way of putting pressure on the parties. Instead the congress decided to recommend supporting those candidates who had committed themselves to presenting the divorce proposal again in the new legislature. Thus it happened that on June 5, 1968, immediately after the elections, and with the youths' and students' dissent raging in the country, seventy lay-party members of Parliament - PCI, PSIUP, PSU, and PRI, with the exception of the Liberals, who proposed a bill of their own drafted by Antonio Baslini - presented a unified bill, the first

one of the Fifth Legislature.

2. THE POPULAR MOVEMENT AND THE PRESSURE ACTION ON PARLIAMENT

During more than three years, from the beginning of 1965 to the Spring of 1968, the divorce movement organised by the LID had sunk roots in the country and was capable of organising street demonstrations, picketing, direct intervention, letters to Parliament, and mass meetings. During the new legislature that followed the 1968 elections and the immediate presentation of a unified divorce bill, the other aspect of the LID's action became accentuated which had nevertheless been present previously - that of a parliamentary pressure group to obtain reforms, obtain them fast and with the best possible laws.

In April 1969, the project of all the lay forces - further unified by the addition of the proposal presented separately by the Liberal Antonio Baslini - was discussed in the Chamber's Justice Commission followed later by a general debate at the end of May in the Chamber itself. For the first time Montecitorio was confronting a divorce bill. The event could be considered of historical importance, all the more for the fact that there was a relative majority and a government of Catholic observance.

The action of the divorce movement was intensifying both on the mass demonstration level with two events in Rome - one at Piazza Navona on June 7, 1969, and one on Sept. 27 at Piazza Cavour - as well as on the level of intervention in the mechanisms governing parliamentary action. On November 10, because of repeated attempts to delay the debate procedures, Marco Pannella, the secretary of the LID, together with Roberto Cicciomessere, the organising secretary, began a hunger strike - the first of a series that would take place in coming years - to force the setting of a date for the vote. The motto was "Enough discussion! Vote on divorce!". This action contributed to obtaining the desired effect: On December 29 the Chamber passed the divorce bill by 325 votes in favor to 283 against.

A few weeks had passed since the Piazza Fontana massacre in Milan (11) and the workers and union movement was erupting and showing its strength. On the same day that the Chamber passed the divorce law, a great union demonstration passed through Rome which found a counterpart during the night in the divorcists' vigil and the triumph of Fortuna who left Montecitorio to cries of "a lay state!" and "Parliament yes, Vatican no!". The workers' battles that had taken shape during that "hot autumn" went in tandem with the divorce campaign which had already shown signs of being the first manifestation of a more general battle for civil rights. And despite the fact that the two movements were separate and had no points of political or organisational contact, it was no accident that they took place at the same time because they were both expressions of the same kind of civil society which demanded social and institutional changes. Under pressure from their members, the general councils of the CGIL, CISL and UIL (1

2) in November 1969 declared themselves in favor of some form of labor union unity and of direct action in the country's great civil and social questions such as health service reform which they then negotiated with the government in October 1970. At the same time the divorce movement was showing that, with the help of a league directed at a single objective, their was a possibility of obtaining a new law that was up to the requirements of the models of behaviour existing widely in Italian society. The unions, impelled by the new combativeness of their ordinary members, had to make their own policies more aggressive and the resulting relations with their counterparts and the government. Divorce made headway only because the LID was the link between a wide-spread feeling that had to be organised and the institutional processes for formulating a law in the presence of a restricted and hesitant majority in Parliament.

After the vote in the Chamber, a happy ending for the divorce law was anything but certain. In the Senate the pro-divorce majority was much smaller and the defections were notable. Among the many obstacles that were continually put in the way was the objection of the Christian Democrats - made to block discussion - that extending divorce to marriages performed under the Concordat was unconstitutional; and the Vatican, for its part, sent a note to the Italian government lamenting that the bill in question violated the Lateran Pact.

The continual political crises in 1970 - in March the second government headed by Mariano Rumor (DC) fell and the Emilio Colombo (DC) cabinet was formed - further delayed what was considered to be an accomplished reform, and which instead continued to find its path endlessly blocked in Parliament. The LID still functioned as a highly active legislative vigilante, and its Radical leaders, Marco Pannella as Secretary and Mauro Mellini as President, gave its behaviour a decisive and impetuous character. Writing at the end of August 1970 to Ferruccio Parri, (leader of the Action Party, later the independent left) who had given a friendly reproof to divorce leaders for their marked aggressivity, Marco Pannella expressed himself thus: "...If we were to keep silent for as long as a few weeks, it would be enough to make divorce seem suddenly like something from the history of another world and not an issue today in Italy for everyone. No longer an assembly, a step forward, a sign, it would look like Penelope. T

hus the pace has naturally become stepped up and hence new reproofs and accusations, censure and isolation. A strange kind of isolation to be sure, since agreement and help, encouragement and exhortations to go ahead have grown in geometric ratio". (13) And returning to the work the LID had done, he indicated its absolute role thus: "For four and a half years we have followed day by day the uninterrupted parliamentary career of the Fortuna bill; we have helped it along as well as we could, studying the parliamentary regulations in depth, their requirements, their regulations, the objective difficulties that continually arose. This has been attentiveness on the collective and popular level; our bulletins, by the hundreds of thousands, illustrated this reality for initiates; we made laymen of ever greater masses of citizens, made responsible participants of them who often came from the classes furthest removed from democratic commitment or most excluded from the dominant culture ". (14)

From September to November 1970 the divorce bill proceeded along its tormented legislative itinerary, under the external pressure that was concentrated precisely on the regulatory data and thus on the correct functioning of the institutions, and finally sailed into port having won out over all the obstacles that had been put in its way. On October 9 the Senate passed the law modified by restrictive amendments that the divorce alliance had negotiated with the DC through the mediation of Senator Giovanni Leone. And finally, during the night of November 30 - December 1, at the end of a marathon session in the Chamber of historic import, the Fortuna-Baslini bill became the law of the land, approved by a wide majority that kept growing from article to article as the final vote gradually approached. (15)

3. FROM DIVORCE TO THE REFERENDUM

The passing of the divorce law was practically a unique event in the history of Italian Republic for at least two reasons: because the reform had been promoted by an action that took place primarily outside of Parliament, and because for the first time the DC had been defeated in Parliament by an alliance of all the lay parties from the PCI to the PLI. That success, considered unthinkable only five years before, had repercussions in Italian political affairs for the next five years.

The interpretations given to it by the various parties were conflicting, since the larger part of the leaders of the lay parties in the government as well as the opposition wanted to consider that battle a kind of parenthesis, whereas individuals and minority groups (16) in the sphere of the Radical Party thought of it as a first step towards future battles between the progressive and lay forces in the country and the Christian Democratic, conservative and clerical forces. "Let us exult" Pannella had said at the time the Fortuna bill was passed, "for this victory of democracy and the anti-clerical laity, and of the best civil and religious tensions in our country. We know too that however great it may be, it is nothing but a beginning. The

fight continues to build a more just and human society. The politics of civil rights has been strengthened by this trial." (17)

In the succeeding months the declarations in favor of a "normalisation" of relations with the DC came pouring in from all sides. Among the first were the Communists who, already during the divorce battle, had expressed through the words of the Hon. Nilde Jotti the hope that the conflicts would be overcome and that there would be a return to unity with the Catholic spheres on the issues of the reform of family law and the relations between Church and State to be regulated by a bilateral revision of the Concordat.(18) The Secretary of the PSI too, Francesco De Martino, expressed similar sentiments and after him the entire Socialist leadership. In a document they stated that they had "appreciated that the Catholic democratic forces, even though contrary to the divorce law, did not have recourse to exasperating the conflict and waging a religious war"; (19) "thus", the statement continued, "with the passage of the divorce law, which is a great civil reform, the way has been opened for a new chapter in the

relations between Church and State. The PSI intends to develop now this relationship, regulated by the Constitution, within the ambit of a bilateral revision of the Concordat". (20)

Communists and Socialists as well as Republicans and Liberals considered divorce to be a kind of "floating mine" in political life that had to be defused in order to return to collaboration with the DC and liquidate what Enrico Berlinguer, Vice Secretary of the PCI called "distortions, sectarian exasperation, and irresponsible provocations of anti-clerical groups" put on the same plane as "the overweening ambitions for revenge on the part of anachronistic clerical groups". According to Berlinguer, the fight against such positions meant "to fight and defeat those who on the one hand are meditating an anti-divorce crusade, and those, on the other hand, who would want to resolve the complex questions of the relations between Church and State by a unilateral rupture" (of the Concordat, ed.). Thus the Communists - according to an authoritative editorial in "L'Unità" (the official PCI paper, ed.) - will not relinquish "the need to go ahead with a fight and a policy of proletarian unity and democracy, both po

pular and national: the policy, that is, that promoted and sanctioned the entry of both the lay tradition of the Risorgimento and the the organised Communist and Socialist masses as well as the organised masses of the Italian Catholic political and social movement into the fundament of our State organism, and which tomorrow must assure their rise to its top levels.

Despite the almost unanimous good will of the left and the laity to close the anomalous episode of divorce, the process which it had set off had repercussions on the entire political scene. When the definitive passing of the divorce law was in sight in May 1970, the Christian Democrats already arranged the approval of the law instituting popular referendums for abrogation, which was provided for in the Constitution but had never been made operative. And on the day after the divorce victory the preparations for a referendum abrogating the divorce law began to be made, first by the Church and the most retrograde of the clerical forces, then, little by little, by the entire Christian Democratic Party.

The Italian Conference of Bishops, meeting in plenary session, had publicly declared this intention in February 1971: "The bishops declare it legitimate," said an official document, "that the citizens in such vital problems [such as divorce], that touch the conscience of everyone, should, in defence of the family, avail themselves of every democratic means that the Constitution provides: we reaffirm that the faithful, as citizens guided by a Christian conscience, have the right and the duty to commit themselves with all legitimate means to defend those values that they consider essential for the good of the family". (22)

In this way, between February and May 1971, a national committee of fundamentalist clerics (23) collected the number of signatures necessary to call a referendum to abrogate the divorce law. Behind this committee was mobilised the entire Church organisation and no small part of DC groups and forces. Afterwards several attempts were made to prevent a show down in the country that was not welcome to the majority of the political forces, for reasons however different and sometimes opposite.

The lay pro-divorce part maintained that an electoral test by means of referendum was inapplicable with regard to a right that protected minorities, in the specific case the dissolution of marriages; and so they went as far as to present a bill signed by 60 members of Parliament, most of them Socialists, the first signers being Loris Fortuna and Eugenio Scalfari. This however got no further. (24)

For their part, the Communists feared the referendum more than anyone. This was not only because they considered a pro-divorce victory improbable, but mostly because they saw the clash between opposing ranks as an obstacle to the policy of dialogue with the Catholics. Thus they pushed for an agreement in Pariament for the modification of the Fortuna law (by modifying a law one cannot obtain a referendum to abrogate it). They proposed "improvements... that is modifications not merely in the form but also in the substance, or legisltive innovations; and these also in relation to family law reforms as well as to the bilateral revision of the Concordat", as Sen. Paolo Bufalini expressed it in a meeting on this issue held at Fratocchie. (25) And finally, in January 1972, Sen. Tullia Carrettoni of the independent left presented a proposal for modification which did not manage to reach the floor, just as another attempt to block the automatic course of the referendum, made once again by Sen. Giovanni Leone, h

ad no effect.

Thus it happened that in Spring 1972 Parliament was dissolved so as to delay the referendum for two years because the two major parties, DC and PCI, in view of the unpredicability of the vote, did not want a showdown between them for the general political implications that would have followed.

The moderate and reactionary forces, who were pullling the strings behind this "strategy of tension" as it was called, were in the meantime again getting the upper hand on the new course that had started in 1968. Expressions of this deep-rooted tendency were the student and worker uprisings and, however indirectly, the divorce victory that had represented another proof of the potential for change that existed in the country. Agitation, clashes, rebellions followed upon each other in many parts of the country (Reggio Calabria, L'Aquila) along with mysterious events such as the death of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Giovanni Leone was elected President of the Republic in December 1971 by a majority supported by the right after the clamorous successes obtained by the MSI in the Sicilian regional elections and several municipal ones in June 1971.

In such an atmosphere, the national elections of May 7, 1972 took place - the first early elections in the history of the Italian Republic called because of the dissolution of Parliament mainly due to fear of the referendum. They resulted in a shift to the right of the political balance, a standstill of the left (26) despite the presence of wide-spread social movements. And with direct regard to the divorce issue, the elimination from the Chamber and the Senate of all the representatives of the lay ranks who had most vigorously fought for divorce and for the interpretation of the victory as the first step in the strategy of a lay alternative. (27)

However the confrontation that the majority of the parties wanted to avoid in 1972 was only postponed. It had been primed by the right wing clergy; it had been exorcised by the left wing, first of all the Communists; and it had instead been accepted by the divorce forces since Autumn 1972 after it had been shown to be impossible to pass a law that could deny the citizens the right to the test of a referendum majority.

The Radicals, together with those who shared their strategy, had passed through three successive phases, all expressions of the same attitude of no negotiation with their Catholic and clerical adversaries on issues regarding civil rights: the first, opposition to the referendum on the basis of its non-applicability to an issue regarding the civil rights of individuals; the second, opposition to negotiations for the depreciation of the Fortuna law which had been attempted by way of the so-called Carrettoni proposal; the third, in favor of calling the referendum in order to go to the country and test the presence there of a progressive majority such as had been determined in Parliament. This last choice was the consequence of an analysis in which the Radicals were practically alone and on a strategic line that expressed their entire position: the explosive character of civil rights issues in the Italian context; the country as being more mature than the political spheres were aware; the possibility of a

lay and progressive majority; the real balance of power between the lay and Catholic forces on political terrain; the death of clericalism in the consciousness of the society.

In order to keep from holding the referendum, the country had been subjected to repeated political crises with there no longer being a stable government majority; it had been subjected to institutional and moral crises because of the extension and aggravation of the strategy of tension, to all of which was added in the Autumn of 1973 the energy crisis that triggered off the economic crisis. The appointment at the polls for the referendum, which weighed on the political spheres during that whole period, was not in any case avoided, despite repeated and diverse attempts to do so.

Finally, on May 12, 1972 the answer given at the polls was in favor of keeping the divorce law. Contrary to the forecasts even of the larger part of the lay and leftist forces, the majority reached 59% of the votes with very high points in the great metropolitan areas (from two thirds to four fifths). The resulting image was of a country much different and more advanced than any of the parties and their leaders had imagined. This result gave credibility in the eyes of public opinion to the ideas of the Radicals and their subsequent initiatives: that is, that referendums were possible and only needed to be called in order to be won.

On the evening of May 13 a great crowd gathered from all over the city for the victory celebration the Radicals had arranged in Piazza Navona even before knowing the results of the vote. All that night until dawn an immense sea of citizens

- perhaps half a million - of all social extractions and political persuasions marched through the streets of the city, in an atmosphere comparable to the proclamation of the Republican victory in 1946, expressing their enthusiasm for the first post-war victory over the moderate, conservative and clerical forces.

Thus with the passing of the divorce law and the referendum what had first been raised as a limited and specific issue

- divorce and the divorce movement - had now radically changed country's political equilibrium, revealing for the first time since the war that there existed a majority of progressives, at least with regard to certain problems. A slender Radical minority had provoked this result by means of a process that had been purposefully and not accidentally set off from the start, if not in its form, certainly in its political substance.

4. THE RADICALS IN THE PRO-DIVORCE MOVEMENT: ITS GENERAL POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

To conclude this summarised reconstruction of the divorce battle from 1965 to 1974, some questions should be asked about the reason for its being given so much attention in a historical profile of the new Radicals. In particular one must reply to several questions: What was the role of the Radicals in the divorce movement? What was the political mode in which the movement operated and expressed itself? What was the general significance of the affair on the Italian political scene?

"Without the Radical Party" the major political mind of the LID, Mauro Mellini, stated at a certain point, "the League for the Institution of Divorce would not have existed, or it would have been a confederation of separate elements". (28) This affirmation is the truth and it merits discussion. There is no doubt that the Fortuna bill would have been a dead letter as its predecessors had been, presented by other Socialist members of Parliament for the honor of doing so, if a movement had not grown up around the LID. This occurred thanks to the strong action of the small group of Radicals who saw in this battle the occasion to unite the idealistic and political demands of the laity with a widely felt need in the country.

The LID, while referring to the Fortuna bill, had several Radicals as its organisers and prime movers both in its Rome headquarters and in its peripheral groups. The true guiding spirit in the presidency, among whom were various prestigious personalities, had from the beginning been Mauro Mellini, a lawyer in whom the ancient and passionate clerical vein was rejuvenated in the new battle that attracted masses never before seen. And in the collegial secretariat, (29) the true guiding spirit was Marco Pannella, who not by chance dedicated himself for many years to the divorce battle rather than being Secretary of the PR. In both the administrative council and among the local trustees, (30) at least a third were Radical militants and another third Radical sympathisers. The rest was composed of newcomers to political activity, the so-called "pure divorcists", and a smattering of members from other lay parties. But above and beyond such statistical data, which yet shows how a great part of the Radical member

ship had become absorbed by the divorce action, the fact remains that the political style of the movement, in its relationship with the parliamentary forces, took on the character of a typical Radical operation and despite its union with the other lay parties never sacrificed that accelerating aggressiveness it considered necessary to spur on the parliamentary processes. And as this progressed, the only tool the movement had at its disposal was the mobilisation outside of Parliament of those directly concerned, regardless of all the balances in and among the parties and their consequent attempts at prudence.

The global strategies within the government or the opposition which regulated the actions and positions of the PCI, the PSI and smaller lay parties found a counterpoise in the Radical divorce movement's punctilious concentration on the single reforms they were pursuing and the constant identification of the proper mechanisms of public opinion and the institutions for applying adequate pressure to gain their ends. Direct action in the streets and pressure on the members of Parliament responsible for the work of the commissions, individual hunger strikes and non-violent guerrilla actions against the mass information media, in particular the RAI-TV (Italian national radio and TV, ed.), (31) to make them broadcast messages - not so much general ones regarding divorce, but more precisely ones directed at determining a specific legislative action - these were all methods that the small group of Radicals in the heart of the LID were progressively trying out and refining in an unusual (for Italy) combination i

n and out of Parliament meant to activate the protagonists of the reform movement and to convince party leaders. A great part of the Radical's arsenal and political style that joined institutional and extra-institutional actions was studied and refined during the eight years of the divorce campaign, just as their much-opposed agreements and clashes with the parliamentary left in the same period went hand-in-hand with the Radicals' development of objectives to be pursued as well as their way of conceiving political action for reform.

Consequently the way of practising politics that the divorce movement affirms is also something new in Italian civil and political society. The LID certainly presented itself as a new type of mass organisation: within three years (1966 - 1969) - it has been estimated - (32) it collected roughly several thousand membership fees without having waged a proper membership campaign; a total of 150,000 - 200,000 citizens participated in its manifestations; 40,000 letters and postcards were received by Mr. Fortuna through the auspices of "ABC" and 100,000 signatures were delivered to the Chamber at the beginning of the debate; an uncertain number, but certainly some thousands, of telegrams and letters were sent to members of Parliament and LID groups sponsored about 400 public assemblies, debates, round tables and meetings on local levels outside the channels of traditional politics.

The movement thus constituted an effective combination of citizens participating in direct actions in which they were concerned and involved with a politically belligerent central group that propelled the entire organisation using a double initiative directed at political institutions and public opinion with the network of participating grass roots groups. Marco Pannella wrote to Parri at the time of the hardest clashes: "I know that we had and have no structures, no functionaries, head quarters, organisations that allow us to dictate mobilisation orders from above, but only the force of our convictions that ripened and armed themselves with tales, explanations, information... We will certainly have committed many errors on this level too. But had it ever happened before now that it was understood and expected that the Parliament could really be something that had a direct relationship with the life of the "people" and every individual who can offer much in terms of civilisation...". (33)

If, then, the policies of the League had in practice indicated a specific way of approaching and participating in public affairs that ran parallel to the extra-parliamentary insurgencies of the same period, the long battle for divorce and the way in which it was won had its effects on the general political level as well. For the first time since 1948 when the DC established its hegemony in Parliament and the country, the majority party that ran the government was pushed into the minority in Parliament and then in the country. It has been quite rightly stated that the 1974 referendum was the factor that revealed to public opinion and the political leaders as well that there were possible horizons which previously had been unknown and considered unthinkable. The Italian political system and the parties that composed it had remained almost unchanged since 1948 with power balances among them that changed only marginally - a few percentage points at most - in any election. Only after the referendum of 1974

was there a radical shift to the left that then made itself felt in the 1975 and 1976 elections.

The large-scale divorce victory of 1974 was by its very nature a direct verification of the political relations in the country which had always been measured by the party-vote channels. This permitted the electorate to indicate its position without the usual electoral bonds on a specific issue that yet implied a much more general choice thanks precisely to such a simple option as the referendum. A first conclusion to be drawn from the vote of 1974 is that it freed a crystallisation process of the electorate that had lasted for more than 25 years;and furthermore it it showed that a progressive and anti-Christian Democratic majority existed in the country on civil rights issues, much larger and more decisive than could be possible on economic and social issues. (34) It is also true that the referendum must be considered as only the culminating point of a process begun in 1965 and, what's more, neither foreseen in its form nor in reality foreseeable by anyone. But the same kind of considerations can be m

ade regarding the contents of the divorce battle.

The choice of divorce as the touchstone of a radically reformist politics of the possible that would be accessible to a minority was dictated to the Radicals by objective and subjective reasons: the first because of the social and civil contradictions touching quite broad sectors of the common people and the second for their instinctive recognition of the explosive nature of lay themes in Italy which would turn out to be true. Objections came from various sources that the Radicals stood on the sidelines of the great events and movements in the country, such as those at the end of the 60's. One interpreter of this position wrote in "L'Astrolabio", a paper which yet sympathised with Radical activities: "Another characteristic of the PR, which is also one of its great limitations: one has the impression that they turn the long-term theses into small-change actions leaving no residue to the degree that they often fall into an extreme empiricism or pure and simple compartmentalism... Just to keep only to the

last two years, along comes '68, the students' movement followed by the workers' Autumn, the new legislative year that starts with bombs and repression: the PR all the while batters away imperturbably at divorce and ends by showing off the anti-Concordat...". (35)

Well then, it was precisely this tenacity in pursuing what was seen as a small-change action and concentrating their limited energies on a single struggle that probably transformed what could have been an empirical action into a generally valid lesson concerning political method and matter. It was an indication that in Italy, in order to change the ranks - on the one side the conservatives with the DC at their center, and on the other those in favor of change composed of the Communists, Socialists and the lay groups - there was no other way to work than with the single issues such as divorce that it was possible to win. And the chance of winning them lay precisely in their "separateness" which could be treated politically rather than confronted by means of general statements and programmatic propositions.

The political balance sheet that today can be drawn up ought not to consider divorce so much - which yet was not so marginal in itself and for itself - as the relationship between the forces available to the Radicals at the start, those susceptible to aggregation, and the political use that was made of them and its relative results. And in this sense all the factors - the central position of lay issues and civil rights in respect to the reigning power, their power to aggregate, the possibility of pursuing a change in the institutions, and finally the repercussions on the political system - were able to demonstrate, in political more than in idealistic terms, the justice of a choice that at first might have seemed to be politically marginal and idealistically inconsistent.

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NOTES

1) The Socialists presented two other divorce bills previous to the Fortuna bill of October 1965: one in 1954 by the Hon. Renato Sansone, and one in 1958 by the Hons. Sansone and Giuliana Nenni.

2) The debate of December 12, 1965 was organised by the Rome section of the PR with M. Teodori presiding. The Radical spokesman was Mauro Mellini, Luciana Castellina represented the PCI, G.B. Migliori for the Catholics and Loris Fortuna.

3) From the report of Mauro Mellini reprinted by Alessandro Coletti in "Il divorzio in Italia", Savelli, Rome, 1974, p.135.

4) Cf."L'Espresso", year XII, no.17, April 24, 1966.

5) "Allocuzione su Divorzio e Concordato ai membri della Sacra Rota", January 1967.

6) It is worth remembering the names of the guiding spirits of several active LID delegations: Antonio Totarofila (Bari); Egidio Attinà (Bolzano); Eugenio Barrese (Palermo); Ferdinando Landi (Vicenza); Loris Pavacci (Genoa); Giuseppe Nardelli (Taranto); Martina Pasquettaz (Aosta); Sandro Ricci (Viareggio); Augusto Ricci (Naples); Carlo Rughini (Lucca); Enrico Morselli (Bologna); Bruno Recusani and Maria Adele Teodori (Milan).

7) A. Coletti, op.cit. p.136.

8) Luciana Castellina, "Il Dilemma del congresso della Lid,. Divorzio dai partiti o dal Psu?" "Rinascita"", December 15, 1967.

9) Ibidem.

10) Cf."Battaglia Divorzista", year I, no.10-11, October-November 1967. General Manager Gabriella Parca, Managing Editor Marcello Baraghini.

11) The Piazza Fontana massacre. A terrorist bombing in Milan. The police first arrested some anarchists. Later the bombing was widely attributed to the neo-Fascists. No one was ever brought to justice.

12) The three big Italian labor unions CGIL (Confederazione generale italiana del lavoro - Communist); CISL (Confederazione italiana sindacati lavoratori - DC); UIL (Unione italiana del lavoro - Socialist and Social Democratic).

13) Marco Pannella, "Lettera di un divorzista. Divorzio e lotta democratica", in "L'Astrolabio" no.34, August 30, 1967, p.16.

14) Ibidem.

15) The results of the election were: majority needed: 305; 325 in favor, 283 against. Considering the numbers present from the various parties, the anti-divorce forces should have obtained 288 votes.

16) There can be included in these ranks, besides the Radicals, the Socialists Fortuna, Mussa-Ivaldi, Fenoaltea, Banfi, Scalfari, several Social Proletarians, the Catholic elected on the independent left Giammario Albani, several dissenting Catholics, left-wing Liberals and Republicans.

17) A declaration of Marco Pannella's made to the press on the night of November 30, 1970 and carried by the news agencies.

18) Quoted in Gianfranco Spadaccia's "Divorzio e Concordato. Il comportamento dei laici: Lid, Liac, Pr e partiti democratici", in "La Prova Radicale" no.1, Autumn 1971, p.168.

19) Ibidem. p.169

20) Ibidem. p.169

21) Enrico Berlinguer founded "L'Unità" December 6, 1970.

22) A document of the CEI (Italian Bishops Conference, ed.) in "L'Osservatore Romano", February 12, 1967.

23) In the "Comitato Nazionale per il referendum sul Divorzio" figured personalities from clerical circles such as: the priest Gabrio Lombardi; Enrico Medi, later elected as first on the DC list in the Rome municipal elections; Agostino Greggi who passed over to the MSI in 1974; the professors Sergio Cotta, Augusto del Noce, and Giorgio La Pira.

24) A first bill aimed at blocking the referendum was presented in the Chamber by the Socialist Renato Ballardini; afterwards the Scalfari-Fortuna proposal was presented signed by 60 members of Parliament, among them the secretary of the PSI group Luigi Bertoldi and the Social-Proletarian Domenico Ceravolo.

25) Quotation reprinted in Coletti, op. cit., p. 170.

26) Here are the results of the 1972 elections (in parentheses the 1968 results): DC 38.7 (39.1); PCI 27.1 (26.9); MSI 8.7 (4.5); PSI 9.6, PSDI 5.1 (PSU 14.5); PLI 3.9 (5.8); PRI 2.9 (2.0); PSIUP 1.9 (4.4). The left collectively (PCI, PSI, PSIUP and others) won 41.3% in 1968 and 39.8% in 1972.

27) Not re-elected to Parliament were: Eugenio Scalfari, Socialist; Fausto Gullo, Communist; Ennio Bonea, Liberal; Giammario Albani, independent left of Catholic extraction.

28) Quoted in Coletti, op. cit., p. 135.

29) The presidency of the LID from its founding until its first congress in November 1967 was composed of Mario Berutti, Mario Boneschi, Adriano Buzzati Traverso, Alessandro Galante Garrone, Loris Fortuna, Lucio Luzzatto, Mauro Mellini, Giuseppe Perrone Capano, and Ada Picciotto. The secretariat, Giuseppe Faranda, Giulia Filotico, Gino Frisini, Marco Pannella, Gabriella Parca.

30) In the National Administrative Council the following Radicals figured: Leonida Balestreri, Luca Boneschi, Luigi del Gatto, Maria Turtura, Nina Fiore, Anna Maria Gerli Formentini, Matilde Macioca, Fausta Mancini Lapenna, Carlo Oliva, Alosio Rendi, Alma Sabatini, and Francesco Saladini.

31) Among the many significant episodes was the one in September 1970 when after a wrestling match with the RAI-TV the LID managed to impose five debates on divorce of considerable length also including personalities outside of Parliament.

32) Cf. Massimo Teodori, "Il movimento divorzista in Italia, origini e prospettive", in "Tempi Moderni" no.3, Summer 1970.

33) This is the standpoint often reiterated by Giorgio Galli in the pages of "Panorama" during 1974-1975.

34) Mario Signorino, "Radicals: Una fazione per i diritti civili", in "L'Astrolabio" no. 20, May 17, 1970.