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. DIRECT ACTION AND POPULAR ACTION FOR ABORTION

In 1973 and 1974 abortion became a central issue for Radical action and struggle. Differently from divorce, there was a spontaneous development of a militant movement for this new issue on the part of the new feminist groups. An ad hoc organisation had been constituted for the divorce movement in 1966 with the Radical nucleus at its center which promoted the popular pressure to support and stimulate parliamentary action. Abortion was a different case in that it was recognised to be a widespread phenomenon (from one to two million illegal cases a year according to different estimates). It thus took on the critical character of a mass "social problem" regarding women and so the entire feminist movement became based on it although divided into differing attitudes.

The feminists grouped around the Radical Party in the MLD (Women's Liberation Movement, ed.) were only one part of a vaster and spontaneous collective movement. And the Radicals, for their part, had to act while taking into account their direct connection with the MLD and the indirect one with the entire range of the women's and feminist movement. And it was precisely in this framework, where actions, events and processes constituted the objective data outside the Radical Party, that the MLD first, and then the CISA (Centro Italiano Sterilizzazione e Aborto), together with the PR promoted popular action as well as the direct action of civil disobedience in favor of <>. That objective constituted the clearest and most clearly perceived reform among the demands of the new feminists. As such it was the object of specific Radical action which aimed, generally, at organising an outlet in the institutions for individual or collective demands coming from civil soci

ety.

The presentation of the Fortuna bill in February 1973 had opened the long process of the country's applying pressure on Parliament. The accusations and the trials that were periodically started against women who had had abortions functioned as a gauge of the growing tension created by the mass illegalities that was facing the legislators. Such was the case of Gigliola Pietrobon, a minor, whose trial was held in Padua in June 1973 and transformed by the feminists into a trial against the repressive law as was the case of 263 women accused en masse at Trent in December 1973. In Autumn of the same year there was the expansion of the feminist movement with the drama of the cases that from time to time came to the surface, the news from abroad (new laws in France and the United States, mobilisation and self-denunciations in Germany) that provoked the opening of a campaign to start the debate on the bill in Parliament. And the Radicals found themselves at its head: "Liberazione" published in September a list

of those who had made self-denunciations (1) and the MLD demonstrated in front of Parliament to have the question put on the order of the day.

But liberalisation of abortion was opposed openly or by implication by all the political parties. An example was the attitude expressed by the PCI spokeswoman who said on the occasion: <> (2). On the legislative level progress was in no case made despite the fact that feminist activity was intensified throughout the country with repeated demonstrations and the press brought the divorce issue to public attention with ever greater force.

After the divorce referendum with all the implications it contained, and faced with parliamentary inertia, in June 1974 the Radicals once again proposed the abrogation of the articles of the penal code among five referendums to be requested; and at the same time, twenty or so MLD members held a hunger strike during the "hot summer" of 1974, not <> but to provoke its discussion in Parliament (3). They were supported by a petition of 13,000 signatures collected in Piazza Navona in Rome in only two weeks. The growth of interest for a specific change in the law too, was indicated by a public-opinion poll which in July of the same year showed two thirds of the Italians in favor of an urgent debate in Parliament and that 59% of women considered the question to regard their private conscience and not the State or the Church. (4)

A decided speeding up of the abortion campaign was once again due to an organised transgression of a law held to be unjust and to the Radical Party's taking it up politically as an element of necessary civil disobedience. On January 9, 1975, on information given by right wing organisations and charges made by right wing individuals, an abortion clinic in Florence was discovered that was organised by the CISA and the doctor who had organised it, Giorgio Conciani, was arrested. A few days later in Rome, Gianfranco Spadaccia, the PR national secretary, was put under arrest. He had declared the entire party responsible for this initiative, saying: <nd (police) officers, just as are the entire secretariat and the national administration of the party>>. (5)

Adele Faccio, who had founded the CISA in Milan in September 1973 and organised its activities, consigned herself to the police on the stage of the Teatro Adriano in Rome on January 25 during a large demonstration specifically organised for the purpose. Emma Bonino, who had succeeded Faccio as CISA director in Milan after her arrest, and for whose arrest a warrant was soon put out, turned herself in several months later while voting on June 15 in Bra her home town and was immediately released. Marco Pannella also claimed responsibility for the CISA and was ordered to present himself in court together with the Radical activists from Florence Giulia Montanelli, Andrea Ricci and Vincenzo Donvito.

The CISA was formed independently by several people who worked with the AIED (besides Adele Faccio, Guido Tassinari) in September 1973 and immediately had material help from the Milan headquarters of the Radicals. Later, at the Radical Congress of November 1974, Faccio, the guiding spirit and organiser of the center, asked for and was granted status as a confederate of the party which was also sanctioned in the congress's concluding motion: <> the resolution stated, <>. (6)

Thus it was with the assumption of political responsibility for an activity completely separate from the PR, and of whose existence its directors had only been aware for a few months, that the work of assisting women acquired at the beginning of 1975 the importance of organised civil disobedience for which an entire party took on the charge through its leaders. In this way for the Radicals the two aspects were melded that had for long distinguished their method of acting: on the one hand the mobilisation of the people for proposed changes in legislation of their own or in support of others' proposals; and on the other hand direct action based, if necessary, on open transgressions of laws they considered unjust for the sake of having them rapidly suspended.

Certainly it would have carried some weight to have another trial of a clandestine clinic which was part of a network that had organised - and admitted it - about 6,000 abortions in Italy plus another thousand performed by Italians in England. But it carried much more weight to bring charges against political leaders who claimed that the illegal actions were just. In fact, the arrest of the PR's secretary had the effect of widening the public's awareness of the "abortion question" and of creating for it an ever more political front: <> declared the secretary of the PR, <>. (7)

To the incriminations and arrests were added new self-denunciations for abortions procured in addition to the other ones of some time ago. On February 20, after a month of activity, several thousand of them were presented by a delegation of the PR and the MLD to the public prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals. In addition several hundred doctors signed a declaration in favor of immediately doing away with penalties for abortion (8) and made it public during the national conference on abortion held by the PR and the MLD on January 24 and 25 in Rome. (9) and during a press conference held on February 12, this latter group showed a film demonstrating an abortion operation done with the Karman method in order to show that it was impossible to prevent women from aborting and that the new techniques made the presence of a doctor unnecessary.

The explosion of the abortion issue had the effect of winning over the weekly "L'Espresso" to the tool of the referendum for abrogation of the law which the Radicals again decided to promote in the Spring of 1975. The relationship with the press, in particular the weeklies of wide circulation in the lay and progressive sectors of the country ("L'Espresso", "Panorama" and to a lesser degree "Il Mondo") had always been an important and delicate consideration for the Radicals. They had always put pressure on the weeklies to become spokesmen for the emerging demands for civil rights and liberties throughout the country by rapidly spreading the information and amplifying the proposals made and stimulated by the Radicals in various sectors.

In the past a weekly like "ABC" had shown its importance for the divorce campaign, and it was equally clear how decisive had been the work of the mass-distributed, illustrated political weeklies during the first five years of the '70s in forming public opinion. They in turn were strengthened by a broader readership when they gave news and editorial space to the demands for modernisation and laicization, and to the direct expression of civil society's (will) outside the limits of traditional political action. Thus it was that a turning point came in the possibilities of success for the Radical referendum initiative on abortion when an agreement was reached between "L'Espresso" and Pannella's "Lega XIII Maggio" (May 13th League, ed.) to gather signatures for the referendum to abolish the penal code norms on abortion.

On February 5, 1975 a request for a referendum on abortion was presented. A few weeks later the UIL (Italian Union of Labor, Socialist, ed.) too joined in the action and in March began the mobilisation of the people to form local committees. The institutional campaign crossed paths and superimposed itself on actions of civil disobedience. "L'Espresso" gave the "Lega XIII Maggio" one page weekly while from February through April, under the impetus of all these urgings, all the political parties came up with bills in the Chamber of Deputies, including the PCI and the DC. On April 15 the Radicals began to collect signatures in the streets with the help of financing and publicity from "L'Espresso" and the adhesion of many Socialist federations. Three months later the 750,000 or so signatures that had been gathered were presented to the authorities and the Constitutional mechanisms were started for calling a referendum in the Spring of 1976.

2. THE FEDERAL PARTY IS FORMED, ONCE AGAIN IN REGARD TO CIVIL RIGHTS. THE CHARTER OF LIBERTIES.

As has been seen, 1975 is the year in which the Radicals were primarily occupied with the divorce issue. But besides this, they were also active on other civil rights fronts. In April FUORI (United Revolutionary Front of Italian Homosexuals) held its second conference in Naples on the subject of "Sexual Oppression and Liberation" that shifted the attention of the Radical homosexuals to the more general subject of sexual liberation.

The drug campaign proceeded with the development of a bill <> by the National Committee on Drugs and Liberty led by Giancarlo Arnao, which bill was presented to the Senate Health Commission at the end of June. On July 1 Pannella smoked hashish in public, an act of civil disobedience <>. (10) Immediately afterwards the PR committed itself to the gathering of 50,000 signatures for presenting a bill of popular initiative. But in the succeeding months, under continuous pressure from the Radicals, at the end of the year a new law was debated and passed which was considered inadequate even though better than the one currently in effect. "Notizie Radicali" commented: < have undertaken against heroin, against the drug industry, against the attitude of the State toward drug addicts, cannot be considered over. The principle of not punishing the consumer has been passed. It has been badly passed, but it has been passed. Stiffer punishment for the drug traders and dealers has been passed... To maintain that these gains, with all their limitations, have not been won, have not created improved conditions for struggle... would be stupid>>. (11)

In Spring the Parliament passed the laws for the age of majority and the vote for eighteen-year-olds and the new family laws which the Radicals had been pressing for since the Summer of 1974. Without wanting to claim the credit for having fathered those laws, the Radicals did claim to have obtained <> and furthermore <>. (12)

On military and anti-military questions another front had been opened with the agitation of non-commissioned officers and the demands of a democratic movement in the army camps for civil and union rights for citizens in uniform - a situation that gave new strength and legitimacy to Radical proposals for the abrogation of military courts and codes in peace time. In the Summer of 1975 signatures were still being collected for this purpose.

The campaign for signatures for the abortion referendum ended in July 1975 with success guaranteed thanks to the help of "L'Espresso". The Radical program for the other referendums was suspended in the same period in order to accommodate the political requests of other groups, primarily Socialists and extra-parliamentarians, who did not want to commit themselves to the packet but to concentrate on abortion alone to which they gave priority. After the success of this latter, the PR reopened the collection of signatures for five more referendums [to abrogate, ed.]: the Concordat; crimes of opinion and of unionism of the penal code, with the already declared adhesion of the UIL (Union of Italian Workers); the military judicial regulations and penal code with the support of the weekly "ABC"; and the Reale Law regarding public order (13) which had been previously passed.

The Radicals' intention was that this second phase of the campaign should serve to complete the success of the popular mobilisation for abortion as well as exploit the gains made by the left in the June 15 regional elections. <> said a document released by the PR secretariat, <>. (14)

However, in spite of the shift to the left and the [political] climate that was its consequence, the minimum number of signatures was not reached because the support of an important press organ was lacking and the active mobilisation of extra-parliamentary groups and the PSI, to which the Radicals had made a particular appeal, was never realised. The disengagement of the Marxist new left groups, with the partial exception of only the Avanguardia Operaia (Workers' Vanguard, ed.), was thus the grounds for a quarrel (15) with which the Radicals tried to show up the contradictions between the declarations of so-called "class" opposition and the "sectarian and anti-unitarian" behavior of the same forces whenever it was a question of committing themselves to concrete political action against the regime.

The Radical Party came to its Florence Congress of November 1975 after a year in which, besides it specific actions, it could mark up its first big success on the institutional level by having brought about the conditions necessary for actuating the abortion referendum. The party had also grown as an organisation: at the beginning of the year there were formed several regional parties in Lombardy, Venetia, Emilia and Latium which were capable of having an existence independent of the Roman headquarters; their registered members came to more than 3,000 and the participants at the congress - a sign of active interest- came to 2,670, of whom two thirds were supporters and observers; (16) the annual budget reached 180 million lire in debits and 160 million in credits, of which 60 million came from the PSI for the abortion campaign and referendum. (17) And furthermore a certain number of political figures, mostly from the PSI, participated in the Congress and there was a considerable degree of public intere

st in this new group that had succeeded in reaching several limited but important goals with its activities and methods of an active minority.

The work of the Congress put in evidence for the first time the existence of a broad political body resulting from an accumulated heritage of struggles of which the 1975 ones were only the last chapter. The debate centred on three issues: the relationship among the single battles and their combination in a new political organisation; the "Socialist question" and relations with the PSI; the formulation of a total project to suggest to the left for a legislative period.

It was clear to all that, after the first cracks in the political system appeared in 1974 (referendum) and 1975 (regional elections), the Radical struggles for civil rights had to find application and integration in the political ranks. The time of the Radical brigand - as an expression used at the Congress put it - and of guerrilla warfare began to run out when the large regular armies got on the move causing the left to work out new strategies: << the acceleration of the economic, political and institutional crises of the regime >> declared the final motion, << presents the left with responsibilities which cannot be evaded or postponed. One cannot realise a program of reforms leaving it in the hands of the DC and those who have been responsible for the crisis >>. (19) The absence of << a large Socialist and libertarian component in the sphere of the Italian left >> was the cause of worry and alarm. Consequently this became the central concern of the Radical strategy together with the battle program <<

the strengthening, renewal, and refoundation >> of that component << in order to guarantee that the entire Italian left would affirm non-authoritarian and non-centralist principles, but on the contrary democratic, libertarian and self-regulating ones >>. (20)

The PSI, whom the Radicals saw as their principal partners in dialogue, were asked << to commit themselves to preparing and presenting the country and the electorate with a program of government by legislature >> as the start for a united program of the left; consequently they formulated the proposal for a confederated relationship between the PSI and the PR that would maintain the respective autonomy, the potentialities and the experiences of each party. At the same time, to reaffirm their intention of collaborating with all the parties of the left, the Congress decided to propose a consultation pact with the extra-parliamentary groups PDUP, AO and LC (Partito Democratico di Unità Proletaria, Autonomia Operaia and Lotta Continua) as well as indicating the desire for a << frank and loyal encounter with the PCI >>. Finally, the Congress established that the basis for dialogue with these groups and the fundamental proposal to the whole country, which would be the compendium of many years of political wor

k, ought to be a large constitutional project composed of popular initiative bills and of referendums for abrogating laws. For these latter one million signatures would be collected for << actuating the republican Constitution in all sectors of political, civil and social life >> in order not to miss another historic chance, as happened just after the war, to << interrupt the continuity of Fascist laws and structures which this regime has succeeded in asserting >>. (21)

After the Congress a "Charter of Liberties" was drawn up which detailed the civil liberties policies that many Radicals had long felt the need of preparing. As in France, where the three forces of the common program of the left (Socialists, Communists and leftist Radicals) had formulated the fundamental chapters of their platform, so in Italy the Radicals proposed a project of ordinary law regarding the rights and the freedoms of the citizens together with a bill to revise art.7 of the Constitution on the relationship between Church and State.

In the Charter of Liberties many institutional problems were analysed and proposals made for the abrogation of a series of norms currently in force along with proposals for new principles and norms on: << the powers of the State and the freedoms of the citizens >> (responsibilities of members of Parliament, of the public administration, the department of justice, of the public security forces and the armed forces); << The rights of citizens as individuals and as members of voluntary communities >> (personal freedoms, political and union freedoms, freedom of information, expression and communication, of cultural associations, of the press); << the rights of citizens who find themselves in particular situations of inequality and  exclusion >> (minors, women, the ill and the old, sexual and ethnic minorities, the exiled and the stateless, gypsies, the handicapped, drug addicts); << the rights of citizens as members of voluntary communities >> (religions, political parties, unions); << the rights of cit

izens as members of unavoidable groups >> (in hospitals, in the military, in prisons, in environmental situations, as consumers); <>. (22)

That project, which had not yet been stipulated in a definitive way at the time of its presentation in February 1976, was the most complete attempt to give a broad institutional base to the most original contribution the Radicals had made to the Italian left in more than a decade of specific actions. Basic to it was the political assumption, always reaffirmed by the Radicals, that there could be no truly innovative politics without civil rights, and that the latter were a qualifying factor for any substantial innovative program of the left: << No program of economic and social reform, whose concrete features furthermore resist being discerned in the general and sometimes generic nature of their formulations and plans, can be realised unless it is founded on a project of democratic freedoms included in a Socialist vision of social relations >>. (23) This is what the Radicals wrote in March 1976 when the collection of a million signatures was supposed to have begun to make of the "Charter" a great popula

r project and to solidify around it institutional action and the action for political maturity in the country. But the situation moved rapidly towards new elections with the early dissolution of Parliament for the second time in the history of the Italian Republic.

3. AFTER THE JUNE 20, 1976 ELECTIONS. THE RADICALS IN PARLIAMENT

At the end of April 1976 Parliament was dissolved and national elections called. A decided influence on that decision was certainly the desire of a large part of the political forces to avoid the referendum on abortion requested by the petition the year before. Thus a combined vote of the DC-MSI on the bill being discussed in the Chamber offered a pretext for speeding up the decision to put an end to the Sixth Legislature. The Radicals had been the only ones to wish for the early dissolution since they considered that the composition of Parliament no longer reflectedthe true relations among the political forces after the the May 12 referendum and the regional elections of June 15, 1975. Therefore once the voters' meetings were called the PR prepared for the first time to face an electoral dress rehearsal on the basis of the decision of the party's XVth Congress that had voted for formulating lists of candidates for the Chamber and the Senate throughout the country.

The desire to be present in the first person in an election was a break with a policy that had been followed for more than a decade. During all those years the new Radicals had either abstained from presenting themselves on various non-ideological grounds in elections which they considered did not respect the democratic game (the national elections of 1968, the municipal ones of 1971 and the national ones of 1972), or else they had supported other parties of the left (national elections of 1963: instructions for support of all leftist parties; the regionals of 1970: voted the PSI on the basis of an agreement; the regionals of 1975: external support of the PSI, of the Republican Franco De Cataldo, and of Avanguardia Operaia). In reality the 1976 decision to present itself directly to the electorate also had its roots in the acquired awareness of the group's having gained sufficient strength and attention in the country to be able to risk an otherwise very difficult test for a new party, impeded as they

were for traditional reasons besides lack of access to national television.

The alternatives facing the Radicals regarding their role in the elections were either a direct participation with their own candidates or a combined presence with the Socialists on the basis of a political agreement. This latter option was obviously the result of general activities and, most of all, of the policy of rapprochement that had developed during the previous year: firstly, the collaboration on the abortion referendum, then the proposal for a federated relationship that emerged from the November 1975 Congress, and finally the project for actuating the Constitution by means of the "Charter of Liberties" presented to the Socialists' pre-congressional encounters between the end of 1975 and the beginning of 1976.

At the PSI's National Congress in March 1976 the PR secretary expressed significantly cordial greetings: << The realisation of the hopes for an alternative [government, ed.] is in great part entrusted to the possibility that the Socialist and libertarian forces will once again have a determining role in the Italian left, in unifying it, in its political choices, in its government platform... The great choice before us is between... a bureaucratic, authoritarian and necessarily repressive Socialism, and a libertarian and self-managing Socialism... It is no accident if the polemics of a large part of the regime-controlled press is directed against you Socialists and us Radicals... We ask you to accept our proposals for a common initiative which we hope can result in a constantly closer collaboration and integration of the Socialists and Radicals >>. (24) Furthermore, in his formal if not substantial position outside the PR, Pannella was trying to play the role of an independent catalyst in a libertarian

area that would involve Socialists and Radicals. For that reason he had asked for membership in the PSI and received it at the beginning of 1976, even though there were conflicting reactions concerning his real role in the two different organisations (<< Now that the PSI has unanimously declared itself for the alternative which has been the explicit goal I have worked for ever since 1960, it is natural that this too should be my place >>). (25)

However, the election agreement fell through, despite the fact that a line for an opening towards the Radicals emerged during the Socialist congress and despite the intentions of several Socialist leaders and the appeal made by Pannella to the PSI and the PR from his independent position. The fact that the agreement was not stipulated was mostly due to the Radicals' wish to base it on specific political ideas and, in particular, on the project to actuate the Constitution - an intention that clashed with the election goals of the PSI. (26) The new Marxist left groups, who joined in presenting the "Democrazia Proletaria" list (PDUP, AO, and then LC, MLS and other smaller ones) also refused later to accept the Radical proposal for a technical agreement to channel all the votes of their respective supporters into a single list in two constituencies to avoid dispersing the votes.

So, after the failure of the various proposed agreements, the Radicals presented their own candidates alone. The rose in a clenched fist, the new Radical symbol that replaced the Phrygian hat in 1975, was to be seen in all the constituencies of the Chamber of Deputies except in Friuli, and in the Senatorial districts of almost all the regions. (27)

In preparing to present themselves to the electorate, the Radicals again made the question of information their main concern. Access to the public media had for a long time been considered indispensable for allowing the citizens to form a judgement on the issues the Radicals were fighting for. The true democratic process could not exist, according to the Radicals, unless the positions and proposals of all the political parties were made known, including those of the minority groups, through the use of the principal modern mass communication medium.

The RAI-TV and its use by the political forces and the government had been a target of Radical action since the '60s. It had won a momentary success in 1974 during the dramatic hunger strike in the Summer of that year. And if in general a democracy without information was something inconceivable, those elections in particular could not be considered valid if the competitors were not made able to speak to the whole country. The Radicals had not presented themselves in previous elections precisely on the grounds that the minorities not represented in Parliament were excluded from access to television. Thus, this year the problem had to be faced once again and in a sufficiently dramatic way.

To win the right to equality of information for all minorities in general and to the civil rights movement and the Radical Party in particular, a group of Radicals once more made use of a hunger strike, collective at first and then individual on the part of Pannella who reached the point of a total abstention from food and beverages containing calories for a week from April 25 to May 3. << We are not fasting in order to protest >> he declared, << or in order to suffer, but to reach an objective. In general objectives are part of other people's moralities, not of ours... We are not trying to force our principles or our positions on others, we are demanding the minimum... that is the respect of legality and the reintegration of the violated rules of democracy. It is the only reply we can give, other than destruction, to a city that betrays its own  laws >>. (28) In that case the betrayal of democracy regarded not only the political rights of minorities but the << right of the citizens in their totality

to know in order to deliberate and to decide >> that is, << the very basis of universal suffrage, of the power of the people, of political democracy, of the social pact >>. (29)

Even that dramatic new kind of civil disobedience ended by attaining the desired effect since Pannella and the Radicals had a partial recognition of the right of access. The first time it was with a broadcast dedicated to abortion and civil rights before the opening of the election campaign. Later it was with the admittance to the electoral tribune broadcasts [on which the parties presented their positions, ed.]. To obtain this another battle had to be fought demanding equal time for all rather than time proportional to the size of the party's representation in Parliament.

The Radicals' political-electoral message, which was also markedly unbiased, direct and iconoclastic in its tone and language, reached a broad public for the first time on TV screens. It was developed along a few main lines. Firstly, it took up the entire issue of civil rights, emphasising how the battles fought by a minority had constantly ended by becoming battles of the majority. Next, the alternative that was hoped for did not only regard the possibility of the left joining political ranks, but also a counterpoise to the DC regime in terms of values: << a regime that had brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy and of moral, political and institutional besides economic and social disaster >>. (30) Thus it insisted on the traditional left's giving up the attempt to reach agreements with the DC at all costs: the PCI by means of the historic compromise [collaboration with the DC, ed.] and the PSI through its continual uncertainties and subordination. Finally, it asserted the stimulus value that a

small group of Radicals in Parliament would have to the benefit of the entire left, weak from its very "bigness" and unable to make use of its "greatness" - that is, to directly propose its candidacy for power.

The result of the Radical candidacy took on a particular relevance in obtaining 394,439 votes throughout the country (1.1% of the votes) and four deputies elected to the Chamber of Deputies [see part two of this volume]. The success of the new party was not in its limited popular vote, but in the fact that for the first time since 1948 a party not in Parliament and not resulting from a schism had obtained sufficient votes to win seats in Parliament (an entire quotient in one constituency for the Chamber and 300,000 votes throughout the country). A very

modest result, therefore, in absolute terms, but with a pregnant qualitative significance in regard to the relationship of the movement and institutions and in demonstrating the permeability of the political system once certain conditions pertained, the first of them all being equality of information.

A complex series of reasons contributed to the small yet anything but marginal electoral consensus in a system that measured shifts on the order of a few percentage units. Some of these reasons were current and fleeting, others distant and deep. The Radicals' political ideas certainly carried some decisive weight at a time when the general orientation of the country was towards change and renewal rather than conservatism. And certainly that limited vote was part of the general shift to the left that was verified from 1974 onwards and confirmed by the total results of June 20. But alongside this combined picture (shift to the left, electoral mobility, demand for a change from the status quo), there were also reasons specifically connected to the way the Radicals presented themselves to the voters and to the role they played in recent and distant times.

One immediate reason ought to have been identified in the tone of the election campaign, which was obviously entwined with the ideas that formed its basis. Compared with the mostly stereotyped and uniform language of political groups and also their verbal framework, the Radical campaign spoke the language of people outside of all political spheres, and this had the effect of hitting some of the moods of the country that were highly critical of political society.

In this framework, furthermore, the attention given to women and their problems during the campaign certainly played a part in terms of votes. Half of the lists of candidates were women who often headed the lists in all constituencies; women's liberation and the abortion issue were given attention in all sectors of the press thanks to the Radicals, and these were factors that probably led women towards "the rose in the fist" - not so much the politicised women of organised feminism, as the sympathies in the election of that generally diffused feminine and feminist sensibility that had emerged in the last year.

Besides this, another thing that probably influenced the vote was the personification of the Radical image - to a lesser degree in the two women, Adele Faccio and Emma Bonino, who had played leading roles in the abortion clinic affair and the publicity it received in 1975, and to a much larger degree in the person of Marco Pannella whose television appearances continually

enhanced his image as a charismatic leader.

Everyone knows how much weight the personalities and persons of political leaders carry in election battles fought through the mass media (quite apart from their actual roles). It is the emotional attraction that they exert in personifying, unifying and ssymbolising a particular political image and thus making it immediately and directly comprehensible quite apart from all complex mediations of programs and writings. The two women heading the lists in Rome and Milan had been on the pages of all the newspapers, with their photogrpahs too, in the year before the elections. Emma Bonino had become the image of fighting, young feminism battling for abortion; and Adele Faccio even managed to get on the list of the fifteen << best-liked and most trustworthy Italian politicians >> (31) according to the public opinion polls of several weeklies. This contributed to their creating and disseminating their images as popular personalities.

For his part, Pannella not only presented the image of a public personage by now well-knwon due to the mass media, but also with a long and solid history of political battles now reinforced by his effective appearances on TV. He could be perceived as the figure of a leader who, much more than any other Italian leader, expressed the totality of the ideas, style and substance of a dynamic, newly emerging party. The Radical Party was identified as the "party of Pannella", and this was not without consequences for attracting consenses in a country where the realities and images of the parties suggested internal conflict, disunity and fragmentation.

A last reason - and the least visible because the most distant but perhaps the most influential - was the accumulated heritage of the civil rights actions. For more than ten years these had regarded and involved many groups of citizens, even if not very large ones, so that a relatively wide network of involvement had developed throughout the country ever since the fight for divorce: a network that in 1976 allowed the harvesting of many seasons of political work. Certainly the individual battles didn't establish social organisms like the traditional parties and unions because the new movements developed in the form of groups for mobilisation; but they did break ground for awareness of the Radical factor. And when they were ready to present themselves as an option open to the entire electorate, and not only to a restricted group of participants in single actions, the widespread political sympathy accumulated in time was able to be transformed into a specific consensus expressed with the vote.

NOTES

1) Aborto: noi siamo tutti colpevoli, in "Liberazione", Sept.16, 1973.

2) Declaration made to the ASCA Agency by Senator Carmen Zanti Tondi, Vice President of the Health Commission, quoted in "Contro l'aborto di classe" edited by Maria Adele Teodori, Savelli publishers, Rome, 1975, p.20.

3) "Contro l'aborto di classe", cit. p.21.

4) "Gli italiani e l'aborto", in "Panorama", July 8, 1974.

5) "Notizie Radicali", mimeographed, January 2, 1975.

6) "Motion of the XIVth National Congress of the PR", Milan, November 1974, in "Le lotte radicali attraverso i documenti congressuali e lo statuto", edited by th PR, Rome, 1976, IIIrd edition, p.40.

7) "Declaration of the secretary of the PR" in "Notizie Radicali", no.625, January 18, 1975.

8) "200 medici contro la legge criminogina", in "Notizie Radicali", no.625, January 18, 1975.

9) The acts of the conference "Contro l'aborto di classe", cit.

10) "Contro la droga del regime", in "Notizie Radicali" no.37, July 18, 1975.

11) "Prima vittoria sulla droga", in "Notizie Radicali" no.151-2-3-4-5, November 28, 1975.

12) "Diciottenni, diritto di famiglia: due battaglie vinte", in "Notizie Radicali" no.34, May 26, 1975.

13) Mimeographed circular of the National Secretariat of the PR, June 1975.

14) Ibidem.

15) "Extraparlamentari: ma i compagni non hanno tempo", in "Notizie Radicali" no.37, July 18, 1975.

16) Cf. "Notizie Radicali" no.46, November 16, 1975.

17) Cf. "Notizie Radicali" no.45, November 1, 1975.

18) At the Florence Congress of November 1975 speeches were made by the following Socialist members of Parliament: Michele Achilli, Luigi Mariotti, Tristano Codignola, Loris Fortuna, Mario Artali and Luigi Bertoldi.

19) Final motion of the XVth Congress of the PR, Florence, November 1975, in "Le lotte radicali attraverso..., op. cit., p.42.

20) Ibidem.

21) Ibidem.

22) "Carta della libertà, progetto di legge di iniziativa popolare per l'attuazione delle libertà e garanzie costitutzionale", edited by the PR, Roma, 1976. Collaborators in preparing the text were: Giuseppe Caputo, Paquale Curatola, Ernesto Bettinelli, Federico Mancini, Gino Giugni, Gianfranco Amendola, Giuseppe Ramadori, Ferdinando Landi, Mario Bessone, Mauro Mellini, Stefano Rodotà, Alberto Mittone, Angiolo Bandinelli, Giancarlo Arnao, the MLD, the FUORI, the LOC.

23) "Un millione de firme", in "Notizie Radicali" no.4, new series, March 3, 1976.

24) "Il saluto del PR al 40mo congresso del PSI", in "Notizie Radicali" no.4, new series, March 3, 1976.

25) "Nel PSI per dire no", interview with Marco Pannella in

"Panorama", December 11, 1975.

26) Gianfranco Spadaccia, "Radicali e socialisti", in "Prova Radicale" supplement to "Notizie Radicali", June 1, 1976.

27) Radical lists with the complete number of candidates were presented in all 13 constituencies of the Chamber except Friuli (Udine, Belluno, Gorizia, Pordenone) in which the Radicals had recommended voting for the PSI because of the candidacy there of Loris Fortuna; they were also presented in all the regional constituencies of the Senate except Trentino-South Tyrol, Molisee, Basilicata and Sardinia.

28) "La prova radicale", interview with Marco Pannella in "Prova Radicale", supplement to "Notizie Radicali", June 1976, pp.12-15.

29) M. Pannella, "Rischiava la vita per vivere", in "Notizie Radicali" no.6, April 16, 1976.

30) "Non disperdere il tuo voto", PR election pamphlet, 1976.

31) Cf. "Sondaggio, Sopratutto cambiare" in "Panorama", October 23, 1975; the same kind of public opinion poll was repeated several months later by the weekly "Tempo illustrato", March 14, 1976.