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. A MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT

The Radicals entrance into Parliament with the four deputies elected June 20, 1976 (1) was more than just a new occurrence in the Italian political system. For the Radicals it was a change in their political condition from being the promoter and animating spirit of campaigns and movements to being a political force (however small) able to present its proposals directly to the institutions. Such a qualitative change regarded its relations with the other political groups and its public image, and not only the functions that the Radicals attributed to themselves.

In fact, the new militants, who at the beginning of the sixties had inherited and carried on the Radical heritage, had as their hallmark direct action and methods of acting on civil society, but they had never asserted an anti-parliamentary or ideologically extra-parliamentary statute of their own: Even at the time of the extra-parliamentary culture's greatest influence, as in '68, they had affirmed their faith in the democratic institutions of representation. Furthermore, the Radicals' political culture and action counted, among its specific and qualifying features, and even as the most important of these, the fact of always aiming at the transformation of the institutions, that is, on the achieving of specific reforms.

In this the Radicals appeared as the authentic heirs of bourgeois and Western Socialist democracy and their disputatious character was always aimed at a concrete realisation of democratic processes. The Radicals never considered the institutions, and Parliament in particular, as structures that ought only to register the balance of forces which had been determined elsewhere (along more or less corporative or party-rule lines). Even less did they consider them sites and tools for other "revolutions" (along avant-gardist and Leninist lines). The Radical polemics always tended to the re-evaluation of the institutions, to make them correspond to the changes in civil society and thus to regain their role as places for political clashes in general.

The definition the Radicals often gave of themselves as the "ultras" of democracy; their quarrel with the parties for degenerating into appendages of the State (public financing) and for taking over the decisionary powers of the legislative and the executive; their analysis of the movement of Italian society and the State towards corporatism during the thirty years of Christian Democratic rule to the damage of political democracy: the continual criticism of the new Marxist left groups for not including the transformation of the institutions in their culture and not working for it politically; the defence of a "state of law" along lines that in another historical context might be considered to pertain to the "historical right"; the formula of an "authentically constitutional republic" that had subsumed and expressed the referendum project for five years - all these were elements and signs of the democratic-parliamentary view that the Radicals constantly affirmed, even before getting into Parliament, in c

ontrast to the theoretical or actual political approaches that tended to nullify, distort and depreciate political democracy.

Parliament was not therefore an "unnatural" place for the Radicals to be. Their relations with the other political groups changed however, because up until June 20, 1976 action for reform that had been aroused in the country had passed through the hands of members of Parliament belonging to other parties. And this type of action on single members of Parliament was in reality like a liberal vision of the relationship between the citizens and the people's representatives, which, in a certain sense, tended to reduce the function of the parties themselves and the role of mediation attributed to them by mass society. The Radicals had certainly had the function of "legislators", but because of the pressure put on the forces and on the institutional mechanisms, and not as direct proponents in Parliament. In this sense their relationship with the other political forces was changed, and especially with the Socialists who had often functioned as their principle channel for mediation in Parliament but who had n

ow become inevitably their competitors.

Their relationship with the country-at-large changed, with public opinion and with those spontaneous and collective movements with which the Radical Party had direct or indirect connections [see part two of this volume]. On one hand the Radical image was strengthened for those who saw and shared the complementary connection between action in the country and action in the institutions, and who saw in the small Parliamentary group a vehicle for overcoming the mediation of the large leftist parties. On the other hand the new situation of the Radicals no longer permitted them to claim that role, which had partly been their hallmark, as leaders of reformist battles throughout the country able to stimulate from the outside entire ranks in Parliament just because they were not interested in participating in the "power game" that was considered the prerogative of the elected assemblies of representative Italian democracy.

In conclusion, the passage from a (practical) situation outside of Parliament to being inside of Parliament gave the Radicals new problems. With regard both to public opinion and to the political elements it became more difficult to maintain that role of a "party as a movement" which they had played and which had always been especially understood and emphasised in its aspect as a movement rather than that of a programmatic party. And in regard to itself, its new role as a "dynamic minority" that had moved into Parliament imposed bonds and methods far different from the ones it encountered in activity outside Parliament.

The four [Radical, ed.] deputies began action with the first strokes of the gavel opening the seventh legislature to transform Parliament into the site of a real battle among the political forces. (2) Thus they made maximum use of debate in the assembly in the attempt to give it back its central role in the confrontation of the various positions in contrast to the increasing importance of the work of the commissions and the negotiations held outside Parliament among the party leaders which would be kept in mind a posteriori. This also corresponded to the political conception of parliamentary democracy which has been noted, as well as to evaluations of the real possibilities for such a restricted parliamentary group to play a dynamic and not marginal role. It also corresponded to the demands for the "political rights" of the individual members of Parliament, seen as a necessary means of giving back democratic credibility and practicability to Parliament.

Furthermore the Radicals had to arouse contradictions and enlarge their sphere of influence by forming alliances outside their own group. The danger that the Radicals had managed to avoid working outside Parliament, of becoming a small marginal and self-isolated group of contesters, they now risked again inside Parliament. The numerical relationships, the regulations and practices, together with the political situation might lead to a condition of this kind much more readily than could have occurred working in society.

This is why the the four deputies proposed to form a united and distinct group with the PSI (with everyone in the group free to vote according to his lights) (3) This proposal was rejected. And when they also saw their request rejected for a preliminary debate on the election of the president-designate of the assembly, the hon. Pietro Ingrao (PCI), by pushing through a habitual usage, the Radicals left the hall and placed themselves symbolically in front of Montecitorio (the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, ed.) to indicate the continuity of their methods of action inside and outside of Parliament. Even the months-long, stubborn dispute over the assignments of seats for the electronic voting, which could have been interpreted as a controversy of a parliamentary topographical sort (to the left or right of the Communists) had the purpose of claiming the assembly's right to make its own decision with regard to preliminary agreements negotiated by the parties among themselves outside of Parliament.

Ernesto Bettinelli, the scholar who has made it his job to interpret the policies of the Radicals in their institutional work and who has made his own decisive contributions to it, says that this conception of the assembly as the indispensable and privileged seat of political confrontation was also connected to the political design that the Radicals brought to Parliament:  << the mature conviction... that only on the civil rights front today is it possible to demonstrate the unbridgeable gap between the country's progressive and conservative forces. Where choices regarding civil life are concerned, compromises are very difficult and, in any case, are not destined to endure; as soon as one stumbles against them, those matters of "structural" importance are also put back into question on which the antagonists thought that they had found a "modus vivendi". But for this very reason there is a crisis in the seats of mediation, the parliamentary assemblies once again represent in effect the real divisions i

n the society. All the activities of the Radicals in the Chamber comply with... this analysis >>. (5)

The constant attempts of the Radicals to open a dialogue in Parliament with the rest of the left, and in particular with that PSI which, after all, had been at times a receptive partner in Radical initiatives when these had come from outside of Parliament, produced very meagre results during the legislative year. And the same was true of the attempts at understandings with the Proletarian Democrats'(DP) group which yet found itself in the ranks of the leftist opposition together with the Radicals. For this latter group, divergence with the Radicals was caused by two factors: the differing importance that the two groups gave to the possibilities of making democratic and revolutionary use of the institutions which the Proletarian Democrats considered irrelevant (except for the Lotta Continua Deputy Mimmo Pinto who after a certain point began to approach the Radical position); (6) and the Manifesto contingent's progressive march towards the PCI in regard to which the DP did not assume substantially conflic

ting positions.

With regard to the PSI group on the other hand, non-collaboration with the PR depended upon the Radicals holding a whole series of active and distinct positions of a sort that would have brought the PSI into conflict with those very parties (the PCI and the DC) with whom the Socialists were uniting in abstaining from taking a no-confidence position towards the DC one-party government in Parliament. In other words the search for unity, even if contingent on specific issues and with the Socialist members of Parliament alone, clashed with that "consociational democracy" also taking shape in Parliament after June 20. Such a new type of general agreement determined the rules of the political game even for those who like the PSI were not directly involved in it but, on the contrary, ended by submitting passively to its power relationships, perhaps through underestimating their own possibilities of intervening in the confrontation of the PCI and the DC, the two principle protagonists of the new course. The log

ic of aggregation attempted by the Radicals starting with their positions on single issues was opposed by the logic of grouping according to power balances and of their possible evolution.

The vote of confidence on the Andreotti government in August 1976, which was supported by the abstention of the smaller lay parties (PRI, PSDI, and PCI) and the traditional left (PSI and PCI), sanctioned the passing of the Communist Party after thirty years into the formal government majority. In its statement opposing the Andreotti cabinet, the Radical whip underscored the non-ideological opposition of the Radicals to the six parties of the coalition and the role that the small group intended to play at Montecitorio from that position too: "The contribution that we hope to give you is one of a fervid and hard battle over the most important issues in the conviction that one does not unite on the apparently structured economy and the social data, but first of all one unites and comes to an understanding on the day when the problems... of the fight to acquire new liberties and new rights are confronted. I believe that the [opposing, ed.] sides in Italy must, as you say, confront and oppose each other conc

retely. >> (7)

The agreements among the parties of the so-called "constitutional range" [those who participated in drawing up the Italian Constitution, ed.] opened a new legislative year that relegated the Radicals to the most difficult and absolutely unique position of being almost alone in the opposition to the new regime (together with the Proletarian Democrats). They found themselves faced in the assembly with crystallised sides and thus needed to wage battles and take positions that threatened to isolate them, with results opposite to those obtained in the past. The Radicals had always considered themselves "legislators" and little did it matter whether from inside or outside Parliament. And they had always acted as guiding spirits for actions destined to awaken interest in areas much, much larger than their own small ranks. Therefore in that situation the intense parliamentary activity of the four deputies with their motions, interrogations, interpellations, and bills, took on more the form of making up for the

absence of others (the Socialist movement and the proposing of its values in the legislature) by testifying to a political position opposed to the regime, rather than with actions capable of drawing together broader groups.

On the most important issues for action during the first six months of the Parliament's work, only marginal agreements were realised: for example, the motion for unilateral denunciation of the Concordat by the Socialists Fortuna and Tocco and the Proletarian Democrats Pinto and Corvisieri; the agreement of several Socialists and new left Marxists to ask the State for clarifications concerning basic individual and collective rights (the Panzieri case, the Margherito case, the Seveso environmental disaster, behaviour and affairs of the police...) (9) Meanwhile the Radicals were left completely alone in their opposition to the ratification of the Treaty of Osimo [regarding the frontiers with Yugoslavia, ed.] against which almost the entire city of Trieste rose up. Alone too in their vote against the abortion law, fruit of a series of compromises among the lay parties, the Socialists and the Communists who were pursuing a consensus with the anti-abortion Christian Democrat faction. The same thing happened s

ubsequently in Spring of 1977 with the presentation of a Radical police reform bill that would unify the various forces in a << Single public security corps >> (10) and with an action for rapid provisions to deal with the emergency situation in the prisons.

The Radicals' isolation on this last issue was all the more marked in that the proposals for the prisons and the guards were the response of Parliament to the pressure from outside in the form of civil disobedience conducted by the party. A hunger strike by the new PR National Secretary Adelaide Aglietta, the President of the Federal Council Gianfranco Spadaccia, and others extended dramatically for more than sixty days without awakening a response capable of putting into action provisions to resolve the situation. (11)

The moment of the most intense action in Parliament, and for that very reason of the greatest isolation [of the PR, ed.], came at the beginning of March 1977 with the discussion of the "Lockheed scandal" (12) and the incrimination of the three ex ministers: Rumor, Tanassi, and Gui. The Radical whip, Pannella, called on the President of the Republic Giovanni Leone to widen the investigation to discover his responsibility in the "business" and others like it. This was a line of action that evidently did not only tend to verify the precise responsibility of certain people, but aimed directly at spreading the investigation to the DC regime in toto, by way of the involvements and their consequences, and to show how the scandal was not a fortuitous coincidence but a "normal" manifestation of the "normal" administration of power consolidated in the last twenty years. (13) Once again the voice of the Radicals went unheeded, not really so much because their information regarding the highest government authoritie

s was well founded or not, but because of the fence-straddling strategies and hence political behaviour. The Radicals believed that the only defence of the

institutions was by the radical renewal of their methods and ideas which could only be achieved by chasing the Christian Democratic leadership from power. The dominating rule of the traditional left, on the other hand, was based on negotiation and compromise with reference to a << general political picture >> to which specific judgements and choices had to be subordinated.

The Radicals' parliamentary experience thus confirmed the hypothesis which they had taken with them into their institutional role: that is, that legislative action and the parliamentary tribune could only strengthen the Socialist and libertarian movement if they were based on and had the complementary (and necessary) aspect of action in the country outside Parliament. Otherwise they were condemned to the isolation of overweening ambition and to the futility of all their actions.

2. THE REFERENDUM PROJECT AS A PROJECT FOR AN ALTERNATIVE

After June 20, the election of several Radical deputies to the Chamber and their intense activity in the seventh legislature, it was possible for the centre of gravity of Radical activity to be moved from the country at large into Parliament. And it was not only a theoretical hypothesis for their stated intent to use the legislative channel actively and not instrumentally, but it was also a factual situation due to the election of Marco Pannella as negotiator, who, besides being their undisputed leader, had been and still was the principal organiser and animating spirit of Radical battles. However an eventuality of this kind - that is, that the election victory could change the very nature of the PR - did not materialise in the year following June 20, 1976. The essential reason was that the old Radical strategy, reaffirmed by recent decisions, hinged on the referendum project and on what could be called its actual workings quite aside from the energy available to its leaders and militants after the open

ing of the parliamentary front.

The Naples Congress in November 1976 had once again affirmed the validity of the political strategy that had begun five years before, even in the new situation that had resulted for the entire left (as well as the Radicals) from the elections: << Only by a popular consensus >> stated the final motion of the 17th Congress of the PR, << that expresses itself through millions of signatures of Communists, Socialists, religious believers, and democrats who will not surrender to the compromise on the Concordat as to an inevitable destiny - only then will it be possible to prevent the DC in this legislature for laying the groundwork to overthrow the successes of the left, to block all will and possibility for an alternative, to renew and consolidate its own power >>. (14)

For the Radicals to insist on using the referendum as the preferred tool of political action meant not only the reaffirmation of the ideas of the actions to abrogate single laws, but also the priority of gradual reform, as long as it was truly effective, in contrast to the abstract innovative or revolutionary positions and dissenting rebelliousness. The referendum remained an almost unique vehicle for democratic intervention in the mechanisms of the institutions with an absolutely binding character on its own political consequences. The referendum, in fact, is not subject to negotiation, cannot be made dependent on the subjective time limits of politicians, and will not lend itself either to casual or systematic compromise. Furthermore it can by its very nature be an instrument for aggregation for a wide-spread request on several issues and a mechanism that favours polarisation into large-scale ranks. In fact, it was not by chance that the Radicals as long ago as 1965 - that is, even before the law to p

ut the Constitution into effect - had identified the referendum as a tool made to its measure, and had obstinately attempted to use it three times in a row. Because in it two features of the Radicals' political culture could be succinctly expressed: the intention to be a "government" force even while in the minority (according to a profoundly different matrix from the extra-parliamentarian one); and the ambition to change laws and institutions, that is to be real reformers (in distinction to the maximalism or the renunciation of the left).

To propose referendums to the country in 1977 after the formulation in Parliament of the historic compromise [the PCI's collaboration with the DC, ed.] and the Communists' entrance into the sphere of power, even quite openly, was evidently something different from doing so during 1972-73 when the political balances tended (at the top) towards the conservative pole, and in power relationships the DC's absolute hegemony had not been shaken by the voting of '74, '75, and '76. There was certainly continuity in the plan, in the ideas and in the methods, but the negative target and the positive objectives had changed with the change in the country's political picture.

The three major proposals for abrogation (Concordat, military institutions and the Fascist penal code) were joined from time to time by lesser ones (the journalist's order, the press laws and freedom of broadcasting in '74, the insane asylums, certain norms of parliamentary inquiry commissions, the so-called "Reale" law [on maintaining public order, ed.], and public financing of political parties in '77). But this was of little significance inasmuch as it was still a question of a general civil rights project aimed at eliminating laws restricting certain spheres of individual or collective liberty. What was highly significant, on the other hand, was that in the new situation of greater power for the left the Radicals intended to bring up and, if necessary, also go to battle over democratic solutions for several problems of authoritarianism that had developed during the Christian Democratic regime and which, now, the Communists and Socialists could not avoid dealing with. The new meaning of the by-now old Rad

ical argument was, in the words of Lorenzo Strik Lievers, of this type: << in a society corroded and upset by degenerative processes, it is urgently necessary to introduce vigorous countermeasures, re-establish confidence and hope in democracy and in the republic; it is indispensable to restore dignity, truth, the concreteness of political choices and remove them from the necessity of choosing between being accomplices in the parasitical, corporative, corruption of public assistance and vaguely palingenetic-revolutionary nihilism >>. (15)

The political period of the Andreotti government, which from August 1976 protracted itself until Spring of 1977, was for the entire left a period judged to be defensive from many points of view and that made no use of the general election gains of June 20. In that election the left had totalled 46.6% of the votes with 2.6% going to the new Marxist left (DP) and the Radicals (PR), even though the Christian Democrats had not regressed with regard to the 1972 results (38.7%) and had not suffered the collapse that some were expecting, but on the contrary had made a slight recovery from the losses of the regional elections. This situation of success for the left (with a strong Communist gain from 27.1% in 1972 to 34.4% in '76), and at the same time the Christian Democrats holding their own, offered the PCI the occasion for pressing the other groups in view of the compromise agreement that they were openly about to conclude. The Communist attitude, with its abstention from a vote of no-confidence that allowed

the DC to form and run a one-party government, thus set the tone of the new situation and gave shape to the entire framework in which the political battles, the social movements, and the idealistic clashes in the country took place. Then too, in order to advance the plan of collaboration with the DC, the PCI had to create a general climate of political and social normalisation based on two cardinal points: on the one hand the broadening of the management and co-management on every level to which the Communists could gain access as a necessary first step to entering the national government; and on the other, the elimination of any movement or initiative on the left that could interfere with the compromise strategy by creating political or social conflict.

The Radical referendum proposals, made between January and March 1977, thus inevitably came to be seen as a conflicting tendency, all the more dangerous to the stability of the political picture that the PCI had so patiently pieced together and maintained, in that the objective course it took in political society would not be easy to control. In fact, the Radicals emphasised that the eight-referendum packet was the only alternative to the inertia or resignation of the left in the face of the reinvigorated conservative and Christian Democratic forces to anyone who did not accept the higher political logic of the historic compromise. << This referendum >> stated a page in the daily paper "Lotta Continua" dedicated to the referendum committee after April 7, 1977, << is a precious opportunity and a unique one for a political battle, on an institutional level as well, from which the forces for an alternative to the system can emerge all at once as the antagonists or the protagonists of a "historical" class c

lash of social liberation, just at a time when often they are considered, not always wrongly, to have been wiped out or to be in a serious crisis >>. (17)

This was probably the reason why the collection of signatures for the eight referendums in the Spring of 1977 was entirely successful for the first time. In the absence of initiatives on the left and while the long negotiations for a programmatic agreement were going on, in which the PCI participated directly together with the other five parties of the so-called "constitutional range" (DC, PSI, PSDI, PRI, and PLI), the Radical proposal began to look to the public like an active measure in a contrary direction, above and beyond the specific contents of the packet of norms to be abrogated. With the Socialists inert and playing a secondary role in the negotiations over the government and the Communists set on entering the government at any price along with the DC; with a "revolutionary" new left of a kind that was essentially in decline within the movement and missing in Parliament despite the election to Parliament of Proletarian Democrat candidates - with all this the Radical initiative was a point of r

eference for all those who were not in agreement with the course of normalisation and co-administration of power that was everywhere being pursued only one year after the election successes of the left on June 20, 1976.

The Radicals had begun to gather signatures on April 1, 1977 and followed up the initiative until on June 30 they turned in to the Supreme Court of Appeals more than 700,000 signatures for each of the referendum requests. This came to a total of more than five and a half million signatures resulting from a mobilisation campaign unique of its kind. The Radicals' political project had been co-ordinated by a National Referendum Committee. The only groups that had joined it on a national level were Lotta Continua and the small Movimento dei Lavoratori per il Socialismo

(MLS - Workers' Movement for Socialism, ed.) besides several local groups and a noteworthy number of individual leftist militants not excluding several Communists in marginal cases (and the outside support of the UIL [Union of Italian Workers, Socialist, ed,]). (18)

A result of this kind was unprecedented in the Italian experience (inasmuch as abortion had been a single referendum and with great support from the press) and surely beyond all imagining for a small, unestablished group like the Radical Party. It could not be attributed only to the abilities of the Radicals and their small allies to organise, mobilise and act. Certainly the party, as never before, had passed the test of a general mobilisation and had been able to do so thanks as well to the guidance of the new National Secretary Adelaide Aglietta who had at her back experience as a militant in Piedmont and who managed to set up an efficient organisation. Nevertheless there were more general reasons for the (relative) mass adhesion of hundreds of thousands of citizens which was undoubtedly due to the specific faith in the referendum project and the possibilities of its promoters to set in on the right course and bring it into port (even with the only marginal help of the mass media). The citizens - kee

ping well in mind that only a necessary minimum had received the message - had signed mostly as a protest against the stagnant condition of the left and the predominant course of political life as it was widely perceived. And the ones who were motivated by this sentiment were not only those who voted Radical or Proletarian Democrat or who for some reason sympathised with the Radicals' aims and methods, but also those who voted for the left and may even have been militants and members of leftist parties. Testifying to this fact are the unequivocal data of the collection of signatures, zone by zone. (18)

They signed, they joined, and they "voted" as well, those who could accept the peaceful, simple and direct way offered to them to participate in collective choices for the needed expansion of liberties. This need was felt in its global expression ("against the regime", "for an authentically constitutional republic", etc.) even sooner than through an understanding of the specific norms to be abrogated. The demand that gathered around the signatures was certainly a demand of a fragmented type both against the means and ends of the currently dominant politics as well as for a politics and a behaviour that would be an alternative to the historically innovative forces who had joined ranks, with the PCI and the PSI, in a negotiation to the very end with the conservative sphere and, even more, the regime responsible for the country's political and moral crisis.

The accusation that the Radical initiative was destabilising and an incentive to latent political disenchantment paradoxically put into relief two crucial aspects of the referendum project: That it tended to modify a stability or a process of stabilisation founded on the abdication of the innovative forces to pursue the attack, given their strength, even during the negotiations for setting up a government; and that it focused a collective malaise not in the direction of alienating the people from the nations political affairs and taking refuge in a personal and corporative defense of the individual and group sphere, but on the contrary by transforming the discontent into an aggregated political demand for understandable goals. Finally, the Radical referendums offered a political outlet that could strengthen rather than weaken faith in the institutions at the most critical moment in political business with negotiations going on at the summit and in the parties.

The Radicals gave a voice to the demand for reforms and innovations by a positive use of the referendum method, which, when it went from a project to a reality, conditioned all of political life, returning the party to the status of a functioning movement in society and keeping it there. Thanks to that concrete constitutional tool, they also proved that they had not entered Parliament in order to play a sterile role in a marginal opposition, but that they knew how to combine the possibilities offered by the parliamentary arena with the need to start up movements and demands for change coming from the living social and political fabric of the country.

3. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN COMMUNISTS AND RADICALS

The Radicals expansion into the country's institutions after the June 20, 1976 election, and their continuing intensive activity in society outside the institutions which found an outlet in the referendum project, were the two elements that marked the new phase of the Radical Party, pushed them into the centre of public attention and the political leaders with ever harsher polemics. Now that the small group had indicated its ability not only to endure but to grow, emerging from a role that could have been extremely marginal, the worse the polemics that were directed at them, most of all from the Communist Party. This latter, during 1976-1977, became the ever more predominant group on the left and insinuated itself constantly more into the spheres of power and of government. On this road, consolidated by its established political power, its ideology and culture, it now found the irritating stumbling block of the Radical group and its initiatives with which it clashed - within the limits of the so very d

ifferent proportions of size. The roots of the problem, even more than their positions on the specific issues, was the Radicals' "different" kind of politics and of culture which was not homogeneous with the Communist kind that dominated the left.

After the story of the seating in the Chamber, which has already been mentioned, and after the distinct criticisms of the PCI made in Parliament and in public on the questions of the Concordat, public order, the Osimo agreement and international politics, abortion, the prisons, the rights of soldiers and policemen, and the RAI-TV, the Radicals became a frequent target for criticism in the Communist press. In an editorial in "L'Unità" [the official PCI organ, ed.] of December 1976, the co-managing editor Claudio Petruciolli wrote about the debate of Pannella with the representative of the new DC right, Massimo De Carolis, putting the two of them in the same boat: << It is not their anti-Communism, rabid and restless as it is, that they have in common, it is something deeper and more turbid... rancorous and arrogant, allusive and crude, insinuating and blackmailing that collects the dregs of the humours, fears, presumptions, aggressiveness of all those in this society who, even when they have no power, en

joy privileges >>. (19) Moreover, attempting to define the Radical phenomenon in the same terms as the neo-conservative one, "L'Unita's" editorial designated it as one of those << manifestations of an old malady...: the detachment from and lack of faith in the masses whom they want to keep passive so that they will be the object and not the subject of politics and culture, and at the most considered - when they are considered at all - as an exercise field for the self-assertion of the one who interprets, guides and agitates them... >>. (20)

That same week, in the columns of "Corriere della Sera", Antonello Trombadori tried to nullify any continuity between the new Radicals and the Radical democratic tradition and lay reform which had been the heritage of Gaetano Salvemini, Ernesto Rossi, and "Il Mondo". (21?) In that article, the Communist member of Parliament pointed out << the growing political sterility of all the "Radicalising" rebellion even when it is riding issues of real urgency for the individual and society. And it will find itself always deeper [in political sterility, ed.] if it does not succeed in shifting its problematics from the sphere of informal lamentations to that of distinct and responsible political confrontation and of inserting its sectorial gesturing... into an articulate plan of statutory perspective >>. (21) Trombadori maintains that the new <<"Radicalising" movement>> is entirely foreign to the << tradition of European and, even more, Italian Radicalism, which had, in any case, exhausted itself or be

come part of other groups >>. He connected it with the plague of "maximalism", of which he considered it a new variant calling it "maximal-radicalism" : << With this difference, that while the maximalism of the past was content with interchanging the just point of arrival of a historical-political process with its point of departure, the "maximal-radicalism" of the 70's also demanded the [the right] to start up historical processes that were at times unjust and negative >>. (22)

"Qualunquismo" (23), maximalism, anti-Communism and a destabilising influence: these, in synthesis, are the accusations of the Communists against the Radicals made in Parliament or apropos of the referendum campaign.

How did the Radicals react? And what were the basic arguments, both specific and general, that they were able to advance? Pannella repeatedly affirmed during the heat of the polemics, that the reasons for the great fury of the big leftist party against the small one was due to the Radicals' politics offering an alternative: << The Communists instinctively felt that the only adequate alternative to their policies, >> he stated in an interview in [the weekly] "Panorama", << not only for the socialist leftist factions, the Republicans, liberals and libertarians, but also for the PCI itself, was prefigured in our battles that spread throughout the country and welded Communists and Socialists, true liberals and true Christians to the opposition. And it welded them not only in theory... This is our way of being to leftists... I feel obliged to say that if the Communists prefer to be leftists according to the diverse traditions of a certain historical Italian left, wavering between authoritarianism along Cris

pi's lines and respectability of the Depretis type (24), parliamentarism, opportunism, the pluralism of organicism and corporativism, the social traditions that go from Toniolo to Storti (25), the essential pro-clericalism of the Lateran Pacts, the [political] marriages on art.7 of the Constitution [the Concordat, ed.], they will continue to be losers on the political level, as all the traditional left has been for thirty years has been to our misfortune >>. (26)

A few months later, opening in the same tone a free debate in "Corriere della Sera", Pannella had underscored that the singular character of Radical politics lay precisely in its search for unity on the left with the PCI, starting with their differing political choices and idealistic goals that had been stated more than once: << They, the leaders of the PCI, have known us and feared us for twenty years. They know perfectly well that we are not anti-Communist at all, that on the contrary, we are the only political group that since 1959 until now has unwaveringly fought, without doubts and fears, for a leftist alternative to the DC, for an alternative regime with the PCI... For twenty years we have been fighting for the alternative, to strengthen and expand the Socialist, lay, liberal and libertarian, self-administrating and internationalist component of the Italian left, non-violent and pacifist, within and without the PCI and the PSI >>. (27)

To the specific Communist criticisms in regard to the referendum project, there was also a reply by the President of the Federal Council of the PR Gianfranco Spadaccia. He spoke authoritatively for the entire party having become its recognised leader after his arrest for taking responsibility for the CISA's abortion activities, and after Pannella had shifted the center of his activity from the party to Parliament. The Communists accusations of the destabilising effects of the referendums were countered with a defense that emphasised their aspect as essential tools to actuate constitutional norms which the left had never known how to impose. The daily paper "La Repubblica" organised a debate in which the PCI's Achille Occhetto judged the eight-referendum campaign to be << not up to the progress of the country's civil conscience >> (as in the case of divorce), but on the contrary, << founded on confusion and irrationality >>. To this Spadaccia replied: << To those who accuse us of introducing irrational e

lements into the political debate, basing the accusation on single episodes and neglecting the total view of our line, I reply that they are working up a witch hunt against us... The real problem is rather the strategic choice of the historic left that is hiding behind these arguments. This choice consists in the conviction that the confrontation with the DC must take place exclusively on the economic and social levels, neglecting the questions of liberty, of the actuation of the Constitution, of the abrogation of Fascist laws, structures and behaviour. You speak of caution, forgetting that we are still at grips with the old Fascism and old authoritarianism, by now united with the new Fascism represented by the Reale law and the one on public financing of political parties... >>. And still with regard to the meaning of the referendum project in the context of the political and social situation that arose in the Spring of 1977, the president of the Radical Federative Council affirmed: << There is an objective

situation of institutional violence in the country that strikes at the outsiders - only think of the young and the students - that excites forms of counterviolence that can find mass support. In a situation like this, the eight referendums are surely a non-violent and constitutional recourse. We want to give a political outlet to several alternative requests, and in this our strategy is most certainly different from that of the traditional leftist forces >>. (28)

The deep and not merely coincidental conflict that existed between the Radicals and the Communists was put into relief by the opening essay in the first number of a new review "Argomenti Radicali" (Radical Issues, ed.), a bimonthly periodical for the alternative that came out in April 1977. Massimo Teodori was managing editor and a qualified group of Radical militants with party responsibilities were its promoters (among them Franco Corleone of the National Secretariat, Mercedes Bresso and Lorenzo Strik Lievers of the Federative Council, Giorgio Pizzi, Umberto Cerqui, Carlo Lomartire and Enzo Belli-Nicoletti, leaders of the PR Lombardy group, and Ernesto Bettinelli, collaborator with the group in Parliament). The reason for the creation of the periodical was the wide-spread awareness that by now the Radicals, to develop, needed to reflect so as to strengthen the party's growing political capacity for mobilisation, and also to clarify their relations with the rest of the left and the country in general b

y use of an appropriate tool for collective analysis and study.

According to that analysis ("Radicals and Communists, the Reasons for the Conflict") (29), the new data regarding the Radicals were: the election success, the practical and political expansion of the civil rights line, the crisis of the extra-parliamentary forces to which corresponded the Radicals non-crisis, the pressing initiative in Parliament, the political outlet the referendums offered to the tensions in the country, and the growth of the "Situational groups" (see p.31, par.2) in the country. All this was just what made the Radicals not merely a political cultural factor, nor a movement operating only on the social level, but a force capable without further ado of channelling the innovative impulses of civil society towards political outlets and institutional changes. << Faced with the equilibrium of the historical compromise being constructed (in view of the June 20 election results with two predominant and converging parties, the weakening of the PSI and of the extra-parliamentarians of Marxist

origin), the only thing that can upset the new order that is forming is, above all, the ferment of civil society. But civil society per se does not express itself except through movements , channels, and initiatives that give voice to potential or active contradictions. So then, it is right here that one must look for the danger of the Radicals to the PCI and the roots of the conflict >>. (30)

The analysis of the conflict continued thus: << The very particular character of the Radicals is that they are simultaneously the instigators of movements in the civil rights area and capable of expressing this directly in political society and the institutions with precise initiatives. In this quite exceptional fact of their being neither a movement type of party nor a political type, lies the deep reasons for the Communists' thunderings. In the eyes of the PCI, for what regards daily affairs, Radical politics are guilty and thus must be fought for two main reasons: First because they bring the petitions and demands of movements and contradictions in society directly into the institutions and thus are given a political outlet in the institutions without the mediation of the PCI itself (which is what it had been trying to do ever since '68 when the grass roots throughout the country had developed a "party of change"); secondly, because these struggles, which grow from single contradictions, tend to conn

ect up in a general strategy - that of civil rights - which by its very nature is an alternative to the idea of the democratic-social-popular state >>. (31)

The essay then made evident how the Radicals were the product of not only a decidedly subjective political initiative, but also of new objective contradictions. Those [contradictions] according to which society could not any longer be read simply with the traditional class schemes, but had to be analysed as well according to what the sociologist Carlo Donolo had called "situational groups", (32) the groups, that is, that experience contradictions and express needs that refer to a certain existential or institutional situation they are involved in: women as women, youths as youths, the unemployed as unemployed, the members of some total institution or one with the tendency to be such. In some way or other, all these situational groups that have approached politics in the last ten years, and entered upon the social scene as the protagonists of anti-authoritarian movements or for the transformation of single institutions, have become conscious of the specific contradictions in their participation in a dete

rmined situation could be politically aggregated and made into social questions.

Finally, the heart of the conflict between the large historical leftist forces and the small dynamic new ones was identified in the interpretation of "Argomenti Radicali" in the contraposition of the vision of "social tutelage" so dear to the Communists with the Radicals idea of civil rights: << Faced with this social explosion, the PCI tended and tends to reserve for such demands a controlled and controllable social area, but not direct institutional and political representation, inasmuch as it reserves for itself alone the right to general institutionalisation and transformation which it subordinates to general political strategy which comes before the latter and is not a result of it. The "politics of civil rights", on the contrary, tends not merely to identify these needs on the individual plane, thus disintegrating the social compact, but also to become the only practicable instrument of political aggregation, direct and not mediated, of a society otherwise lacking in many points of unity. The "soc

ial tutelage" proposed by the Communists (see abortion, see the way of conceiving access to the RAI-TV and the university reform, etc.) was along the lines of the historic compromise in which they tended to resolve all the new situations of conflict, produced not merely by capital in itself, but by the mediation of the state and its growing functions. To this was counterpoised along ideal and political lines the "tutelage of dissent", the "tutelage of rights": both as a general view and a specific solution, this necessarily came into conflict with the Communists' conception joined with the Catholic one of extending the public hand and of social intervention >>. (33)

4. THE MOTIVES OF TWENTY YEARS OF RADICAL HISTORY

The work of the Radicals is still going on, and at the end of this attempt to reconstruct its basic historical phases one cannot certainly draw conclusions or arrive at overall evaluations. What we have intended to do here is rather to make a first effort to put the essential facts in order (giving the data and information as accurately as possible) regarding a phenomenon

which has been the object of little or no general reflection other than what the political news has offered. By way of a provisional conclusion, however, it is necessary to remember a few crucial problems and questions that have been raised often in the course of this treatment and put them into relief for the sake of subsequent efforts at analysis and comprehension.

The basic thing to be considered is the identification of the motives that were responsible for the duration and the success of the Radicals in Italian political history in the last twenty years. And it is not a question of little import. In fact, for the first time after the disbanding of the Action Party, the Popular Unity Party and the "first" Radical Party of "L'Espresso" and "Il Mondo" (1955-1962), with the present PR a lay group of the non-Marxist left has succeeded in asserting itself by its own efforts and in taking a place in the politico-cultural debate. Furthermore it has been able to take real and true political action which has determined events of great moment and historical importance (divorce, abortion, the eight referendums) and to win a place for itself in Parliament.

Thus the "emergence" of the Radical Party represents a considerable novelty in two senses for the Italian political system: because on the one hand it breaks what had seemed to be by now an "iron law" - that is, that no new political group, which had not resulted from a schism in a party already established, could hope to succeed; on the other hand, it destroyed the myth that there was no room on the left for a group outside the Communist cultural area or which did not make at least formal reference to the working class (such as the PSI).

And the value of these data are all the more evident if one compares the efficacy of the Radicals in the last ten years with that of the other new forces that emerged in the same period, the galaxy of "new" revolutionary left elements of various Communist-Leninist derivations.

In the first place the explanation of the phenomenon should be sought in the will to political durability as an independent force on the part of a nucleus of activists that was laughably small for a long time. They told themselves: this business has been going on for more than twenty years. That group of youths had already formed the body of political activists for the "first" Radical Party, (inasmuch as the more famous and prestigious Radical leaders never really committed themselves to the party as such). But after the schism in 1962 they took on the commitment and the burden - which might have appeared to be ridiculously out of proportion to their strength - to maintain the continuity of the great line that went back through the preceding party to the "Action Party", to "Justice and Liberty", to "Liberal Revolution". (34) However strong the conviction of its partisans in the necessity, justice and potential success of this choice, the fact remains to be shown that the "party", against the opposition

of one and all, kept faith with this decision and was composed for more than ten years by not more

than one hundred people and then, but only in recent years, by a thousand and finally by several thousand activists.

This then is a a story whose subjective and decisive element

was the determination to persist in one's own ideas and positions that went against the trend, notwithstanding difficulties and isolation in political society for such a long period of political time. (And one would be tempted to define as "Leninist"

the relationship between the group that so stubbornly resisted and the "objective conditions" of Italian society if that would not contradict the ideas and methods of the PR's political action.) But then there is no doubt that apart from the aspect of will and willfulness that sustained the Radicals in the endurance test, there was also precisely the political intelligence of their analyses of the true Italian situation, very often in anticipation of the course of events. (Here we may recall the most emblematic and significant of them: progressive corporativism, the function of the clergy in the power structure, the effective role of the public sector in the economy quite aside from the myths in this regard, the authoritarian changes in the institutions, the adaptation of the leftist parties to the State structures and the society to be dismantled.) In short, this combination of things which brought about the Radicals' success.

It is beyond discussion, however, that the new Radicals began from scratch and acted for a long time alone and only on the strength (and weakness) of their own ideas and not merely under pressure from the factors and interests of groups and social strata. From many points of view, therefore, their affairs appear easier to interpret in terms of historiographical "ethico-

political" categories rather than in those more suitable to confront the study of existing social conflicts or investigations of the political forces which express what an ugly and schematic terminology calls structural conflicts. But it is equally certain that as their analyses and consequent political proposals gradually became known to wider sectors of society, they immediately had a response in the real power centres of the country with the identification of bottle-necks, structures and institutions, the real seats of political clash and also class conflict. The Radicals' replies (schematized in the phrase "the politics of civil rights") turned out to be those suited to the advanced industrial society and capable of effectively relating to the new conflicts typical of that society.

The emergence of a Radical political position, however slow and laborious, and not the consumption of, or turning back on itself, was thus due to the fact that after a first stubborn, entirely political proposal, it corresponded to deep needs of the new society, especially to that which took shape in Italy between the 50'and the 70's.

If the original group of new Radicals that came together in the second half of the 50's had not been so tenacious in advancing their own isolated political venture, there probably would never have been that political outlet for the mass libertarian tensions that in recent years has come to be known as the "Radical" response to the crisis. And if, on the other hand, the proposals, battles and responses of the Radicals had not corresponded to true social contradictions that had matured above all after the break in the collective conscience at the end of the 60's, the story of the Radicals would have remained that of a group whose validity was purely cultural, even if this was

something they had never been or claimed to be.

The Catholic Gianni Baget Bozzo has maintained that << Radicalism presupposes the salvaging, I do not say of the subject..., but of the individual >>, of that individual who in the 70's << is an "atom" in the sense of being the last residue of all possible divisions >>. And the new Italian radicalism would be the expression of this new "Radical society", which from the Catholic point of view is the equivalent of the "consumer society", to which barbarism and violence are by now intrinsic, while at the same time it would be an attempt to overcome its negative aspects. << If we properly understand the intention of Radical politics >> Baget Bozzo continues, << it is an attempt to counter the barbarism of latent radicalism in the society, and to make in some way a social being of the emerging individual... the Radical Party is thus not a party but a political form of a society that is by now different from that which the ideological parties (at the top of which is the Leninist party) have expressed

as its political form. >> (35)

In his own language and on his own scale of values, this singular exponent of fundamentalist Catholic culture - however foreign its ideology to the thought of the laity - has hit on some of the fundamental features of the Radicals' relationship to the world of political culture on the one hand, and to civil society on the other. In this perspective, in fact, the "politics of civil rights" becomes not so much the individualistic exaltation of the social disintegration characteristic of modern mass society, but on the contrary a factor in a direct and efficacious alternative to this phenomenon in the social body, as a sufficient tool of aggregation of the new and widespread political demand.

Another important element to consider for a total understanding of the Radical phenomenon is the continual and constant drama of the party-group's way of existing. In its various phases, with its specific battles (divorce, conscientious objectors, access to television, abortion) and with the organisational and financial aims that the group gradually took on, what allowed them to overcome the repeated internal and external crises was perhaps the emphasising of the extraordinary and peremptory character of the tasks of any particular moment. The Radical Party often in crucial moments put the problem of specific actions as questions of life and death, of the very possibility for Radical politics to exist at all. All this seemed to those within the party - and not without some element of truth - like the Radicals "blackmailing" themselves. And to those outside the party it looked like a form of "exhibitionism" on the part of people who had no better arguments than scandal with which to get across their me

ssages, nor adequate structures for tackling the political tasks of the moment.

In terms of an analysis, this commentary on the Radical way of being for fifteen years certainly corresponds to a distinct reality. But still one also must see in it one of the reasons for the singular Radical ability to win in ventures much greater than their political and organisational capacities. Giorgio Galli [ a political commentator, ed.] maintained that the Radicals used their small power to the maximum in the ambit of a left which used minimally the great power at its disposal. (36) And Francesco Ciafaloni has written that the contradictions and inadequacies that can be found in certain Radicals are due to the << disproportion inherent in a political group whose cultural weight, ideas

and practical efficacy are so enormously greater than its organisational weight >>. (37)

Probably if the Radicals had not dramatised their situation they would never have been able to bridge the constant gap between their task and their capacity, their energy and their goals. For in reality even history will have to recognise that there was a true drama which corresponded to the "dramatisation"; that from time to time it victory or defeat really were a question of life or death, of credibility outside the party and self-confidence inside of a group that had no chance of holding up under the clash with a skeptical and hostile political ambience except by constantly presenting winning initiatives since it was supported by so slender an organisation with no social foothold or constituted interests. In short, the dramatic character of the Radical Party's political activities - the repeated laying on the line of the party's survival and often even the physical survival of its militants - was a reply in the same terms to the politically objective situation of essential isolation in which the PR

had to work.

Therefore the Radicals' story is one of swimming against the current and was due primarily to the groups foreign political culture in respect to the predominant one both among the lay parties and the traditional or new leftist ones. But the basic determining data of the Radicals' different culture in political society are not and were not the cultural texts and idealistic references (nor possibly the ideological ones on the rare occasions when they came to the surface). Anyone wanting to venture into an analysis on this terrain would find little material at his disposition, and that little would be scarcely comprehensible. Paradoxically, in fact, the Radicals' political culture lay in the primacy of politics always accompanied by the urgent need of action. Precisely on this ground one must identify the distinctive marks of the party-movement-group which it was in relationship to the political culture of the other leftist forces; and this is again one of the reasons for the emergence of the Radicals at

the time and of its effectiveness.

The PR always marched to the beat of its own drums and with its own ideas, apart from and despite what from time to time was

considered to be current on the political scene. Precisely this desire to propose and impose at all costs rhythms and issues against the prevailing currents was gave the PR its special political culture in continuous conflict with and defiance of the majority - hence the "solitude" of the Radicals.

In all the years of the group' slow reconstruction, it was a challenge to show, for example, that issues like divorce, which pertained to the lay culture, could be popular issues and find a response in widespread needs. The same argument holds for the relationship of the Radicals with the events of '68 (the year of widespread cultural dissent, ed.). The PR, its analyses and its proposals - those same ones which are usually called "Socialist and libertarian" - existed before '68, during '68, and were a source of conflict with all the culture subsequent to that year. The stubborn pursuit of small, limited and concrete reforms - their hard pursuit - has been one of the attitudes opposite to that of the new Marxist left or the neo-revolutionary class groups of the left.

The Radical motto "a little but certain" is a challenge to the mottoes "everything and at once" or "a little if possible"

of the dominant political action cultures, and thus a source of conflict.

The Radical Party was discovered by the general public after 1974. Its affairs, that for many were only known and appreciated or opposed for what the party undertook in recent years, in reality go back to the end of the 50's. That is the date when the reprise and inversion of the decline of the Italian lay-liberal and Socialist movements began with the action of the new Radical group which grafted the ideas and methods of the new left onto the traditional line - those new left movements that resulted from the crisis of the questions of modern society that the great ideological groups of our time, Marxism, liberalism and Christianity, were unable to answer effectively or sufficiently.

With the referendum of 1974, the PR gained credibility for and the confirmation of its proposals. Then too it gradually achieved the objectives that it had set for itself: in 1975 the abortion referendum; in 1976 the winning of seats in Parliament; in 1977 the proposal for the eight referendums. Up until today the PR has been the "party of projects" and the "party of mobilisation". It has almost always punctually succeeded in bringing its projects out of the ghetto of sterile talk, inserting them into the great debate and place them on the great stage of national concerns. From time to time it has succeeded in mobilising a part of public opinion to support them and in enriching the its own minuscule political corps with new activists.

Today, perhaps, the PR is facing a new challenge. To many of those who cannot identify with the new regime based on the DC-PCI alliance which is taking shape, its success in its ventures makes it seem like a force on the Italian scene on which to place one's hopes. For the rest, its very growth, based on specific and intermittent mobilisations for single projects, has determined its structural characteristics.

Success and growth - and the consequent political demands and hopes that a part of the country places in the PR - shed light on some of the Radicals' limitations: a political organisation that functions almost exclusively on the level of mobilisation, but entirely inadequate at uniting and transforming the activists it attracts into a homogeneous political body; a group of leaders that is by now too slender in proportion to the actual and potential strength of its own political power; the low level of the new activists in absorbing and assimilating the homogeneous political culture (which had been a strong point of the original nucleus) as the party has gradually grown in size; in short, it's existence as a political force did not live up to the model that had caused it to grow.

It is probable that the Radicals' role in the nation's political life will take on importance because of the new situation in which the corporative interests tend to solidify precisely by means of new political agreements. The Radical Party's role will be able to grow if the party can overcome the danger of being pushed to the sidelines by the new dominating block, and if at the same time it can react against its own inner centrifugal force tending towards the role of an opposition that is merely a witness to the proceedings. In the new situation, a force like the Radicals could be the natural counterpoise to the dominant forces by soliciting and welcoming liberal and Socialist moves for the growth of civil rights to oppose the consolidation of this type of corporative and authoritarian regime.

In order to confront its new tasks, the PR may perhaps have to give itself a new challenge - that of revising its way of being and hence of acting in response to the demands and the expectations of the country.

NOTES

1) In the national elections of June 20, 1976 four Radical deputies were elected to the Chamber: Marco Pannella opted for the Turin constituency, Adele Faccio for Milan, Emma Bonino for Rome, and Mauro Mellini for Genoa.

2) The analytic lines of this part follow the interprative essay of Ernesto Bettinelli, "Quattro radicali a Montecitorio: primo bilancio di una stagione parlamentare per la rivoluzione democratica", in "Argomenti Radicali", no.1, April - May 1977, pp. 114-127.

3) The Radical proposal to the PSI's members of Parliament was to form a united group on the condition that Loris Fortuna was elected president of the Chamber and that the individual MPs were free to vote according to their convictions. Evidently this proposition was not acceptable to the PSI. It was however indicative of the Radicals' line of action for the formation of alliances on issues, most of all with the PSI.

4) Many of the bills prepared by the Radicals were due to the work of Ernesto Bettinelli (e.g. the reform of public order). He frequently was author of the column "Attraverso le istituzioni" in the bimonthly review "Argomenti Radicali". We have already quoted from his essay "Quattro radicali in Parlamento" which appeared there.

5) E. Bettinelli, cit., p.118.

6) The Hon. Mimmo Pinto, the only Lotta Continua candidate to be elected on the Democrazia Proletaria list, took a progressively different tack from the colleagues of his group, especially once Lotta Continua decided to join in the collection of signatures for the Radicals' referendum project of March 1977. In July 1977 the Democrazia Proletaria group almost fell apart with Pinto (and partly Gorla of the PDUP) on one side, and the Manifesto MPs (Castellina, Magri, and Milani) on the other.

7) Marco Pannella, "La democrazia chiede confronti duri e leali", speech in the Chamber of Deputies, printed in "Notizie Radicali", no.19, new series, August 29, 1976.

8) Cf. for just the first period, "Parlamento: bilancio di tre mesi di attività" in "Notizie Radicali", no.43, new series, October 13, 1976.

9) Panzieri was a leftist accused of having killed a rightist; Margherito was a police captain incriminated for having denounced the police for brutality and abuse of power.

10) Cf. Ernesto Bettinelli, "Polizia e società civile: verso una nuova separazione?", in "Argomenti Radicali", year I, no.2, June-July, 1977, pp.122-138.

11) Cf. Gianfranco Spadaccia, "Sollecitiamo col digiuno una politica carceraria", open forum, "Corriere della Sera", January 31, 1977. See also "Appello a chi ne ha il potere e l'autorità", on the 70th day of fasting, advertisement in "La Repubblica", March 19, 1977. Concerning the resignation of the Deputy Emma Bonino for the same reason, cf. the national press on March 24, 1977.

12) The Lockheed scandal regarded charges of the aircraft manufacturer's making payoffs in various countries besides Italy in exchange for orders for the C130 Hercules.

13) Cf. the national press, March 3-8, 1977.

14) Final motion of the PR's XVII National Congress in Naples, November 1-4, 1976, in "Notizie Radicali", no.182, new series, November 15, 1976.

15) Lorenzo Strik Lievers, "Referendum: contro la crisi uno strumento di unità e alternativa", in "Argomenti Radicali", year I, no.1, April-May 1977, pp. 7-8.

16) "Otto firme per un solo grande riferendum", edited by the PR, Rome, 1977.

17) Marco Pannella, "Perdere i referendum, un crimine di classe", in "Lotta Continua", April 8, 1977, p.8.

18) Cf. the data on the collection of signatures, province by province, published in "Notizie Radicali" no.163, July 1977, comparing them to the election results obtained by the Radicals and the Proletarian Democrats.

19) Claudio Petruccioli, "I dioscuri del privilegio", editorial in "L'Unità", December 13, 1976. See also "Come inventarsi millioni di voti e vivere felici", in "L'Unità", December 13, 1976.

20) Petruccioli, art. cit.

21) Antonello Trombadori, "Il PCI replica a Pannella: troppo vittimismo", in open forum, "Corriere della Sera", December 14, 1976.

22) Ibidem.

23) "Qualunquismo" is an often used term in Italian politics indicating an attitude of indifference towards political issues in general and diffidence towards political parties in particular.

24) Francisco Crispi (1818-1901), a follower of Mazzini and mentor of Garibaldi's "dictatorship"; Agostino Depretis (1813-1887) leader of the leftist opposition to Cavour and author of a cautious progressive policy.

25) Giuseppe Toniolo (1845-1918) a Catholic sociologist who formulated a political program of Christian inspiration; Bruno Storti (1913) a leader of the DC labour union CISL.

26) "Radicali Senti Berlinguer", interview with Marco Pannella in "Panorama", October 12, 1976.

27) Marco Pannella, "Pannella al PCI: Perchè c'è l'avete con noi?", in open forum, "Corriere della Sera", December 12, 1976.

28) "Dibattito: Se scattano gli otto referendum" (Gianfranco Spadaccia, Achille Occhetto, Alberto Malagugni, Enrico Manca, Stefano Rodotà) In "La Repubblica", June 7, 1977.

29) Massimo Teodori, "Radicali e communisti: le ragioni vere del conflitto", in "Argomenti Radicali", year I, no.1, April-May, 1977, pp.33-47. The essay was originally drafted as a report to the Federartive Council of the PR and was discussed there in January 1977.

30) Ibidem.

31) Ibidem.

32) Cf. Carlo Donolo, "Oltre il '68. La società italiana tra mutamento e transizione" in "Quaderni Piacentini" year XV, nos. 60-61, October 1976, pp.3-38.

33) Teodori, op. cit. p.42.

34) The first two were anti-Fascist parties and the third an anti-Fascist periodical.

35) Gianni Baget Bozzo, <> in "Argomenti Radicali", year I, no.1, April-May 1977, p.112.

36) Giorgio Galli, "Il ruolo dei radicali secondo Giorgio Galli" in "Argomenti Radicali", anno I, no.1, Aprile-Maggio 1977, p.112.

37) Francesco Ciafaloni, "Una sinistra liberale, figlia del '68", in "Argomenti Radicali", year I, no.2, June-July 1977, p.110.