> - Adelaide Aglietta - Preface by Leonardo Sciascia - Milano Libri Edizioni - February 1979)THE REFERENDUM CAMPAIGN: THE SCHIZOPHRENIA OF A JURYWOMAN
Thursday, May 18. The hearing is suspended to allow for trying Curcio and Franceschini for illegal apology for a crime. I read the absurd sentence that is inflicted and think with bitterness that this is one of those articles of the Rocco penal code (1) establishing crimes of opinion that we asked to have abrogated. It is not by keeping people from expressing their opinions, even if they apologise for crimes, that crime will be kept in bounds, but by arresting the criminals. And it is not by impeding the insults to the head of state or the institutions that these will gain in credibility. It brings to mind the case of the little boy expelled from school a few weeks ago because he said he was a Red Brigadier. These are the ridiculous consequences of a state in which crimes of opinion continue to be the bulwarks of Bourbonic justice.
In the evening when I am in Milan for the referendum campaign there is the first television broadcast of the referendum committees and the Radical Party. The broadcast which lasts twenty four minutes in all, takes place in total silence: Emma, Marco, Gianfranco and Mauro present themselves on screen gagged and so they remain for twenty minutes, limiting to the last four minutes the explanation of the message they want to get across in this unusual manner. Television time is a fraud: very limited, split up [among the parties, ed.] and without the possibility of a direct confrontation among the political forces; for months we have had no right to speak out our opinions; the citizens must not "know in order to judge", a cynical way for hoping to cut them out. If in these conditions we had accepted to play our role in the normal and prescribed ways, we would have in turn conspired and been responsible for the impositions and illegalities to which the country had been submitted.
These images of the four Radicals denounce in a stagy and grotesque way the information situation under the regime; the citizens who received their election certificates at home without knowing anything about it, now ask some questions and the parties of the majority coalition are forced to come into the open. From the following day the real election campaign begins and all the newspapers are forced to speak of the referendums. By the way, this program had the highest audience rating of all the political broadcasts.
Friday, May 19. The referendum on the Reale law (2) is by now certain to take place: the obstructionist tactics of the Radical deputies (four among six hundred, or better, one thousand counting the senators as well) have been successful, the date for turning the decree into law has now expired irremediably.
For a month my life will know no rest. I almost won't be able to stretch the time at all to include some for being with the children, which in this period have been the most relaxing, serene, and joyful moments I have had. When the hearings end I will pass from one meeting to the next, from radio stations to private TV channels. Despite trying to limit the requests, I will spend many nights on the highway, half asleep, in order to be on time for the morning hearing. But this period too, which will generate a minimum of enthusiasm and desire to fight in me, I will experience in a paranoid way, not tuned in to my party comrades: on the contrary, often with anguishing contrapositions. Since I do not participate in the collective work of directing the political campaign, I will often have the feeling that I am a robot, or worse, a postal package, obliged to pass from one world to another very different one without the time to adapt myself to the opposing realities: I leave the Lamarmora barracks and go to
Via Garibaldi, the party headquarters, pick up my "marching orders" and set off again at once. Once or twice I will have to ask Barbaro to adapt the trial schedules a little to my needs. I always find him understanding.
Monday, May 22. To the great satisfaction of Barbaro, the jury, and many of the lawyers, today judge Sossi comes to give his deposition. Not that anyone is expecting unusual news or explosive declarations, evidently, but the overbearing arrogance with which he has tried to avoid this duty has influenced everyone against the man, even those who have no acquaintance with the person or his actions.
Before the opening of the hearing there are the usual perplexities about how it is going to end, on the possible reactions of the defendants and, knowing him, of the judge as well. In fact, after furnishing a reconstruction of his kidnapping and detention, judge Sossi suddenly comes up with a new recollection: his captors specifically mentioned Lazagna as the representative of the organisation and even indicated other lawyers as persons with whom they had had relations, in particular Guidetti-Serra, Arnaldi and Guiso. Guidetti-Serra is indignant at this and makes a declaration for the record which mentions facts that contradict Sossi.
The attorney Zancan asks how come the accusations against Lazagna come out just now and never did during the questioning after his liberation. It seems incredible that such important information comes to the judge's mind only now or, as Sossi maintains, that they slipped past Caselli in an inquiry that was already meagre in information and precise testimony. In the general confusion, Ognibene and Franceschini interrupt his deposition to evoke the judge's past, deny that they ever had infiltrated the Viminale (3) and ask questions of Sossi.
Sossi's lawyer bursts out and says that it is time to end conducting the debate in this way, but Barbaro let's the defendant go on talking who contests the judge's [Sossi's] statements. The defendants particularise their position in Sossi's regard in a communique, no. 17, which they will deliver to the court on May 29.
1) Sossi collaborated with the revolutionary forces to unmask the machinations in the trial of the G.A.P. By interrogating him we were able to identify and reconstruct the forces and the techniques that the counter-revolution had put into play to annihilate our comrades of the G.A.P. of Genoa...
...Sossi spoke straight out: the men who instituted the special trial and directed it according to the interests and the orders of the political powers are his powers and superiors CASTELLANO, GRISOLIA and COCO!...
...The Genoa trial was SET UP BEFOREHAND and its only aim was to reach an exemplary sentence, not only of the men, but above all of their political ideas...
...By interrogating and trying Sossi we were able to verify concretely the subordinate role the magistracy played to the directives of the executive. Not by chance this was made concrete in an evident way precisely when the attempt was made to try a Communist fighting organisation...
...Dallaglio and Saracino are the names of the SID (4) agents who, at the right moment, passed Sossia the press releases to be used against our comrades. As a good public prosecutor, he never asked the reason for this intromission, but perhaps this is a habit all public prosecutors have in common...!
The arms traffic between the Genoa police headquarters and two armouries. The police officer Catalano, who is one of the designers of the trial against the G.A.P., made his money with this dirty traffic...
...But Catalano has good cover: there is Taviani at the Ministry of the Interior and Coco at the top of the Genoa magistracy; and so the inquiry of the illicit traffic is first passed to the trustworthy Castellano and then disappears.
Sossi's fears. After having spoken to us of these facts and having indicated the names (and ADDRESSES) of the powerful figures who were responsible for them, Sossi is more afraid of the government police agents than of the BR...
...Sossi had already actively collaborated (even if against his will) with the revolutionary forces and this is one of the various reasons for which we have decided to suspend his sentence and put him on "provisional liberty".
2) A clarification regarding the poisonous insinuation that there were relations between the BR and the Office of Reserved Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior. We affirm that there the only possible and existing relationship between Communist combatants and the Ministry of the Interior has already been defined by a series of operations that go from Tuzzolino to Berardi to Demartini... With regard to the massacre in the Alessandria prison there was a more general symbolic meaning and a precise reference to the Sossi operation. The violence used against three convicts was not referable to the dangerousness of the event. In reality TAVIANI, REVIGLIO and DALLA CHIESA were speaking to us; there was the desire to avoid establishing a precedent and to show that the government had chosen the road of force...
...3) The Genoa action has a story behind it. It was not born as an idea in somebody's head, but grew from the workers' struggle of those years, in particular from the FIAT fight which has always been the vanguard of the workers' offensive in Italy.
To understand the kidnapping of Sossi then, one must begin with the turning point represented by the workers' struggles that brought Turin to the "red week" with the occupation of the Mirafiori plant and such phenomena as the spontaneous organisations of the workers on the ground of armed proletarian power like the "fazzoletti rossi"...
...Faced with the acceleration of the workers' struggles, there grows inside FIAT an interest in the PCI forces that are pushing, on the one hand, for a turning towards a Social Democratic model...
...On the other hand it inserts itself organically into the DC and the Confindustria (5) which are the fundamental politico-economic centres for the imperialist restructuring of the state (Gianni Agnelli becomes president of Confindustria and Umberto Agnelli prepares his political rise within the DC.
Within the workers' movement to lines of "getting away from the factory", that is to say, overcoming the partiality shown to factory initiatives...
...As we said in one of our documents at the time: "Historical compromise or armed proletarian power - this is the choice that comrades must make today. A division grows within the workers' movement, but it is from this division that the unity grows of the revolutionary front that we are seeking".
The only valid prospect for the Communist vanguard is that of coming out of the factories armed and extend the revolutionary battle to the vital centres of imperialism. And this is what happened in '74... with regard to the CRD and Beria d'Argentine) Beria of Argentina. The strategy that led to the meeting of Bium and the birth of the CRD is the same as the one of the Piazza Fontana bombing (6) and the mobilisation of the reactionary elements among the "silent majority"...
...Up to '74, Sogno's projects coincide with the objectives of imperialist policies in Italy...
...the failure of the plan of the "golpisti bianchi" (7) does not mean the end of the imperialist project.
After Fanfani's defeat in the 1974 referendum (8), the DC develops Moro's line of "attentiveness" and of an "opening" to the PCI.
At this point it is the DC to take on, as the party of imperialism, the REFOUNDING of the STATE, while the PCI, for its part, is guarantor of that social surrender which is indispensable to the "co-management of the crisis"...
...To us the figure of Beria d'ARGENTINE seems emblematic.
Meanwhile we point out a letter to Sogno on the occasion of the Conference On The "Refounding Of The State" at which Beria refuses to participate because it is not "politically opportune", but to which he sends a report of his own requesting Sogno to read it without mentioning his name... The political position Sogno assumes is typical of the continuity of the imperialist initiative in Italy in these years aside from the vicissitudes of the political picture. And it is indicative of the role played by these "technicians of counter-revolution" who constitute the imperialist political personnel. Argentine in fact will be one of those to inspire the public order program proposed by the Andreotti government and approved with the acquiescence of the PCI.
From this date on there is a turning point in the RESTRUCTURING of the STATE that leads to the realisation of the SPECIAL SECURITY PRISONS, the SPECIAL COURTS, and the SPECIAL ANTI-GUERRILLA TROOPS.
The hearing ends with an aftermath of quarrelling in the corridor. I cannot avoid noting the indifference of Barbaro to events of this kind. Barbaro remained completely imperturbable even when his bodyguard was removed, and he will also be above the communique of the Turin magistracy which indirectly sustains Moschella's position and quarrels with him [Barbaro]. This consistent behaviour with very few exceptions, is the quality in Barbaro which impressed me most favourably and facilitated the many occasions for dialogue that we had during the trial.
I rush away from the hearing because I have to catch a plane for Rome. Gianfranco Spadaccia vented the idea to me of a new hunger strike, and possibly a thirst strike, in opposition to the decision of the Parliamentary Commission for Surveillance of the RAI-TV. Every time that one of us starts a hunger strike I get agitated. People get used to the idea and don't give weight to the risks of this kind of non-violent action, perhaps because of the derision and denigration shown by our adversaries, or because they are induced into thinking of us as fakirs for whom fasting is as normal as eating is for others, or simply because they don't trust our honesty in continuing it. But I know very well how bad it is for health even if the effects are not immediately noticeable. I also know that there are greater risks for the life itself of those who undertake it, and that these are all the greater when one cannot count on the right information, that is the honesty and accuracy of the press and television.
There never has been a debate on non-violence. Either it is considered a kind of general rejection of violence, or (when it is a question of conscientious objectors and civil disobedience) the worst kind of deception is credited and spread abroad. The most insidious kind is that which says that non-violent demands are just as much blackmail as the violent ones (for example, kidnapping). According to this thesis, the only difference recognised, or at least not contested, is that the "threat" of the non-violent is directed against his own life and not the lives of others. It is no small difference, but it is not the only one. In reality by fasting, by holding a hunger or thirst strike, the non-violent do not claim to impost their own will on the laws in force but demand the respect of the rules of the game as set by their adversaries themselves and that is the source from which the [political] powers draw their legitimacy. This time the stakes are the principles and the correctness of the referendum elect
ion campaign.
The parliamentary commission for surveillance [of the RAI-TV] has regulated it as if it were a normal political election. Since the NO-vote parties have a clear majority, even calculating the phases of the committees promoting the referendums, the supporters of the YES-vote are at a decisive disadvantage in a campaign that ought to be equal. There has been no regulation of the information broadcast by the normal radio and television news programs, there has been no provision made for debates and confrontations, press conferences have been abolished, two referendums (still formally convened) have been arbitrarily cancelled with the campaign already under way.
Thus I leave in a very worried state of mind. I want to know the objectives that Gianfranco intends to give to the initiative and to understand if it is at all possible to reach them. It is a matter, in fact, of correcting a decision already formally taken by the Commission of Surveillance.
Tuesday, May 23. While I am in Rome with Emma and Gianfranco we have a meeting with President Leone.
We arrive at the Quirinal [the President's residence] five minutes before the audience begins. The only presentable one of us three is Gianfranco in jacket and tie. I am in slacks and a sweater, Emma in a skirt and clogs. But no objection is made to our clothes. We are received by the Secretary General Bezzi, extremely courteous, who immediately ushers us in to the President. Giovanni Leone looks even smaller than I had imagined him to be, but above all very old and tired. He has nothing of Neapolitan shrewdness, but he does not eschew some of the vulgarities for which he was noted in the past. He strikes me as an old man, a bit ridiculous and very much in a jam.
He greets Emma and Gianfranco and then immediately turns to me in an almost affectionate way to tell me that my gesture in accepting to be a juror at the Turin trial "has been much appreciated" (exactly with those words, not that he had much appreciated it). I try to interrupt this conversation about the trial. I reply drily that "I had only followed my conscience as a citizen". I hope he realises that I did not feel compelled by other considerations and understands that I do not intend to speak about the trial. But I realise at once that I am talking to someone who doesn't manage to give much attention to what is said to him. He keeps on asking me how long the trial is likely to last; he asks again for news of the presiding judge Barbaro, adding that he knew him when he was still a judge in Naples and that he considers him an excellent magistrate. Then he leads us to the other side of the room near his desk where there is a divan and several armchairs. Nervously he lights a cigarette in a long cigarett
e holder and the conversation begins.
The first impression is reinforced. It is like presenting all of our constitutional arguments to a wall. To all of them Leone replies that the president of the republic is not directly competent, has no direct powers, except for the power of influencing and persuading the organisations authorised by the Constitution.
But this time it is not the arrogance of power hiding behind this attitude: it is as if he didn't manage to concentrate, to lend attention, to understand the point of our arguments. I think it is impossible for a university professor, a lawyer, a man of long political and parliamentary experience to be lacking in the most elementary capacity to pay attention and to hold a conversation. Evidently I am dealing with a much-tried man. He doesn't annoy me but only makes me feel pity. I think how unjust it is to have wanted to keep him in that post at all costs, despite the seriousness of the charges and the suspicions: unjust and perilous for the Republic, but for him to. I have the sensation that instead of concentrating on what we say, he is conditioned by these thoughts which go unexpressed.
In the end Gianfranco, after a quarter of an hour, succeeds in making him understand this idea: that the Constitution empowers him and him alone, as President of the Republic, to call the referendums and so the the Commission for Surveillance of the RAI-TV, in cancelling two of the four referendums already called, has invaded his area of competence. Our viewpoint is that the President of the Republic has not only the power but "the duty as well" to intervene in an "invasion" of this kind. Bezzi too intervenes to explain the concept to him and in the end the reasoning seems to strike home: the ascertainment that a power attributed to him by the Constitution has not been considered at all, seems to make him react in some way. In conclusion he assures us that he will use his powers of persuasion with the presidents of the chambers [of Parliament] regarding the other issues we have raised, whereas with regard to this "invasion" on the part of the Commission for Surveillance of the RAI-TV, he will intervene
directly with the president of the Commission with a document. A communique to this effect is also agreed upon with Bezzi. At this point it is not to be expected that the thing will have any practical consequences. But for us this intervention has, in any case, the value of defending a principle: it is one more example of the illegalities committed by the majority coalition and of the nonchalance with which the political powers bend the laws to suit their purposes.
After the three quarters of an hour of our audience, we walk back through the corridor that flanks the Quirinal gardens. A ministerial car is passing through in the other direction. Inside is [Flaminio] Piccoli (DC) who is going to see the head of state. He looks at us with a stunned air, as if not expecting to see us in that place.
Before I take the plane back to Turin, Gianfranco begs me not to join him in his action. I understand his reasons without an explanation: in February I was very unwell physically, and the doctors attributed my great weakness to the fasting of the year before. I assure Gianfranco that I will join in the hunger strike but not in the thirst one. Ennio Boglino, the comrade who as a doctor always assists us in these circumstances, gets nervous as usual. Perhaps, among us all, he is the one who suffers the most. I remember his anxious phone calls from Madrid at night when Marco was holding a thirst strike for the rights of the conscientious objectors in prison.
Wednesday, May 24. On returning to the Lamarmora barracks I am struck by the atmosphere of suspense created by the news that in the Province of Cuneo a truck full of Carabinieri uniforms has been hijacked. Some people have the idea that this could be a prelude to an attack on the Lamarmora barracks to free the prisoners. I shrug my shoulders. To me that sounds like science fiction. We listen to Beria d'Argentine who, mentioned in the defendants' testimony regarding his relations with Sogno and the Centre of Democratic Resistance, has asked to make a deposition.
It is evident that his place would be, if at all, in the trial against Sogno and not here. In fact, his declarations add nothing to the facts we are called upon to judge.
I have begun a hunger strike in support of Gianfranco and other comrades. For a week this will make me an object of curiosity and attention. Presiding judge Barbaro immediately asks me in a worried way what one should do if I feel ill and if a doctor is needed. An attorney I don't know, after having heard a declaration of mine on a private TV channel concerning the reasons for the fast, approaches me and expresses his solidarity and his respect for this type of action. Even the public prosecutor Moschella comes to shake my hand and say that, despite our frequent disagreements, he can only respect those who base political struggle on non-violent means. The attitude of the defendants is ironical: during the P.P's harangue, having noted my momentary absence, due to the arrival of a party comrade who brings me urgent news, he exclaims to Moschella: "You've already knocked off one juror - unless she has gone to eat a sandwich". The hearing is suspended while they send out to find me. The lawyers that I know
limit themselves to decisively disapproving the fact, punctuating it with male-chauvinist quips which the presiding judge also does not eschew. Perhaps my presence and that of other women, attorneys and feminists, brings on the desire for this type of quip.
After a week, thanks to Gianfranco's proceeding to a thirst strike and the not small risk that his worrisome laboratory analyses increasingly indicate, we obtain a supplement of our TV news time in a measure that is equal for all. The debates of contending positions, however, have been blocked by the Communist commissars: a confrontation on these referendums is not accepted. The majority, that on paper has 94%, has become afraid.
Turin and all Italy has been invaded in the meantime by the delirious slogans of <> (9) and the PCI: the Radicals are no longer merely irresponsible, or "folksy", but Fascist, "qualunquisti" (10), destabilising and supporters of terrorism. This defamatory campaign has no need of a reply, it is a commentary on itself: there is no one who is disposed to believe these incredible and, above all, contradictory affirmations. The country rejects it. All the leftist attorneys at the trial, apart from three Communists, are indignant and come to speak to me, at times asking what we are doing for a reply. I affirm that on this occasion more than ever the facts speak for us: our consistent positions are clear. It is the others who must explain how it is that after having contested the Rocco [penal] code and the Reale law, (11) they have become this year the defenders of the one and the other. What on the other hand has to be disproved are the affirmations that began with the TV discourse of Ugo Spagnoli [PCI deputy, ed.] and have continued with different shadings and adjustments of aim throughout the election campaign, becoming the war-horse of <> and of the Communist manifestoes and assemblies. They affirm that if the Reale law were to be abrogated it would put back in circulation Concutelli and Curcio and the Circeo "monsters" Ferrari and Vallanzasca (12). Illustrious jurists, who cannot be suspected of having Radical sympathies, hotly deny this. I will deny it during my television discourse, the only one I will hold during the election campaign, and which has cost me a breathless rush to Rome and two sleepless nights, in order to respect the Turin trial schedule. Thursday, May 25. While I dispute acridly with a juror whose only source of information is <> there comes to mind the declaration of a Communist that was published in <> (13) in January: "The referendums are such as to cause a confused and lacerating clash which would serve to unite a vast and equivocal front of defenders of public order". I remind him of it without commenting. Inevitably, I come into contact with the "outside" through the children as well. While I have lunch with them, Francesca tells me about an episode which she jokes about a little but which in reality had perturbed her. A school chum of hers, son of an "orthodox" Communist, accused her of being "Fascist like your mamma". I think about it for a moment, trying to decide if I ought to speak to hear and clear up the matter. Then I realise from her comment that it is pointless. Francesca, despite being only twelve, is a mature and strong child. But the fact disturbs me: she is a faithful barometer of the climate they are creating around us. Today the PSI also officially decided to take a NO position, leaving their members free to vote as they believe best, almost as if it was necessary.
The trial, meanwhile, continues in the midst of general indifference: even in the corridors outside the courtroom time is passed in discussing politics, sometimes very hotly. Today's hearing, on the other hand, is almost a historical moment: "The debate is closed", announces Barbaro. One seems to hear a collective sigh of relief along with that of the presiding judge.
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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
1) The Fascist penal code still in force in Italy.
2) A public security law that severely limited individual liberty on the excuse of fighting terrorism.
3) The Viminale, one of the seven hills of Rome, is the seat of the Ministry of the Interior, alluded to here.
4) The military intelligence service.
5) The association of industrialists.
6) Literally a "white coup". The colour white is often used to represent the Christian Democrats, so in this case the reference is to a (hypothetical) DC coup.
7) A bombing in Milan's Piazza Fontana, one of the many unsolved terrorist attacks that took place in Italy.
8) Amintore Fanfani, DC Senator and erstwhile prime minister.
9) The official Communist Party newspaper.
10) "Qualunquisti" - A common term in Italian political parlance that indicates individuals or groups who put little faith in political parties and the party system in general.
11) The Rocco penal code dates back to the Fascist era and was still in force in Italy. The Reale law was a special public order provision severely limiting civil liberties with the excuse of fighting terrorism.
12) Far right thugs who raped two girls (one of whom died) at San Felice Circeo.
13) The prominent FIAT-owned Turin newspaper.
