ABSTRACT: After twenty years, Marco Pannella is once again Secretary of the Radical Party, on the wave of a political initiative against world hunger which has been developing for two years. In particular, on 24 June 1981, a "Manifesto - Appeal" was presented simultaneously in several capitals of the West (from New York to Geneva, from Paris to Rome), signed by 52 Nobel Prize winners, with two precise indications: the intervention aimed at ensuring the survival of the populations threatened by hunger is the priority of our time; on the basis of this priority, a specific political will should be organized in the institutions and in the parties.

On 2 September 1981, Marco Pannella undertakes a hunger strike on the objectives underlined by the Nobel Prize winners, and in particular to obtain the immediate passage, in as many Parliaments as possible - and in particular in the Italian one and in the European Assembly of Strasbourg - of a plan of extraordinary and urgent interventions aimed at ensuring the survival of at least three million people in the following 12 months. The Radical Party of 1982 originates in this context, with the precise and determined aim of saving at least three million human beings starting from 1982. The present article contains Marco Pannella's first reflections in his office of Secretary of the Radical Party; prejudicial to any other initiative is the constitution, the existence and the growth of the Party, in the absence of which any struggle is doomed to fail. The drafting of two parliamentary bills; the constitution of local groups and committees for their circulation in Italy and abroad. It is necessary to operate in su

ch a way as to expand and consolidate the front which has formed after the launching of the Manifesto - Appeal of the Nobel Prize winners. The fundamental unity between radicals, Catholics, communists and lay parties. The organization of the Christmas March in favour of life and peace.

The first weeks of work in the Radical Party; the initiatives for the release of Dino Del Gatto (a radical physician, antiprohibitionist on drugs, who faces trial in Pescara charged with having prescribed morphine to drug-addicted patients) and of Athos De Luca (arrested while he was demonstrating in front of the "Academy of War" of Civitavecchia, with the objective of changing its name into "Academy of Peace"), the meeting at the Bourse du Travail in Paris. The enrolment of French citizens in the Radical Party. The Party's operative structures at the European Parliament: letters have been sent to three thousand bishops and to 16,000 parliamentarians throughout the world. The activities in terms of operation and normal political administration of the Party. The "daily fee" to join the Radical Party. A difficulty which may appear "technical" and is on the contrary moral, having to do with understanding and formulation: the "cash assets" necessary to pay the entire fee immediately. The humbleness, the force, t

he courage to "ask" for a loan. The first commitment of the Secretary of the Party: immediately asking the rich radical companions - unemployed, pensioners, housewives or workers with a family to support - to join the Radical Party. The objectives of the hunger strike; political fasting is not gesticulation, but a different, more serious and vigorous way of experiencing political struggle and the confrontation with violence.

(RADICAL NEWS No. 42, 15 December 1981)

Dear readers, fellow party members,

the following was little more than notes, material for an article.

The urgency of having you receive this newspaper makes it impossible for me to use it the way I had planned to. Angiolo Bandinelli (1), who coordinated and guarantied the release of this issue of Radical News, has decided to publish it as it is. I therefore beg you to read it - if you consider it useful or necessary - solely as a documentation of the reflections I happened to make a certain evening, at a certain hour, about ten days ago.

Today I would have written other things, since writing involves choosing. Now we have a clearer picture of what we will try to do in the coming weeks and days. The constitution, the existence, the growth of the Radical Party of 1982 nonetheless remains valid and prejudicial to every other initiative, and so does the membership and enrolment campaign. In the absence of this, every struggle will be the struggle of a handful of friends and comrades, not of a Party, and therefore is doomed to fail. The peaceful struggle of today, and for 1982, is that of saving from a death which impends - boundless ruler in our time and inside us - the innocents who are about to be executed on behalf of that Nazi culture which unconsciously animates and leads today's establishment (Spadolini, (2) Lagorio (3), Andreatta, Colombo) to sacrifice them on the altar of the ruthless profit of the producers and merchants of weapons and wars. If we reciver - as I hope - our capacity to work day and night, we will try to draft, in the sho

rtest possible time, the final text of the two popular parliamentary bills (a more decidedly "radical" one, and a more "unitarian" one), of the Petitions (to the President of the Republic, to the Chamber of Representatives, to the Senate, to the European Parliament) and to organize their printing and circulation to the local groups and committees (to be created) to the municipal secretariats, to the chancelleries of the Magistrate's Courts and of the Courts of Appeal. Furthermore, we shall see to the "conversion" of these initiatives so that they may be taken, in a simultaneous and convergent way, also in other European countries, in particular in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, perhaps in Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

At every level of responsibility and initiative, from the institutional one of the Radical Party to the personal one of each of us, everywhere, it is necessary to operate with the aim of consolidating and extending throughout the world and in the European Parliament, the front which has formed itself following the Manifesto - Appeal of Nobel Prize winners. In particular, I believe the unity of the radical movement and of the Catholic movement should now be achieved at the roots, and extended to the institutional reality embodied by the communists, the unions, if possible to the "lay" parties - the liberals, the republicans, the social democrats, the socialists.

As soon as you receive the texts or have access to them, we ask you to collect the signature and endorsement of mayors, parsons, town councillors, regional and provincial councillors, religious exponents, intellectuals, and to forward them to us immediately, as it is our intention to add a list of "first" signatories to the publications we will send. Time is extremely short if we do not want to start from zero again, squander the potential of attention, growth and hope which we have achieved.

The radical members of Parliament, and all the members of Parliament who have chosen or will finally choose to become legislators in terms of life, of peace and of a new international and national order, should be provided with new immediate possibilities of intervention and struggle: the parliamentary bills of popular initiative and the petitions for the Chambers should therefore reach their addressees before the resumption of sessions, while the financial law and the budget of the State are under discussion. Similarly, they should provide us with accurate information to be used with the purpose of better illustrating the aberrant reality and the blind and irresponsible policy which continues to be opposed as "reasonableness" to the reasonableness of the struggle for peace and for life.

We have in mind to summon a first operative assembly, perhaps for the first collection and official and public certification of signatures in Milan, for Sunday 20 December at 15:30, with a national assembly of militants and committees which will last until Tuesday 22 at 13;30. Just in time, for many, to move to Rome and to give a hand in the organization of the great Christmas march for Life and Peace to be held on 23 December.

Before any other thing, therefore, friends who are reading, it is necessary to join the party immediately, with the most adequate, necessary and quick means.

Best wishes for a profitable work, with friendship and hope".

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"Rome, 27 November"

I have reflected for a long time, and as I prepare to write this first article as Secretary of the Party, I still wonder.

I take for granted the information of the persons reading me. When I was elected, the Congress knew I was involved in an unlimited hunger strike; a hunger strike linked, in other words, to the survival of at least three million of those who are about to be exterminated by hunger in 1982. Together we could count on a handful of four or five weeks at the most, of my presence. I made it immediately clear to the party members who are closest to me in terms of responsibilities - the treasurer, Marcello Crivellini, the vice secretaries Francesco Rutelli (4), Giovanni Negri (5), Gaetano Quagliarello and Maria Teresa di Lascia - and subsequently also to the Federal Council, that the only way to meet our tasks, duties and commitments inside the party and outside of it was that of getting to work, acting "as if" my mandate were effectively guarantied for the entire statutory mandate, that is, one year.

What I was suggesting, in other words, was to work intensively at the immediate reprise of the Party's activity, at the creation of a project for the implementation of the statutory decisions and of of that implicit but mandatory decision which is the complete respect of the "rules" and of the guidelines of the Statute. At the same time struggling, every day, for the complete achievement of the objective of the survival of at least three million people in a year, starting from 1982, in all institutional, party, international forums of the various nations in which we are carrying out this struggle.

Almost a month has gone by this way.

I have once again interrupted my hunger strike, on 25 November. But I will talk about this further on; first I would like to trace a brief and general outline of the things we have done. Together with the treasurer and the vice secretaries and the remaining members of the previous Secretariat (confirmed until January), we have analysed the state of the party, in relation to the decisions of the Congress, and have tried to devise a project for the Party of 1982, as well as endure the daily initiative in the meanwhile. We met in Pescara from 8 to 9 November so as to intervene as rapidly as possible for the release of Dino Del Gatto, arrested on his way back from the Congress of Florence, and to support his struggle: this has been done excellently. Similarly, we have been able to guarantee that minimum of commitment to make it impossible, for the establishment, to keep Athos De Luca in prison any longer. I held my second meeting as Secretary, after the one of Pescara, at the Bourse du Travail in Paris, at the p

resence of over 1,000 people, in an absolutely extraordinary atmosphere, at the conclusion of which at least ten people the Radical Party - a demonstration of the fact that in France too, the struggle against world hunger and the radical objective of saving at least three million people are perceived as reasons for making organizational and party choices.

In the meanwhile, in Brussels and from Brussels, and from Luxembourg, the seat of the two structures of European parliamentary and political activity we have created, Emma Bonino (6) and Jean Fabre (7), Gianfranco dell'Alba and Maria Linosa, Alberto Fumagalli, Giampiero D'Amico and Rolando Parachini, saw to the dispatch of an information sheet on the state of progress of our campaign, on the objectives and on the deadlines, on the possibilities of convergent actions, on the initiatives under way in the European Parliament and in the various national Parliaments, starting with the Italian one, to over 3,000 bishops and religious and spiritual authorities of the whole world, and to 7,000 parliamentarians from 16 European countries. As you may well imagine, this represented a huge, overwhelming task: over 10,000 letters in six different languages and as personal as possible; a militant work, comparable to the work done at the "tables" during the last days of signature collection.

Simultaneously, with the same group of fellow party members, we guarantied an intense presence at the European Parliament, where we submitted dozens of amendments to the budget, participated in dozens of meetings at the Parliament and at the Commission, and conceived and completed (in Strasbourg) the new "Appeal" of European parliamentarians such as Willy Brandt, the Presidents of the Parliamentary Groups and 90 more parliamentarians, many of whom had not endorsed the resolution passed on 29 September which has become, together with the Manifesto of Nobel Prize winners, the basic text of the struggle against world hunger. To this we should add at least one thousand letters received in at least four languages, the coordination - from Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg - of the actions in the other countries, the pressure on the French, Belgian, Dutch, German and British media; the contacts established with the United Nations Agencies, some of which, the PNUD, have been particularly intense. Consider, in this

handful of days, meetings such as the one with the ten Foreign Ministers attended, with great determination as President of the Group of the Radical Party, by Emma Bonino and Jean Fabre in London during the European Council, in the impossible but dutiful attempt to spark a decision on the resolution of the European Parliament or - at least - a nonfraudulent behaviour of the Italian delegation headed by Spadolini and Colombo, and you will get an idea of what all this means for the fellow party members operating in the "European" front, and - thanks to them, because without them I couldn't have done anything - also for me, in terms of commitment and contribution to the policy of the party and of the struggle against world hunger, in terms of fatigue and sometimes of sense of discrepancy between the target and the available forces. And I mentioned but a small, albeit important part, of all that has been done...

In the meanwhile in Rome, according to the provisional plan of activity which we had devised, Francesco Rutelli was seeing to the party's restart in terms of operation and normal political administration, as well as taking care in particular of the delicate sector of the initiatives "in favour of peace"; Giovanni Negri (who, as already for the collection of signatures for the referendums and for the vote, since 10 September had assumed the coordination and the organization of the struggle for the survival of three million people in 1982) together with Gianni Sandrucci (8) and ten more party members took care of launching and following the membership campaign for the Party of 1982; Gaetano Quagliarello and Maria Teresa di Lascia, in cooperation with the President of the Federal Council, Corleone, took care in particular of keeping contacts with the party's membership and of the organized and militant support to the initiative of the parliamentary group to cause an urgent debate at the Chamber not on generic d

eclarations of the government, but on the motion discussed on 1 and 2 December.

At the Party, at other forums, in particular in Bari and Naples, at the Radio, at the Groups, at Radical News, everything moved immediately and with extreme rapidity, prompting many to work day and night. This was accompanied by the generosity and the serious commitment of the hundreds of people - 800 over a period of ten days - who announced their enrolment or their renewal, guaranteing the Party a share of contributions three times the one given for enrolments throughout the entire year.

A special mention for the Treasurer, Marcello Crivellini, who ensured the ordinary administration of a disastrous financial situation, at least in terms of liquid assets, as well as a constant presence in all meetings and activities of the Party, of the Radio, all the while continuing to provide his cooperation to the Group - who repeatedly and understandably asked him for it in this moment of debate and conflict on the budget. Moreover, the party was able to count also on the militant contribution of many parliamentarians; in particular, I would like to mention the day of contestation of the "pacifist" demonstrations summoned under the aegis of the policy of Minister Lagorio by the companions of the Socialist Party, the hotlines for the membership campaign...

Having this way traced an outline and a summary account of the 25 days elapsed between the end of the Congress and the moment in which I am writing, a few remarks now on the near future. After the refusal of the Commission and of the Council of the European Community to implement the Resolution of the European Parliament in the requested time and conditions, after the outcome of the battle at the Chamber and in Italy, now more than ever we must resist, insist, organize ourselves, organize every other force and potentiality, support the parliamentary groups in the parliamentary battle on the budget and the three-year plan, for which the Party should be very active and therefore very well informed (which explains the difficult function but also the rare effectiveness of Radio Radicale) to mobilize a movement of support from the base, from the country, from the intelligentsia, with clear, precise and immediate objectives. We must make it clear that the Secretary and the Treasurer, the Secretariat and - with th

e exception of Giovanni Negri - the vice secretaries, will try to support the principal activity of coordination, information and mobilization which will be almost totally provided by the Radio.

It is becoming urgent to conceive, prepare and launch the structure and the project of implementation of the statutory objectives, of the Preamble, of the Manifesto of Nobel Prize winners, of the Resolution of the European Parliament, of the Congress deliberations, accelerating,,as far as possible, the beginning of the process for the constitution of the Radical party of 1982, because we have to come to terms with absolutely dramatic deadlines, both inside the Party and outside of it. This is why I cannot exclude that we will be forced to anticipate the meeting of the Federal Council to the last four days of the year, during which we shall illustrate "the state of the Party" and the structure and policy project for the new year, the one in which - starting January 1 - the people whom wee have the duty to ensure to life and peace and to save from extermination and genocide will start to be assassinated. I intend to attend also the seminar of the Parliamentary Groups, which is scheduled for early January.

But in order for all this to have a practical application, to grow and consolidate itself, to give hope and comfort and urge each one of us (and those who regard us with friendship but also with concerned skepticism in the face of the huge difficulties) we have to devote ourselves, day after day, with punctuality and determination, with priority to the membership campaign for the Party of 1982. I am saying this first of all to remember it and link myself to this necessary choice. And this means being more and more numerous every day, including myself ("new" member) as well as operating in such a way that there will be "others" and "new" members, to make this year "new" and "different".

If, therefore, you expect an operative indication and advice from me as Secretary of the Party, I ask each and all of you, I ask the Federal Party in Italy, but also in France, in Spain, in Belgium, where associations exist and operate, to succeed every day in promoting enrolments at once, organizing themselves for this, organizing themselves individually if necessary or with specially created associations (why not?) with the yearly payment of that "daily fee" which should represent the degree of our will and capacity to change and grow ourselves - immediately, now - so that the Party may also change and grow, in proportion to our objectives for this year.

Mine is the indication or the firm request for a true, daily commitment, which originates and supports every other commitment, every other radical structure or subject, of we want to avoid the specific work of each of us to represent (as would happen if the pattern of things were not ruled and channeled according to the pattern of our needs and of our choices) a distraction from the priority, from the prejudicial morality of "being" "together" a "Party". I would like to repeat here my belief that today the attempt to convince us to unite, to give each other a hand for objectives which are ours, precisely because we can ask something that is important in our day, that is, in the continuity of life, as well as in each one's year, is easier, and only apparently more difficult if we keep in mind the result. Quite rightly, this year, for the constitution of the new Party of 1982, we raise a problem and also a moral issue (with regard to the morality of each of us, obviously!) which need to be solved; a decision,

therefore, that cannot but suddenly rid us of the "ideological" reflexion (in its worst sense), self-serving but almost undefeatable for the formalistic and superficial level, summarized by the sentence "I have never joined, I will never join, etc...". In these cases, the premise really was an abstract, flat idea of the meaning of "joining", as if it were really the same thing to join a party as well as another with L.1.000 or with L.500.000, for a yearly pact which is motivated first of all by the campaign against the holocaust (to make it successful), or to "join" the "policy" of the "socialists", of the "communist", of the "Christian democrats", of the "liberals", of the republicans of of the MSI (9). As people did not accept to be automatically "enrolled" in a "union", accepting to spend considerable sums for objectives and a policy which hardly anyone considers relevant or necessary any longer, or in any case morally and ideally capable of involving or changing - during that year - one's existence.

If, one day, there will be no enrolments on the part of other people, we will still have the possibility of improving, of promoting a better life, of attaching more value to one's membership card. Each of us - and myself first of all - should remember that in dialogue the most convincing thing is the example, the proof that we have already done the things we advocate, and that we are doing them and will do them even more if other people decide to start too.

The Federal Party in its central headquarters, every other headquarters, every other radical subject, every reader of this paper, should organize; I am asking this especially to those who ask me, and wonder what they might do, or to those who have the wrong impression of doing all they can and more; each and everyone, therefore, should organize every meeting, every other action, placing on the agenda all that has been done and remains to be done in order to grow and become stronger, as we vitally need to in these dramatically final weeks, to achieve a different year of truly painful or tragical defeats.

It seems to me that there is a difficulty which could appear "technical" and is on the contrary moral, that has to do with understanding, with organization, far more than with the amount of the daily membership fees or the "cash assets" of the global, yearly sum to be paid.

Having the humbleness, the force, the clarity and the courage to "ask", to explain why we are asking, to resort to loans, to bind oneself with a "debt" (and debts often give more force more than a credit granted does) to someone else might be the best way to ask others and advise them to join the party, or to create the serious premises for a reflection in this direction, making it possible for people to better understand "all the rest" of the Radical Party: possibly this is the link between the different quality of the interior and practical life of each of us, here, and life itself in parts of the world where it would otherwise be condemned and defeated. Yes, I truly believe, my friends, that a good way to promote the hope, the need to grow in terms of quality and number, to make the Radical Party and each of us not bigger but greater, to be stronger in the extraordinary human and political tasks which we have chosen could be that of an honourable mendicity - even if we didn't need it materially and indivi

dually - of lay and Christian people who know how much more difficult and important it is to ask rather than to give; and how the person who asks makes the person he asks to give richer...

This newspaper has been conceived also and especially to inform on this, to give each and all an instrument on this front; and this, as Secretary of the Party and as a comrade, means asking, my rich friends and companions, unemployed, pensioners, homeless, middle school students, people with families to support or with consumeristic compulsory debts, drug users, mothers; no less than those who cannot buy a new car, give up exotic holidays, give up a third house or a boat to gain a few months, in 1982, in terms of militancy and of that life as comrades which many believed they no longer had the capacity and the possibility to experience..

Friends and comrades, we need the greatest of all those major and minor "lay miracles" which everyone - voluntarily or unvoluntarily - acknowledges this party has done. We didn't want to set down figures, "objectives": but by Christmas, by the end of the year, it is necessary, as a good omen, to start the 1982 of the holocaust or of the happiness of life conceived, taken away from death; we need to organize the possibility of knowing that we are becoming numerous, to show "everyone" that we can make it, and show "some" that it is convenient to try to make it, and show "ourselves" that we have reasons to keep on hoping.

You realize, if you think about it, what it would mean if the mass media reported the image of a growth of the party, of the value and values which are given to it through the payment of the membership fee, already in the coming weeks, which will in any case be decisive weeks, under many aspects.

I ask you, therefore, to use Radio Radicale, the post, postal orders, giro forms and cheques whenever it is possible and prudent, to give the announcements, the examples, to encourage and comfort those who will have the task of providing this service to us. Thank You. And now, as we announced, we will pass on to the subject of the hunger strike, of my fast.

There is a mass of explanations pressing, probably because a sufficient one is still lacking inside me. Each one is correct, each one corresponds to reasonings, to moments that are really present, really experienced. But none, obviously, is sufficiently deep; none is a synthesis, the achievement of an adequate, necessary clarity. In any case I will try to rearrange and to express some of these thoughts.

An unlimited hunger strike can only be achieved during the fast. Achieved until one reaches a force and an interior clarity which become profound clarity, duration without contradictions. Fortunately I don't believe in dialectics! During a hunger strike, an "antithesis" is inconceivable, because it simply destroys the thesis and asserts itself as "synthesis". One cannot nourish oneself and then resume...For us followers of nonviolence, a conclusive decision, a commitment which concerns life to such a point that it pays, even if by way of hypothesis, the fact of putting it out, cannot be truly assumed without contradicting oneself, without denying the hope - at least at the point in which it becomes certain that you are faced to the last moment, the last second of life...But when it is possible to say to oneself that the "minute" is the last one and not the one before the last? That minute which is and should be the most powerful one in terms of life to be conquered, the most socialized one, the most common a

nd communitarian one and which needs to be risked with intransigence and serenity, to the end, with no protection, in the void of eternity.

Is this sort of indissoluble marriage possible, with the risk of life until the onset of a succession, in this marriage, of life in the place of death? By what force, by whatever "sacrament" should the decision of a moment be valid, should it be respected and not reconsidered, not overcome? But there is more. We have understood, I believe, that "political" fasting, that hunger strike as a form of nonviolent struggle, should be not a gesticulation, not a sort of activity, but a different, more serious, more vigorous and exemplary way of experiencing the struggle, the confrontation with violence, of growing and enhancing it. Therefore, not the quest for interior silence, for meditation, taking for granted that these can be achieved in isolation and quasi-immobility. One can live in a monastery and yet be inhabited by noise...

Translators' notes

(1) Angiolo Bandinelli: Among the founders of the Radical Party. Secretary in 1970, 1972 and in 1973. Treasurer in 1969. At the end of the seventies, he was town councillor in Rome and member of Parliament during the last legislature. Editor of several radical publications ("Prova Radicale", "Notizie Radicali") and collaborated with Radio Radicale with reportages and surveys.

(2) Giovanni Spadolini: (1925) Italian historian and politician; secretary of the Repubblican Party (1979); minister of Culture (74-76) and education (79), Prime Minister (1981).

(3) Lelio Lagorio: Italian politician. Socialist exponent, minister of Defence from 1980 to 1983, minister of Tourism from 1983 to 1986.

(4) Francesco Rutelli: Secretary of the Radical Party in 1981 and Treasurer in 1984. Antimilitarist and conscientious objector, he is co-promoter of the Research Institute for Disarmament Development and Peace. Member of Parliament on the radical lists from 1983 to last year, he has been head of the radical group at the Chamber. At the last European elections he was among the promoters of the "Verdi Arcobaleno" environmental list. Member of the Coordination Group of the Green Federation. Currently town councillor in Rome in the Green group and among the founders of the environmentalist association "Centre for a sustainable future".

(5) Giovanni Negri: Member of Parliament, European Federalist Group. Secretary of the Radical Party from 1985 to 1987. In 1986, with the slogan "either you choose it or you dissolve it", he conducted the extraordinary campaign for the achievement of 10.000 members. Several times member of the Italian and European parliament. Organizer of battles on information and against world hunger, he also undertook a long hunger strike. Promoter of the campaign "Live Tibet" against the violent oppression of China. Currently provisional secretary of the ARCOD (Radical Association for the Democratic Constituent Assembly).

(6) Emma Bonino: President of the Radical Party. Member of Parliament, European Federalist Group.

Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion), she was one of the leaders of the battle against clandestine abortion. Several times member of the Italian and European Parliament. One of the first in the Radical Party to devote herself to the information of the international public opinion on the problem of world hunger.

As founding member of "Food and Disarmament International", in May 1981 she was among the promoters of the Manifesto of Nobel Prize winners for development and against world hunger.

(7) Jean Fabre: former secretary of the Radical Party.

(8) Gianni Sandrucci: former director of Radio Radicale, creator of the software program for "Agorà telematica".

(9) MSI: Italian political party of the extreme Right.