ABSTRACT: The way in which the two co-ordinating centres, Rome and Brussels, followed the April 19 1982 action. Radical Radio with a non-stop broadcast introduced by the famous Radio London identification signal. In Brussels there is the international press office. Parliamentary inquiries in the House of Lords, the French, Belgian and Dutch Parliaments. The BBC and the Belgian radio are among the first two broadcast the news.

(NOTIZIE RADICALI No. 6, May 28, 1982)

On March 19 Paolo Pietrosanti and Guido Votano set up the broadcast arrangements for the demonstration in Eastern European countries: a biographical sketch for each of them and a brief round-table discussion to explain the meaning and the foreseeable developments of the demonstration. The recordings were to go on the air on April 19 during a studio broadcast conducted by Francesco Rutelli.

On "D-Day" we go with Guido to the broadcasting studio at 6 in the morning. We prepare the tapes which had been hidden until then and from 11 a.m. onwards Francesco begins to describe the motivations and the contents of the demonstrations, alternating this with the broadcast of the recordings. Meanwhile we await with growing anxiety the telephone calls from the press officers of the various groups. The first one to arrive is Bernard's: "Springtime calling"; next comes Patricia's from Bucharest which must be interrupted a number of times because it is being traced by the police, and the one in code from Bucharest...

Meanwhile our work increases with satisfaction for what seems to be a highly successful action. We have to follow the link-ups with the Chamber [of Deputies], the Senate and the European Parliament; to collect the declarations of solidarity that we receive from the Gioventù Liberale Italiana [Italian Liberal Youth Movement], Solidarnosc, Padre Balducci... But most of all we are besieged by the interest and the telephone calls from listeners which indicate a "very large" audience. We must also keep contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian embassies in the various countries. By 1 a.m. the only ones not to be heard form are our comrades in Prague.

There is no let-up in our work, and at 8 p.m. there is the added job of interviewing the "veterans" dispersed throughout Europe, the link-up with Fabre's press survey from Brussels, to ask the listeners to phone and send telegrams to the RAI asking them to stop censoring the news, and to the Czech embassy in Rome.

The morning after, besides the telephone calls and the telegrams, we also begin to receive promises of contributions to the radio and of party membership (about fifty) indicating that our listeners also adhere politically to the demonstration. Besides this we must follow the demonstration in front of the Czechoslovakian embassy for the liberation of Stefano, Olivier and Jean-Paul. Guido and I go to the embassy where we stay all night making continuous appeals for the protesters not to abandon the demonstration. Only at 9 the next morning will we learn that Stefano and the others have been released. We can say that after three days of live broadcasting, Radical Radio has once again shown that, in view of a provincial press and a Fascist RAI, it is an indispensable tool of serious alternative information - even more than for the Radicals, for the citizens, for everyone.

For a week Brussels has been the centre of international information for both newspapers and television and the various groups involved in the demonstrations in the East.

Night and day news reached the headquarters of the Food and Disarmament International concerning the arrival [of demonstrators] in the cities chosen for the action. This news was transmitted to Rome, Nantes, Madrid, Paris and other places. We were particularly worried about the Moscow group which had trouble making contact on the first day, and the Bucharest comrades who were stopped at the border with visa problems. In the end everything was set straight.

On Sunday the 18th we work night and day to prepare the press releases and the telex tapes in all possible languages. From 10:30 a.m. news begins to flood in from every capital. We get our radio and parliament contacts, the unexpected news of the arrest of our Madrid comrades which occurred while they were passing out leaflets outside the government employment bureau (to insist on the conversion of military and civilian structures, and for solidarity with the Spaniards in East Berlin).

The telexes were sent one after another every half hour updating the general situation. In the early afternoon we linked up with House of Lords in London where Sir Fenner Brockway held an interrogation; then with the French Parliament where the Radicals of the left were on the move, and Belgium where the democrat Thys made the first inquiry and the others were made by the "ecological" deputies.

Meanwhile we had to give news of the initiative to the European Parliament and convene a news conference for the Moscow group while the interviews were left to the BBC and Radio Belgium who at times gave the news even before we did.

"If we went into the capitals of the Warsaw Pact countries it was in order to break the conspiracy of silence; to inform the peoples of the Soviet and Western blocs that we have only 50 days in which to save 5 million people from extermination. We ask for information about this" - this is the essence of the conference held by those returning from Moscow. Immediately after the press conference they went to demonstrate at the Czech embassy together with a delegation of Belgian parliamentarians, while other parliamentarians called the ministry of foreign affairs on the telephone and the Belgian embassy in Prague directly. While in Holland the parliamentarians of "Democracy 66" intervened by also having direct recourse to the Czechoslovakian authorities. With the release of the Prague group calm was finally re-established. But Nicola Cantisani already announced on his return from Budapest: "I am ready to leave again at any moment."".