ABSTRACT: On the eve of the 34th Radical Congress held in Bologna (January 2-6, 1988), Marco Pannella gives a preview of the list of banalities and "unavoidable readings" that will monopolise the journalistic reports of the Radical assizes: the PR's crisis of isolation, Cicciolina, the "opposition" of Enzo Tortora, the wearing-out of the "charismatic leader", the division of the leadership group into "ultra-Pannellians" who want to "flee forwards" to the trans-national party and are led by Giovanni Negri, and the "serious" administrators of the possible guided by Francesco Rutelli and Massimo Teodori...

Turning his attention to the journalists, Pannella recalled that the PR has a twenty-year history composed more of "war" than of peace "due to the number of battles it waged, the vastness of the social and institutional territory it explored and passed through, during which time the demise of the Radicals was announced at least twenty times. But each time it was those "emerging" and potent forces who predicted and hoped for this demise who disappeared instead. For this reason it would be imprudent to underestimate the theme of this 34th Congress: the creation of an international trans-national political party.

(IL GIORNALE D'ITALIA, December 30, 1987)

Several "salient" episodes for the press of the 34th Radical Party Congress have already been written by events and the usual, unavoidable readings of them: an initial minority affluence of members and the absence of prestigious delegates delegations from the national political parties (for once speeches and greetings are not on the programme) which will allow for emphasising the "PR's crisis of isolation and efficacy; the nervousness and episodes relating to the presence of comrade Ilona Staller (1), who as a deputy is accused by many of being nothing other than the Hon. Scemolina (1), and who others, on the contrary, defend. The roar of applause at the announcement of Enzo Tortora's (3) speech of "opposition"; the wearing-out of the old charismatic leader Marco Pannella, who many or at least some contest, and the difficult post-Pannella phase that is taking shape ("but who remains the old lion to the very end..."); the division of the leadership group into ultra-Pannellians who, led by First Party Sec

retary Giovanni Negri, propose "fleeing forwards" to the "trans-national party" and the "serious" administrators of the possible as well as of the future, who are guided by the president of the group Francesco Rutelli and the true old Radical Massimo Teodori. And moreover, the practical disappearance of many of the "15,000" members who joined to save the party from oblivion; the ill-humour and criticism caused by the uncritical pro-Israel stance of the top party leaders. In short, a party in the vain and desperate search for itself, for its past glories... The deterioration of relations with the PSI [Socialists],l the very rapid sunset of the lay, liberal-Socialist "illusion" of the great uninominal, Anglo-Saxon style reform, the turning back towards accords and understandings with the Greens and the DP [Proletarian Democrats] and the too generic "new phase" that is supposed to have begun in relations with the PCI [Communists] - and finally, the disconsolate and uselessly angry reactions to the painful annu

lment of the referendum victory on the civil responsibility of judges effected by the legislation passed in the Chamber with the approval of the five parties of the coalition along with the PCI, almost all the independent leftists with the opposition of only the MSI [neo-Fascists] and Radicals. In the background the Radical Radio crisis, going hand-in-hand with that of the party. The rest - little more than local colour: the refuseniks, the Soviet dissidents, the small foreign groups: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Belgian, Turkish, Polish, Yugoslav...

In short, overweening ambition, illusions, confusion, provincialism, side issues, presumption, exhaustion, a pathetic and annoying reality, grotesque and as usual lacking in proportion, searching for some artifice, some kind of trick. Hence, nothing new.

For the most part locked into the "space" assigned to them by the dislocation of their services, by the predictable absence of editorials and radio/tv "competition", the journalists and correspondents will have, as usual, an almost impossible job to do, and they will have to come to terms with the ill humour of the Congress's militants and main figures. How could it possibly be otherwise? In the last year, or the last two years, how many articles on the Radicals and their affairs have appeared in »Alfabeta , or »Micromega , »Rinascita , or »Mondo Operaio ? How many speeches or analyses in the multitude of conferences have touched on the Radicals - in any but the briefest of polemical notations, and with occasionally even a positive one?

The Radical "populace" and its affairs now reach their 34th Congress in twenty years, or in thirty if you start with their first in 1958. It is more a story of "war" then of peace due to the number of battles it waged, the vastness of the social and institutional territory it explored and passed through. The demise of the Radicals was announced or celebrated at least ten, twenty times. But most of those who predicted and hoped for this demise regularly disappeared themselves instead, while seeming to be rust-proof, "emerging" and powerful.

Is it then prudent, I ask myself, to underestimate - lazily, sympathetically or antipathetically - this nth occasion, rather unlikely in the issue to be handled, which is the creation of "a political party-like international" with campaigns of an "epochal" character or something of the kind, announced as imminent: the United States of Europe; the attack at the heart of the "drugs-arms-power" system, maybe even the "liberation" of people (and peoples!) "oppressed" by the Soviet, post-colonial social and imperial system? Did anyone seriously think meanwhile of abandoning the struggles - even the Italian ones - for "the right to life and a life under law" and the establishment of the Radicals' ecological and environmental approach to the biosphere, atmosphere, water, earth and anything else you can think of?

But, for heaven's sake, allow me to wonder and to ask if all those who today laud the past five or six years of solitary battle for civil rights, divorce, abortion, the reform and the certainty of rights and justice, in which almost everything was risked - if all of them had at the time caught on to the historic importance of that approach, that organisation and that struggle, and if they had made it their priority, what would have happened in our society and our politics?

It is certainly probable, even highly probable, that the "trans-national", "trans-party" Radical Party may miscarry, may end in the Babel-like collapse of a tower of wind-bags, obsolete and marginal figures from Italiot chronicles. It is probable that - according to the report of a weekly which no one has denied - Massimo Teodori is right in denouncing the pathetic repetition of the error and the horror of "Che", in transit from Cuba to other shores in search of the revolution, dies in reality a "different" death in the face of a life that is too much "the same".

But, by your pardon, it is also possible that this is not the way things are. And if things were not like this, wouldn't it be worth while trying to understand if - once again - it were not for the risk that not understanding today what tomorrow will be indicated as the example of a glorious, but inevitably unrepeatable past, gone forever.

At bottom, given the predicted, and to some degree provoked, demise of four out of five legislatures in expectation of "explosive" referendums; certain reforms which have been won and others which were lost by a hair (due to the "distraction" or the "ignorance" of too many among the other "few" who otherwise would have shared in the initiative), would the presence of the Radical Party not merit attention of a different order, a better considered, understood and illustrated funeral or wishes for a long life?

The chroniclers of the Palazzo (4), they themselves, are sure of not being behind-hand even with respect to the inhabitants of the Palazzo itself, who yesterday were "extraneous" and inimical, while today so respectful and involved in the Radicals' "differentness", not because they are considered to be in decline or no longer a threat, but rather alive and relevant, perhaps even necessary, whereas the past certainties of an indeterminately long future of "the same old thing" have now collapsed just as did their contemporary revolutionaries and representatives of an alternative?

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Scemolina - "Scemolina" is the diminutive of the word "scema" meaning imbecile, hence "little imbecile". It is a play on the stage name - "Cicciolina" - of Radical Deputy Ilona Staller, the noted porno star.

2) Pannella, Marco - Pannella, Giacinto called Marco (Teramo 1930). At this time President of the Radical Party's Federal Council. He was one of the party's original founders. At twenty he was national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty two President of the UGI, a university student's union of lay convictions, at twenty three President of the UNURI, a national union of Italian university students. At twenty four, in students movement and Liberal Party circles, he warmly urged the foundation of the new Radical Party which was established in 1954 by prestigious cultural figures and political groups of minority democrats. He has been active in the party except for a period (1960-1963) when he was Paris correspondent of the daily »Il Giorno . In Paris he made contacts with the Algerian resistance. Once back in Italy he took up the reconstruction of the Radical Party which had been dissolved by its own leaders due to the birth of the centre-left. Under his unquestioned leadership the par

ty promoted (and won) important civil rights battles that introduced into Italy divorce, conscientious objection, the vote for eighteen-year-olds, important family law reforms, etc. It fought for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. He was arrested in Sophia in 1968 while demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia invaded by Stalin. He opened the party to the new homosexual organisation (FUORI) and encouraged the formation of the first green and ecological groups. For years the new Radical Party organised difficult campaigns proposing numerous referendums (about twenty in the course of the years) for the moral reform of the country and of politics, against public financing of political parties, against nuclear plants, etc. But in particular it worked for a thorough reform of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all conducted with rigorous non-violent methods of Gandhian inspiration - his Gandhi being neither a mystic nor an ideologist, but rather a statesman both rigo

rous and flexible - he was put on trial various times and was generally acquitted. From 1976 on, when he ran for the first time, he has always been elected to the Chamber of Deputies, twice to the Senate and twice to the European Parliament. He has run on various occasions and been elected to the Municipal Councils of Rome, Naples, Trieste and Catania where he conducted exemplary battles and initiatives. When necessary he has gone on hunger strikes, not only in Italy but elsewhere in Europe, in particular during the course of the great campaign against extermination by hunger in the world. During this campaign he mobilised about a hundred Nobel Prize winners and prominent scientific and cultural figures for the sake of obtaining a radical change in the direction and management of the funds destined for developing countries. On September 30, 1981 he obtained a vote in the European Parliament on a resolution going in that direction and following this analogous laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliaments. In Ja

nuary 1987 he ran for President of the European Parliament, obtaining 61 votes. At the present time the Radical Party has decided not to run candidates of its own in Italian national elections and is working for establishing itself as a trans-party and trans-national party with the aim of promoting a federalist United States of Europe and civil rights throughout the world.

3) Enzo Tortora - (Genoa 1928 - Milan 1988) Journalist and famous television MC, arrested for drug pushing on the basis of declarations made by "penitent" Camorra members. The Radical Party mobilised public opinion with a campaign denouncing the violation of the law by the Neapolitan judges who had incriminated Tortora, and in general of abusing the use of the "penitents". This campaign culminated in the referendum for making judges civilly responsible for their actions. (The referendum, held on November 8-9, 1987, resulted in 80% of the voters being in favour of making judges civilly responsible.) Elected to the European Parliament in 1984 on the Radical ticket, Tortora underwent a famous trial in which he was convicted, only to be acquitted on appeal. This acquittal was upheld by the Court of Cassation. The Tortora affair became the symbol of the Radicals' most important campaign for the reform of justice.

4) Palazzo - In journalistic parlance the symbol of political power in its negative aspects of insensitivity and dishonesty with regard to the needs and demands of the people.