ABSTRACT: In a long interview published in the Ljubljana paper the "Star", Marco Pannella deals with the major issues of Radical action with particular regard for the prospects of creating the transnational Radical Party.

("Notizie Radicali", no.87 of April 28, 1988)

Marco Pannella, leader of the Radical Party and a member of the European Parliament, is a unique figure among European politicians: he has gone on hunger strikes for his ideas, has committed "excesses", has been arrested, and has led (and won) thee fight for divorce and for the legalisation of abortion...

He has also proposed the disbanding of his party.

Recently he was a guest on the Belgrade and Zagabria radio stations for young people.

Marco Pannella is the only Italian politician and one of the very few in the world who does not fight for power but for his ideas. He is known for his extremist positions, his hunger strikes, his public demonstrations and for being arrested. The leader of the Italian Radical Party is a deputy in the European Parliament and is as well a man of strong principles and an acute sense of justice.

For quite a few years he has dedicated himself entirely to political activities, but in his case this commitment is based exclusively on the desire to propagate his convictions and not to satisfy personal interests. All those who know him well say that today he behaves in an almost religious way; Radical ideas are his "faith" and like a priest he works for spreading them.

Born in Teramo in 1930 (of an engineer father and a Swiss mother), Pannella spent his youth in Rome where he took his high school examinations at sixteen and then enrolled in law school at the university. From that time his political career began as president of a lay students' club. In 1955 he was one of the founders of the Radical Party and seven years later was elected for the first time as party secretary. After finishing his studies, Pannella practised law for a while, but he soon decided to go abroad in search of new experiences. He worked as a manual labourer in a shoe factory in Belgium, but also as a free-lance journalist in Paris until returning to Italy in 1963. With a handful of people Pannella led and finally won some of the most important political battles of Italian post-war society from divorce to the legalisation of abortion. The Radicals were the first to concern themselves with the problems of conscientious objectors and for the recognition of the so-called minorities, that is homosex

uals and lesbians.

As precursors of the "green" movements, the Radicals began to interest themselves in ecology at a time when people didn't know the meaning of the word. They oppose nuclear weapons as well as the whole arsenal of conventional arms. As proponents of non-violence they are particularly committed to the fight against hunger in the world which massacres the populations of the non-developed countries.

To get their isolated message through the underbrush of the jungle of other parties, Marco Pannella used from the first a tool entirely uncommon on the Italian political scene: the hunger strike. On the first occasion he did not eat for eleven days. This was in 1968 after the intervention of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Many people did not believe he was really fasting; they thought he was secretly eating spaghetti and laughed behind his back. Even those who did not go so far as this considered him an exhibitionist in any case. It is true that the Radical leader loves being at the centre of events, but it is also true that more than once he has laid his life on the line with his hunger strikes. Standing 1.90 meters tall and weighing more than 90 kgs., Pannella possesses a remarkable physical resistance. He smokes three packs of Celtiques cigarettes a day and only sleeps a few hours, but is always lucid and ready to answer any questions. His is an uncommon "mediumistic" personality. Besides having an

imposing physique, he is a remarkable orator, which quality makes it pleasant to talk to him even when he is making propaganda for his party.

Marco Pannella's charismatic power is perhaps most emphasised within his party. All of his ideas are accepted enthusiastically even when they are incomprehensible to many people, such as the recent idea he proposed of disbanding the party if it should not attain its goal of becoming a transnational party. One of the reasons however which make others accept all his positions is that it is difficult to oppose a man who has dedicated his whole life to the Radical Party entirely sacrificing any private life.

Marco Pannella lives in an old house, has no automobile and doesn't know how to drive because he has never had time to learn. He never goes to the cinema or to social events. His only indulgence, apart from cigarettes, is elegant clothes and sometimes good food. As a deputy to the Italian and European Parliaments he now earns a good living, but he only keeps about twenty million [lire] for his own needs and turns the rest over to his party. He has never married and has no children. For some years he has lived with a young Roman woman who is a doctor, but no one knows the true nature of their relationship. After all, it is not easy to live with a man who is constantly moving between Rome, Brussels and Strasbourg, who participates in all demonstrations, marches and meetings and in round-the-clock radio and television broadcasts.

Because of his passionate political activity, Pannella has found himself in the dock of the Italian courts more than a hundred times, but he has only once been found guilty and fined. The police have arrested him twice: the first time in Sofia in 1968 during an anti-military demonstration; the second time in Rome in 1975. At that time the Radicals were fighting for the liberalised use of light drugs. Defying the Italian law, Pannella smoked a marijuana cigarette in public. He was arrested and put into preventive detention for an entire week.

But these are not the only shocks Pannella has provoked on the Italian scene. It was thus, for example, that Toni Negri was elected to the Italian Parliament. He was a professor in Padua and considered one of the principal ideologists of terrorism in Italy. The ensuing parliamentary immunity allowed Negri to leave prison. But before the court finally condemned him to thirty years in prison, the professor had abandoned the Radicals and Italy, taking refuge in France.

The most recent case is that of Enzo Tortora, the famous television MC, who spent several months in jail charged with being a member of the Camorra and implicated in the drug traffic. The Radicals had always believed in his innocence although Italian public opinion was divided. After long judicial procedures Tortora was finally freed and elected both President of the Radical Party and deputy to the European Parliament. But nevertheless the most celebrated deputy the Radical Party brought to the limelight of the world's press is without any doubt Cicciolina - that is, the porno star Ilona Staller. Elected deputy to Parliament, this actress of Hungarian origin had up to then only been known for her naked breasts which she gladly exposed in public during her porno shows. Ever since being occupied with politics she devotes less time to "dramatic" art.

During his recent visit to Zagabria we spoke with Marco Pannella of all this as well as of the future programme of the Radicals whose main aim is is now to beat down all the obstacles to seeing their party become transnational and to disseminate the idea of a United States of Europe.

Q. You have recently visited Belgrade, Zagabria and Ljubljana as a member of the European Parliament delegation, but afterwards in numerous encounters with journalists and the public you have acted as leader of the Italian Radical Party in seeking new members. Exactly what do you hope for from your stay in Yugoslavia?

A. I have come first of all as a member of the European Parliament. Ever since 1979 I have been part of the parliamentary delegation concerned with Yugoslavia, and that of my own initiative because your country has always interested me greatly. I have already been here a number of times before: in 1982, in 1985, and now. That is part of the traditional exchanges with the Yugoslavian delegates. Once a year they visit the European Parliament and once a year we pay a return visit. These are work meetings at the highest levels. Therefore I am in Yugoslavia as part of my job in the European Parliament, but at the same time as a Radical Party representative who has been interested in Yugoslavia for a long time. Our European federalist positions are well known as are our commitments to the Gandhian principles of non-violence. By means of a Gandhian-type non-violent action we want to liberate Europe and Yugoslavia from their borders. Thanks to its position as a non-aligned country, Yugoslavia has a very particu

lar interest for us. Actually many people have asked me if the same thing would happen this time that happened when I was last in your country: while I was being received by high-level Yugoslavian officials the Yugoslavian police arrested Radical activists in various cities for distributing propaganda leaflets. However, I don't know. Time will tell. So far we are here and nothing has happened.

The third and most important thing is that we are in the final and most decisive phase of the party's life. Aside from the official decisions, I personally believe that if we do not succeed in the next few weeks in creating a truly transnational party, entirely "de-Italianised", which we have been wanting to do for twenty years, the Radicals will not have reached their main objective and there will be no point in working for the party's existence. Perhaps one or another of us will say that another twelve months are needed before the party can be completely disbanded or finally acquire a truly transnational character. It would be the first transnational party in this century, based outside the blocks and thus have a non-aligned nature.

Q. How do you intend to create this transnational Radical Party?

A. First of all with a big campaign to inform public opinion. In this sense some of my comrades are right when they accuse me of being too draconian in my position on the disbanding of the party. They say, for example, that only about a hundred people in Yugoslavia are informed about our position. Far too few people know that they can save the Radical Party by becoming members and that otherwise it will die. How can we put the key under the doormat before informing people? Apropos of this, there is the question of East and West. We are deprived of disseminating true information because of the use of disinformation and in the East censorship and the absence of information used for political ends. In this situation those who find themselves between the two, as here in Yugoslavia, has had no reply, neither positive or negative. We will get a reply only when the question has been stated. In the meantime, the Radical Party, which defends the same interests in Vladivostok, Belgrade, Montreal or Buenos Aire

s, must work with full vigour for a United States of Europe and at once, in the sense of a political federation and not an economic community.

Q. How is it possible in the present situation of division into blocks to think of unifying states with completely different political systems?

A. If we were not so alienated and overwhelmed by politics, the question would be: how can we progress without a United States of Europe? Just think of the enormous expenditures that every country must sustain to maintain an enormous military apparatus and a whole series of similar examples. How long will we continue to allow politics to divide us? On the other hand, for those who think that this impossible, I would simply point out that the European Community was created as an economic community of six countries and is now a political community of twelve countries. At the present time 300 million people elect the European Parliament. We hope that in 1989 a European President will also be elected. We Europeans must finally learn that we cannot go on if we are not united; otherwise we will perish. Nationalisms constitute the greatest tragedy of the last century and the first part of this one. We must not allow them to continue to exist because that will inevitably lead to conflict and reciprocal killing

. And death is always negative even when it is a question of the death of heroes. We do not owe the fatherland our sacrifices but our own happiness.

Q. Your hope of seeing the party de-Italianised and transformed into a transnational party - isn't this in some way an opportunistic attitude? The Radical Party that had an important role in Italian society at the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies has lost its influence little by little and one talks of it at the moment primarily for its election of Cicciolina to Parliament. How do you explain the decline of the Radical Party?

A. I object to such criteria. I fear that you are mixing up different notions. It is not true what you say, that is that the Radical Party was important or influential.

Q. I was not referring to is size or political power, but to the ideas it defended and which were very important in the evolution of Italian society from divorce to the legalisation of abortion, from the ecological campaigns to the opposition to nuclear arms.

A. I understand what you are trying to say, but now I will tell you what I think. I could prove to you that in 1968, '69, '70 and '71 the same things were said of the Radical Party that you are saying now. This began in 1962 when the PSIUP (Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity) was founded. At the time everyone said that this marked the end of the Radicals. Later, in '68, people again said that the Radical Party was finished because of the existence of Manifesto, the PSIUP, and above all the new Students Movement, a strong students movement that united the extra-parliamentary left. When we began to speak of abortion and divorce, with the exception of an obscure third class porno period in Milan, no one in the press wanted to give us space, not even as representatives of the League for Divorce. Take the year 1970, when divorce was adopted - because even if the popular referendum took place in 1971, the divorce battle was won in 1970 in Parliament. This constituted a real parliamentary incident,

because all those who voted in favour of divorce were convinced that they would not reach a majority. The lay parties said that the divorce issue would provoke the fall of the centre-left government by dividing the Catholics and the laymen. The members of Parliament in favour of abortion were totally isolated. But the battle was won. At that time we were also fighting other battles - in favour of sexual minorities, conscientious objectors, and also in favour of abortion. These were the years between 1966 and 1970. If you consider that the Parisian May [a period of student revolt, ed.] did not take place before 1968, you will see that we were in advance of all the great changes. It was only after the Italian Parliament's adoption of divorce in 1970 that the foreign press discovered our existence. The London "Times" and the Paris "Le Monde" came out with the same headline as if by agreement: "Italy Takes Its Place In Europe", explaining to their readers how the little David, the anti-militarist, libertarian, a

nti-clerical Radical Party which then numbered 600 members, had conquered Goliath by means of the League for Divorce which united some 2,000 people.

Q. How many members does the Radical Party have?

A. I'll get to that in a moment. I want to emphasise again that the same people who say we were important and influential once and that today we have lost our prestige are the same people who at that time treated us like outsiders, as useless. This is the most frequent argument of those who consciously or unconsciously carry in themselves an anti-Radical attitude. Let's look at the consequences of what happened between 1975 and 1987. It is the most important decade for the Radical Party. Why? Because we were the "green" party in Europe, the first ones who concerned themselves with ecology. The German "greens" did not yet even know they existed when we not only defended these standpoints but collected 700,000 signatures in Italy after the Three Mile Island incident. These were authenticated signatures and not the anonymous kind collected in haste, for example during pacifist meetings. Since we have party offices, everything was done in the streets without concern for the weather. Nothing like this has

ever been done elsewhere. Now, ten years later, it is common. In those days to collect 700,000 signatures against hunting and nuclear power was a unique challenge. But I would also like to mention the most recent example. Recently in Italy a double referendum has been held on the power of magistrates and on nuclear energy. We brought up these problems in 1978, ten years ago! This time we even won, but no newspaper or magazine ever admitted that we were, from the first day, the only ones to defend these ideas. It was amusing to watch the agitation of the other parties that did not know up until the last moment what position to take. And only when they realised that the public was going to vote "yes" in the two referendums did they rush in.

Q. How has the Radical Party evolved in these last years?

A. Primarily in the fight against the accusations that were made against us at all times. They accused us of not being anti-nuclear pacifists like everyone else. But we were the only party to say "no" to NATO in the Sixties. Even the Communists supported NATO. Berlinguer's (1) famous thesis was: under the NATO umbrella, under the atomic umbrella, socialism will develop more easily. But we were never among those of "The Day After", we never gave in to the fear and terror of nuclear arms because we have always been aware that 40 million men, women and children die of hunger every year, that there are wars that go on for years and that these are the real problems of the planet. And for this reason being pacifists for us means supporting a law and not declaring ourselves opposed to death. In effect, the question is not one of opposing nuclear arms. This is obvious. One must say no to nuclear arms, but today people are dying from conventional weapons.

We were accused by the Communists of not being true pacifists at the very moment when they were voting to extend the military budget while at the same time they sent activists to Comiso (2) so that they would not understand what was happening in Rome.

Q. You mentioned the presence these days of Radicals in the Soviet Union. How is the Radical Party regarded in that country?

A. We are the second largest party in the Soviet Union! Obviously because there are no others. We have our secretary in Moscow and five other members. Some comrades have returned from Poland recently where some members have been made. In general we are having ever-increasing success. Among Radical Party members are the Justice Minister of Burkina Faso, the Health Minister of Sao Paulo State in Brazil, some eminent Brazilian leaders and many others. The Soviet representative who came to our last congress violently attacked my idea about disbanding the party. You don't have the right to do it, because in the Soviet Union a growing number of people knows the Radical Party and the underground press talks about it much more than you abroad can realise. In Italy the large parties like the Communists and the Socialists have adopted our positions on nuclear energy. They don't officially recognise it, but the ideas were ours.

Q. The Radicals and you yourself have been associated with unusual political actions. You have held hunger strikes, you have been repeatedly arrested, you have been in prison, you have been in the dock about a hundred times. These political methods which once struck public opinion, are they still effective today?

A. When we were on hunger strikes people asked themselves insinuatingly whether we weren't eating spaghetti in secret. You can read this in the papers. Here is what happened after my last hunger strike in 1983. After sixty days a press conference was called with doctors who published an official bulletin in which they stated that certain irreversible processes were taking place in my body and that consequently I risked dying from one moment to the next. The Italian television reported that I was about to shut my eyes for good, but in the left corner of the screen they showed a picture of me when I was particularly fat and with a double chin (they had photographed me five days after I had begun the hunger and thirst strike and I was particularly bloated. This form of debilitation is well known to those who know what it is to not eat for a long time.) This was the message disseminated by the Italian TV and people laughed at us. By making fools of Radicals who went on hunger strikes they destroyed a highl

y civilised political tool. It must be said, however, that some individuals (priests, soldiers, prisoners, etc.) have held hungers strikes and obtained what they wanted. What happened? The hunger strike became widely diffused as an effective tool for achieving one's aims. It was all O.K. as long as they were individual manifestations, but when it was a question of strikes like ours of a Gandhian type, civilising and radical, then it was necessary to neutralise them. They are afraid of this kind of strike because it is the most effective action.

Q. Last year you were at the point of disbanding the party, but progressive Italian public opinion reacted vigorously and the number of members reached 12,000 including very famous names.

A. Our decision moved many people from Nobel Prize winners like Rita Levi Montalcini to singers like Domenico Modugno. The list of these 12,000 names is a true manifesto, the explosive proof of a diverse society. With regard to us, we do not want to become the guardians of the party. It is indubitably precious, but we want to subject it to a new test. No, the question presented itself to us, the 2,000, who were convinced of the need to disband the party, in the face of the 12,000 who are today the party just as much as we. They say that we must not even dream of disbanding the party, but we have reached an agreement only for this year.

If during 1988 we succeed in making a great step forward and de-Italianise the party and create one that can act simultaneously in Moscow, Belgrade, Washington, Rome and the other European capitals, then it will be worthwhile going on.

Q. It is time for me to ask you about the Cicciolina phenomenon. If there is a person thanks to whom the Radicals have become popular in Italy and the world, it is Cicciolina, the first porno star ever elected to a parliament.

A. Cicciolina is a Radical deputy personally elected by Eugenio Scalfari (editor of the daily paper "La Repubblica") because not a day passed without his publishing something about her on the front page. In reality she was elected by the enemies of the Radical Party. She cost us between 200 - 300,000 votes, whereas we think she won at the most 10,000.

Q. If you are disturbed that Cicciolina is robbing the other Radical candidates of votes, why did you nominate her as a candidate?

A. Out of sheer tolerance. We cannot tell her "we don't want you because you are a whore". But like all the other party members she herself presented her candidacy; she was not our choice.

Q. Then how do you explain her being elected?

A. In Rome the number of those voting Radical has diminished. Many of our serious candidates were defeated. She won 20,000 votes and I 40,000. If you consider the kind of publicity coverage her candidacy received at the beginning, all the promotion she was given by the press against us, that is no great victory. In the province of Latium there are three million voters. So her percentage is minimal.

Q. In spite of that they voted for her and not for the other Radical candidates certainly.

A. Because they did not know that the other candidates even existed. Do you imagine that many people in Rome knew that my name was on the list of candidates? Cicciolina benefited from publicity worth about 100 billion lire. Evidently she was not the one to organise all that, but the others who wrote so much about her. In a system known as "multiple parties" one gets incredible democratic misappropriations. But for us Radicals the problem of Cicciolina does not exist. We are the first and only party that has posed sexual problems as political problems. We have managed, for example to get laws passed regarding transexuals. Nevertheless we are facing the fact that a woman who exhibits a breast in the street - and not even both of them - provokes general euphoria and appears on the front pages of all the newspapers. It is a proof that sex phobia and sex mania are deep components of our society. So Cicciolina in herself is not a problem; the problem is in the fact that it has become a sensational event.

Q. So it is not true that the Cicciolina case caused a generally negative reaction to Italian politics and above all put into question the seriousness of the Radical Party which lost a lot of credibility?

A. It may have lost some credibility, but I don't know with whom. As will only become evident in about twenty years, it is the information system that has lost its moral, cultural and historical credibility as well as that of its civilisation. For me the information media are the only true AIDS of contemporary society, the worst that exists in Italy and the West. And its extraordinary announcement was made in Orson Welles' film "Citizen Kane". This is the reason for which Cicciolina and her naked breast can become a world event, because the information system is run by a lot of voyeurs whose problem is whether or not they can masturbate. The West has created the most culturally deprived information system. I will give you an example: if you show a photo of a starving African child during a press conference and announce at the same time that a law has just been adopted to appropriate five hundred billion lire to fight hunger throughout the world and to save at least one or two million human lives, it wil

l be a great event. If you show this photo of Mathausen in Paris, Lisbon or Rome, no newspaper will publish it.

Q. Your closest collaborators are all very young. In your reflections you often mention the younger generations. Does this mean that the Radical Party defends the ideals of youth, something which could be gloomy because all youths unfortunately become old and forget the things they once believed in?

A. No, absolutely not. When I speak of the younger generations I am thinking above all of those who have no power, because those who hold the reins of power are generally older. The Radical Party is oriented towards all those who have ideals and are ready to fight for them.

Q. Must one be of age in order to enrol in the Radical Party?

A. No. When this question came up for the first time, we realised that in reality there was no age limit for a human being to live according to his opinions. That is why among the Radicals there are children of 11 and 12 years old as well as old people of 92.

Q. What do you need to do to get a Radical Party membership card?

A. Nothing in particular. All you have to do is ask for it. We have never even thought of granting the membership card to anyone according to his merits. You get a membership card exactly as you do a bus ticket - not forever, but for a limited distance, trying to go towards a better, more just world. The Radicals pay dues equal to 1% of the average GNP, which in Italy is about 400 lire a day. Because of the difficulties of obtaining the dues, members in the Eastern countries are exempt from paying dues.

Q. After your thirty years of activity with the Radicals, are you satisfied with the results?

A. The notion of satisfaction is rather foreign to my nature. I have no time to be satisfied. I do not add up the sum total of my life. The only thing I can say is that during my life I have seen many things happen which I had hoped to see and which everyone assured me were impossible. Many things they told me were foolish, that I should abandon them, that they were youthful ideals. We are all raised in this way. After our youngest years we learn to abandon all our illusions. But this, instead, is the true reality. All the rest is sad illusions and Utopias. In this sense I have no right to become tired and to want to change my way of thinking and my convictions. ----------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984) - The Communist Party secretary from 1972 to 1974.

2) Comiso - The site of a military base in Sicily.