ABSTRACT: For many people, democracy seems a luxury or a privilege of which only western civilisations can boast. Others, in their opinion, would not be sufficiently mature to wield basic civil rights. However, the Radical Party believes that democracy is an essential right. Wherever totalitarianism predominates, violence, war, and hunger are rife.

("Single issue" booklet for the XXXV Congress of The Radical Party - Budapest 22-26 april 1989)

As regards democracy, there are firm convictions, unexpressed but nonetheless explicit, in the behaviour of a considerable proportion of the Western ruling classes, both right- and left-wing. The first can be summarised as follows: political democracy and the State of Rights are a "luxury" or a privilege" originating in Europe and solely for Western European civilisations. This has given rise to the attitude of "understanding" as regards the totalitarian regimes of the Arab or African world, and those national liberation movements that have very often made the people regret their former oppressors. It is often said that these peoples would not be mature for democracy without questioning the democratic maturity of their ruling classes, frequently and not by chance, educated in the most prestigious universities of the West. As for the Communist world, apart from the prudent reflexes of a hard-core Communist left-wing, even the more conservative forces seem to prefer solid totalitarian regimes, capable of

guaranteeing order, stability, and business with the West, in spite of their superficial denouncements of the unliberal nature of the Soviet regime. Another corollary of these "reservations" on democracy is revealed within democratic countries in the presence of subversive elements. In short, it is affirmed that respect for the State of Rights, including individual rights, must be fully guaranteed in periods of social peace. But in exceptional circumstances, when order is threatened by terrorism or crime, it is necessary to make an exception, to limit constitutional rights, (naturally for the common good) to issue exceptional laws and to authorise the police to take "hastier" action. Italy, Germany, and Northern Ireland are the most gross examples. Unshakeable extremists of democracy, we have fought against all this, using the weapons of non-violence. We have fought without reserve against capital punishment, life imprisonment and the violations of the rights of the individual, when it was a question

of the political affiliation or social status of the victim of injustice, whether inflicted by fascists, terrorists or "simple" criminals. In these pages we have chosen a few accounts from twenty years of militant politics, non-violent action, and legal and parliamentary campaigns, to defend basic rights in Prague, Warsaw, Ankara, New York, Moscow, Sofia, London and Rome. Not for us the pharisaic and verbose solidarity of the traditional parties, but for the Radical Party and its militants, always total involvement, with no reserve nor compromise. The years of accumulated imprisonment, the trials, and the hard periods of lynching that we have undergone are the proof. But it would be mistaken to think that the Radical Party had a neutral, therefore abstract concept of civil rights, or that for us it is the same whether we demonstrate in Moscow or New York, in Ankara or Jerusalem. Political democracy is not one of a determined number of acceptable political systems. It is the only system that can guaran

tee the best protection of the rights of the individual and the best economic and social development for society. If it is defended with passion, it is developed with rigour and imagination. If we demonstrate with harshness against the authoritarian temptation in the Western countries, we do so to reinforce and protect their democratic credibility. But the greatest obstacle today to the chances - even those existing - of guaranteeing all the inhabitants of the earth the right to live, to justice, to security, lies in all those political totalitarian conceptions, differently camouflaged, which emerge from the majority of the countries represented at the UN. Wherever the rights of the individual are subordinated to the interests of the State, whether Socialist or Fascist, whenever they are suppressed in the name of the Working Classes, the Capitalist God or the Religious Promise, it is inevitable that violence, war and hunger occur. In short, democracy is not a luxury but a basic necessity.