ABSTRACT: In six thousand words, the history of a small political group which has succeeded (in twenty years of history, until now mainly Italian) in amassing the only great social and political majorities which have modified the civilisation of Italy and brought this country closer to the great European democracies.

The battles, victories and defeats of this single political entity which has decided to stake its own existence for objectives which, if they were achieved, would change the history of Europe, geographical Europe even more than the Europe of the Community: the United States of Europe as a State of Rights and freedom, able to overcome the cancer of national egotism to be a haven of peace, security and development in the east as well as the south of the world; the defeat of the criminal empire founded on drug traffic and maintained by the crazy prohibitionist laws.

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

1. THE RADICAL PARTY: ITS ORIGINS AND ROOTS

The Radical Party in Italy was founded in the mid 50's by progressive liberals who had come from an anti-fascist non-communist left-wing party which had been very active in the resistance against nazism and fascism (the "Partito d'azione"), and by members of youth and university movements. Its activity was centred on democracy, old and new civil liberties, social justice and the ideals which inspired federalist and republican democrats in the Risorgimento, anti-fascist liberal socialism and the theory and practice of lay movements involved in the separation of Church and State. In 1962 a group of young Radicals, led by Marco Pannella, inherited control of the party by launching the concept of federalist internationalism, anti- authoritarianism, non-violence and civil disobedience.

The Radical Party was both a party and a movement. As such, it organised, gave voice to and represented the peoples' need for greater freedom, democracy and justice, by fighting arduous battles for reform. By rejecting revolutionary rhetoric, the Radicals pursued their objective of modifying the law to make it more appropriate to the way Italian citizens actually live, think and behave. In this way, while remaining a small minority party the Radical Party always pursued objectives which were destined to become majority issues. But the Radical Party was also a movement capable of mobilising and organising public awareness around vital popular issues which were not always recognised as such by national policy.

Until 1976 the Radical Party had no parliamentary representation because it had chosen to fight its battles without standing for election. In 1976 the Radical Party gained parliamentary representation, which it still has, in the Chamber of Deputies (presently holding 13 seats out of a total of 630), in the Senate (with three senators out of 315) and in the European Parliament (with 3 out of 81 Italians elected). However the Radical Party's structure, methods and programme of action have stayed the same as when it was extra-parliamentary, proposing popular campaigns, direct non-violent action and specific reforms.

2. FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, FOR NEW AND OLD CIVIL LIBERTIES

In the specific Italian situation, where the Catholic Church and the Vatican are omnipresent, the Radicals have fought for the separation of Church and State engaging not only lay action but also by promoting anti-clericalism whenever it was apparent that the Catholic hierarchy was making use of the faith to extend its power.

Traditionally the Radical Party has been committed to the abrogation of the Concordat, the special agreement between Church and State (signed by Mussolini in 1929), according to which the role of the Catholic religion as the State religion, questions related to marriage, religious education in schools, public health and social work are the privileged domain of church authority.

As a fruit of its ideological positions, the Radical Party promoted, organised and won its action for the introduction of divorce in Italy. In 1965 the Radicals, together with some leading Liberal, Socialist, Communist and independent personalities started the Italian League for divorce. For the first time in Italian history the Radicals gave birth to a movement which was made up of politicians from different political backgrounds as well as ordinary people, and which was able to exert considerable influence on public opinion and on the political system itself. Through a campaign of great mass demonstrations, with constant pressure on parliamentarians and non-violent actions including hunger strikes; after five years, in December 1970, divorce was finally introduced for the first time in Italy. This victory the first for lay and progressive ideas in post-war Italy in which Catholic inspired forces were still dominant broke the paralysis of traditional political forces. Four years later the referendum,

promoted by the Catholics in 1974 for the abrogation of divorce laws, marked the defeat of the Catholic-conservative front which represented only 41% of the total population.

The issue of sexual liberation which is neglected by traditional politics, found, thanks to the Radical Party, its first application in the action defending the rights of homosexuals.

In the Spring of 1971, the Italian united homosexual revolutionary front "FUORI" (outside) was founded. The acronym itself expresses the intentions of this minority group "to react against the state of alienation and to emerge from the ghetto of fear and wretchedness imposed by society." This group, like other ad hoc organisations and movements, confederated with the Radical Party which assumed the role of political centre for a federation of specific groups. After a period which was devoted to the analysis of the moral prejudices and the material handicaps endured by homosexuals, in 1976, for the first time in Italian history homosexuals are included as candidates in the Radical electoral lists as a proof that the party would defend their rights.

At the beginning of 1970 the Women's Liberation Movement (MLD) was founded "as part of a broader Radical movement towards a socialist and libertarian (society...in as far as women's liberation will bring in its wake general liberation, fulfilment and happiness, of benefit not only to women but also to men". Amongst this movement's various objectives was the liberalisation of abortion. By organising mass confessions it put pressure on Parliament to legislate on abortion, while at the same time setting up the Sterilisation and Abortion Information Centre (CISA) as an abortion clinic and as a form of deliberate civil disobedience. In January 1975 Adèle Faccio and Emma Bonino who were in charge of the clinic were arrested as well as the Secretary of the Radical Party, Gianfranco Spadaccia who declared himself responsible for the initiative. This was how, after the ensuing scandal and a referendum organised in the autumn of 1977 Parliament, yielding to pressure of the Radical Campaign, passed a law for th

e liberalisation of abortion.

Together with divorce, abortion and new laws regarding the family the Radical Party campaigned for the lowering of the legal age of majority and for the right to vote at eighteen. This was achieved in 1976. Another constant concern has been the drugs issue. Since 1973 the Radical objective has been the liberalisation and legalisation of hashish and marijuana. After a series of acts of civil disobedience, information campaigns and the presentation of a legislative proposal based on the controlled distribution of drugs to addicts, the campaign has focused lately on the fight against all forms of prohibitionism in order to combat more efficiently the illicit drug trade and the black market. These actions have achieved a widescale sensitisation of public opinion on the liberal nature of such proposals and have counteracted more repressive, moralistic and incriminating approaches, even if they have not as yet achieved positive legislative results.

3. AGAINST THE PARTY SYSTEMS AND GOVERNMENT SCANDALS

The popular referendum, as a vehicle for high profile civil and social issues, calling on the population to participate directly in decision making in contrast with party manoeuvres, has proved to be an important weapon in the Radical Party's arsenal over the years.

In Italy, the Constitution allows referendums not as a means to institute new laws but as a means of abrogating existing ones, so the Radicals were able to raise popular support for the cancellation of a few laws. The effects on the Italian political system, known for its immobilism and lack of alternatives, were extremely innovative and sometimes shattering. A wide range of issues covering civil rights, anti-militarism, injustice and important social problems was brought to the attention of general public opinion and triggered the referendum process with the collection of 500,000 signatures (1% of the voting population).

Over the years Radicals, alone or usually in coalition with other political forces, have called for the following referendums: on State Church relations (abrogation of the Concordat); on offences associated with political opinion and trade unions (penal code); on the military code in peacetime and military justice; on issues relating to freedom of the press; on abortion; on the public funding of political parties; on emergency laws and the restriction of personal freedom; on mental hospitals; on hunting; on the demilitarisation of special bodies such as the Guardia di Finanza; on nuclear power stations for civil use; on life-imprisonment; on the depenalisation of marijuana and on the responsibility for judicial errors.

Many of these referendums were held with the aim of introducing themes which would have otherwise been ignored by the Italian politicians; and some were won by Radical inspired groups, such as divorce, nuclear power and the responsibility of magistrates in judicial error; others have exerted such pressure that they have caused an immediate change of the laws in question. In every case the repeated use of the referendum has had the effect of highlighting the existence of a substantial agreement between all the parties (whether those formally belonging to the governing majority, to the opposition), to maintain a balance of power within the political system without giving citizens a chance to express themselves except through the mediation of the parties themselves.

This particular political system, which the Radicals have combated, has been baptised "partitocracy", that is the power of the parties, which in Italy have assumed an abnormal influence in every walk of life. The Radicals have in such a way demonstrated the existence of a clash not so much between government and opposition, but between those who were participating in the "party regime" and those who were countering it. This is how the Radical Party was also able to be a minority force which publicly denounced and fought the scandals of the regime which have characterised Italian history over the last decades. This was possible because of the Radicals' absolute extraneousness to the management of national, local, economic and military power.

In 1978 the Radicals were among the few political forces which adopted during the Moro case, endeavoured to save the leader of the Christian Democrats, by means of dialogue and calling on the competence of institutions rather than on those parties (Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party) which did nothing to prevent the assassination of Aldo Moro. Similarly, in 1980, during the kidnapping of the magistrate, D'Urso, the Radical initiative which relied on the force of dialogue through Radio Radicale, succeeded in saving the victim, who had already been sentenced to death at the hands of the Red Brigades. The link between wide-scale criminality and politics and between illicit business and politics, is fairly well developed in Italy. The Radicals vigorously denounced the Lockheed Affair following which Giovanni Leone, President of the Republic, was obliged to resign in 1978, just as a significant role was played by the Radicals in denouncing and bringing to the truth, the cases of Sindona and C

alvi, in the outrageous scandal of the Masonic Lodge, P2., and in the illegal funds which were taken from the greatest public company (IRI), 300 billion lire given to parties, politicians and newspapers.

4. ECOLOGY AND THE ANTINUCLEAR STRUGGLE

The Radical Party's defence of the environment and the antinuclear struggle even for its civil use, have turned the Radical Party into a true and proper "green" party ever since the 1970's.

The policy of active ecological defence has been translated by the repeated proposal of referendums on "hunting" and "nuclear energy". In Parliament there was constant opposition to anti-ecological rulings, the proposal of laws to safeguard nature and health, action for the application of laws against pollution, the contesting of the national energy plan and proposals for a policy of energy saving by the development of alternative energy sources.

Both on the national, regional and local levels, the battle "against nuclear energy plants", those already in existence, (Latina and Caorso) and those planned and being built (Montalto di Castro, Trino Vercellese, in Puglia) has involved all the Radical parliamentarians since their entry into Parliament in 1976. And this is how environmentalist politics have brought the Radicals, on the local and regional level, to promote and to form after 1983, electoral coalitions with the Greens and CivilGreens by means of the election of representatives in the councils of many cities and regions in Italy. The umpteenth referendum against nuclear plants, promoted by the Radicals together with the environmentalist associations and Green groups, succeeded in 1987 for which reason the building of nuclear energy plants in Italy was prohibited.

THE FIGHT AGAINST EXTERMINATION BY HUNGER IN THE WORLD

The introduction of the fight against hunger in the world as a major issue in Italy and in the European institutions, as well as the attainment of concrete, though partial results, is due to the Radical Party. As with other rights concerning the specific conditions of citizens, the Radicals have affirmed that "the right to life" is a supreme value which ought to inspire the international policies of our country as an alternative to current military and power politics.

Since, 1979 we have protested against the political nature of the drama of extermination by hunger and the accusation of the rich countries' governments as accomplices in the holocaust, the result of real economic confusion established on an international level, was denounced. Italy was asked to respect its international obligations, in particular the "Resolution 2626" of the UN, which committed industrialised governments to paying at least 0,7% of their GNP as public aid for development. The campaign which took off at the time, was based on the need for immediate action by Italy and Europe to save millions of human beings dying of hunger in the Third World. Popular demonstrations took place in Rome, and so the Italian Parliament was summoned to an extraordinary session while the issue was raised by the Radical MPs in the European Parliament, that the right of intervention by the UN Security Council with a task force against hunger should be sanctioned.

Public, parliamentary and non-violent action multiplied the mobilisation and interventions in the campaign against starvation: in September 1979 the Pope denounced the "intolerability of the existence of an area of starvation and an area of satiety." In June 1981 a ManifestoAppeal was launched by 54 Nobel prizewinners which provided the moral, theoretical and political basis for the fight against starvation; in September the same year when the European Parliament provided the resolution which welcomed the Nobel prizewinners appeal; immediately afterwards, Willy Brandt launched an appeal signed by numerous personalities; in March 1982, 1.200 mayors from all over Italy presented a petition to the President, Sandro Pertini, who in turn pronounced his support of the action. Successively, non-violent action was intensified with hunger and thirst strikes taken to the utmost limits of human endurance by Radical militants in Italy, France (including the Dominican priest Jean Cardonnel), and Belgium and

also with the introduction in the West of the practice of "Satyagraha".

To complement the Radicals' action in Italy, an international initiative was developed by "Food and Disarmament International" which gathered personalities, Nobel Prizewinners, and Heads of State from all corners of the world. The sanction for the moral, as well as political imperative for action against hunger and for life, was granted at the November 1981 Congress, which adopted the following "preamble" to the statutes of the Radical Party.

The Radical Party proclaims the right and law, the right and law which are also the political right and law of the Radical Party, and it proclaims them as the insuperable source of legitimacy of the institutions. It proclaims the duty to disobedience, non-collaboration, and conscientious objection to the supreme forms of non-violent battle for the defence through life of life, rights, and laws.

It reminds itself, and every man and woman who want to hope in life and in peace, in justice and freedom, of the close respect, and active defence of three basic laws like the Declaration of Human Rights, hoping that the title will be changed to "Individual Rights" the European Convention of Human rights, and in Italy, the Constitution of the Republic; of the refusal of obedience and the recognition of legitimacy on the other hand, for whoever violates it, whoever does not apply it, and whoever reduces it to mere verbose declarations of an orderly nature, in other words, non laws.

It declares that value is conferred on the historically absolute law, on the Christian and humanist imperative "do not kill", without any exceptions, not even legitimate self-defence.

It resolves that from now on, until the defeat of the policy of extermination by hunger and war, to be testified by piety, human awareness and civil dignity, that the Party's symbol should be changed so that it will result "at half-mast" in a sign of mourning, to oppose the refusal decreed by the power of the parties and the Republic on every level, to at least honour with any sort of official sign, the immense part of humanity exterminated in these years, in these months.

The concrete results approved by the Italian Parliament which progressively carries the allocation for aid to development from 0,03% to 0.3% of the GNP; from the numerous other resolutions of local and international bodies and from the decisions of the Belgian Parliament in March 1983 to institute a special emergency fund for survival and to ensure the execution of the Manifesto Appeal of the Nobel Prizewinners. Finally, as the first important effect of Radical pressure, even the Italian Parliament approved in spring 1985 a new law for interventions against extermination by hunger which grants 1.9OO billion lire over a period of 18 months.

6. THE PARTY OF JUST "JUSTICE"

The aspiration of achieving justice in all its aspects has been and continues to be the focal point of the Radical Party's attention. Just justice is essential for the realisation of any project founded on the reign of rights as opposed to the domain of force and violence.

The Radical Party opposed, almost alone, the barbarification of laws and rights, which happened during the so called period of emergency (second half of the 1970s), in which a great coalition of nearly all the parties including the Italian Communist Party, transformed Italian legislation in an even more authoritarian and unliberal sense, by means of new exceptional laws.

But the battle for justice has been waged above all in the halls of justice, with initiatives of civil disobedience, in prisons, in squares, and by the proposals of exemplary cases starting with the Braibanti case in 1969, when the Radicals were drawing the attention of the public to the violent behaviour of "justice" which had severely sentenced an alienated intellectual for the offence of "plagiarism".

Prisons, their material and human conditions, the rights of prisoners and the living and working conditions of the prison warders traditionally represent another aspect of Radical interest developed through constant visits and proposals of law.

Emergency legislation has brought about the lengthening of the terms of "preventive imprisonment" to more than 12 years, so that the great trials for terrorist offences are held many years later than the time of capture of the criminals. On this front, against imprisonment understood as the preventive expiation of a penalty not yet inflicted and against inertia in carrying out trials, the Radicals engaged battle with the exemplary cases of Toni Negri first and then Enzo Tortora.

The head of a workers' group, imprisoned on April 7, 1979, interrogated only marginally and without a trial, became a candidate on the Party's lists for the political elections of June 1983 and was elected member of parliament. Although Negri was not Radical and had no intention of becoming one, with an ideology thousands of miles from that of rights and non-violence, he was taken as the symbol of a criminal, one of many, detained in prison for many years without a trial. When the authorisation for arrest was given in the Camera, with the favourable opinion of the Radicals, Negri fled to France, thus betraying our trust in him.

The Tortora case was different. The well-known television commentator, was a candidate elected to the European Parliament on the Radical lists in 1984. A unique case in parliamentary history, Tortora did not only ask that the authorisation to proceed should be granted, but resigned as a Euro-MP, voluntarily gave up his immunity and returned to be arrested to combat preventive imprisonment.

Elected President of the Radical Party, under house arrest he waged the exemplary battle for a just justice, in spite of the highest level sentence which condemned him to more than 10 years for criminal association of a mafioso nature, and for drug dealing. But later, in September 1986, the second level trial proclaimed that Tortora had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes for which he had been sentenced, and declared him innocent.

Thanks to the "Tortora case", taken up by the Radicals, the battle for a just justice was brought to national attention. The terms of preventive imprisonment were reduced even though they remain immeasurably long, and the "justice issue" in all its implications became a national issue. This is how in 1987 the referendum to introduce the responsibility of magistrates was an overwhelming success.

7. THE PARTY OF ANTI-MILITARISM AND NON-VIOLENCE

Anti-militarism has characterised the Radical Party right from the beginning of its new course. In 1967 conversion from military structures into civil structures and withdrawal from NATO was requested. In 1968 national and nationalist myths were denounced; in 1969, as well as the anti-militarist march, a white paper was published on the militarisation of some regions; in 1970 an organisational link was established with the international organisations and the objective was adopted, of a pro-conscientious objection law. This was approved in 1972 after dramatic hunger strikes by militant Radicals.

For many years, between 1960 and 1970, anti-militarist marches were held in the north-eastern regions of Italy, with the participation of thousands of young people. In 1978 the election of Jean Fabre, a French conscientious objector, to the post of Radical Secretary, also had a symbolic significance. He was subsequently arrested and brought to trial in France, for "insoumission". In September 1977 Marco Pannella headed another hunger strike in Spain, aiming to get the right to conscientious objection recognised by the new Constitution of that country. In 1979, the Radical Party together with other non-violent European movements organised the Brussels Warsaw "disarmament caravan"; in 1980 another anti-militarist march, organised by the Radicals from Avignon to Brussels, crossed Italy and Yugoslavia. This is how their action acquired a European and international dimension, and the Radical members of parliament introduced the subject to the Strasbourg Parliament. In 1985, a young Belgian, Olivier Dup

uis, completed his affirmation of conscientious objection before the army and the military judicial authorities, and faced almost a year in prison.

Non-violent anti-militarism is closely linked with action to defend Human Rights in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. The existence of this Radical commitment was already manifest through demonstrations, sit-ins, and hungerstrikes to protest Czechoslovakia's invasion in 1968 and by means of forays into Communist capitals collaborating with "War Resistance International". Direct action and demonstrations have been innumerable, particularly in various Eastern European countries Czechoslovakia, Poland, USSR, Bulgaria often concluding in arrest, trial and expulsion. The Radicals support the "right to intervene in totalitarian countries" to obtain civil rights. This line of the active support of Communist dissent made it possible in 1985 1986 to bring into Italy, the two little daughters of the Filipovs, the Bulgarian couple who had been granted political asylum in Italy, and had been separated from their family.

The Radical Party's role in furthering civil rights was acknowledged at the 1986 Radical Congress by Vladimir Bukovskj: "You have begun a most important information campaign in the Communist countries. Who will carry on if you give up? You have embarked on a major project, to find a new way, a third way, which will be neither capitulation nor rearmament in dealings with the USSR. Who will carry on if you give up?" Leonid Pliusc wrote on the same occasion: "Already for nine years I have been following the Radical Party's action in the sphere of human rights in the so-called Socialist countries, and relations between the West and the Warsaw block. Although I am not entirely in agreement with Radical politics, I do feel that many of the ideas and methods of this party are necessary if we are to resolve the problems of the current international situation."

8. THE TRANSNATIONAL PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE

Ever since it came into being, the Radical Party has refused to accept that it would be possible within that theoretical and political framework which is the national dimension, to wage battles for freedom and democracy which are appropriate to meet the needs of the real economic, financial, cultural, scientific and military structures of the contemporary era. The transformation of a party, which has been based almost exclusively within Italian political and institutional reality even though not officially national, has had its turning point at the Radical Congress of January 1988; whose final motion proclaims:

"None of the major problems of our epoch, on which the future of humanity depends, the life of rights and the right to life of every individual, can today be faced with the hope of a solution within the solely national dimension. Institutions are needed, democratic powers, positive right and supranational laws, to begin with the historically mature objective of the United States of Europe.

The Radical Party therefore decided to complete its own transformation into a transnational political entity, not only in its political ends, but also in the concrete reality as an association. The Radical Party from this moment proposed itself as a means of political organisation, beyond and across national frontiers, open to the participation of those who also belong to various national parties. For this reason, the Radical Party as such will not run in the national elections."

The Congress therefore indicated six points for political action, each of which is the sanction and the development, into the transnational dimension of a long commitment of over thirty years in Italy. The points are:

1. "United States of Europe", respecting the cultural differences of the different European regions;

2. "Anti-totalitarianism and human rights"

3. The fight against "extermination by hunger", anti-militarism and security.

4. "Antiprohibitionism" to combat crime, and the cultures and ideologies which have developed through drugs.

5. The defence and development of the principles of the "State of Rights".

6. "Environment", energy and protection of the ecosystem.