May 1987

RADICAL ANTINATIONALISM

At the time of the Radical Party's relaunching at the Bologna Congress, the Radical Party refused the national dimension as a fitting political and theoretical framework in which to wage battles for freedom and democracy. It decided first and foremost not to have, as its symbol, the specification of an Italian national party: only the Radical Party. In its statutes it expressly included the possibility for everybody, even non-Italians, to join the Party.

In the motion approved, it emphasised the need to "overcome nationalism". "Antinationalism and anti-authoritarianism are the necessary reference points in order for its initiative to be identifiable in the struggles of the Radical minority throughout the world".

September, 1968

IN THE EAST WITH THE WAR RESISTERS' INTERNATIONAL

The Radical Party, which in 1968 adhered to the antimilitarist organisation the War Resisters' International, demonstrated in Sofia against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of Warsaw Pact countries.

November 1978

JEAN FABRE, FIRST NON-ITALIAN RADICAL SECRETARY

Jean Fabre, French non-violent antimilitarist, was elected Secretary of the Radical Party. His election excited a lot of fuss, and a number of incidents with the institutions: the Radical Party saw the President of the Italian Republic, refuse to meet its own Secretary, since he was not an Italian citizen.

March 1979

THE FIRST FEW RADICAL GROUPS IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM

Due to the campaign against the famine Holocaust in the south of the world, the first two Radical groups are established in Brussels and Nantes (France).

September 1981

THE BIRTH OF COMMITTEES IN SUPPORT OF MARCO PANNELLA'S HUNGER STRIKES

In France dozens of committees were formed to support the hunger strikes Marco Pannella was organising to exact respect for the European Parliament's commitment to save five million human lives threatened by death from starvation. In Brussels, the organisation "Food and Disarmament International" was formed, with Jean Fabre as Secretary.

1987

LEONTIEFF, IONESCO, HALTER, PLIUSC...JOIN

Following the Radical Party's decision for its closure if it did not manage to collect at least 10.000 enrolments, a lot of non-Italian personalities joined: the Nobel Prizewinners, Leontieff and Wald, the priests, Delorme, Cardonnel and Gilbert, the Minister of Burkina Faso, Ionesco, the Soviet dissident Pliusc, and the refuzniks, Sharanskj and Margulis.

February 1987

THE INTERNATIONAL AND INTERNATIONALIST PARTY

The extraordinary Congress in Rome decided on "the investment of the financial, organisational and militant resources necessary to achieve the objective of several thousand enrolments, outside Italy in order to create the premise to make the Radical Party not only in the proclamation of its ideals, but also in its organisation and composition as an association the international lay and non-violent party for human rights, the United States of Europe, the right to life and the life of rights, for the fight against extermination by hunger and for the defence of the planet from threats and attacks on the balance of its ecosystem."

January 1988

THE NEW TRANSNATIONAL ENTITY IS FORMED

The Bologna Congress decided to complete the transformation of the Radical Party into a transnational political entity. It also decided to substitute its own symbol the fist and the rose for the stylised face of Gandhi composed of the various linguistic versions of the words "Radical Party". Enrolments arrived from 37 countries.