ABSTRACT: Quoted here below are several passages of the hot line held by Marco Pannella on the night of 28-29 October on Channel 66 - in the course of which Pannella himself promoted the 1990 pre-enrolment campaign for the Radical Party - and a selection of enrolment announcements.

(Radical News n.248 of 14 November 1989)

For those who have recovered a part of their personality that was wearing out; or for those who found something new that aroused their curiosity and interest; something that thrilled them, to the point that now they love it, I would like something that the Radical Party as such has still not proclaimed: the opening of the 1990 enrolment campaign to this miraculous and extremely fragile party.

As for myself, I will think of the daily membership fee with which I intend to join the party.

In the next few weeks I would like to open, together with you, not the enrolment campaign - as only the Party can summon it and conduct it -; I would like us to open the enrolments to the Radical Party in 1990 from the "base", starting from our "private" situations, from our personal situations. Because we owe it to the party. Because the truth that has crossed Rome in these weeks is the fruit of the seed that the Radical Party has succeeded in conceiving and sowing, at a moment in which it seemed to be doomed, and was instead concerned about living and learning to cohabit with death. The party is therefore capable of love, and is asking the most of life of itself.

This is what I'm thinking about for myself. The membership fee to the Radical Party should be Lit. 185,000, and I know that we Radicals keep three million of the eight or nine million Lire a month of the parliamentarian's emoluments.

As for me, this will mean giving up a taxi ride; but I must be honest toward the pensioner, who can pay Lit 500 a day, so I think my contribution to the Radical party should be Lit. 30,000 a day.

I therefore ask Radio Radicale to jot this down: Marco, 60 years old, journalist, former member of parliament, member of the Radical Party; voted lay in the past elections; commits himself to pay Lit. 30,000 a day; will pay the first part tomorrow morning.

I hope that all those who feel up to it and who want to do it will call us to announce their enrolment. And the greater the number of socialists, communists, lay friends, right-wing friends, who will make others understand and who will have understood that the important battles - divorce, abortion, antiprohibitionism, and all the civil rights campaigns, those for a fair justice - the more all this will unite us, also formally, as it has united us in the course of the years and the decades.

We must all unite for the many things on which we agree with all those who agree in Madrid, in Africa, in Moscow: without this, without a transnational party, without this harmony, without making these feelings and these common beliefs come true, there can be no Greens, no antiprohibitionists. The Party cannot have the membership cards because it must still decide. But we must make this serenity possible - for the secretary, the treasurer, the President, as we wait for other possible solutions, formally integral also of the President of the Federal Council which I am. The moment in which they will decide to launch the campaign, they will know that next to them - I said next to them, and not behind, possibly even slightly in front of them - they will find all those who want to unite in the Radical Party of 1990.

The criterion is how much money we give the party each day. If I look at my life, I realize I haven't got the 30,000 Lire I promised to give, but I will have to find them.

Lorenza: which radical Party should I join? the transnational one, the transpartisan one, or what?

Romano: the radicals candidates will be on antiprohibitionist lists at the administrative elections. How do you reconcile this with an international policy?

Carla: the enrolment never should have been automatic...

Ottavio: why don't we join a mass party, instead of the Socialist party?

There is only one radical Party, and "transnational" and "transpartisan" are its attributes. Transnational means that men and women organize themselves with the same spirit and the same process of acquaintance that are necessary for love and for art, beyond national territories. Transpartisan means "through the existing parties", that are no longer sufficient because they are national. To be Greens or antiprohibitionists while being rooted in a territory is fine, but if it were a national dimension, exclusive and centralized, then it would have no future and would lack an adequate force. Both are ways to say: up with democratic organizations divided into parts, rather than dozens of ideological parties.

The radical Party wants to live, it doesn't want to die. Like the phoenix, if it dies in the evening it rises once more in the morning. But this phoenix of a Radical Party, alive and vital because it has given up possessions to become a new Being, must be made of people who have "never" been Radicals, because only in this way, we who have "almost always" been radicals can be radicals anew, through dialogue, in the absence of which our words become habit, instead of growing in the creativeness of love and freedom.

The Radical Party as such needs - but the Italian democrats and the progressivists and all the parties also need - this thing, that is the fruit of thirty years of uprightness and which is available to all. We need the word "radical" to mean transnational and transpartisan, so that no one will be able to say: "the radicals vote...". This must penetrate the body, the flesh, the heads of the people who call themselves "believers", so that it becomes a way of "being" that which is chosen in relation to one's institutions. If those who have always been socialists, maybe even candidates or members of parliament, join the transnational and transpartisan party, we will have people who are 100% radicals and 100% authentic representatives of their lists. If there will be antiprohibitionist lists, the candidates elected in their territory will have a reference point in the International Antiprohibitionist League. It might be decided that the Antiprohibitionist League is a sort of committee, and that the radical party

is a moment of its mass organization. At a formal and organizational level, the League must decide whether to promote its presence in the elections or not. In the meanwhile, all must prepared in order to be able to do so, and eventually decide not to do so.

We must be capable of hoping against the automaticity of the "non-enrolment", which concerns 58 million Italians who choose not to enrol. In practice this means we should not let ourselves be automatically paralysed confronted to an enrolment with the alibi of the doubt or with the need to feel its emotion. It is from the moral reasonableness of the statement "I want to love you" that the choice ensues, and not from the emotion of the statement "I love you".

I believe I will continue to request a socialist membership, as I have been doing for fifteen years, without ever receiving it. The fact that the socialists continue to refuse it to me whereas they give it to everyone else must surely have a meaning.

Surely the mass parties are heap parties, and the new communist party cannot be such a party, but it risks becoming one. I no longer have the problem of two memberships. The radical membership is like the WWF membership today, or the masonry membership in the heroic times in which the advocates of tolerance and social love people united clandestinely . The radical party is not a double membership, and to join the radical party is useful not only to give oneself a supplement of courage and strength, but also to aim higher up and bring alive the "new" that is necessary.

The radical Party of 1990 is something different in its capacities, its uprightness and its strength, that departs from new stories and from other itineraries, so as to force us to "renew ourselves" in a new party.

******************************************************************

BENEDETTO MARCUCCI, member of the Communist Party - Section Mazzini - Rome; final year modern history student. He announced his enrolment to the radical party on the occasion of the assembly of the Antiprohibitionist List, held at the Ergife Hotel on 14th October 1989.

"To join the Radical Party has a precise meaning: it means fighting for the policy of civil rights, which the radicals are supporting with an even firmer conviction than in the past. As a communist, I believe that all the Left must fight for a complete freedom of conscience against those who want to make us live on probation. For these reasons, I invite many other communists to follow my example, at a moment in which personal freedom is seriously threatened. I agreed with Pannella at the meeting at Largo Goldoni today, when, referring to the law on drugs,

he stated that we are faced to a fascist sort of attack. The sphere of intervention of the citizen is becoming narrower and narrower. We must be careful, because soon they will tell us how we should make love or how we should behave at home".

FRANCESCO BRISCUSO, 27 years old, medicine graduate. He is joining the radical party for the first time in 1990.

"I joined the party because I want to be part of those who - if necessary - can help you.

I had been wanting to join the party for some time, because a close friend of mine joined it during the 100,000 campaign. Then I didn't, and I felt guilty. I'm doing it now, because I agree completely on the proposition on antiprohibitionism, and because it seems to me that we are living in a very special moment of the political and civil life of our country and especially of this city. At the past political elections, as I was walking with a friend of mine, I witnessed Taradash's arrest, while he was handing out leaflets in Via del Corso. The police shot off with three or four cars and ran over a girl; they also hit my friend, who got frightened and said it was the drug dealers, and that we had to vote against drugs.

Then I realized that if my friend had "absorbed" this information, we were all in great danger, and a force was needed, even a small force, to fight against this sort of thing. In the past I always voted for you because I am a "sectarian", I give rambling speeches, the communists call me a "jerk", and I am against Craxi. I shared everything with you, except the friendship with the socialists, whose policy consists in gaining power, and important positions, and who betrayed the hopes for a liberal-libertarian turning point."

ANDREA AMICI, 21 years old, student. Joined the radical for the first time in 1990.

"In order to pay the enrolment fee I had to make an economic sacrifice, but now I'm glad I did it, because the radical party deserves it.

I don't believe in all the battles conducted by the radical Party, but on one issue you are absolutely convincing, that is on the respect of this rule: "I don't agree with your ideas, but I'll give my life so that you may express them". Time ago, I was a vaguely "right-oriented" guy, and got involved in the antiprohibitionist battle, but I also found the battles on abortion and of divorce extremely sensible. You are courageous, whereas the others are not, and for this reason I don't want you to die.

I don't agree on your policies on armament: I think a State must have a defence organ, especially if there are armaments in the rest of the world.

I very much appreciate the transnational choice, which brings together the culture and the milieu of extremely different people, demolishing cultural, economic and political barriers.

I also believe it is necessary to make people become conscious of the small crimes they commit every day out of unawareness or indifference: unauthorized placarding is an example of this culture of common crime".

ROBERTO CEROFOLINI, 40 years old, trade unionist, communist. Joined the radical party for the first time in 1990.

"I became secretary of the Communist Party's Youth Federation when I was still very young. Then I became corporate, provincial and regional secretary of the CISL (1), and for some time I worked on the national contract of the category I was working for.

Now, here I am, without having in the least changed my communist mentality; rather, the radical party is closer to my ideas.

I joined it because the radical party has conducted just battles, and I appreciate the things it does and have a good opinion of the persons who are part of it. It is a combative party, that corresponds to my personality: I always liked fighting and I always got into trouble for this reason. I don't know when I will start militating in the party. For the moment, my computer is at your disposition. Come and visit me."

ANNABELLA GUARALDI, 46 years old, translator, astrologer. Member of the radical party for 1990.

"I "almost always" joined the radical party, and joined for the first time when it wasn't even running at the elections. I was part of a movement federate to the radical Party, called Carm (2), for the abolition of mental hospitals. The interest for the radical party is connected, through the years, to an ideal I have always advocated: antiprohibitionism. The Carm ended ingloriously: it ended with a compromise: this is why we should always look after things, otherwise in time they change. This is a risk involved also in antiprohibitionism on drugs, because the depreciation of a culture is always looming.

When one has the courage to state that one lives on "consent" only, and has the guts the take this road instead of accepting prebends, then one is truly a party. So let us not despair, because the road is difficult and tiring, and crosses not only Italy but the whole of Europe."

ALFREDO COLANDREA, 30 years old, geometer, architecture student.

Joined the radical party for the first time.

"I was a member of the socialist party until last year, as an act of faith that one accomplishes at least once in a lifetime. But now I feel I have nothing in common with this socialist party, which expresses no policy that can be called socialist. I'm talking both about their national policy - whose choices I do not share - and of the organization of the territory in which the party organizes itself in components whose only goal is to "grab" centres of power. Then there is also the problem of dogmatic politics, without a dialogue and with the prohibition to think. I am a convinced antiprohibitionist, not only as far as drugs are concerned, and I believe that repression leads nowhere. I conducted the campaign for Rome, and rediscovered the pleasure of political action: to dialogue - without at all costs wanting to grab positions of power - to achieve democracy and the freedom of all people.

The transpartisan and transnational choices of the radical party are correct and are a sign of strength, not of weakness. For these reasons I joined the party, also on the basis of the battles that the radical party conducted against massive starvation; I really hope our choices are not premature."

FRANCO PIRONE, 39 years old, sales representative. Joined the radical party for the first time.

"I decided to join the radical party reaching this decision day by day. As the national political situation got worse, I felt the need to be closer to the radical party, which deeply resembles my attitude.

I often saw Marco Pannella on screen, in the programs of Teleroma 56, and I thought he was a person who tries to conduct important battles and who for this reason is always neglected, boycotted and insulted, both by the Parliament and by the media.

I share the prohibitionist battle with much conviction, because I think it will yield positive results in time, if we will have the strength to persevere."

Translator's notes

(1) CISL: trade union established in 1950 by Christian Democrat unionists.

(2) Carm: Collective for the Abolition of Mental Hospital Regulations.