CHAPTER VI

THE RADICALS IN PARLIAMENT

ABSTRACT: Paragraph 1. In the name of the rules: the behaviours, the struggles and the results obtained by the radical deputies elected in the 7th, 8th and 9th legislature; enhancement of the chief characteristics of the radical initiative aimed at restoring the prerogatives, functions and values of Parliament, releasing it from the suffocating grip of the parties and groups joined together by the tightest form of consociation. The initiative was carried out especially during the 7th legislature, with an accent on the procedures and rules rather than on the legislative work strictly speaking; analysis of the relations with the P.S.I. and P.C.I.; the question of the relation between parliamentary group and party: the schism of 1982, and the "code of behaviour" adopted during the 9th legislature.

(Lorenza Ponzone, IL PARTITO RADICALE NELLA POLITICA ITALIANA, 1962-1989, Schena editore, gennaio 1993)

1. In the name of the regulations

The radical party wanted to bring its difference into Parliament as well as into the country, as it had been doing throughout the two decades of its history.

As we saw, while preparing to enter Parliament the radicals were still discussing the nature of the organization they belonged to, and trying to decide whether it was a party or a movement. They preferred to identify themselves as a party, and they had in fact assumed the shape of a party, but a different party, a party in progress, and above all a receptacle of the most different demands coming from the base and aimed to the creation of a socialist libertarian society. The radicals wanted to turn Parliament into the theatre of a real conflict among the political forces, a continuation of the civil rights campaigns rather than continue to perceive it as the place where the agreements and compromises that inevitably intervene among the political and social forces were reached.

Thus, they attempted to use the parliamentary institution in such a way that they could not only carry out an opposition on principles, but also specific planning campaigns (274).

Nonetheless, the way the parliamentary activity was organized, with the fragmentation into various committees, did not allow the four-member radical group to actively participate in the political confrontation with the other groups. The radicals were in practice forced to carry out "raids" from one committee to the other. In other words, they had to devise special techniques in order to participate, all together, in the proceedings of the commissions any time bills on "radical" subjects, such as the one on the regulation of abortion, were on the agenda.

The radicals' opposition to the fragmentation of the Chamber into sectorial activities also reflected a precise political scheme. The radicals believed a clear-cut opposition between conservative and progressivist forces was possible only on civil rights. Compromises on such issues were hardly imaginable, therefore the theatres of mediation, i.e. parliamentary assemblies, in contrast to the commissions, were to be the theatres of the real "clash". Hence Pannella's controversy on the assembly's recovery of its sovereignty. Pannella called for more space for the radical dissent which, being the expression of a minority, could fruitfully express itself only in plenary sessions where it could attract the consent of the parties of the left on issues pertaining to civil rights.

The Radical Party's method in Parliament was expressed through collateral proceedings on issues that were only apparently of secondary importance. For instance, the question of the assignment of the benches. The radicals had asked to sit to the left of the communists. The communists perceived this request as a provocation directed at the representatives of the PCI. The truth was that the reason for the radical protest was far more serious, and was part of its attempt to defend the sovereignty of the assembly. The distribution of the seats had been decided by an internal body, the quaestors, and therefore had been subtracted to the decision of the assembly.

Another aspect of the parliamentary activity which the radicals strongly challenged was the organization of business through groups, the apportionment of the time, the functions and responsibilities, with the consequent diminution of the role of the single deputy.

The radical group also denounced the praxis whereby it was possible to hold simultaneous sessions of the assembly and of the commissions. The radical party's entire action in Parliament aimed at reconsidering the assembly as the theatre of political debate; and it could not have been otherwise if we reflect on the meaning of the interventions in the country. Hence the radicals' position against the government's reluctance to answer interpellations and interrogations, thus violating the assembly's faculties of control on the executive.

The political circumstance - the government of national solidarity - was in itself hostile to minorities, which had remained excluded from the debate by a vast coalition between the largest political parties. In this context, the radicals appeared to be a minority among the minorities, in that they had been excluded from any negotiation; it was thus imperative for them to find a role for themselves in order to avoid being crushed between hegemonic forces, D.C. and P.C.I., that had coalesced. It was a role that they could carry out only in the legislative assembly, acting on the political conscience of the left-wing deputies to obtain consent on the civil rights projects. With this strategy the radicals wanted to restore deputies' original representative function, which was guarantied by art. 67 of the Constitution.

The radical controversy against the reduced role of the parliamentary assembly did yield some results, but was unable to dent the consolidated system of deciding and negotiating outside the assembly itself. "As in an assembly line", the parties of the majority "dictated themes, procedures and steps to a thousand sham-deputies", wrote Pannella in relation to the conflict in Parliament between the radical group, the majority and the "passive" minorities (275). The radicals wanted to denounce this situation: they had realized that the interpretation of the parliamentary was in keeping with the attitude of the government parties towards their representatives in the Chambers, who had been deprived of their original and sovereign function.

The radicals claimed that according to the praxis, deputies were not allowed to intervene, not even for procedural remarks, to recall the regulations. The situation was such that the President of the Assembly had the faculty of denying the floor to a deputy and hearing his motivation.

At this point an analysis of the link between parliamentary rules and politics is necessary, and we must rely on the sources that regulate Parliament. These sources are jurisprudential, i.e. the president's circular letters and the interpretative opinions of the committees for the regulation, but above all non-written sources which are absent in every other sector of the juridical rules (276). At this point of intersection between written and non-written rules, the need for a greater smoothness in behaviour combines with the necessary stability of agreement on the rules.

It was precisely this balance that the radicals tried to upset: they wanted to challenge the non-written rules that formed the parliamentary praxis, customs and habits, and stress the superiority of written sources, i.e. the regulations; these were a stable source, not liable to be manipulated by the majorities to the detriment of the minorities, despite the risk of creating a certain rigidity in behaviour.

The radicals' action in Parliament was justified in two ways. On the one hand they wanted to restore formal legality in the assemblies, by respecting the written rules; on the other hand they wanted to exploit the resources of the rules (160 interventions in Parliament on matters pertaining to the rules) to the last drop, but ultimately with a view to defending Parliament from all of the extra-parliamentary decisions of the parties of the then ruling six-party coalition.

Approved in 1971 in consideration of a future convergence between the DC and the PCI, the regulation provided ample space for obstructionism, especially at the Chamber, since it was based on the unanimity of the administration of the proceedings.

Basically it was founded on the assumption that there was no opposition. It endowed the presidents of the parliamentary groups with the faculty of starting and planning business; these were rules that were strongly based on the concept of "group", as the radicals pointed out. And this reduced each parliamentarian's independence. In other words, with the excuse of guaranteeing everyone, and the "centrality" of Parliament, the aim was to achieve a form of unanimous co-management of the power on the part of the parties. The radicals questioned the validity of the consociate system; and apart from this they maintained that Parliament did not function in any case, and that above all it had been deprived of its powers from the party secretariats.

Even if it disposed of a large majority, the government was forced to resort to emergency decrees, and even draft bills were blocked for months when there was no agreement between the parties of the heterogeneous government majority. The radicals' parliamentary action was carried out consistently with what had been established by the statute of the radical party, which was approved in 1967.

Article five, comma 2, envisioned, with reference to the elected representatives with lists of the party in local, provincial and regional elections, that "the elected representatives, in pursuance of their representative activity, are not bound by mandates or any discipline" and are left freedom of vote also with respect to the deliberations of the parliamentary groups. It was a formula studied to shelve party discipline and the excessive power of the apparatus, in contrast to the consolidated rule of subordinating the parliamentary group to the party.

The radicals' approach wanted to break the links between parliamentary elites and party elites, and thus bring about a dialectic relation between party and Parliament. Part of this approach was the principle of rotation of the parliamentary mandate, announced by the radicals at the beginning of the legislature, and carried out at the end of 1978 (277); and that of the incompatibility between parliamentary mandate and party positions.

The radicals asked to be enrolled in the parliamentary group of the PSI, but the request was dropped precisely because of the anti-apparatus positions the radicals had declared to want to maintain and in fact translate into draft bills establishing those incompatibilities of positions at the Chamber and in the Party. However, the point of greatest contrast between radicals and socialists lay in the radical party's firm and inflexible request of freeing the single deputies from the discipline of the relative groups.

The PSI opposed this because obviously accepting it would have meant undermining the relation between party and apparatus and its parliamentary expression.

In the face of the socialist refusal, the radicals established a "parliamentary collective" formed by their deputies and the first of the non-elected. To set a greater distance between party and deputies, the radical parliamentary group could not participate, de jure, in the Federal Council; in contrast, normally the secretary, the treasurer and the president of the Federal Council could intervene in the seminars of the Group. However, in 1978 the Bologna Congress approved the establishment of a "consultive committee" formed by the former secretaries of the party and the parliamentarians, whose purpose was to coordinate the party and the parliamentary group and avoid possible divisions.

The relation between parliamentary group and party during the 7th legislature was rather balanced and based on mutual support. At the beginning of the legislature, the radical deputies presented a number of draft bills relative to subjects for which they had already been campaigning in the country for many years.

The radical "patrol" had to face the opposition of the vastest majority in the parliamentary history of Italy. And as we said in the previous pages, the radical deputies operated in Parliament in a different and alternative way. They practiced obstructionism, referring constantly to the rules (278), and they insisted on the "primacy" of the assemblies to sink a series of legislative initiatives of the six-party coalition, which they considered illiberal, such as the "Reale-bis". The first bill introduced by the radical deputies was the one on abortion. A series of bills were also introduced on subjects pertaining to parliamentary immunity, shifting of the trials on the part of the Cassation (Valpreda case), protection of linguistic minorities, reform and demilitarization of the police forces, adjustment of the age to vote at the Senate, of the necessary quorum for Parliament to indict ministers in the common sessions, the principles of military discipline and of the military penal code, and other minor ones.

The radicals' activity in the 7th legislature, in the legislative promotion, surpassed the average of the other groups, and the radical deputies were more zealous in the parliamentary activity than any other group. They were the ones that most interevened and also listened to their antagonists (a thing normally considered useless). Moreover, the radical group did not neglect the deputies' other institutional task, i.e. the activity of "board of inspection" (interrogations, interpellations) and of "address" (resolutions, recommendations). Following is an account of these last two activities. During this legislature, the radical deputies introduced 19 motions, 73 interpellations, 256 interrogations with written reply (279).

During the tragic days following the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the radicals refused to accept the "ritual of consent" and the fact of giving up any discussion, in the name, they argued, of the "rhetoric of the sacred union" (280).

To oppose the bills passed with the purpose of avoiding the referendums on abortion and mental hospitals, the radicals operated with various interventions, prejudicials and amendments. Nonetheless, the majority underlying the Andreotti cabinet, despite the radical obstructionism, managed to pass the law on mental hospitals, on the committee of inquiry, on abortion, which prevented the three referendums on the same subjects introduced by the radical party.

The radicals particularly opposed the bill on abortion because it did not provide for the complete depenalization of abortion which the radicals and the various leagues, the MLD and the CISA, had advocated (281). The bill thwarted the radicals' hunger strikes, their civil disobedience, the arrest of Spadaccia, Bonino, Adele Faccio, Giorgio Conciani and the dozens more militants and the assistance lent throughout Italy to thousands of women. Their obstructionism carried out in the committee against the law that replaced the "Reale-bis" and prevented the referendum was instead successful. Many amendments were introduced, with dozens of interventions in the Justice Committee, until it became clear that the bill would not have been voted before the referendum.

Generally speaking, the radicals' presence in Parliament on the one hand caused irritation because it upset deep-seated habits, but it also obtained the consent and approval of many "loose" deputies who realized that their work was thus being improved. Also, during secret ballot, it was not infrequent for deputies to vote the prejudicials, amendments and proposals advanced by the radicals, contravening their parties' indication.

The radical party in other words revalued the parliamentary institution, and those who were more respectful of the Constitution appreciated this.

Moreover, the radical parliamentarians proved not only attentive towards civil rights issues. They also played a significant role on matters such as nuclear energy, and participated actively in the debates on the budgets, the fiscal measures, controlled rent and a variety of other economic, financial and social issues.

But despite this sometimes frenzy activity, the radical group had to face a political problem: breaking the isolation of the radical party caused by its refusal to participate in consociate and "partitionining" democracy, as Pannella named it. In practice, it paid the price of being marginalized to the left. Also, the Chamber did not respond to the radicals' demands on urgent matters such as, for instance, the prison situation.

This refusal obviously shifted the axis of the radical initiative and praxis outside of Parliament. The radicals thus resumed their traditional direct actions, such as hunger strikes (282). The "parliamentary collective" itself refused to consider itself part of the institution and preferred to assume the role of counter-part.

With the usual mobilization, and by resorting to various direct actions, the radicals wanted to prove that in no case were they willing to accept any form of institutional pressure and to lose their identity as an active minority which expressed itself first and foremost at the grass-roots level. In this same context we should judge the return to the referendum strategy as a fact of grass-roots aggregation of the left-wing forces that believed in an alternative, in view of creating a socialist and libertarian society. During the 8th legislature, 18 radical MPs and 2 senators were elected. Their first concern, considering the size of the group, was avoiding to take up the praxis of other traditional groups. In the meanwhile, the radicals were first in terms of number of interventions (in the first fifteen months alone, a total of some 900 interventions in Parliament); moreover, the political situation had changed: the end of the government of national solidarity could have opened up new spaces for the radical

presence in Parliament.

However, the radicals' relationship with the P.C.I. and the P.S.I. remained highly tense, as we will see later on. In fact it worsened with Craxi, who tried to rid himself of a dangerous antagonist that could have subtracted votes in the socialist area. The radical party's isolation was therefore very strong, both in Parliament and in the country. The radicals' strategy of aggregating left-wing forces for an alternative therefore did not seem feasible. In 1979 the radical party embarked on a campaign to fight world hunger, a subject that did not receive the support of the left-wing parties (particularly the P.C.I.) as such, but was supported to various degrees by the public opinion or by "loose" parliamentarians.

It was a cross-subject like civil rights, but not one liable to create a right/left division. The radical party carried out the struggle in the country with frequent hunger strikes. At the same time in Parliament the two radical senators managed to obtain the necessary signatures.

At any rate, the radicals continued their battle for parliamentary fairplay. During the 8th legislature the problem of the crisis of the institutions, of the necessary institutional reforms and the problem of the "governability", ceased to be a radical monopoly and became a common problem.

The radicals identified the critical point in the weakness of the executive with respect to Parliament. The latter, in order to carry out the program, was forced to resort to law-decrees. The radicals had already stressed this point during the previous legislature. In order to make the system smoother, the radicals believed simple modifications of the parliamentary rules and of the Constitution, as advocated by many parts, would have been insufficient.

It took more than that to improve the relation between a majority that governs effectively and a true and inflexible opposition, since the problem lay with the bureaucracy: the parties did not form clear-cut majorities and minorities. Opposite roles were often confused and mixed up, creating a situation of confusion and chaos.

Thus, a government alternation would have been necessary to ensure a proper functioning of the institutions. This alternation would have allowed a change in the leading class. But what was the means that could allow for this alternative? First of all: a coalition of the parties of the left. Second: the actual respect of the rules of the parliamentary activity.

To fulfil this political-institutional scheme, Pannella suggested to adopt an "institutional covenant to enhance the key mechanisms of the life of Parliament and of the government". In practice, the covenant suggested by the radical leader consisted in a precise commitment of the opposition to discuss the government bills and parliamentary bills within the scheduled time. For its part, the government was to respect the oppositions' right to have their bills voted or rejected. To make this covenant work it would have been necessary to use the available rules, i.e. the planning of the proceedings.

However, the proposal was dropped. In 1981 a reform of the regulation of the Chamber of Deputies was passed, which restricted the times of speech of parliamentarians and confined unanimous planning within the conference of group chairmen. On the basis of these reforms, a vast convergence was achieved, also on the part of the communists, despite the fact that they limited the opposition, without (as the radicals remarked) tackling the government problems or planning new means of address and control (the radicals suggested to adopt the British "question time" to solve the problem of the government's reply to the inspective board). The reforms, the first of a long series that made the rules more stringent, against which the radicals introduced as many as 50,000 amendments, were adopted with the purpose of beating the obstructionism of the radicals, considered to be sabotaging the institutions.

In early 1980 the radical parliamentarians had explained an all-out obstructionism with long speeches, to oppose the conversion of the anti-terrorism law-decree into a law. This went under the name of "Cossiga decree". On that occasion the radicals were clearly opposed to the P.C.I. and the P.S.I., which were induced to give a vote of "technical" confidence to the government, since this had asked for a vote of confidence on the decree (which even the opposition agreed on) in order to override the radical amendments and thus defeat obstructionism.

The radical party justified its intense use of obstructionism with the lack of correct information on the parliamentary activity. The aim was drawing the attention of the public opinion on the choices made by the majority and on the proposals advanced by the oppositions. This choice further contributed to enhancing the conflict with the parties of the left, also on procedural issues.

In 1982 a part of the radical parliamentary group merged into the mixed group and thus came closer to the P.S.I. (Aiello, Boato, Pinto, De Cataldo, Rippa). Marisa Galli joined the independent left and Pio Baldelli the mixed group. At the European Parliament, M.A. Macciocchi passed to the socialist group. The radicals were increasingly isolated also in Parliament.

The stringent rules the radicals had established (rotation and incompatibility between party positions and parliamentary activity) were not always heeded. Marco Pannella, for instance, who was elected secretary in November 1981, did not resign as member of the European Parliament.

The relationship with the party was ever more problematic compared to the previous legislature, also because especially after the referendum of 1981, as we shall see further on, the radical party seemed rather lost and in search of a new identity.

During the 9th legislature, the radicals continued the battle against the praxes which they judged to be the instrument of party power in Parliament. At first the Office of the Presidency of the Chamber denied the radical party (as well as D.P. and the P.L.I.) the authorization to form a parliamentary group. Such authorization was granted only after the passage of changes in the rules that restricted the powers of the group presidents.

The radicals established a "code of behaviour" which envisioned, among other things, that the radicals could refuse to introduce bills, interpellations and interrogations and not participate in the votings both in Parliament and in the committees, and participate instead in the general debates in Parliament and in the committees in order to notify the radical party's position on each bill. The reason for this behaviour lay in the fact that the radical parliamentarians considered themselves and therefore behaved like simple militants of their party within the institutions, and refused the party system that prevented Parliament from expressing its sovereignty. In other words, they wanted to make public what was taking place in Parliament, refusing however to endorse, with their presence, moments in which "party power wanted to embellish itself with the prestige of carrying out rites and prescriptions of the constitution and of parliamentary and political democracy".

The code of behaviour was the reason for a sensational act which raised a series of controversies. When the Chamber of Deputies was asked authorization to proceed to the arrest of the radical deputy Toni Negri, the communist group proposed a suspension that would have postponed the discussion. When the communist proposal reached Parliament and was to be discussed, the radical group refused to participate in the vote. The proposal was blocked by a handful of votes, and the Chamber subsequently voted the authorization to carry out the arrest. In the meanwhile Toni Negri had fled to France. There were controversies also within the party and the parliamentary group itself on whether or not to participate in the vote, but the code of behaviour remained in effect throughout the legislature.

NOTES

(274) For a reconstruction of the basics of the radical method in Parliament, see ERNESTO BETTINELLI, »Quattro radicali a Montecitorio: primo bilancio di una stagione parlamentare per la risoluzione democratica, "Argomenti Radicali", n. 1, April-May 1977, p. 114.

(275) MARCO PANNELLA, »Quell'esarchia extra-parlamentare in "Prova radicale", Year I, July-August 1976.

(276) Cf. A. MANZELLA, »Il Parlamento , AA.VV. "Manuale di Diritto Pubblico", Il Mulino, Bologna, 1989, pag. 416.

(277) The four deputies elected in '75 were: Bonino, Faccio, Pannella, Mellini, replaced in '78 by: M. Galli, F. De Cataldo, R. Cicciomessere; P. Vigevano was supposed to replace M. Mellini, but the preschedule end of the legislature prevented it.

(278) The radical parliamentary group organized a convention on parliamentary rules: the papers of the convention are in »Il Parlamento nella Costituzione e nella realtà , Giuffré, Milano, 1979.

(279) Cf. »L'opposizione , "Notizie radicali", n. 74, 15 May 1979.

(280) "N.R.", n. 74, ibidem.

(281) Cf. »La battaglia sull'aborto , published by the radical parliamentary group, Rome, 1977, with the texts of the bill passed by the Chamber of Deputies, the parliamentary debate, the declarations of vote of the radical deputies and the RP's draft bill.

(282) In 1977 the leaders of the RP carried out a long hunger strike together with the parliamentary group to obtain the reform of the prison system - Cf. press release by MARCO PANNELLA on "Notizie radicali", N. 4, 8 February 1977.