ABSTRACT: The radical party's congress will take place in the days of Sarajevo and of Somalia, and of the end of the Italian postwar political regime. What are the radicals' credentials to confront this situation? And with what means? Former Yugoslavia - We suggested three things to Amato (3): recognition of Macedonia, creation of a diplomatic representation of Kosovo in Rome, international court on crimes of war. Pacifism - Pacifism's interpretation of the events is one-sided: during the catastrophes and monstrosities of this century, it has played a tragic role to the advantage of the dictators and to the detriment of the oppressed. Trying the establishment - In August 1974, I asked for a "penal, not a moral trial" against the political establishment. Pasolini was enthusiastic about the idea and relaunched it.

We have been above all a party of grandmothers. Why not thing of innocence as wisdom, as something to be acquired throughout a lifetime, rather than as an original quality?

(THE PARTY new, issue N. 1 of 20 January 1993)

SARAJEVO

SOFRI - The Radical Party and yourself have taken steps very early on the issue of Yugoslavia. You foresaw the destruction of the unity before anyone else, and have tried to adjust your action to that earthquake. You have warned Europe to play its role until there was time to do so. At this very moment, Sarajevo is besieged and famished, and we hope its mayor will come inaugurate the congress of the Radical Party in Rome on 4 February.

PANNELLA - I suggested Amato to do three things, in his autonomous responsibility, informing Scalfaro (not others) first if he deemed it appropriate. The first things is to recognize Macedonia. In a situation in which there is an assailant and an assailed part, one should assist the aggressed part, help it, arm it; but above all, one can and must attack and disarm the aggressor. Greece will protest, there will be sour feelings, but the result will be a final and stabilizing act. Italy, for its part, could use its good offices to encourage talks between the Greeks and the Macedonians. In any case, it would be a tardy action, if it is true that the UN Security Council itself has voted, albeit with a small majority; and it seems there will be no vetoes. The second proposal is to recognize a representative in Rome of the delegates of Kosovo (who have been elected and then deprived of all authority), with exactly the same rights and dignity as the representative of the PLO, thus infringing the taboo of the "provi

nce of Serbia". The third proposal is for the Italian government to pledge to introduce a research and a proposal made by its own jurists within twenty days or one month, to the UN, the EEC, the CSCE and the Council of Europe, in order to start organizing the trials for the crimes of war committed in the former Yugoslavia. This would represent the first, formal relinquishment of the policy of the pact of Münich in the thirties, the strongest assertion of European identity, and a concrete contribution to the reform of the UN.

DISARMING THE AGGRESSOR

SOFRI - At the conference held in Sanremo between pacifists of the former Yugoslavia and Europeans, the militants of the Belgrade anti-war Centre themselves advocated the formation of an international court under the aegis of the UN and of the CSCE. Unlike Nürnberg, such body could become a permanent court against crimes of war. In the meanwhile, even a single country such as Italy, could decide to prepare and anticipate its functions by opening a register of charges and testimonies.

The war in the former Yugoslavia has highlighted a divergence with the pacifist organizations, despite the fact that the latter have advanced more flexible positions, and a determination to confront the concrete situations. Isn't this a pity?

PANNELLA - We are at the end of a century, a time in which one takes stock of everything. One person who is as old as the century is Karl Popper, whose major work, "Open society and its enemies", remained deliberately unpublished for almost half a century, until 1974, when it was published by Armando.

Five years ago, I had read the apology of the Anglo-saxon single ballot uninominal system. Recently, thanks to the book-interview written by the vice editor of L'Unità, Giancarlo Bosetti, I discovered that this ultra-liberal is also a passionate scholar of nonviolence and Gandhi. On the other hand, I remember my bewilderment when Ralph Dahrendorf (4) candidly confessed he had never thought there was a distinction between nonviolence and pacifism. Pacifism interprets events in a one-sided way, and the consequence of this is during the catastrophes, the monstrosities of this century, it has played a tragic role in favour of the dictators and to the detriment of the oppressed, to the advantage of the militarist totalitarian states and to the detriment of the democracies that needed to be rearmed; is has represented an important psychological factor of the policy of Münich, and of the aversion for the Western world. It has brought about Messianic and irenic attitudes; Gandhi was something totally different. In o

ne of your brother's works I found Gandhi's statement that violence for a just cause is better than the coward endorsement of injustice. During the Gulf War, some of us said (only once the operation had started) we didn't consider Italy's participation as a negative fact. We said nothing more.

It seems to me that Yugoslavia and the Middle East are proving that the worst problems are brought about by the inadequacy of the military means, whose technological sophistication makes it no less coarsely one-sided, but which is nonetheless still considered to be the only possible means. All the more so when it comes to combining the schematic nature of a military plan with the mountains of Bosnia or Montenegro, rather than with the deserts of Somalia. Like Bruno Zevi never stops repeating, our society has preferred complexity to linearity. Military options, on the other hand, always remain an excess of zeal of linearity. The force of the weapons, their presumed "intelligence", are too tight a needle's eye to contain the problems of the world. If weapons prevailed on truth - information, education, culture - at the end of the century the spectres of today would be indomitable antagonists.

The right to interfere, an issue which is now becoming the object of discussions, has been the linchpin of our action for years. The duty to interfere had already been theorized in the Nobel laureates' appeal of 1981.

PACIFISM AND NONVIOLENCE

SOFRI - I have also read the passage mentioned by my brother, where Gandhi deplored nonviolence as a result of cowardice. However, resorting one-sidedly to Gandhi is impossible. Some pacifists asked him to explain the circumstances in which he endorsed the participation in the war - in the Anglo-Boer war, or the war against the Zulus, or the Indian intervention with the British army in '14-'15. According to his most faithful biographers, the actual choice in favour of a rigorous, absolute pacifism - according to Gandhi, nonviolence meant extending nonviolence to international relations - was made only in '35-'36. It would be impossible to make a direct use of the Gandhi who said Europe has sold its soul for a piece of bread, or of the Gandhi who took a position vis-à-vis Nazism and World War II. I believe the distinction between pacifism and nonviolence was made after that, and pertains to pacifism as an ideological movement, or as an appendix of political fronts. As far as Bosnia is concerned today, while t

here are positions of principle that rule out any form of military intervention - such as the "Merry constructors of peace", who recently made a commendable pilgrimage to Sarajevo - there is a far more widespread, though not always declared, willingness to face the problem of the concrete conditions of a use of force, and on who should use it, with what means and with what risks, and so on. The possibility of an international intervention to open gateways of access and exit from Sarajevo; or to destroy airports, heavy armaments facilities, and the supply and communication lines whence the attacks and the bombings against the civilians come from; all this is far but rejected by most of the European "pacifists". Perhaps it would be better to aim to a wider and more productive confrontation of concrete initiatives. You were among the first, if not the very first, to go to Yugoslavia, and now you can count on an important credit on the part of Muslim exponents. In fact, I noticed that, globally speaking, about 2

0% of the non-Italian members of the radical party are Muslims: a proportion which is in itself considerable, especially for a political formation that accepts no compromises on the confusion of anti-Zionism.

PANNELLA - We have been going to Yugoslavia every year as of 1979; there I used to meet the Slovenes, the Croats. The Radical Party was the first which the Yugoslavs could join during the monopoly of the League of Communists: and 5-600,000 people joined it. When the Slovenes and Croats expressed the desire for independence no longer in a federation, but in a Confederation associated to the EEC, and when De Michelis (5) and the EEC replied with a point-blank no, we said this was a mistake. We said in the meanwhile it was necessary to give full recognition to those republics that guaranties civil and human rights. We were not allowed to hold our congress in Zagreb - in part this was a good thing, as we then held it in Budapest. In 1988, the young socialists of Slovenia hosted our Federal Council in public structures, in open conflict with Belgrade's ban. At the time I was the only foreign politician in Ljubljana that was being bombed. In Zagreb, the prime minister Greguric and the vice president Tomac publicl

y joined the party, and so did 4 ministers and 40 members of Parliament. All this was decisive when it came to forcing Tudjman to decide against the ustashas and the extreme right. We had gone on a hunger strike for them, we had been the only friends they could count on in Europe: and there were moments in which the most reasonable of them warned that making the most brutal choices would have meant breaking up with us. The same occurred during the extremely delicate moment of the negotiations with Serbia to carve up the whole of Yugoslavia. Now those friends of ours have been defeated, but fortunately too late to go back. There was my name on the Croatian uniform I was wearing: the wife of the commander of the Croatian armed forces had embroidered it. Some, after a lifetime spent in Belgrade, were already saying: it will be worse than in '44-'46, they'll butcher each other.

SOFRI - Nonetheless, there is the risk that the conference of Geneva will end up in the worst of ways, not very differently from the conference of Münich in 1938, with an international authorization to punish the Bosnians who refuse to adapt to the ethnic partition. And there is the risk that the agreement between Croatia and Serbia will ultimately damage Bosnia.

PANNELLA - The Geneva conference is a good thing, it is a place to talk also, and especially, with the murderers; but these murderers should know that the trial in which they will be prosecuted for what they have done and will do is already being prepared. But even the plan developed by Owen and Vance in Geneva, the plan of the 10 provinces, is murderous. In practice, it wants to reduce the territory occupied by the Serbs from 70% to 40-45%. Ethnic coexistence was the rule in those territories until very recently. We have long been insisting on the need for an accurate population survey of the refugees, with the indication of the places of origin and the minorities they belong to, in order to reconstruct their personal history in view of their return.

TRYING THE ESTABLISHMENT

SOFRI - The stubbornness with which you used to spend the month of August in town, because - as you claimed - it was easier to gain space in the media during the holidays, is a legend. This was how you managed to have a small article published on Il Corriere della Sera in mid August 1974, in which you advocated a "penal, not a moral trial" against the political establishment. A few days later, Pier Paolo Pasolini enthusiastically relaunched the idea, which received front-page coverage. Twenty years have gone by, and now the political establishment is being penally tried: how similar and how different is it from the then prophecy-anathema?

PANNELLA - Actually I had forgotten I had suggested such an essential thing: my memory begins to fail occasionally. The censorship and oblivion of the people cause your image to detach itself from your real identity, and this is terrible.

The penal trial is under way, in fact it has just started, if you consider the theft of legality more than the theft of money. There is a non-respect of the rules which is the instinctive, natural, rather than deliberate result of a habit, of a mentality and culture which assimilates the exponents of the media with the political class. This culture and its subspecies ignore the rule of law; likewise, it ignores more than deliberately offends the liberal principles. It perceives them on the one hand as an abstract and useless notion, on the other hand as a practical obstacle: it labels it as excessive concern for the defence of civil rights, and it is in a hurry to get rid of them.

It is a good thing to prosecute people for the thefts committed, but it is urgent to reinstate (or establish) the rule of not stealing, the rule of creating and adding, rather than stealing. Also for this reason the first charge to be questioned should be that of criminal association. Many judges, and a vast number of journalists focus only on private forms of dishonesty; the omission of the crime of association reduces political decisions which on the contrary bring about endless dishonesties, even in honest people, as a sum of private dishonesties. It is an essentially omissive choice that pertains to the judiciary policy: it controls the men it fights against or the establishment they belong to, with mechanisms of destruction-replacement of the opponent. I sense a number of high magistrates will soon be called to administer the common welfare as former judges. It is a paradox, but a phenomenon similar to the populist role of the military in Latin America or generally in the Third World - which causes thos

e regimes to pass from a situation of fictitious and corrupted democracy to national salvation juntas - could well take place in this country in this shape.

At the "trial" which I had first advocated in 1974, and which Pasolini later asked masterfully, there was no trace of any desire for summary justice. Year after year, we worked hard to prepare that trial, with concrete and ritual acts. There is the risk that this too will be forgotten. Like in 1983, after the electoral campaign, when we said "don't vote for us", because the whole thing is a swindle, because it is impossible to judge without any knowledge; we participated in the election simply to denounce it - on the day of the inauguration of the legislature we weren't there, as we were operating throughout the entire country, submitting and illustrating formal charges of attempt against the Constitution and seizure of legality on the part of the establishment.

And didn't the issues submitted to the Constitutional Court (which is too often reduced to a special court for the defence of the regime, rather than of the law) pertain to the "trial", to its preparation? In the aftermath of the trials brought about this way, the Court decided the abolition of the fascist codes under the direction of Branca first and later of Bonifacio. But all the more consistently it then endorsed political conveniences - from the emergencies to the "wave of referendums", the pensions - for which a plausible "economic incompatibility" (the equivalent of the substantiality of the criminal emergencies, etc), replaced the law instead of modifying it or respecting it. This until the referendum on the Senate, that was rejected three years ago: it would have already been possible to vote with the mixed system, 2/3 with the uninominal system and one third with the proportional one - inadequate today, but at the time still capable of being the last act of a non-traumatic collapse of the regime; r

ejected back then on the basis of motivations that were coincidental, it was passed now. Without the decisive vote of Conso, not even the referendum on the single preference vote would have been passed.

A LONG STORY, AND THE INTELLIGENCE WHICH ENSUES FROM IT, VERSUS A DYING ESTABLISHMENT

SOFRI - Therefore, you claim you had the early intuition of the "trial," its methodic "preparation" throughout the years, the primacy of legality. But the real trial has come so late, and following such a flood of "substance", of thefts, such as to override or neglect the rules. Despite the precedents, your positions might appear suspect of a posthumous sympathy toward the old regime. And the old regime might be tempted to offer you, to place in you clean hands, the role of a sort of global honorary secretary so that you might use it to contain the damage if not to guarantee its preservation. On the other hand, while the new political formations go straight to the point as far as ideas and words are concerned, aren't you, the creator of extreme formulas - party power, political bunch, and others - and of drastic words, who paved the way for them?

PANNELLA - First of all, I'm far less convinced than you are of the solidity and of the further growth of political formations that have crystalized the psychology of the revolt. A few weeks of proper information would deflate the element of novelty, underlining its inadequacy: these formations are filling the gap created by the absence of dialogue, of struggle. They are creating for themselves an environment that shuns real discussions and debates - they accept attacks, even the most violent ones, but they don't want debates. They need to be alone. They draw comfort from the anathemas and courage from their isolation. The fact that we are in between two coalitions, that we are pulled this way and that way really doesn't strike me as a risk. To start with, remember that this sensation isn't new, nor is it the effect of the years that go by. They accused us of the same thing in '68-'69, when they considered us isolated, and condemned to a role of supporters, or simply naive people who could easily be manipula

ted, until it became clear that we had paved the way for a lot of things: for example, the process that lead to the parliamentary vote on divorce, in 1970, and its confirmation with the referendum, in 1974. Our counter-inauguration of the judicial year - "2 grams of hashish 2 years of prison" - dates back to January 1965. For years every week we collected packs of denunciations for having tried to uphold civil rights, the right to demonstrate, for example. Then came the trials, and each of them marked an achievement: the fact that it was legal for 30 people to walk in a single line; that in order to hold a demonstration there was no need to ask for an authorization, but simply to notify the authorities; and other things. This was our sensational legalitarian provocation: on the Enel, on the justice issue, on Cefis (6), Mattei (7). We always supported our actions with figures: and they were bigger than the current ones of the scandal of the bribes in Milan. In 1963, we were fewer than the monarchists when we

demonstrated to defend their right to demonstrate in front of Montecitorio. Or when the republican party expelled Pacciardi (8), accusing him of being a "fascist", and we pledged to start a hunger strike to uphold his right to speak out for himself, and we filed charges against the conspiracy of silence that was used against him; and God knows we were his opponents! In 1964, when Parliament secretly suppressed the compulsory arrest for the crime of misappropriation, and we protested against the "republic based on misappropriation". Or when, supported only by Umberto Terracini, the only one who voted against the reintroduction of the law on the Association of journalists and on the editors' responsibility, we started a systematic campaign of civil disobedience, Spadaccia, the Rendi brothers (9) and myself. We wrote various flyers, cooperated with "Umanità Nova", of the great Armando Borghi, with Maitan's Trotzkyist "Bandiera Rossa", with Brandirali's first communist flyer, we assumed the editorship of Lotta C

ontinua, with Pasolini (10) and many others. We were accused of not being "serious", of not worrying enough about the farmers and the workers, about the economy....Around us there was an intense activity of enterprises and signatures, from Bordiga to the conscientious objectors. My first article on abortion dates back to January 1968, but I had previously introduced a motion of minority at the radical congress as early as in 1961!

Well, during all this patient and long itinerary, we were mostly "outsiders", a mixed sort of people with no autonomy; for some, we were the representatives of the bourgeois contradictions, therefore potentially the "worst"; for others, we were the accomplices of the communists. We carried on, we reintroduced the glorious name of the Leagues into the realm of politics - a name which had survived weakly only in the League of Cooperatives - we were accused of being drug addicts, weirdos, homosexuals, two or three hundred of us - few, but enough to make it inappropriate to talk generically about the "generation" of 1968: and the school books continue to ignore our activity in '69 and '69 - outside of Parliament, we built the parliamentary process which was later to lead to divorce, with a newspaper such as ABC we managed to get in touch with the masses, our masses, which were made also of people with varicose veins. When Ingrao (11), disbelieving all we were constructing as "suprastructural", and hostile to the

idea that Parliament could accept those issues, one day he saw the Chamber vote, and on the one hand the entire DC and Almirante's MSI, with no absentees, and on the other side all of us, and our victory by six votes, finally admitted he was moved. It was 1967, the MSI and the DC has raised an issue of unconstitutionality to prevent the application of the Fortuna-Baslini bill. Years before winning the referendum we the extraparliamentarians, the referendum organizers, had obtained the majority in that Parliament.

I'm not evoking this story out of prolixity or vanity: simply, all this continues to operate in us. It is as if a combination of what we had foreseen and advocated and of what we had fought gave us insight into the current events and into that which can or cannot be done. This insight - I'm saying it to underline its actual modesty - relates to our life in the same way as "dishonesty" relates to the leading class which is collapsing. The guiltiness of the latter and our undeserved insight translate into an impulse to administer the current events. This pertains to the modesty, to the moderation you were mentioning above as our current evolution, and at the same time with my supposed responsibility in raising the stakes in the game of verbal anathemas. The other day at the Chamber I was listening to a young representative of "La Rete". I heard him shout "THIEVES of justice!" and so on. And I thought back at the scandal when we first pronounced the word 'abortion' on TV. I thought back at the early activity of

Emma Bonino (12) and myself, in 1974: "We abortionists, drug addicts, homosexuals, betrayers of the homeland", and each of those words corresponded to an infamy, a trial, an indignity suffered. The more we had raised people's indignation with those words then, the more the invectives of the young representative of La Rete sounded like the escapade of a schoolboy.

The problem is that of a dying establishment. The totalitarian and bloodthirsty regimes themselves collapse when they become more liberal, when they hope in an evolution, and at that point the mob, which previously accepted everything, revolts violently. Without the responsibility of the ordinary citizens, this mechanism is always ready. This is why I was telling the people in the squares, a few months ago: punish yourselves before punishing your superiors, whom you yourselves elected to be your representatives. There is a subordinated or inner part of the regime that tends to become the heir of that regime, giving it the final blow like in Piazzale Loreto. For years, I talked about a postwar antifascism that was the heir not of antifascism, but of fascism.

THE WEEKS BEFORE US

PANNELLA - The scandal of the bribes in Milan is bound to expand, and frontpage arrests will be covered on the ninth page for reasons of space.

Everything is coming apart. There have been suicides. In this earthquake, harsh social conflicts will break out by March, experienced with great authenticity of sufferance and concern, but with subordinate and inadequate interpretations, with the same culture according to which anticipating the age of retirement to 40, 45 years of age was a major social achievement. It would take a perception of the tragedy - and that is what is missing - to prevent this social tension from leading to a cycle of repression and attacks and to a further embitterment of the situation. The TG3 and its audience, represented by 50% by populace and 50% by a sort of cour des miracles, confronted with the inadequacy of conscience of all the authorities, and with the size of the deficit. A political class dominated by fear cannot cope with it. Orlando openly admits he is afraid of being killed, of dying. But even the entire Parliament is afraid, though it doesn't say so and doesn't face it. There are roughly three types of emerging po

liticians. The first is Segni, a man of a single discipline, an honest person, without any other experience, passion or formation. The second type is represented by the technicians of the government, from the USL to the ministries, who are, for the most part, administrators of the power and of the repressions. The third type is represented by the followers of the single discipline of the denunciation, of the revolt, of the anathema and of the French revolution, even if a purposeless one. At this point, I believe our experience as fosterers of the respect of the law, our attention toward the institutional and juridical government, the experience of the referendum, combined with the awareness of the fact that in itself it is useless, will emerge. The triptych formed by rule of law, nonviolence and referendum, is decisive; and with it the institutions and Parliament. A couple of hundred people, more or less, who have administered little money for major aspirations, who have learned how to use the media, and who

have also accumulated large-scale capacities, some looking elsewhere, some remaining with us. Lately, people tell me something in the form of a joke which is becoming embarrassing: you should be the secretary of the DC, of the PSI, the minister of this or that. If they accepted, instead, to consider Emma Bonino and Marco Taradash (13), Roberto Cicciomessere (14) and Adelaide Aglietta (15), Gianfranco Spadaccia and Giovanni Negri (16)...I'm not talking about the first secretary, Sergio Stanzani (17), the first, with Franco Roccella, whom I met when I was sixteen and a student, and when he was president of the Unuri. And the many who do their share of work elsewhere, such as Rutelli (18), or Corleone among the Greens. Among today's leaders, the "historical" group account only for 6-7%: a temporary but significant symptom of a success.

SENILE EXTREMISM, THE SILENT YOUNG AND THE RADICAL OLD AGE

I come from a period which is too jeopardized to want to give an opinion of the Italian public life. However, I was increasingly impressed by the uncontrollable emergence of a feeling, of a resentment, which I would call senile extremism. It has the drastic nature, the exemplification, the desire to clear out everything, which is proper of extremism - a contagious extension of the spirit of certain elderly taxi drivers, when they say someone should place a bomb in Montecitorio...Unlike the juvenile extremism I was part of, especially in its initial stage, this extremism is closed, void of hope, often vindicative and bitter, more eager to have the petty pleasure of "making them pay for it" (though obviously they deserve it) than to change the world and themselves. This bitter feeling has translated into the formation of new - and in some respects extremely different - political formations, but it has also influenced traditional formations and environments. The deliberate exaggeration of its language has becom

e the predominant tone of the media, even the most conservative ones: it has united a president of the republic with his bitter opponents, journalists with decades of experiences with scholars who were until them isolated. This senile extremism may express itself in a good or bad form - Judge Caponnetto and Professor Miglio - but it is the symptom of a deep common condition, full of consequences. Clearly, it is a reaction and a demonstration of the collapse of the regime. It is also, in my opinion, one of the causes of that scarce visibility of the young, of the fact that they don't speak out, which is wrongly ascribed to the endorsement of values of order and opportunity - as if the primitive opinion polls of the eve of '68 hadn't depicted a generation of students who were all concentrated on school and mass. The concern to offer an impossible (or so I hope) "new '68" to the following generations of youths has also played a role in the isolation of the young - and in the mutual choice made by many brilliant

youths to engage in other activities, as in the voluntary service, which was the most precious quality of the '80s. But senile extremism is invasive, it oppresses and fakes the young people's right to a fresh and radical interpretation of the world, and to a distance from that which the adults have made of it. I'm thinking neither of biological nor sociological rules. I believe the young are confronted with a generation of adults which has been overwhelmed by the idea of getting rich and boasting about it on TV, and pitifully overwhelmed, half an hour later, by notices of investigation and by the loss of their reputation, which is once again the main value in the global village, overshadowing the confrontation with one's conscience, which had been the basis of the morals and of the sense of guilt for a billion and a half years. Adults who kill each other because they can't look at each other in the mirror of the TV screen or of their neighbours; or they don't kill each other, they make the names of their fr

iends and colleagues and relatives, and make a fresh start as TV entertainers. This class of adult and mature men is the object of a bitter attack on the part of old or very old men, with real indignation and demagogic rhetoric, men who are inflexible and ready to describe the world as the most obscure of plots, the most fraudulent of swindles, the most reversible of vulgarities. The young come in numbers or don't, they vote for one or the other, they fill the rooms in which the world is explained to them, they take notes - and they keep quiet. They never come out of the closet. Clearly, nothing is incidental, and no moralism can compensate the profound reasons which make a movement which is fostered more by fiscal hate and a disgusted intolerance for foreigners of any kind than by remote forms of solidarity and adventurous sympathies, explode. Words that are as brutal as stadium slogans, and a more or less imminent promise to authorize them to use violence; this is one of the most consistent offers from the

civil market to the young. In this varied but transversal senile extremism, I see the weakening, if not the elimination altogether, of the generation conflict which, despite its possible excesses, fosters the liveliness of a society; and the young people's subordination, if anything, to a conflict proper of the older generations. In this I see the alarmed reflection of the most marked difference between our years and the end of the '60s, between the arrival of the age of rebellion of the baby boomers and the longevity caused by the fall of the birth rate of our days. Italy, which has reached this mature tendency very late, is witnessing a record of longevity and feverish demonstrations of that change of trend. Our old people - whether they have a power or they cheer it or they question it, or they throw stones at it, even in this respect the age limit has greatly increased - view our young people neither as interesting interlocutors nor as an obscure threat. The young people many of them think of are Albani

ans and non-Europeans, they are Asians and Africans: they belong to the world in which the majority of people is younger than fifteen. The Italian or European match between old and young is over, or suspended, it is subtly and brutally played between our old societies and their young ones. Truly reversed, the '68 that cherished the South, the sun and the Third World, has become a frightened first world, miserable, distant and ready to commit the worst things in the future.

PANNELLA - I have no doubts that there is a peculiarity in the young people's condition, and your way of perceiving it is reasonable. I have always thought and felt differently. I have always believed that the unity between fathers and children, between elective, moral fathers and children, was more interesting than the unity among people of the same age group; that it was more cultural than sociological. A unity built on the emergencies, more lasting than the identity and affirmation of each new generation. When 400,000 people, 400,000 unforeseen "eccentrics" voted for us in 1976, an interview I granted to Lietta Tornabuoni titled "We are above all a party of grandmothers". Of women, of Catholic women, of old women. This has become more and more accurate, as well as true. In so many families, the first member to vote for the radicals was the grandmother. We have always done without a direct evocation of the young, of the condition of the young. Then we realized that among the young who approached the party,

the trust they had in their grandparents had played a major role. Even the contemporary world somehow draws force from the Penates. I feel close to the Old Testament, to the Olympus of Zeus, to the world of the Renaissance. The mystification of youth, the rhetoric of the young child, the confusion between virginity and innocence, the decorative but meaningless putto: I mistrust all this. Why not think of innocence as wisdom, as a force, as something one acquires during a lifetime, rather than as an original quality, a face without history, figures of babies that are good for all the manifestos of the Third World?

I suggested to establish the age of retirement for women seven years after men's. We all agree, in theory, on the right and on the promise of non-work. But in the meanwhile, it is more honest to cherish the resources of old age, officially considered the equivalent of rare treasures. When a deposit of wisdom, of decades of accumulated life, lives in the fear of being abandoned, it is obvious that it becomes nasty, that it doesn't recognize itself. They see an external image which is painfully different from the identity they feel within. We have replaced the right to live with the right to have a home. A wise elderly person should hope to clear that house soon in order to give it to the young. I have just met the president of the international association of Gypsies in Strasbourg. He lives in Berlin, he is a refugee from Serbia, he is a radical member. I talked with him about the right to have a home and to live according to their experience, of the nomad life style and of exile.

In 1968 I said that fast processions prevented the impeded and the old to be part of the procession. Think of your young people, and let me worry about the old age. They are often our poorest and strongest contributors. I would like you to meet Ubaldo Gardi, one of the last knife-grinders of Italy, an eighty-year-old who can afford to eat little and send us his pension.

Translator's notes

(1) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(2) SOFRI ADRIANO. (1942). Leader of the Italian extraparliamentary movement "Lotta Continua". Journalist and writer. Tried and convicted to twenty years of prison as the presumed author of the assassination of police commissioner Calabresi. Lucid and disillusioned memorialist.

(3) GIULIANO AMATO. (Turin 1938). Politician, expert in constitutional law. Extraparliamentary by formation, later joined the Socialist Party. Member of Parliament during several legislatures, under-secretary of the Presidency of the Council during the two Craxi governments. Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Treasury during the first Goria government. Current Prime Minister.

(4) DAHRENDORF RALPH. (1929). German political analyst and philosopher, scholar of modern industrial societies, professor at the London School of Economics. One of the greatest living theorists of liberalism. Very popular in the Left, after the dissolution of Marxism.

(5) DE MICHELIS GIANNI. (Venice 1940). Italian politician. Socialist, former representative of the group of the Left, member of the government as foreign minister. Enjoys great power in Venice, his home city, which he sponsored as seat of an international "Expo". Promoter of the idea of cultural and artistic property as a "mine" to be exploited intensely from an economic standpoint.

(6) CEFIS EUGENIO. (Cividale del Friuli 1921). President of the National Hydrocarbon Corporation (ENI) from 1967 to 1971 and of the Montedison chemical company (1971-77). Promoter of the Italian economic reconstruction, favoured by his policy based on the use of oil and methane, he used ruthless systems of power and corruption to achieve his objectives.

(7) MATTEI ENRICO. (Acqualagna 1906 - Bascapé 1962). President of the ENI (National Hydrocarbon Corporation) as of 1953, he extended its activity, jeopardizing the powers of the so-called "seven sisters", the seven greatest oil companies, trying to establish direct contacts with the oil-producing countries, Iran in particular. He died in a plane crash, the causes of which have remained mysterious. He had reached power by heading Catholic partisan formations during the Resistance, which he then used as a force to maneuvre politically. Those partisan group were the origin of the first nucleuses of "Gladio".

(8) PACCIARDI RANDOLFO. (Giuncarico 1899 - Rome 1991). Italian politician. Member of the Republican Party since his youth, antifascist, among the most prestigious heads of the Italian volunteers on the republican front during the Spanish civil war. Back in Italy, he became secretary of the party from 1946 to 1948. Defence Minister between 1948 and 1953, in 1964 he was replaced by Ugo La Malfa at the head of the party and created the "Movement for the New Republic", which aimed to the institution of a presidential republic in Italy.

(9) RENDI ALOISIO. (1927 - 1979). University professor, writer, translator, among the founders of the radical party, wrote for "Agenzia Radicale", antimilitarist.

RENDI GIULIANO. (1927 - 1979). Brother of the above. Scholar, liberal and then radical militant, essayist. Among the founders of the Radical Party.

(10) PASOLINI PIERPAOLO. (Bologna 1922 - Rome 1975). Italian writer and director. Novels ("Ragazzi di vita", 1955; "Una vita violenta", 1959), verse ("Le ceneri di Gramsci", 1957, etc.), plays, cinema ("Accattone", 1961, "Il Vangelo secondo Matteo", 1964, etc.), but especially powerful polemist and moralist, he denounced the evils of the "bourgeoisie" and severely criticized the Italian Left for its shortcomings. Sympathizer of the Radical Party, on the subject of which he wrote some beautiful pages, the day after his death he was supposed to go to Florence to take part in a congress of the party.

(11) INGRAO PIETRO. (Lenola 1915). For many years chief exponent of the Italian Communist Party. After militating in the fascist university organizations, leader of the party's "Left", open to the so-called "dialogue with the Catholics" and to a grass roots conception of politics, perceived as struggle of the "masses" against capitalist exploitation on a world scale. President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1976 to 1979, at the time of the "compromesso storico" and of "national unity".

(12) BONINO EMMA. (Bra 1948). President of the Radical Party, former member of the European Parliament, as of 1976 member of the Italian Parliament. Among the promoters of the CISA (Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion) and active militant in the campaign against clandestine abortion. She was tried and acquitted in Florence. Participated in the conduction, on a national and international scale, of the campaign on World Hunger. Among the founding members of "Food and Disarmament International", promoted the circulation of the Manifesto of Nobel Laureates.

(13) TARADASH MARCO. (Livorno 1950). Italian journalist. Promoter and leader of the antiprohibitionist movement, secretary of the CORA. Member of the European Parliament.

(14) CICCIOMESSERE ROBERTO. (Bolzano 1948). Radical deputy belonging to the European Federalist Group. Conscientious objector, arrested and convicted; following his initiative, in 1972 this civil right was recognized in Italy. In 1970 treasurer of the Radical party, which he was also secretary of in 1971 and 1984. In 1969 secretary of the LID (Italian League for Divorce), member of the European Parliament from 1984 to 1989. Architect and organizer of "AGORA' telematica", multilingual computer communications system.

(15) AGLIETTA ADELAIDE. (Turin 1940). Currently President of the Green Group at the European Parliament. Former member of the Italian Parliament, Secretary of the radical Party in 1977 and in 1978, year in which she was chosen to be part of the popular jury at the trial in Turin against the Red Brigades and Renato Curcio. Promoter of the Turin-based CISA (Information Centre on Abortion and Sterilization).

(16) NEGRI GIOVANNI. (Turin 1957). Secretary of the Radical Party from 1985 to 1987; in 1986, with the slogan "either you choose it or you dissolve it", he promoted the campaign for the achievement of 10.000 new members. Several times deputy since 1983, and member of the European Parliament. Among the most active supporters of the campaign on world hunger and promoter of initiatives for the freedom of Tibet. Among the founders of the ARCOD (Radical Association for the Democratic Constituent Assembly) and of the "Lista referendaria", electoral ticket at the elections of 1992.

(17) STANZANI GHEDINI SERGIO AUGUSTO. (Bologna 1923). Exponent of the Italian Students Association in the '50s, among the founders of the Radical Party. Senator and member of Parliament, currently secretary of the Radical Party. Former IRI executive. Engineer.

(18) RUTELLI FRANCESCO. (Rome 1954). Secretary of the Radical Party in 1981 and treasurer in 1984. Antimilitarist and conscientious objector, co-promoter of the IRDISP (Research Institute for Disarmament Development and Peace), member of Parliament since 1983, group chairman. Among the promoters of the "Verdi Arcobaleno" ticket at the European elections of 1987, member of the Coordination Group of the Green Federation, regional councillor in Campania and local councillor in Rome. Elected member of Parliament on the green ticket in 1992.