ABSTRACT: Recalls the figure of Ernesto Rossi, remembering his affinity with the initiatives of the "dissolute" radicals of the '60s ("labeled as drug addicts, homosexuals or immoral people") and especially his solitary tirades against the "corporatism" of the Italian economy and society. Those battles were not understood by those who were closest to him. If the radicals manage to win a few battles it's because they have "drawn" on the political force of a personality who "is one of the greatest Italian politicians ever".

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 22 November 1993)

...The civil rights campaigns, those for which we are given credit, among many indignities, also of a certain dignity, personally I could never have conceived them without the constant proximity, the constant exhortation of Ernesto Rossi. This occurred in the years between '64 and '65, one of the worst periods of the history of this country, when were labeled drug addicts, homosexuals and generally immoral people.

Ernesto Rossi died on February 8th. Together we had conceived that immoral thing called "anti-clerical year", which many judged to be of bad taste: we drafted the text together, and on 5 February Ernesto told his wife Ada, in the clinic: "Maybe those people are right again. You'll see, there will be a crowd at the Adriano, I sense it", and he was to chair that meeting. There is a continuity: he approved us in the immoral years, in the years in which we did not exist, in the years in which so many friends who could have written and continued to write for "Il Mondo" or who had chosen the republican party (ultimately, I believe, in good faith) accused us of smearing a clean tradition, a dignified, severe, austere tradition. All I'm saying is that we should be careful: Ernesto Rossi, even then - I believe 90% of the people here should recognize it - was judged by must of the people of his same age as a good, honest, excellent journalist, but someone who knew nothing about politics.

In those years we recall his request to repeal the Concordat, his requests for radical actions, his denunciation of the government's compromises, his attacks against the corporative system. After his death his most technical and proper collaborators who enevr again engaged in a single battle, not even the technical and proper ones such as the Federconsorzi. We hear it every day, even in the Radical Party: "Ernesto is so good", "Ernesto writes so well", "What a fool", and them they thought they would save his soul by saying he was a liberalist. I am grateful to Leo Valiani (3) who, with his intellectual honesty, has given food for thought for anyone who grossly presents Ernesto Rossi as a liberist. Rossi was never a liberalist. He simply understood something I have been reading for five years on "Il Manifesto" as the distinctive feature of a regime that was emerging in Italy: not that of an unrestricted capitalism, but that of the corporative state.

It was he who at a moment in which "corporative" was used only at the level of small things, small corporatisms, denounced this fact, the central fact of the characteristics of the State: it was he who sparked the controversy against the mixed responsibilities in IRI and in private capitalism.

I don't want to bore you, but I would like to have three or four minutes to say that if in the future people will fail to understand why we manage to win unitarily with others it is because we are sustained by the political force of man whom I consider one of the greatest Italian politicians ever.

Translator's notes

(1) ROSSI ERNESTO. (Caserta 1897 - Rome 1967). Italian journalist and politician. Leader of "Giustizia e Libertà", in 1930 he was arrested by the fascist regime and remained in prison or exiled until the end of the war. Author, together with Spinelli, of the "Manifesto di Ventotene", and leader of the European Federalist Movement and of the battle for a united Europe. Among the founders of the Radical Party. Essayist and journalist, from "Il Mondo" he promoted vehement campaigns against clerical interference in the political life, against economic trusts, industrial and agrarian protectionism, private and public concentrations of power, etc. His articles were collected in famous books ("I padroni del vapore", etc). After the dissolution of the Radical Party in 1962, and the consequent split from the editor of "Il Mondo", M.Pannunzio, he founded "L'Astrolabio", whence he continued his polemics. In his last years he joined the "new" radical party, with which in 1967 he launched the "Anticlerical Year".

(2) 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.

(3) VALIANI LEO. (Fiume 1909). Writer, historian, politician. Leader of the Resistance, in 1943 among the founders and the key exponents of the Partito d'Azione. Writes for "Il Corriere della Sera" on historical subjects. Senator for life since 1980.

(4) IRI. Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, constituted in 1933 with the objective of reorganizing the Italian industry. After the war, with its financial companies, its banks and operative boards it became the core of the Italian public industrial system.