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INTERNATIONAL
CHRONOLOGY OF THE TRANSNATIONAL RADICAL PARTY: 1962
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JANUARY - Italy: Florence - Antimilitarism 10 MAY - ITALY: Rome - Local Elections JUNE - Italy: Rome - Local elections, European Federalism, Il Radicale Historical
references
October. "Cuban Crisis" with US naval blockade surrounding the Island, and risk of nuclear war. Foundation of the Consulta italiana della pace (Italian Council for Peace) by Aldo CAPITINI. Radicals accede to the Council through the Committee for Conventional and Nuclear Disarmament in Europe Use of triple symbol in electoral campaigns: Phrygian cap or "Head of Minerva," European flag, pacifist Y" INR 39 The disbanding of the (first) Radical Party was virtually complete with the withdrawal of its founders (Mario PANNUNZIO, Arrigo BENEDETTI, Leone CATTANI, Ernesto ROSSI, Leo VALIANI, Guido CALOGERO) and the majority of the leaders joining the socialists or Ugo LA MALFA (Rodota, Ferrara, Jannuzzi, De Mauro, Mombelli, Scalfari). The "Radical Left" of Pannella, Rendi, Spadaccia, Bandinelli and Teodori now represented the Party. Of the original group only Bruno VILLABRUNA and Leopoldo PICCARDI remained. Within this framework, a list of candidates was presented, under the Radical Phrygian cap symbol, for the Rome Municipal Council. In the electoral newspaper Il Radicale, Rendi affirmed: "European federalism is central to the Radical Party’s international interests, to the extent that it is not considered a foreign policy, but domestic policy issue." (AP1591) The original Radical Party was finally disbanded when key figures either resigned or left, one after the other. The reins were taken up by the young leftists, with an interim secretariat composed of Vincenzo LUPPI, Luca BONESCHI and Marco PANNELLA, with Elio VITTORINI as President. NO TO FASCISM IN EUROPE
De Gaulle, Salan, Franco, Salazar by Giuliano
Rendi
(IL
RADICALE, June 1962)
"European federalism is central to the Radical Party’s international interests, to the extent that it is not considered a foreign, but domestic issue. A European federation, or equally effective supranational institutions, are required to permanently overcome nationalism and de Gaulle’s quasi-military dictatorship; to bring down the Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships, which are no longer an anachronistic residue of the fascist era but actually paralleled in the French situation; to take in hand the economic structure, which in Europe is entirely dominated by large private monopolies: all issues that interfere with the political and socioeconomic life of our country. We believe
that colonialism is one of the worst ills of our times; that we must
further the process of independence of Afro-Asian peoples; that we must
assist the economic development of underdeveloped countries. Very often
their struggles for freedom (above all that of Algeria) are also our
struggles for freedom; and even when the most hard-fought battles are
over, there remains the long hard struggle of emergent peoples to create
both a modern state and society. We can help them in this by rejecting
all neo-colonialist tendencies.
Concerning
the international conflict - which according to the Italian press takes
precedence over all other conflicts -, that is, the power struggle between
the Western and Communist world, the Radical Party’s position is
ever-more critical. For some time we Radicals have been committed to
détente, to peaceful coexistence, to the betterment of international
relations to reduce the overriding importance given to military issues
and the Atlantic alliance, which stifles the internal political affairs
of European countries.
Nevertheless,
the identification of the Western bloc with freedom and the Eastern
bloc with tyranny is becoming an increasingly abstract concept where
we are concerned. In the West we are witnessing the ever-more serious
repression of democracy that is affecting, with the French crisis, the
majority of Western Europe. The political life of European States, in
Germany, Italy, and Britain, does not go beyond a static conservatism
- with a few economic correctives in our case. Nationalism, decadent
and reactionary, is still rampant. Former authoritarian structures,
military to be precise, re-emerged after the war with renewed vigour,
and whereas in Germany they represent only a potential danger, in France,
Spain and Portugal the armies support the dictatorships. This repression
has been permitted in the name of the Atlantic Pact and the "free
world," since it is the military requirements of the Atlantic Pact
that have reconfirmed the Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships and the
German Army, and given France considerable power.
(AP1591)
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