FOR THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND A LIFE WITH LEGAL RIGHTS

1985 closes with distinctly positive results for the Radical Party's political initiatives. We should remember: the referendum on the cost-of-living wage scale, which, thanks to the Radical Party, put the spotlight on the contradictions and ambiguities of the Communist Party's policies; the regional elections where, with reasonable altruism, the birth of a new political element was solicited - the ecological lists of candidates; the campaign for correct justice, where the clash was intense and showed that it will be a central issue in the coming months; the fight for the assertion of conscientiousness that posed the international problem with linear simplicity. During the entire twelve months, in short, significant successes are noted.

The motion of the Congress focuses a commitment on a few essential points - above all on the double slogan "the right to life/a life with legal rights" with the proposal to extend the campaign for justice even by recourse to direct democracy. The European commitment returns to the spotlight tied to the Spinelli Treaty (1).

The Congress confirms Giovanni Negri as Secretary and Giuseppe Calderisi as Treasurer.

The 31st Congress of the Radical Party extends its greetings and thanks to all those whose membership, work, and support have up to now allowed for a political adventure without peer or precedent and that has assured gains and hopes for a great civilisation and for human and political values not for Italy alone.

To all of them and to all democrats, the Congress makes an appeal to commit themselves immediately to an extreme attempt to realise an alternative of hope, of legality and of life to interrupt, if possible, what appears to be the ruinous race of Italian politics towards further degradation and the definitive destruction of any possibility for democratic life, for legality and justice.

During 1986, and beginning immediately, the Radical Party decides to commit itself to:

1) relaunching in Italy and Europe, in all of its original radicalism, the great battle for the survival of three million human beings within a year over death from starvation and misery in the Third and Fourth Worlds.

Reproposing the objectives and methods indicated in the Manifesto-Appeal of the Nobel Prize Winners and adopted by the resolution of the European Parliament appears all the more urgent and necessary in the face of the bankrupt budget of a law that was not by chance passed by every sector of the ranks of the party-rule alliance without the consensus of the Radical Party. Only thus will it be possible to transform the abstract figures of the funds earmarked for co-operation, development and petitions of principle into effective policies and into a central commitment of the government of the Republic and the political parties.

2) Prepare and equip every Radical and every citizen who has and evidences the need for a great, continuous, mass judiciary action to contribute in that way also, throughout the entire year of 1986, to the struggle that should unite the battle for the right to life and a life of legal rights, in order to try to regain in that way the respecting of the laws and the rights of citizens. Without the affirmation of a judiciary initiative too, the realisation of a great political and judiciary initiative, organised and diffused, against illegality and the concrete behavior and responsibility that make it possible, it would be vain to hope in the affirmation of democratic and constitutional laws and jurisprudence, by means of legislative reforms in Parliament and by actions of direct democracy in the country.

3) Accept the appeal made by Altiero Spinelli to the Congress, assure the maximum federalist commitment directed at realising the new treaty for the European Union, in just the form in which it was proposed by the European Parliament, against the burying of any project political unity for the European Community already decreed by the national governments of the member states against the desire and the hopes of their peoples, the interests and urgent needs of their countries, the reasons and the aspirations of a new international equilibrium and order.

4) Continue in Italy and Europe in the battle for the rights of conscientious objectors and the assertion of conscience for the purpose of obtaining a community directive for bringing nearer to each other, on the highest levels, of national laws on the rights of conscientious objectors and to affirm the full and actual practicability and the greater efficiency of defensive choices that guarantee more security by the adoption of non-military policies and instruments.

1) The Spinelli Treaty - A proposal for a federated United States of Europe.