Italy after Moro
peter Nichols
Rome There must be man-traps throughout Italy containing the bones, rusted remains of Portable typewriters and plastic cases for anion cards belonging to all those incorrigible journalists who at one time or another have pronounced that things here Will never be the same again. There was a Weighty windfall in late 1966 after the great t Italian flood. Never again, it was said, Would Italy remain saddled with a civil service so backward that it held up American relief convoys because the emergency rations included untaxed cigarettes. Once Was enough. Reform would be sure to come. The prime minister at the time was Aldo Moro. A few years earlier things were never going to be the same again because the first reforming government based on an alliance of Marxists and Catholics had taken affice and, with Aldo Mom as prime minister, Would drive its way through the jungle of Italian social injustice.
Since Aldo Moro was kidnapped by terrorists on 16 March, people have been asking the slightly different question of Whether things will ever be the same again. before that they were going particularly well uefore Moro was so ferociously yet deftly removed from the political scene. But his Presence brought its comfort. He was the tie Christian Democrat who had the conrence of Communists, and fewer and ewer people doubted that an understanding, even if temporary, between the Communists and Mom's Christian Democrats was essential to the country. He was no e..rusader against corruption but he was legarded as personally an honest man.
r, The question of corruption, like the ''-'°nImunist connection, is one which very ;sltricklY throws western opinion off balance. Moro has been subjected to a 'trial' by his captors which might be expected to produce fresh material for scandal. Yet even the terrorists have had to admit that there was not much in the way of revelations. They Probably mean that there is not sufficient ... liew material to make an impression on a country inured to scandal. All that they Pave. so far published is a passage of Moro's testimony dealing with Senator Paolo
Taviani, the former minister of the
',Tenor who comes from Genoa and so is a rrte' particularly 'noir' for them because 7e, noa is one of their principal strongholds. 4 "'A 'legations that he took money from the `Intericans and Germans made no discernible new ripples on the Tiber. He did n °t even bother to answer the charges. The Christian Democrat leadership has a
° far confounded not so much the critics as
the prophets. Sciascia's Todo Modo and the anonymous satirical writer of the highly successful little novel published in 1975 about Communist and Catholic collusion called Berlinguer and the Professor both foresaw the end of the governing party as internecine slaughter. Take a random passage from the latter book: 'Bisaglia's atrocious death had been an ultimatum. The newspapers still attributed it to natural causes but the experts had no such illusions. And when poor Taviani, despite an ultimatum, continued to delay, the conspirators came out into the open, killing him in the bath tub. It had been open war ever since.'
But since Moro's abduction, his colleagues have been firm and reasonably disciplined. They make public statements marked by obvious sincerity. They have, arguably, exercised prerogatives which should have been left to the state, by overshadowing government and parliament. But they certainly cannot be accused of putting party loyalties first. They are made fun of, as everything is in a city as cynical as Rome. An example of this black humour: 'A message from the Red Brigades calls for the murder of every Christian Democrat leader, from 'A' to 'Z' beginning with Andreotti. "Agreed" murmurs Zaccagnini. . .' and he, poor man, has been the main target of the desperate attacks on his old colleagues contained in the letters which Moro has written from captivity. Judgment has to stop before these letters: the combination of threats, apocalyptic warnings and vast self pity can only be properly judged when the conditions are known in which they were written. The constant accusation in them is that he has been cynically abandoned by the party which owed so much to him. They may have strengthened the hand of the sections of opinion genuinely pressing for a negotiation to save Moro's life. They cannot however in any way have increased the possibility that a liberated Moro could find a place, even a purely honorary one, in public life.
And unless they can be written off as having nothing to do with the real Mond, they damage the immense asset he could be — particularly in a Catholic country — as a martyr. They contain far too many reminders, explicit and implicit, that Christian Democracy is the classic case of a party which has always recognised the need to avoid the unnegotiable, looking round obstacles, never at them, standing four square but bending rather with the prevailing wind. This will have to be put back into terms of conciliation and an allembracing concept of democracy if the party is to be able to use his fate as an inspiration for its supporters. And for potential supporters: there can be no doubt that Moro's dream of a return to that April of thirty years ago, when the Christian Democrats installed themselves in power with an absolute majority, has not been forgotten by his friends.
The real question is something different. It is one with a relevance beyond Italy's borders. The terrorists have shown powers of organisation such as to suggest that they had been seriously underestimated as a menace, and had probably more backing oi non-opposition from some sections of opin'ion than had been foreseen. Suppose at the next General Election, the Christian Democrats substantially increased their vote, which looks likely. Would the probe lem of terrorism be any nearer solution?
Moro's most important warning in one of his letters to Zaccagnini may have been conveyed in his plea not to look just at tomorrow, but at the day after tomorrow.
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