Italian elections

The late and lovable Stephen Potter was much concerned, at the end of his life, with what he called further lessons in 'lifemanship'. And one I remember was about how to survive in company and in conversation that's way above your head.

His lesson, his advice, grew out of such a conversation he had once about Italian politics. He'd been apparently taken along for a nightcap by a man he was staying with. The host knew all the people and Potter knew none of them and, as often happens, he assumed that they'd be congenial, amusing types, not unlike Potter himself. Well, they turned out to be double-dome political pundits, language experts, a professor of political science, a very learned priest and such. And Potter – they all, by the way, spoke English – but Potter was clearly out of his depth. 

I can see him knitting his brows and nodding his head sagely in a desperate effort to keep up. He hadn't a clue to Italian politics but he'd been around academics long enough to know some of the unconscious tricks of the trade and, at one point, when the priest had been going on in the most subtle and complicated way and working up to a very impressive generalisation, Potter looked up sideways and said, 'But not in the south, I think.' And the priest was stunned at such deep perception. 'Exactly right!' he cried and, from then on, addressed himself exclusively to Potter as the only brow in the room high enough to talk to. And when it was over, the priest took him aside, begged him to stay, wanted to go on. Potter and his host stayed a while and, from then on, all Potter had to do was to nod thoughtfully, sigh when the priest had a sighing thought, chuckle knowingly when the priest implied, 'You know how it is!' 

Potter recommended that in all such similar situations when the knowing talk turned to politics – never mind which country you're talking about – all you had to say, quietly and just once, was, 'Not in the south, I think'. 

Well, I was dying to try this out the other evening when I was listening to a conversation about the, then, coming Italian elections, a matter which very much concerns Washington and, perhaps, most of all, the 49 million Roman Catholics of the United States. The rather startling fact that one American in four – and the percentage is higher if you take in Canada – that one American in four is a Catholic is something that political writers and, surprisingly, even American political writers, rarely mention. 

Now some people not of a statistical turn of mind may say, 'Well, one in four still leaves three-quarters of the population as non-Catholic' but that three-quarters is not a solid body of opinion. It's split up into many religious groups, all of them smaller than the Catholics. There are several hundred religious denominations in the United States. There are, for instance, only six million religious Jews. There are 13 million Methodists divided up among such exotic clans as the Reformed Methodists, the Reformed Zion Methodists, Unionists, the Fundamental Methodists and the Zionist Episcopal African Methodist Church. 

Much the largest body, after the Catholics, are the Baptists – 27 millions of them – but they come in 21 varieties ranging from the American Baptists, so-called, to the Christian Unity Baptists, the National Primitives, the Seventh Day Baptists, the Duck River Baptists. 

Mr Jimmy Carter has been admired, or wondered at, for his success in being able to run so effective a presidential campaign, 'Even though,' as a Northern paper wrote, 'he is a Southerner and a Baptist.' On the contrary, I should guess it has been one of Mr Jimmy Carter's original assets that he belonged to a religious denomination which counts 27 million Americans among its members and Mr Carter, I ought to say, was sufficiently aware of the other great, solid body of the faithful, the 49 million Catholics, to make, early on in the campaign, persuasive speeches to reassure the Catholics, as Kennedy did in 1960 to reassure the Protestants, that he would be a secular president and one at all times aware that one of the first things done by the men who founded the republic was to separate church and state. 

And, by the way, that congressman who raised a storm about the British gift of a new Liberty Bell was more ignorant than anybody. You may have seen that Britain sent to the United States a replica of the original Liberty Bell which is an object of almost religious reverence to Americans. The original was cast in London in the mid-eighteenth century and was ordered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvania as a colony. It became popularly associated with the American fight for independence when it was rung on especially defiant occasions as, for instance, a protest against the first British taxes on the colonies and again it peeled out when the Declaration of Independence was first recited in public. 

Well, Britain has made a replica, cast in the same foundry as the original and has gallantly presented it to the American people to celebrate the bicentennial. The only thing missing from the copy is a sentence inscribed around the rim of the original, a sentence taken from Leviticus – for the pedants, chapter 25 verse 10 – 'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof'. On the copy, it says simply, 'Let freedom ring' which seems a neater motto for today, suggesting that one free country salutes another and hopes there'll be many more of us. 

But that was not the way this enraged congressman took it. He proclaimed that Britain had offered, and I'm not sure he didn't say a 'deliberate' insult to the people of the United States by omitting the biblical quotation. 'It rudely suggests,' he said, 'that the United States is no longer a Christian country.' 

Well, somebody should tell him quick that the United States never was a Christian country. Though most of the founding fathers were professing Christians, they saw around them immigrant sects – many Jews, for instance, Sephardic and otherwise, and Catholics and Huguenots, and other victims of religious persecution. And the fathers had the generosity of mind to lay down, in the very first amendment to the constitution, the firm words, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion', to which, at a stroke, proclaimed that the United States and its government was one thing and a person's right to worship as he or she pleases, is another. Moreover, a right upheld in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment also protects the right of people not to worship any god, human or divine. 

So, now, back to the Italian elections. The first problem about it was that it was a two-day election and that is murder on the reporters who had to cover it. A journalist – and I mean in the strict sense, a man or woman who writes every day – has to write something. It's the curse, and sometimes the blessing, of the trade. I got a pretty thorough briefing from both the British and American press because I was in a place where I could buy all the London and the New York and Washington papers and learn what was going on, or rather, what was expected to go on – what the desperate journalists were wishing or fearing might go on because they had to write pieces, the first known as a trailer before the election and then, for the morning of the first day, then the second, then the results dribbled in at different times and it wasn't until Wednesday, Thursday, that we could see what really happened. So, what happened? 

Well, the Italians didn't do what they were supposed to. The Communists didn't get the majority that Washington and Bonn, and Paris, perhaps, were fearing. The Christian Democrats, who've been running the country very badly through 30-odd elections, didn't get a decisive majority. They need a supporting ally and the Socialists are their favourite, but the Socialists, with the fingers up in the air guessing which way the wind might blow, promised not to ally with the Christian Democrats and took a solemn vow that the Communists must be in the government. This was a shrewd vow because it meant that, whatever happened, the government in power would have to woo or reward them unless, of course, there was a massive majority for the Christian Democrats. 

Well, in the result, the Christian Democrats are back again, hardly as a government in power, just about a government in being. The Communists made both actual and moral gain. Many more Italians have listened to their song that the Christian Democrats have been, which evidently they have been, both inept and corrupt. The whole business was watched with the most cat-like scrutiny in Washington. One high official said, 'The worst thing that could happen would be a tiny majority for the Christian Democrats and a gain for the Communists. That will mean another election before long and, at last, Communists in the government.' 

I think that few experts in Washington believe the boast of the Italian Communist leader that he can establish an Italian brand of Communism quite independent of Moscow and, perhaps, fewer still share the view of some European Socialists that Signor Berlinguer can produce a new European Communist Party that is like the original but one that will be more humane and guarantee free speech for everybody. 

This American suspicion, by the way, is not at all the same thing as the old dogma that Communism is a monolithic party which rears the same stony head all around the world. Some people may say that Americans are much given to seeing in any Marxist the threat of a deep-dyed plot and the Italian Communist leader is not a plotter. But the Americans remember that the broadly based Polish government of Communists and others promised by the Russians in 1945 turned into wholly Communist satellites. They recall troubles that turned into deep-dyed plots in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Like the man from Missouri, they say, 'Show me'. 

Americans also know the enormous capacity for deep-dyed plots that can come out of Sicily – the spot where Italy touches the vital Mediterranean. And if anyone maintains that a Communist government would be humane and independent and nice to NATO, they'd very likely say, 'But not in the south'.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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