Squalid party deals behind divorce reform

Workers Press no. 270, 8 October 1970 · scan page 5

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THE DEBATE which of Byzantine complexity, the opened yesterday in from the right-wing capitalist the Italian Senate on a politicians and their northerr bill to allow divorce would like to put an end to shows party politics at its most squalid. promised.

It threatens' Premier Colombo's centre-left coalition of Christian Democrats with three of the lay Socialists, Republicans and Social Democrats.

The divorce bill is supported by all the lay parties, the right-wing Liberals.

It is bitterly opposed, at the instigation of the Vatican hierarchy, by the Christian Democrats, with the support of fascists and monarchists.

On strict Parliamentary arithmetic the bill should pass, as it has already in Chamber of Deputies.

Nafartinne

UCICLUVIS But in the secret first-round vote last week the pro-divorce parties suffered eight defections, reducing their majority to only two.

Amid allegations of Vatican pressure, and even bribery, two leaders of the national campaign for divorce resigned in protest on Tuesday.

One Senator accused of sabotaging the bill - though he vehemently denies it—is veteran Stalinist Terracini, founder member of the Italian Communist Party.

Party leaders are as eager as ever that their 'dialogue' with the Church should pave the way for a governmental alliance with the Socialists and sections of the Christian Vatican claim The Vatican claims the right to interfere on the question because Mussolini's Concordat with the Pope reserves questions of matrimony to the ecclesiastical authorities.

The Concordat was embodied in the post-war Republican Constitution with the full support of Stalinist party chief Togliatti, who claimed it was necessary in order not to 'alienate Catholic he had devoted his life, no longer corresponded to the ideals that it once had, and And in the present crisis, developing through intrigues and Haworth calling bitterest anti-clericalism comes industrialist on Monday.

appearing in court. the few social reforms it has For the Tory authority.

France:

Farmers protest, Society.

pay strikes AN ESTIMATED 10,000 peasants and small farmers joined in demonstrations earlier this week in Britanny (NW France) against the government's refusal to increase the maintained price of milk, which is about 6 per cent lower in France than in the other Common Market countries.