Fifty years ago – on 12 and 13 May 1974 – the referendum on divorce took place, the first abrogation referendum in the history of the Republic.
The Italian people, with a large majority of around 60% of voters, confirmed the “Fortuna-Baslini” law, which in December 1970 had introduced divorce into our system, putting an end to an anachronistic and civilly backward situation. Suffice it to say that until then divorce in Europe was banned, as well as in Italy, only in the clerical-fascist regimes of Spain and Portugal and in ultra-Catholic Ireland.
With the approval of law n. 898/1970 restored dignity and serenity to many “irregular” unions in the eyes of the law and to many children born out of wedlock. At the same time, the figure of the woman no longer took the form of a mere recipient of her spouse’s decisions but emerged within the family unit as an active legal subject.
The impact of the new law was notable and, in some ways disruptive, especially on the Catholic Church, which experienced the introduction of divorce not only as an attack on its own prerogatives (according to a forced reading of the Concordat), but also as a striking manifestation of the ongoing process of secularization, destined to undermine its own ethical-political magisterium on the Italian nation. It was Pope Paul VI himself, with repeated stances, who made his anathema fall on the new institute.
The ecclesiastical hierarchies, after having exerted formidable pressure on Parliament and in particular on the DC in order to avoid the introduction of divorce, therefore mobilized with diligent determination against the new rule, giving life to civic committees which, thanks above all to the contribution of the parishes, gathered over 1,300,000 supporters in the space of a few months in support of the referendum request. The central theme of the repealist propaganda will be the defense of the family as the first nucleus of civil society: any danger or threat caused to the family would, from this perspective, have given rise to a movement of disintegration destined to overwhelm society as a whole. An apocalyptic pessimism that had no basis in reality. In the three years between the approval of the law and the celebration of the referendum, in fact, the number of divorces was overall limited: 17,164 in 1971 – the first year of application of the reform – 31,717 in 1972 (the majority of the applications, however, dated back to the previous years ), and 22,500, with a sharp decline, therefore, in 1973.
In reality, in May 1974, two alternative conceptions of the family were in conflict: on the one hand, a formal, traditional and hierarchical vision, with undisputed male supremacy; on the other, an idea of an equal, democratic, elective and therefore reversible family.
That of 12 May 1974 was an electoral consultation with very vast and decisive implications for the country. On the one hand, the secular and left-wing front formed by PCI, PSI, PSDI, PRI, PLI and the radical party (which, not present in Parliament at the time, nevertheless boasted a primogeniture on the issue, having promoted the Italian League for Divorce since 1966 , a very active pressure group); on the other, the Christian Democrats, who presented themselves to the vote with the sole, disturbing company of the Social Movement, which in 1974 was experiencing one of its most markedly subversive seasons, amidst the daily violence of the “right-wing square”, desired by the secretary Almirante to compete for hegemony in the public space with left-wing movements, and the involvement of part of his leadership group in black plots.
The defeat of the DC coincided with that of its secretary, Fanfani, who had strongly wanted to go to the polls (overcoming many doubts within his own party), with the aim not only of achieving revenge with respect to the parliamentary defeat of the 1970s but to create a conservative bloc, led by himself, capable of reducing the weight of the left and the trade union movement and possibly ferrying the country towards a presidential-type “Second Republic”. And to this end, he had not hesitated to conduct an unscrupulous electoral campaign, under the banner of a clash of civilizations (in this fully supported by the most reactionary sectors of the clergy), with crusading arguments and tones, almost as if to artificially recreate a 1948 climate. .
Ultimately, a radicalization that ultimately backfired on those who had provoked it. The centre-left itself, crossed by innumerable tensions and by life that has always been historically difficult and conflicted, essentially survived the “divisive” test, as we would say today, of the referendum and the Rumor V government (formed by DC, PSI and PSDI) substantially unscathed. reached the end of the year, while the definitive crisis of the alliance, at the beginning of 1976, will be due to reasons of a general political nature, and in particular to the search, primarily on the socialist side, for a majority capable of giving new life to the policies of reform and (in the face of a DC in crisis of credibility also due to the moral question) to finally associate the PCI with the government of the country.
Instead, the victorious defense of the Institute of Divorce opened the way to further changes and conquests in the field of civil rights, such as the reform of family law in 1975 (which finally introduced equality between spouses and eliminated the heavy legacies of patriarchal system) and the voluntary termination of pregnancy, in 1978. Precisely those rights today directly or indirectly under attack by the ultra-conservative government that governs the fate of the country, which is not by chance inspired by the old triad of reaction “God , Homeland and Family” and which aims to redesign the structure of society, starting from the family and the relationship between genders, in a hierarchical-authoritarian sense. A restorative plan against which a new generation, of young and very young men and women, has already taken the field, determined to avoid any dangerous leap into the dark and the return of obscurantism.
