The Radical Party (, PR) was a liberal and libertarian political party in Italy. For decades, inspired by 19th-century classical radicalism, the Radical Party was a bastion of anti-clericalism, civil libertarianism, feminism, liberalism and radicalism in Italy as well as environmentalism. The party proposed itself as the strongest opposition to the Italian political establishment, seen as corrupt and conservative. Although it never reached high shares of vote and never participated in government, the party had close relations with the other parties of the Italian left—from the Republicans and the Socialists to the Communists and Proletarian Democracy—and opened its ranks also to members of other parties through dual membership. The party's longtime leader was Marco Pannella (1930–2016), who served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies (1976–1994) and the European Parliament (1979–2009), leading the party in most of the elections it contested. In 1989, the PR was transformed into the Transnational Radical Party, a non-governmental organisation tasked with defending liberal and left-libertarian values. During the 1990s, the Radicals had formed a succession of electoral lists (notably including the Pannella List and Bonino List), without having a structured party and sometimes dividing themselves between competing lists. The latest incarnation of the party is the Italian Radicals, founded in 2001, former section of Transnational Radical Party. History The PR was founded in 1955 by the left wing of the Italian Liberal Party as the ideal continuation of the historical Radical Party, active from 1877 to 1925, emphasising liberal and secular issues such as separation of church and state and the full implementation of the Constitution. Leading members of the new party included Bruno Villabruna, Mario Pannunzio, Ernesto Rossi, Leo Valiani, Guido Calogero, Giovanni Ferrara, Paolo Ungari, Eugenio Scalfari and Marco Pannella. Following a leadership crisis in 1963, most party members left the PR and joined the Italian Socialist Party or the Italian Republican Party; the remaining members, under the leadership of Pannella and Gianfranco Spadaccia took control of the party, which abandoned its original social-liberal views and adopted a strong left-libertarian position. The "new" PR came to political success in the 1976 general election, when it entered Parliament with four deputies: Pannella, Emma Bonino, Adele Faccio and Mauro Mellini. In the 1979 general election, the party won 3.5% of the vote and elected 18 deputies and two senators, its best result ever. The relative success of the party was a consequence of