A WEEK in Italy has just given me the sort of social experience I am unlikely to encounter in Britain again.

I was in Bergamo, the elegant, welcoming northern Italian city which is a two-hour flight away from Cardiff.

The heart of Bergamo is a breathtakingly-beautiful mediaeval walled city perched on a hill. At its feet are the broad streets and sophisticated shops of a more modern urban development. It is an ideal place for a break once the heat of summer has cooled into autumn.

We were due to fly back on Friday, the last flight we could get to Cardiff that week. But the intervention of a general strike meant that our flight was put back until Saturday.

The strike was called to protest against the Berlusconi government's plans to radically alter Italy's pension system. A protest march through the lower part of the city was called to coincide with the strike. And we went down from the upper city to watch it. It was an impressive event. Thousands of workers travelled from the surrounding towns and villages to march.

Organisers suggested as many as 12,000 had taken part. The police estimate of 5,000 was probably closer to the mark. But the protest, repeated in dozens of similar cities - with a population of 120,000 Bergamo is smaller than Swansea - amounted to a considerable proportion of the working population.

Nor were their numbers limited to steelworkers, engineering employees, airport workers or train or bus drivers. Schools, universities, government offices, banks and some shops closed for the day. Many of their employees took part in the demonstration.

As they marched the mile or so from the central station to the lower city's main square the protesters waved a forest of red, white, yellow and green banners representing the three main unions, CGIL, CISL and UNIL. They blew whistles, sang songs and showed a political cohesion British trade unionists spend their lives only dreaming about.

At the end of the march, the workers, many of them accompanied by their spouses and their children, gathered in the square to listen to rousing speeches from their leaders. Once they were over, a pop group whose repertoire included some of the stirring songs sung by the Partisans at the end of World War II entertained the crowd.

Estimates suggested that throughout Italy two-million workers took part in similar demonstrations. The protests were a gratifying reminder that in a country where Berlusconi and his ministers have done their best to turn politics into an adjunct of showbusiness, the values of social cohesion and community awareness are alive and kicking.

Even in a society where a talentless television presenter can wield more influence than the Church or the university, the strike gave the lie to that famous Thatcherite judgment, "There is no such thing as society."

In Britain, of course, the swingeing anti-trade union laws introduced by Thatcher and still in place under Tony Blair's New Labour regime, make such demonstrations of social cohesiveness impossible. If you had to ballot every single worker taking part in it, organising a strike on the scale of Italy's last week would take a year.

The problems that are eating away at Italy's sense of community are just as prominent here. An overwhelming self-absorption and a mediocre individuality are just as relentlessly promoted by television and the entertainment industry.

And if you are still reluctant to believe that British politics are now dominated by the values of the soap opera, then the fate of poor old Iain Duncan Smith this week provided clinching proof.

The treatment of the hapless Conservative leader had everything to do with the drama of watching a sincere but modestly-talented man being torn apart by his enemies. It had nothing to do with policies or the clash of radically-opposed visions of the way society should develop.

As in Italy, the relentless individualism promoted by showbusiness and its big business backers is undermining our commitment to society and to politics. But at least in Italy, as that march on October 24 proved, you can still believe that protest and genuine political change are possible.