GENERAL STRIKE IN ROME

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25365, 12 December 1947, Page 7

GENERAL STRIKE IN ROME

600,000 Workers Idle NEGOTIATIONS TO CONTINUE

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON December 11. A meeting between Italian Government representatives and trade union leaders designed to settle the Rome general strike ended in failure soon after midnight, but it was decided to continue the talks to-day. Meanwhile, according to the Rome correspondent of Reuters, a strike affecting 600,000 workers throughout the city was in force. The Prime Minister (Mr de Gasperi) said that all necessary measures for maintaining public order had been taken, and all morning newspaper offices were under heavy guard. The Rome correspondent of the British United Press says that Christian Democratic unions have denounced the strike as a political imposition and have ordered their supporters to remain at work. The decision to call a strike was made after an announcement by Communist leaders that they had rejected the latest Government offers. The Communists issued strike orders because the Government refused to grant special Christmas bonuses for unemployed, or to punish police who fired on a rioting mob outside Rome on December 5. Government sources claimed that the Communists had no intention of calling the strike off, even if acceptable offers were made. These sources claimed that the strike was planned as a Communist show of strength in a six weeks’ old campaign to overthrow the Government.

SOVIET-CZECH TRADE FIVE-YEAR PACT SIGNED (Rec. 7 p.m.) PRAGUE, December 10. A five-year trade pact between Czechoslovakia and Russia was signed in Moscow to-day, under which trade with Russia in 1948 will amount to between 16 and 18 per cent, of Czechoslovakia’s foreign trade.

MISSING MEMBERS OF R.A.F. 9000 STILL UNTRACED (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, December 11. About 9000 Royal Air Force officers and men who were reported missing over Europe during the war remain untraced, said the British Air Minister (Mr Arthur Henderson) in the House of Commons. Twelve thousand others were lost over the sea. It was unlikely, Mr Henderson said, that positive evidence of their fate would now be discovered. Search units were still at work in Germany and other European countries, but permission to enter Poland had not yet been received. In the last six months these units had accounted for 2000 officers and men whose deaths could previously be only presumed. Altogether, about 18,000 had now been traced. With two exceptions all the Royal Air Force men who had been posted as prisoners of war had been traced.