GENERAL STRIKE TO END

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25367, 15 December 1947, Page 7

GENERAL STRIKE TO END

DECISION OF ROME LABOUR CHAMBER STRONG POLICE ACTION ROME, December 12. The Chamber of Labour, representing the trade unions of Rome, announced to-day that it had unanimously voted to end the general strike at midnight to-night. The Chamber of Labour declared that the Rome municipality’s' appropriation for the winter relief of unemployment had met the strikers’ demands. The Rome correspondent of the Associated Press says that observers believe that the Romans’ growing resentment also influenced the decision to end the strike. The announcement followed a day of clashes and unrest. Heavily reinforced police acted vigorously and sometimes ruthlessly to carry out the Government’s instruction that workers refusing to join the Communist call for a general strike must be protected. Helmeted riot squads and mounted police in the Piazza Colonna, in the centre of Rome, swung their clubs to disperse crowds of strikers and keep strike-breaking transport moving. The police followed when part of the crowd sought refuge in the vestibule of the Church of St. Maria. They clubbed a woman and two other persons in the vestibule, and an Associated Press photographer as he was taking pictures of the scene. This was the second time in a day that the police had clubbed this photographer. Four hundred demonstrators forced their way past the police guard on the Milan Stock Exchange and protested against thd continued fall in securities quotations. They stopped trading. The decline has wiped out millions of paper profits piled up during inflation. A number of Communist deputies, when they emerged from the Parliament buildings to-day, became involved in a clash between 3000 Strike demonstrators and 200 police, states Reuters correspondent in Rome. Several deputies received truncheon blows in the general confusion. The deputies rushed back into the Parliament buildings and brought out the Left Wing Socialist leader, Signor Pietro Nenni, who attempted to remonstrate with the crowd. Police in jeeps eventually dispersed the demonstrators.

Thousands of office workers and Government employees went back to work this morning, defying the Chamber of Labour’s instructions to continue the general strike.