Communists Stir Up Strife After Election Defeat

Chronicle (Levin), 22 April 1948, Page 5

Communists Stir Up Strife After Election Defeat

(N.Z.P.A.-

-Reuter*

Comriaht)

Received Thursday, 10.10 -a.m, ROME, April 21. Commumst-led rioting and demonstrations against the election results have broken out in several parts of Italy. In the Foggia area the police used tear gas to break up crowds oi' Left-Wing demonstratprs. Ten were injured during the rioting. More than 1000 demonstrated at midnight outside Com- ; munist headuarters in San Severn. Police and carabinieri dispersed the demonstrators, who shouted that the election results were false. Police in armoured cars broke up a meeting of 2000 Communists in Carignolia. The police made 24 arrests during tighting between Communists and anti-Communists in Milan's Cathedral Square last night.

"I fear that relations between j the Government and the people i will shortly undergo dangerous tension," said Signor Luigi Longo, | vice-secretary of the Communist : Party and Communist "military j leader" in Italy. The election results did not mean the end of the! Communist Party, but only a deiay in the development of the party's! plans, he said. } Mr. Winston Churchill, commenting in London on the Italian elec- ; tions, said that Italy had saved; herself for the time being from the ; Bolshevik dictatorship of Stalin.j Italy now regained her place in the ranks of the principal European powers instead of being like ■ so many unhappy countries, made to live in the cage with a bear.