Word: scelba
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Bald, pale Mario Scelba, Italy's tough Minister of the Interior, had studied a Cominform directive found by his police on a Red courier en route to France from Bulgaria. Scelba was convinced that French and Italian Communists were under orders to launch a spring offensive. One day last week he warned his fellow ministers: "We are in an emergency." He asked and received extraordinary power to keep public order, including reinforcements for the police and a ban on all public and factory meetings...
...public assemblies. When Greppi told the Red delegation, "No meeting is authorized," he was vilified as a "coward and traitor." As they left, the comrades spat angrily on the city hall stairs. They were equally frustrated when they tried to stir up a street march. Scelba's celere (jeep-riding riot squads) dispersed them...
...Rome, Red truculence was cooled off by an old technique. Scelba's men used high-pressure water hoses to scatter street demonstrators...
...Ramparts. The skirmish of the week took place at San Severe (pop. 40,000), a poverty-stricken market town amid southern Italy's vineyards. There a Red-led band of 4,000 overpowered the local policemen, stacked up high barricades-gasoline drums, junked autos, mulecarts, one steamroller. When Scelba sent armored cars and regular troops into San Severo, the rebels manned their forts, fired stones, guns and grenades...
...fifth cabinet reshuffle since he became Premier in 1945, Christian Democrat Premier Alcide de Gasperi last week held on.to the wavering Saragat Socialists, dropped the waning Liberal Party. His "two fists" were still present in the new cabinet: tough Interior Minister Mario Scelba, who fights Communists, and tight-fisted Budget and Treasury Minister Giuseppe Pella, who fights inflation. The departure of the Liberal Party, which is conservative, may mean that De Gasperi can push ahead with land reform. The Premier explained that the reshuffle was not caused by a real crisis, but merely by a "crisetta," a useful word...