RUSSIAN President Boris Yeltsin last week signed a decree banning the National Salvation Front - a political alliance comprised of remnants of the banned Communist Party, officers in the armed forces and militant nationalists.
Established on October 24, stewards at the front's launch rally were ominously described by Reuters news agency as 'guards in black uniforms, berets and jackboots'.
The newspaper Moskouskiy Komsomolets reported that the front was blending the organisational experience of its red' wing with the parliamentary and local government skills possessed by some of its 'white' nationalist elements.
Hostility
The front's public pronouncements and its bitter hostility to Yeltsin and his policies have led to comparisons with the people who organised the failed coup of August 1991.
Its leaders have reacted defiantly to the ban, accusing Yeltsin of panic. Some western diplomats share this view. Most commentators don't see the organisation itself as a threat. So why was it banned?
First, social and economic No longer feted by the masses, will Yeltsin repress them? conditions in Russia are ripe for demagogues appealing to nationalism and nostalgia for the old USSR. Unemployment is rocketing, people literally faint with hunger in the streets, and Russians living in some former Soviet repul blics have been mistreated or turned into The winter is going to aggravate distress and social explosions are possible, which a group like the front could exploit, even if it couldn't use them as a springboard to Yeltsin also banned the Russian parliamentary guard, perhaps fearing that it would link up with his opponents and overthrow him in the way already seen in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan.
Authoritarian
Secondly, Yeltsin himself has authoritarian instincts, and favours presidential rule by decree - something often forgotten by western admirers of this 'democrat'.
The International Monetary Fund is applying the screws on a Russia lurching into chaos, and Yeltsin probably feels obliged to show he can use strong arm methods which could bulldoze the path to a market economy.
The decree against the front is worded in a way enabling it to be used against people who stir up 'social' strife (strikers, perhaps?).
end of October presided over the founding of the RussianAmerican Investment Bank, whose honourary chairmen is former US president Richard Nixon, in power during the CIA-inspired coup in that ushered in the notorious dictatorship of general Pinochet.
Presumably Yeltsin buying a used car from Nixon, called 'authoritarian incompetence', while the rouble goes into freefall against the not over-mighty dollar. With such a market, such a democracy and such ackbooted feet among the op position, anything lorrible could happen. trounce Labour SCOTTISH Militant Labour has won a second seat on Strathclyde regional council after Willie Griffin overturned a Labour majority of 2635 to take Queenslie/Barlanark by some 520 votes last week. SML also polled 1771 in Drumoyne/Govan, finishing third as the Scottish Nationalists took the seat from Labour. Euro rail strike success A TRANS-European one hour rail strike saw trains paralysed in 14 countries across the continent on October 27. The action came in By Bob Smith JOHN EDMONDS, general secretary of the GMB, has called a national demonstration on 28 November to support the Burnsall strikers, who have been picketing since June 15.
It will assemble at 10.30am, Fenton Street, of High Street Smethwick, marching past the tion, declining services and massive dismissals seen in many countries. Later that day, a rail union delegation met EC transport commissioner Karel van Miert. OVER 200 employers have derecognised unions in the last four years, a new study from Labour Research indicates. This is four times the number of cases found in a similar survey for the years 1984-88. However, 22 of 42 unions covered reported no derecognition attempts. THE BRITISH National Party's annual conference, held in London on October 26, was only able to proceed after police detained around half of the hundreds of protestors who turned up at the fascists' redirection point at Euston station. The counter-mobilisation was organised by Anti-Fascist Action. have finally forced Burnsall's owners the O'Neill family to install four ventilation extractors and to carry out other safety measures. They are now paying scabs 115 (instead of 80) to start, but cannot keep them (only 18 out of 40 remain) because of the atrocious conditions.
People sent from the Job Centre have even joined the pocket. Production is seriously
Derecognition spreading
Police protect nazi conference