Chapter 5: Democracy & Small IslandsSweden’s political landscape; Small is visible; Gotland, Visby and the Hansa; Decline of the Hansa; Silver coins or magic flutes; Swedish Labour Party; Swedish Farmers Party; Town and Country represented in Gotland; Members of Parliament or Privy Councillors; Monarchy and Democracy; Democracy in Gotland 1982-88; Swedish Conservative Party; Swedish Communist Party; Swedish Green Party; Swedish Christian Democrat Party; Proportional representation in Sweden; Wasted votes; Votes cast and seats allocated in Gotland 1982-88.
Sweden has twenty eight constituencies, ranging in size from The City of Stockholm with an active voting population of 420,000 to the Baltic Island of Gotland with 35,000 registered to attend the polling booth when elections are called. These twenty eight constituencies send a total of 349 representatives to the Swedish National Parliament, with the City of Stockholm sending thirty and the Island of Gotland sending two. Small is beautiful, but perhaps as significantly, small is visible. Let us first take a look at Representative Democracy in Gotland.In the Middle Ages, the walled town of Visby was at the centre of The Other Medieval Multinational (TOMM) with commercial treaties and lines of supply and demand reaching out into all the corners of the Roman Catholic United States of Europe. Maritime law was determined by the Hanseatic elders meeting at Visby. Herring was the Hansa staple and a Hansa ship never traveled with an empty hold. Visby was host to the Hansa top brass for many years, as good an off-shore tax haven as one would wish.
The people of Gotland however were less than enthusiastic about this great cancerous growth upon their island home. There were skirmishes and unstable alliances. The little maritime interests of the Gotland fishermen and the landed interests of the Gotland smallholder would not always coincide with the big European maritime interests of the Hansa merchants. And, as time passed, even less with the commercial interests of the Confederation of Hanseatic Towns. By the end of the fourteenth century, Gotland wanted nothing to do with the military pretensions of The Hanseatic League. They wanted out.
Their prayers were answered. Some mighty mysterious cosmic force caused the deep ocean currents of the North Atlantic Ocean to move and the economics disappeared overnight from The Hansa Shipping Cartel. No channel tunnel project could have had so dramatic an impact on the fortunes of Visby Town. And no opium wars can reverse the effects or counter the consequences of so dastardly a strike at the core of the Hansa’s economic being. Gotland returned to its former peaceful glory and became the home from home of such great Swedish poetic spirits as Ingmar Bergman, creator of the rich visual and emotional feast that is his silver screen production of Mozart’s opera ‘The Magic Flute’. How do all the hoards of Anglo-Saxon silver coins in Visby compare to the treasures of the soul that such great art provides?
For many years now, one of Gotland’s two representatives in the Swedish National Parliament has been swearing allegiance to Socialdemokraterna, the Social Democrats, a Wilson-Kinnock style British Labour Party coalition that has held power in the Swedish Parliament for as long as most people can remember through its sound populist instincts, its shrewd power-mongering and its strong diversified political base in the trade and labour union movements and the traditional production cooperatives of Scandinavian communal village life.
As urban and industrial interests have gained the upper hand within the corridors of Swedish labour party power, so the interests of the labour party have coincided with the interests of the megamachine in creating a Corporate State centrally controlled from the heart of Stockholm. History is repeating itself for the people of Gotland. The interests of the Swedish Labour Party are less and less the interests of the Little Gotlander outside the walls of Visby.
Gotland’s other representative throws in his vote instead with Center-partiet. Previously calling itself the Farmers Party, in recent years Center-partiet has shifted its political emphasis in attempting to establish a bridgehead in Sweden’s three urban city regions. Though a reasonable short term expedient for the end of the twentieth century, this is not a sensible strategy for the party to pursue into the twenty first century, as we will argue later on (see Chapter 19 on Rural Politics).
But for Gotland, it creates a logical balance between urban and rural interests to have one representative for the Swedish Labour Party and one from the Swedish Farmers Party. How did Gotland get so lucky? Were King Carl Gustaf wise and powerful and were he to call together his privy council to consider the state of his realm, then from the island province of Gotland he would have been advised to summon just these two counselors to his court at the Royal Palace just a musket shot away from Kungsholmen in the heart of the Stockholm islands.
Democracy lacks the elegance and transparency of monarchy. Less able to hide behind a stream of lies, damned lies and statistics, Monarchy concerns itself with handing down power to those competent to receive it, rather than making laws to be used against those with little need of them. But the democracy of a good monarchy and the tyranny of the money powers behind our bad republics are outside the scope of this present discussion.
So let us look at democracy in action in Gotland from 1982 to 1988. This was the percentage of the vote polled by each of the political parties after presenting their case and asking all those above the age of eighteen to furnish them with their vote and encourage them in their endeavours.
Figure 1: % of the vote in Gotland by Party 1982-1988 Election M C Fp S Vpk Mp Kds 1982 18.3 27.5 5.1 42.1 3.7 2.3 1.0 1985 17.0 22.8 10.4 41.8 3.7 2.5 1.6 1988 13.3 25.1 7.8 41.2 4.1 6.8 1.5 And before making further headway, let us draw up a set of thumbnail sketches of the Swedish party political landscape adopting as our reference point the British political landscape rather than attempting to translate Swedish politics into North American conditions.
Moderaterna (M) used to call themselves Högerpartiet. Höger means right as in left rather than as in wrong. Translates as the British Conservative Party.
Folkpartiet (Fp) where Folk translates as people and has none of the Spenglerian overtones of the German word Volk. Much closer to the English old folks at home. Translates as the British Liberal Party before the onslaught of Thatcherism on opposition politics.
Vänsterpartiet-Kommunisterna (Vpk) translates as the acceptable democratic face of marxist-leninism. Vänster means left. Dubcek in Prague Spring Czechoslovakia and Gorbachov in Perestroika Russia would feel comfortable with Vpk party policies as would the French and Italian Communist parties. In Great Britain Vpk translates into the Tony Benn socialist wing of the British Labour Party with its militant tendency. Had Vpk thrown in their lot with the Swedish Labour Party at the beginning of the century, the Labour Party would have had a very similar history to the British Labour Party and would have failed to chalk up the forty years in power. By the same token the formation of The Socialist Movement in Chesterfield in 1987 could well lead to the eventual formation of a party that would translate well into the Swedish Communist Party.
Miljöpartiet (Mp) are the Swedish Green Party. Miljö is the English word milieu but in context would nowadays translate as environment. Both Miljöpartiet in Sweden and the British Ecology Party are founding members of the European Green Movement. They regularly exchange delegates and can be expected to coordinate tactics. Both parties are comfortable presenting themselves publicly as The Green Party.
Kristligdemokraterna (Kds) are Christian Democrats, better known in West Germany than in Britain. In power terms Kds plays the mass election game in much the same way as Dr. David Owen does, wheeling and dealing for policy, influence and, when elections come, for ways to obtain representation. This is no criticism of either the Christian Democrats or the British Social Democratic Party. This is the way small parties go about their business. But the Christian Democrats are the type of political operation that The Pope disapproves of in South America where he is instructing the Catholic Church, and in particular its priests, to distance themselves from election politics.
The terms Moderates, Centre Party, Folk Party, Social Democrats, Communists, Greens and Christian Democrats are somewhat more misleading in English than in Swedish, so in this essay the equivalent British political Party name is being used. Hence M is Conservatives; C is the Farmers Party; Fp is Liberals; S is Labour; Vpk is Socialists; and Kds is Christian Democrat.
With these seven brief sketches of the political landscape, we are now ready to look at the ways Sweden translates votes at the ballot box into representation in the Swedish Parliament. And like most of Europe, Sweden has ‘proportional representation’. But those who see PR as ‘fair’ and ‘first past the past’ as unfair may be in for a surprise. Not everybody’s vote ‘counts’ with PR. Votes are ‘wasted’. And, like the insurance policy, the small print is ignored at your cost. Just as an insurance policy has an ‘excess’ so the Swedish PR system has its ‘threshold’.
So, for the moment, let us stay with Gotland and look at ‘votes’ rather than at percentages; real people, nodding heads, shows of hands and walks into lobbies instead of computer screen charts and electrons bouncing back from satellites, opinion poll margins of error and statistical sophistry. Here were the votes polled by the seven parties in Gotland in 1988.
Figure 2: Votes cast in Gotland in 1988 Total M C Fp S Vpk Mp Kds 35 738 4 767 8 979 2 801 14 733 1 483 2 437 538 100.0% 13.8% 25.1% 7.8% 41.4% 4.1% 6.8% 1.5% And the real consequences for the three elections in terms of seats in the Swedish Parliament were like this:
Figure 3: Seats allocated to Gotland by Party 1982-1988 Election M C Fp S Vpk Mp Kds 1982 - 1 - 1 - - - 1985 - 1 - 1 - - - 1988 - 1 - 1 - - -