There is still a fight to be had inside the Labour Party. But the main elements of a fight-back are likely to come from Norway's r On September 13th Norwegians voted for 425 municipal councils and 19 regions. The result was characterised by a particularly low turnout rate and a slight polarisation. Bjarke Friborg reports. One third of voters preferred the Conservatives and the populist Progressive Party. The Social Democrats scored only 28% their worst result since the 1920's. The Centre parties maintained their overall vote, as the third largest bloc.
The radical left had a particularly good result. The reformist Socialist Left Party (SV) won 8% of votes, and the revolutionary Red Electoral Alliance (RV) attracted 2.1% of voters. Five years after EU referendum
Norway's political landscape has changed a lot since mass mobilisations narrowly defeated a referendum on EU membership in November 1994. The movement against EU membership blossomed into the country's largest political grassroots' organisation in the country-rivalling the Social Democrats-with 140,000 members and a large number of activists.
The "No!" campaign was an inspiration for the RV and the Red Youth organisation, both undergoing a generational change and recruiting new revolutionaries with experience in mass work. The campaign overlapped with a perios of sudent nobilisation on other period of student mobilisation on other
The Social Democrats were kept in a firm grip by Gro Harlem Brundtland. She is internationally known for her environmental work in UN structures. But at home she was a staunch believer in an unhindered market economy and very often at odds with the Norwegian environmentalists. Nevertheless, she managed to keep the Social Democrats the a unions and/or the social movements. An upturn in social struggle might lead to a regeneration of the left in the Labour Party. But the Party is not where the struggle will start. This means that the priorities should be strengthening the left in the unions, and strengthening the intervention of the left in the campaigns and the social movements. * ed vote at 40% of popular support, despite massive criticism of her pro-BU campaign. Even the main confederation of trade unions opposed her-reflecting an uplifting left wing victory over the labour bureaucrats.
The anti-EU struggle also radicalised the small farmers Centre Party, which took an uncompromising stand against membership (which attracted some left reformists to the party). Forces for change?
The Social Democrats and the Centre Party are the main losers of the 1999 elections. The Social Democrats are losing their traditional core voters. Many Social Democrats are frustrated with Gro Harlem Brundtland's weak successor, Thorbjørn Jagland. The party has lost votes to the left, but also to the Conservatives. Some working class voters switched to the racist, right-populist Progressive Party.
The Centre Party have lost almost all their newfound supporters from the referendum period. The party has lost credibility because of its poor performance in the three party coalition government. The Centre Party is supposedly highly critical of the EU, but in reality they have given up presenting their own views, to the point of even recommending Norwegian membership in the EU's Schengen agreement on police cooperation.
Even the Socialist Left Party (SV) has forgotten that it was popular anti-EU mobilisation which put them where they are.
The party leadership is determined to enter a new government with the Social Democrats. Life in parliament is everything, while struggles in local communities and on the workplaces seem to be unimportant: When a group of young people in Oslo occupied a house to draw attention to the housing
problems, the SV candidates distanced themselves from the action "because politicians do not use that kind of method"
After several bleak years, the left opposition inside the SV has been encouraged by the radicalisation of the Socialist Youth organisation.
Like Sweden's Young Left (Ung Vänstern) the Socialist Youth are noticeably to the left of their mother party. The outcome of the present confrontation is still unclear. Yes to NATO?
The April SV congress faced total turmoil when chairperson Kristin Halvorsen threatened to resign if she did not win majority support for the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia. Like Germany's Green Party, the SV has its roots in the anti NATO movement in the 1960s.
Luckily for Halvorsen the war was over before the electoral campaigning reached the decisive phase.
Voter concerns were concentrated on education —a traditional SV strong point. So while core SV voters moved to the more radical RV, the party attracted a number of frustrated Social Democrats.
The increasingly radical Socialist Youth were the spearhead of a campaign which has made the SV the most popular party among 16-19 year olds. In parallel school elections, 19% of this age group voted for SV. The more radical RV maintained its traditional 6% score. The Red Electoral Alliance
This was the best ever result for the revolutionary Red Electoral Alliance (RV), which won 42,000 votes (2.1%). Support for the party has been slowly increasing since its foundation in 1975.
Back then, the RV was a pure electoral front for the Maoist AKP/ML (Workers' Communist Party/MarxistLeninist). At that time AKP was Europe's biggest Maoist party with a daily newspaper, Klassekampen and several thousand members (in a country of only 4.5 million).
After a decade of relative stagnation, RV was transformed into an independent party with about 1,400 members and full freedom of tendencies and factions.
Today RV contains Maoist and Trotskyist currents. But the great majority of members just describe themselves as revolutionary Marxists.
This Red Electoral Alliance is turning into a real party, with activities and interventions all year, and a relatively important presence in the trade unions and women's movement.
Of course, RV is not nearly as strong as the AKP was in the more radical 1970s. But the daily revolutionary newspaper Klassekampen is an important asset - and something most radical left groups in Europe don't have. Both the newspaper and RV played a crucial role in the protests against the NATO operation against Yugoslavia. The rest of the left was more disappointing — the SV leadership supported NATO and the old "Muscovites" in the NKP did not wan to criticise Milosevic.
In the elections on September 13th RV won more votes than SV in several places, and in some municipalities the party won 7-13.5%. RV now has 6.5% in Bergen, 4.1% in Trondheim, 4.2% in the capital, Oslo, and 4.4% in Lillehammer, seat of the Winter Olympic games.
The party's main theme was the struggle against the strangulation of local economies.
RV refused to take responsibility for cutbacks, and encouraged people to protest against the growing centralisation and concentration of wealth. RV also protested against the crisis in the offshore oil industry.