Chances of
survival slim
for
Denmark's
new government
AFTER a four week governmental crisis, an unusual situation in Denmark, a new bourgeois minority cabinet was finally formed on June 3. This followed intense negotiations since the May 10 elections. More than a deadlock between the workers' and bourgeois parties, this reflected a deep split in the bourgeois camp about how to fight the workers in the sharpening crisis that lies ahead.
S INCE 1982, Denmark has been
ruled by a minority government made up of four bourgeois parties - the Conservatives, Liberals, Center Democrats and Christian People's Party. The parliamentary basis for this regime has been represented by the bourgeois majority in the Folketing [parliament], which has also included the Progress Party on the government's right-flank and the Radical Liberals on its left.
While the government can count on a majority for its general economic policy, including for its attacks on workers' incomes and its cut-backs policy, on a number of questions it has faced a so-called Alternative Majority, made up of the working-class parties and the Radical Liberals. This Alternative Majority has, for example, forced the government to conduct a different policy on environmental and military questions (on which there have been extensive popular mobilizations).
The existence of this Alternative Majority on military matters has forced the government in recent years to put footnotes in official NATO documents, first and foremost because of the opposition to the deployment of American Pershing and cruise
missiles in Europe (the so-called doubletrack decision). It was this majority that induced the Schlüter government to call an election on May 10, 1988 — only eight months after the previous parliamentary election in September 1987. Together, the Radical Liberals, the Social democrats and the Socialist People's Party (SF) had passed a resolution that henceforth any NATO ship would be informed that it was incompatible with established Danish policy to bring atomic weapons into Danish territory in peacetime.
NATO question became main election issue
Even though the resolution did not demand an answer from ships that they were not carrying atomic weapons, the government and NATO chose to consider the resolution a break with NATO practice that no ship reveals whether it has nuclear armagovernment was to open it up to "the left of center," that is, to bring in the Social Democrats. At the same time, the wide differences between the Radicals and the Progress Party remain, and there is no possibility in sight for overcoming them.
Against this background, the new govemment is functioning in a very unstable way, and has a slim chance of surviving very long. How long depends first and foremost on whether the Social Democrats want to maintain the government and really become part of its parliamentary base.
Until now, the statements from leading Social Democrats in the party and the trade-union movement have been totally contradictory. But the result will be determined to a large extent by whether the Danish left can organize workers' resistance into active opposition to class collaboration in parliament as well. *
DENMARK
Election results (seats)
1987/1988 1987 1988 Social democrats 54 55 SF 27 24 Common Course 4 01 Radical Liberals 11 10 Conservatives 38 352 Liberals 19 22 Center
Democrats :9 9 Christian People's
Party 4 4 Progress Party 9 16 1. A party formed by a breakway from the CP in the seamen's union with an anti-immigrant pro gram. lt got just under the 2% minimum for representation in parliament. Parties that top 2% 2. The premier's own party, ments on board. The government opted to Left parties lose seats make the question an election issue, with the clear aim of liquidating the Alternative Majority on defence policy.
Although the Alternative Majority lost seven seats, it maintained its edge, with 79 seats out of a total of 175. The government parties made no gains, but the rightist Progress Party won seven more seats.
It was this unsuccessful attack on the Alternative Majority that was the background to the long governmental crisis after the election. Premier Poul Schlüter's problem was that a continuation of the four-party goverment would face an Alternative Majority on environmental and defence questions, and therefore could not look forward
So, Schlüter opted for a tactical maneuver. The two small bourgeois parties in the government (the Center Democrats and the Christian People's Party) were maneuvered out, and instead a minority government was formed of the Conservatives (35 seats), the Liberals (22 seats) and the Radicals (10 seats).
The objective of this tactic was to lure the Radical Liberals away from the Alternative Majority on defence with the bait of ministerial seats. In the short term, the ploy worked. With the help of the Radicals, the new government has already solved the problem that led to the snap election by sending a letter to NATO countries' ambassadors saying that Denmark does not want atomic weapons in peacetime. In that way, they avoided the direct challenge involved in sending such a notice to the captains of every NATO ship.
Likewise, in a series of other areas it is clear that the Radical Left has abandoned the viewpoint of the Alternative Majority for the sake of participating in the government. This has already provoked uneasiness among many members of the party.
However, it is too early to talk about an outright capitulation by the Radical Liberals. Their declared aim in going into the
FOR THE Danish left, the May 10 election was not a good one. Altogether, the left parties lost six seats. In particular, this was a bad election for the forces to the left of the social democracy. For the first time in more than ten years, they suffered a definite setback, losing 3.1% of the votes.
With 16.3% of the vote today, the forces to the left of the social democracy are still an important factor and are bigger than at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.
NTHE PERIOD from 1977 to 1987, we saw a considerable strengthening of the
Danish left wing. Its vote doubled from about 10% to 20%. The bulk of these gains were registered by the left reformist Socialist People's Party (SF), whose vote increased from 3.9% in 1979 to 14.6% in
The left wing's advance was in part an expression of the class polarization in Danish society under the impact of the capitalist crisis. But it was also an expression of the fact that by voting for the left wing a lot of workers were trying to compensate for the difficulties of stopping the offensive of the bourgeoisie and the bosses in open
The culmination of the left wing's advance came in the 1987 elections, when it won almost 20% of the vote. That was a direct result of the Easter strikes in 1985, when for several weeks Denmark was paralyzed by a "proto general strike." Even though the strikes did not achieve their goal of toppling the bourgeois Schlüter government, they did give a strong impetus to the parties that would carry out policies in the interests of the working
Dashing hopes for a working-class majority
Opinion polls showed a clear majority for the workers' parties, and the social democracy was forced to open up to a possibility of governmental collaboration with the SF Since then, both the social-democratic and SF leaderships, each in their own way, have helped to to dash workers' hopes for a
The social democrats have continually sought to open up the way for collaboration "across the center" (for example with the Radical Liberals), and time after time they have stressed the need for a tough austerity policy to save the capitalist system.
SF in general has held fast to the perspective of a workers' majority government, but at the same time has watered down its political context. From the SF's parliamentary angle, moving closer to the social-democratic perspective was supposed to make the possibility of governmental collaboration more "realistic."
However, the result of this has been on the one hand that the SF has been confronted with new demand from the social dem: 5 ocrats and, on the other, that popular July 11, 1988 • #145 International Viewpoint
DENMARK support for a workers' majority has ebbed considerably. The result was that in the May 10 elections the workers' parties represented no clear alternative. This, combined with the absence of struggles, led to losses for the workers' parties, partly to the bourgeois parties and partly to abstention.
The biggest loss was in the SF vote. That was a result of the fact that the party's profile was very much subordinated to that of the social democracy (for example, in the campaign it did not want to come out in clear opposition to NATO, although this position has been one of the party's trademarks.) But it was also linked to the fact that the SF was most committed to "workers' majority alternative," which many people thought offered no real alternative in practice.
Despite the setback, there is no immediate sign of opposition developing in the SF to the leadership's rightward course. In fact, at a congress after the election the leadership's line was endorsed by an overwhelming majority.
For the far left as well, the election was a defeat (see IV 142). But in contrast to the SF, it has prompted an extensive discussion on tasks and perspectives, especially in the Left Socialist Party (VS).
VS majority for revolutionary regroupment
That was reflected clearly in the VS congress held two weeks after the election. A series of leading figures announced that they were leaving the party and appealing to join the SF. But there was also a majority for ending the party's right turn (the so-called "red realism") and putting the perspective of a "revolutionary Marxist party" on the agenda. In this connection the VS also expressed a desire for collaboration and discussions with the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP, Danish section of the Fourth International), among others.
The SAP has welcomed these developments in the VS, and is prepared to participate in a regroupment process with the perspective of building a revolutionary Marxist party. This is not because in the short term this will assure an advance for the far left and renewed representation in parliament. It is because such a regroupment can became an active and strong pole in the class struggle that can fill the vacuum left by the SF's right turn. *
Progress Party leader Mogens Glistrup after attempting to speak on May Day a few years ago (DR) International Viewpoint #145 • July 11, 1988
Racist party
doubles vote THE BIG WINNER in the May 10 election was the rightist Progress Party. It almost doubled its vote, reaching 9%. That gave the party 16 seats in the new parliament, an increase of seven. Since this coincided with Le Pen's success in the French presidential elections, many people have seen the Progress Party's advance as a similar phenomenon. T HE PROGRESS PARTY was formed in 1973 as a protest against the high taxes enacted by successive social-democratic and bourgeois governments. The initiator and unquestioned leader was Mogens Glistrup, who called for cutting taxes and equated this fight with the 1940-45 resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. Personally, he managed to pay zero taxes.
Besides the demand for lower taxes and drastic savings in the public sector, the party's policy in the beginning was very diffuse. For example, Glistrup called for cutting back the military and replacing it with a recorded telephone message in Russian saying "We surrender."
After a spectacular jump in the 1973 elections, in which the party won 15.9% of the vote, it started to develop toward positions like those of the traditional parties in a number of areas (for example on military questions and foreign policy). But, at the same time, it held fast to the demand for lower taxes and economies in the public sector. This meant that the party was less able to differentiate itself from the other bourgeois parties, and in the 1984 elections its vote dropped to 3.6%. A mood of weariness with politicians
The Progress Party's rise to 4.8% in 1987 and 9% in 1988 can be explained by a number of factors. In part, there has been growing dissatisfaction among bourgeois voters with the Schlüter regime's inability to deliver on its election promises, such as reducing the public sector and cutting taxes
In part, with its populist demagogy the party has been able to tap a mood of weariness with politicians, resulting among other things from having two parliamentary elections in a period of only eight months.
Finally, the party has cynically linked itself to, and promoted, fears that have developed in recent years about an influx of foreigners, among other things in response to periodic increases in the number of refugees from Iran and Lebanon.
About 55% of those who vote for the Progress Party declare that they have a "very negative" attitude to Muslim immigrants and refugees. Among those who vote for the other bourgeois parties, "only"
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25% feel the same way.
In the meantime, it is interesting to see which groups are being attracted to the Progress Party. In the 1970s, there was a sector of young voters. But today only 16% of the party's voters are under 30. On the other hand, 60% of its voters are over 50 (in comparison with only 40% of the population as a whole). Against this background, it is not surprising that almost a third of those who vote for the party are old-age pensioners. On the other hand, only 18% of its vote comes from workers employed in the public and private sectors.
While the Progress Party got 9% of the vote, it has only a few thousand members. The level of activity is very low, and only a small proportion can be mobilized to go into the streets in election campaigns. The party's inability to mobilize its members was illustrated on May 1, when it called for a rally in the Faelledpark in Copenhagen. While 200,000 people participated in the commemoration organized by the workers' movement, only 50 people (protected by almost as many police) listed to Mogens Glistrup's diatribe against refugees and
While the Progress Party's electoral advance was a victory for the extreme right, it is not an advance that can be translated today into an offensive in the streets. These gains still have too much of the character of a protest vote. *