"I want to see my file!"
A public commission set up by the Norwegian parliament has revealed police surveillance of the left on a scale that even surprised even the most informed critics. Revelations of the intimate collaboration of leading members of the Labour Party with the police has sent shockwaves through the public. And many people have lost their illusions
Norway * passports and registration of everybody who went to the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, no matter what the purpose of the trip was. Every cultural event organised in the East by the Norwegian Foreign department was routinely reported to the Surveillance Police.
about the "neutral," "classless" nature of the state. Anders Ekland THE INTELLIGENCE AND SURVEILLANCE departments of the army and police were heavily compromised by their collaboration with the Nazis and quisling forces during World War II. After liberation, they were rebuilt almost from scratch, and staffed by reliable social-democrats linked to the wartime exile government in London.
Surveillance of communists was one of the major tasks of the new structures. The Labour Party had no scruples using the archives on communists collected by the Nazis during the war. Recent reports by a parliamentary commission show that this task as continued to absorb the Surveillance services. Labour Party collaboration
Their firm grip on the Surveillance Police allowed Labour Party leaders to listen to tapes of the meetings of the Norwegian Communist Party. And when expelled members of the Labour Party formed the Socialist Peoples Party in 1960, they were put under immediate police surveillance. After 1968, Norway's influential Maoist movement was also the target of a massive surveillance programme.
The Lund Commission recently revealed the existence of over 50,000 personal files in the buildings of the Surveillance Department of the Norwegian police. The establishment is scandalised by these revelations. Why? Mainly because some conservative politicians have always been dissatisfied with the political monopoly that the Labour Party had over this business. They even suspected that they themselves were being surveyed! This is why the Lund Commission was set up in the first place. The Labour Party was strongly against any real inquiry.
Pressure for a real inquiry was also generated by the revelations of Ronald Bye. former General Secretary of the Labour Party,
Eras ousted from the party leadership following a corruption scandal. Bye took his revenge by writing a series of books exposing the illegal surveillance that had been taking place, organised by Labour.
"Public opinion" began to favour an impartial inquiry. And it became near impossible for the establishment not to include well known leftwingers like Berge Furre professor of history, and former leader of the Socialist Left Party in the commission. This was a change from previous commissions, which had, obviously, consisted entirely of persons loyal to the establishment. The scale of the operations
What most shocks the public is the scale of the whole affair. A special room was set aside in the building of the Norwegian Trade Union Congress, a special room was made for taping meetings held in the building, and writing resumes of the recordings. This went on routinely for decades! These reports were submitted to leading members of the Labour Party, including its General Secretary, and to the Prime Minister.
The surveillance of the newly-created Socialist Peoples Party, went so far that microphones was placed in the cottage of the party leader, with a police officer stationed nearby, monitoring every single word said inside.
There was massive phone tapping of all kinds of people suspected of participation in revolutionary, left-wing, or peace movement activities persons. Before 1960, much of this activity was illegal. After 1960 most of the phone tapping was formally legal. And special judges that handled such cases denied the police the opportunity to phone-tapping in fewer than ten cases! The rest of the time they just sat in the offices of the Surveillance Police and signed the documents presented to them for authorisation,
There was continuous photographing of
Employment blacklists
What shocked people most was the control exercised by the Surveillance Police over individuals' careers. A huge majority of people in Norway assumed that this kind of behaviour was limited to totalitarian regimes. "It couldn't happen here," they said.
In the iron-mines in Northern Norway, Surveillance decided who could get a job in the mines, and who couldn't. This had nothing to do with military or other "state secrets". But the Labour party did not want communists to influence the trade-unions. When a communist got the post of welfaresecretary of the coal-mines at Svaldbard, the Surveillance Department intervened. Not the whole truth
The full extent ofithis blacklisting is still not clear. The Commission has only seen part of the archives, mainly police files. The surveillance apparatus in the military has either concealed or burned their material and has in general been less cooperative. The Commission has depended on the willingness of former employees of the Surveillance services to talk to them, rather than having the power to summon witnesses, and take evidence on oath.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions. How much did the ministers of the successive governments know about all this? And who were the informers? Files were opened on people as young as 15, after police informers within the schools labelled them as Maoists Stop political surveillance!
These revelations are a useful reminder for those on the left anywhere who had any illusions about the "democratic" character of the modern capitalist state. Left forces in Norway are trying to build a movement of public opinion for the complete abolition of the Surveillance Police. Socialists and democrats in other countries should take note! *
July 1996 #279 5