A Spectator's Stockholm Notebook
In Stockholm, November is the worst month of all. October allows the Swedes to go on feeling European: the sun shines until early evening and the weather is. mild enough even to have windows open. December is all right too. The genuine arrival of winter is celebrated with glogg (pronounced glurg, appropriately), mulled wine parties which start early in the month and roll on drunkenly through the Christmas season until everyone is heartily sick of them, or just heartily sick. But in November it is rainy cold. The sun sets at 3.30. Stockholm commuters know it isn't going to light them back from work for another six months. Without either sun or alcoholic festivities to solace the people, the catch-phrases about Sweden take on a ring of truth — a clean, well-lighted place, a nation of shop windows.
Sibylline fate
Meanwhile there have been plenty of domestic concerns to keep the people of Stockholm occupied. The death of Princess Sibylla (mother of the Crown Prince, now working in a merchant bank in London) caused a flurry of memorials and reminiscences. But the chief effects appeared to be sartorial. The Sveriges Radio announcer wore a suit instead of his usual pullover and denim jacket, and the British Embassy are following Court mourning — black ties — for a couple of weeks, despite the fact, that Sibylla staunchly supported the Nazis during the war.
Sveriges Radio
A matter likely to divert the Swedes for much longer is the imminent shake-up of the Swedish broadcasting organisation, Sveriges Radio. For some time, control of a wide range of its programmes has been effectively in the hands of the younger producers and directors, whose political interpretation of current events would have had Tory Conference in an uproar. They have little constitutional power in Sveriges Radio, which is a State monopoly anyway, but up until now the administrators have been sufficiently impressed by their collective belligerence—including the threat of strikes and mass walk-outs — to have given them their head. This has resulted in some interesting interpretations of hard news. TV2, normally regarded as the main current affairs channel, greeted the re-election of Nixon with two programmes, neither of them news commentary: a Russian cartoon and the American satirical film Milhous.
Freedom fighters
What now seems to be happening is that the top SR people are preparing for a showdown — and they will have the support of Olof Palme.
This week the organisation has come under heavy fire in the Swedish Parliament for failing to implement the rulings of the Radio Council (similar to our Press Council), for broadcasting "subversive and atheistic propaganda" and for "practising sabotage like that against military installations." The Director-General is now drafting new programme instructions which may mean amending the original directive given the organisation by act of Parliament.
The Prime Minister is in the embarrassing position of an apostle of radical policies who finds himself being outflanked on the left — not" only by SR but even, occasionally, by the liberal Dagens Nyheter in many ways the best and most respected .of Sweden's Stockholm-based daily newspapers. This is particularly dangerous for Palme now' that his policies of increasing taxation (as much as 50 per cent on a salary of 0,000 a year) and reducing wage differentials are causing widespread terror that 'his Social Democratic government is going to live up to its name, instead of being the party of comfortable status quo as it was under Tage Erlander. The time has passed when Olof Palme could march side by side with the North Vietnamese ambassador to Moscow in the vanguard of an antiAmerican demonstration. These days the chicken-wire is up on the balconies of the American Embassy; armed guards patrol beneath; and Palme waits and hopes that Nixon will send from Washington a replacement for the unfortunate Ambassador Holland — a black diplomat sent to the country most repelled by racial discrimination and jeered out of office as a token 'Negro. SR's advocacy, in this situation, of the FLN and North Vietnamese Army, and of the valiant freedom-fighters of the IRA, is less than welcome to the Swedish government.
Competitive spirit
The outcome of the Sveriges Radio clash won't be apparent for some time. But it is significant that in several areas in which her social democratic measures have been the envy of right-minded egalitarians the world over, the Swedish government is retrenching or calling a halt. Palme's policy of raising the wages of 'the poorer workers to the standard of higher-paid workers came to a sticky .end last year, when the government had to legislate to end a strike by two big white-collar unions who refused, to permit their standard of living to be depreciated by a bargaining agreement advantageous to unions with lower-paid members. A comprehensive marking system for examinations has been re-introduced into secondary schools. The competitive spirit, previously regarded as an elitist perversion of natural human instinct, is clearly being encouraged — possibly a wise decision in a country of eight million population with a 2 per cent unemployment rate. With the all-important elections only nine months away, Palme is gready drawing in his horns — instance his reappointment in the summer, against feverish opposition from young socialists, of a Swedish ambassador to Greece.
Next to godliness
Finally, two pictures which might provide sustenance for generalisations I shall avoid. The first is a grumble to a friend of mine from a high official in the Swedish Institute for International Peace Research set up with great pomp and subsidy by the government some six or seven years ago. "What's happening?" he complains. "Peace is breaking out all over the place. I'm leaving," he goes on with a gleam in his eye, "to set up a study group to research inter-personal conflict instead."
The second is from a bookshop in Stockholm on my last day in that city — a November day it. must be added. A baby girl, not more than three, strapped in her push-chair, accidentally brushes against a book. It falls to the floor. Leaning down, straining against her straps, she picks it UP with great effort and puts it back on the pile. It isn't quite straight. Leaning right out of her push-chair she re-aligns it with the books beneath, and sinks back with a sigh.
C.H.
Previous page
