The
Nordic Federal Election of 1922 would mark a sharp turning point in the political history of the Nordic Empire, some political scientists arguing that its eventual outcome would shape Nordic politics up to the present in a way no subsequent election has.
Since the conclusion of the Great War in 1909 and the collapse of the General Unionist League's Hjalmar Montelius' "Round Table Composition", the Liberals had ruled supremely, winning elections after elections. The opposition parties had been in disarray, with no Unionist leader seemingly capable of repeating Montelius' feat of pushing the Liberals down into second place. Meanwhile, the Unionists were increasingly beginning to suffer from the growth of the Nordic Labour Party who were starting to eat up their support among working-class voters in the cities. Even the Radicals were suffering from this once reliable source of support.
During the Comfortable Teens, the Liberals had successfully managed to stake out a position in the center of Nordic politics, balancing reforms in pensions with low spending and free trade. For the first time since the days of Sønderheim, there were actually surpluses being reported from the Union Chamber of the Treasury. The Liberals' leader, the former professor of statistics at Lund University, Sigurd Meissner, was generally considered a popular figure who knew what he was up to, and when he called his third election since his leadership had begun in 1922, everyone were expecting that the outcome wouldn't change the government.
Indeed, when the outcome were actually announced, few people still expected it. Sure, the Liberals had lost their majority, but they were still the largest party by far, almost twice the size of the Unionists, and the Liberals had after all lost their majority in 1914 as well, only to have it regained in 1916.
Meissner did what his predecessor had done in '14, and invited the Radical leadership in for negotiations at his modest mansion in Lund the week after the election. Surely, the Radicals wouldn't turn down the offer to work with the government? I mean, there was no other viable option, and this way, the Radicals could hope to get some of their policies through. They didn't want the Liberals to go to the Unionists or Skepticals, now did they?
Willy Westergaard, the Radicals' leader, was far more reserved than he had been back in 1914. He was generally willing to work with the Liberals, but he felt that this time, his base wouldn't forgive him if he didn't push for further reaching demands than he had done in the past, and what with the rise of the Nordic Labour Party, the Radicals could no longer rely on the cities for their support. There was Radical support on the countryside, but that support tended to go wasted, seeing the electoral system of the Unionsdag ran on FPTP in rural areas (where the Liberals ruled supreme), and STV in the urban areas. Westergaard's request was what his base had hoped for since the 1880s: electoral reform, STV in the countryside as well.
Meissner brushed this request aside with promises of letting the Committee of Secrets set up a subcommittee to look into the matter and come with recommendations. Westergaard tried to stand up, but he soon found himself outtalked by the Liberal leader. Meissner handed Westergaard a list of policies that the Radicals had championed in the election where the areas where the Liberals were willing to accommodate Radical ideas were clearly enunciated. Westergaard accepted the list, and responded that he and the rest of the leadership needed to discuss the matter further with their regional leaders and parties on
landsnivå.
Exactly how Westergaard would have handled the situation if given the time is something for counterfactual historians to speculate on, for on the Friday of 12 May 1922, the leader of the Radicals decided to go to the kinematograph[1], and see the celebrated new French comedy
Le Vie en Violet: Les Aventures du Marquis de Polynôme, based on the best-selling novels by the French writer Denis Bourbaki. The visit took at turn for the disastrous, as Westergaard not just found the film to be much too his liking, but dangerously much to his liking, enough to his liking for him to meet the same end as the ancient Greek philosopher Chrysippus of Soli, and on the way home from the showing, he collapsed, dying from laughter.
Though some would say that there was an element of ignominy about this death, most people would agree that there were certainly worse ways in which to die, and at the very least, Westergaard had died a happy man.
In political terms, Westergaard's death had immediately consequences, as the 53 years-old Odense MP Artur Christian Andersen, the son of the former Nordic Imperial Chancery President Nicolas Andersen, now inherited his job by virtue of being deputy leader of the Radicals. Andersen had three decades of political experience behind him, having served in various capacities in the old Round Table Composition, most notably as Chairman of the Board of Health and as Minister of Housekeeping[2]. He checked around with his allies across the empire before the weekend was over, and on Monday the 15th, when Meissner visited Andersen's office to express his condolences, handed the leader of the Liberals a list of his own.
This list when far beyond the offers that Meissner had given Westergaard, and included all sorts of social legislation on the top of the still crucial issue of electoral reform. And as if that wasn't enough, he also wanted the Radicals to be members of an official composition government, with ministerial portfolios for Andersen himself and his allies. In particular, Andersen demanded the Hubert Horace Sannes, a man he knew Meissner couldn't stand, be made Secretary for the Expedition of Norwegian Affairs[3]. Meissner is to have exploded with rage and informed Andersen that he would be willing to talk with the Dane again only when he had come to his senses, and that in the meanwhile, he would talk with the other parties in the Unionsdag.
But Meissner had underestimated just how quick Andersen had been moving, for when he went to the Unionists and the Labour Party, he discovered that Andersen had beaten him to it. Neither party were particularly inclined to work with the Liberals. Not the Unionists who were the main opposition party and worried about losing this position to the Labour Party, nor the Labourites, who were very awkward toward the idea of settling for something less than what the Radicals had demanded.
Meissner finally visited the office of Sven Tigerstedt, the leader of the Skepticals, and asked if Andersen had been there as well. Tigerstedt informed him that Andersen had been trying to schedule an appointment, but that Tigerstedt, an elderly man who had served in the Unionsdag since back when Andersen's father was Chancery President had merely sent the Radical leader the message "Come back when you have something to either promise me or threaten me with, youngster!" Meissner wondered what the Skepticals wanted to continue supporting the Liberals, to which Tigerstedt gave the standard list of Skeptical requests: economy in government, hands off the electoral system and the House of Knights, and all the rest. Then the Skepticals would promise not to vote against the government in a motion of no-confidence.
Meissner was now certain. With the 191 Liberal votes (the Speaker not included) and the 24 abstaining Skepticals, his government would survive. But the old professor of mathematics had not done his arithmetic properly, for 191+24=215, meaning there were still 219 votes left in the Unionsdag in case of a vote of no confidence. If Andersen could get 218 of those deputies to support him he could bring down the government.
And that he did.
On the first day of the new Unionsdag, Meissner's government fell. For the first time in almost three decades, the ball now rolled into the corner of the monarch. It would be up to Valdemar I, Emperor Across the North, to appoint the next Chancery President.
And here too, Meissner had not thought things through, for Valdemar had been a young boy back when Andersen had been a young boy, and Valdemar's grandparents had been Emperor and Empress Across the North back when Andersen's father had been President of the Imperial Chancery. Valdemar knew Andersen, and when Andersen proposed that he could totally negotiate a settlement with the Labour Party and the Unionists, Valdemar trusted him. Andersen admitted though, that he did not feel himself suitable for the task of actually leading the government, nor did he feel that that office should be given to another member of the Radicals. A Unionist would be the best, the natural choice.
Imagine Svinhufvud's confusion when the old Finnish aristocrat was invited to Älvsborg Palace and informed by the Emperor that he would be willing to name him Chancery President provided Labourites and Radicals were included. Svinhufvud was very weary of the idea of including the Labourites. They had never been in government before, and the Unionists, in their campaigning had often denounced them as revolutionaries and anarchists.
But this was the Emperor Across the North and Protector of the Baltic Realms, Åeliedäjja of the Sami and Prince of Tobago.
When the Emperor asked you to do something, you didn't refuse.
When the Emperor asked you to do something, you bowed and said,
It shall be my humble duty to serve.
The final stitching together of this ragtag composition would prove very tricky, not least since the Labourites demanded control of the College of the Chamber[4] to acquiesce to sitting in the same government as the Unionists, and the Radicals demanded the creation of a new ministry all together. Finally, Svinhufvud could present a government with himself at the head as Chancery President, with Leon Roos as Union Minister for Labour (and Labourite Rickard Beskow as Union Minister for Finance), as well as Artur Christian Andersen in the newly created title of Union Minister for Social Affairs.
At least one thing they did agree on, and that was to take STV to the countryside as well as the cities, and this caused Sigurd Meissner to play his final card, which was to prove his downfall. He now proposed electoral reform as well, but electoral reform of a different kind: Break up the cities into single-member constituencies as well. On paper, it was a brilliant ploy, for he knew that this was a reform the Unionists had supported a few decades ago when they had much higher levels of support in the cities and had ironically been blocked by the Liberals upon attempting to enact this reform. But he was too late, the Unionists were uncertain this would really help them, with many fearing it would cement their loss of the cities to Labour.
And then there was the backfiring. Rather than convince Unionists to abstain from the vote of no confidence Meissner had put forward, it actually horrified the Skepticals who otherwise likely would have joined Meissner. The Skepticals were against any tinkering with the electoral system in any direction, and now they were faced with the prospect of having to eat either one of two dishes they found deeply tasteless. Eventually they decided that if it had to be one or the other, they might as well go with the one likely to harm them the least, and so abstained, allowing Svinhufvud's government their first victory as they survived this crucial vote of confidence.
[1] We would say movie theatre.
[2] A term that sounds ridiculous in English, but in Swedish
hushållningsminister sounds like a very plausible title for a government in the former half of the 20th century.
[3] Kind of works the other way around in the Nordic Empire as it does in Britain. Basically, in Sweden in the 18th century, the head of a department, or "kollegium", had the title of President, and the heads of the various subdepartments, or "expeditions", had the title of Secretary. When the Nordic Empire was formed in 1867, they opted for replacing the title of all of the "kollegii" from President to Minister, so, now, technically,
Minister is considered to be a superior office to that of a
Secretary.
[4] Read as Finance Department.
[5] The two-coloured seat in the above diagram belongs to the eccentric Ystad MP Loke Fagerlund who got himself elected under the banner of the
Loke Fagerlund Party.
