(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
FRA ORIENTERING SEPTEMBER 1967
The big ones in the world are getting bigger and the smaller ones are getting smaller. It applies to the nations as it applies to many conditions in our own country. And there should be no assurance from me that miracles can still be done by the small nation, the small party, or the so-called little man in Norway. But I would like to give an example of how it can still be useful to do something, that at least it is possible to reach a distance in a separate way, even if those who try it are both small and small at the start. Yes, even though the experiment seems so comically hopeless that it may be reminiscent of flea and elephant when they entered the ark. Don't push, shouted the flea.
15 years ago Norway was just enrolled in NATO, and it looked irrevocably for a period of 20 years that anything that had to do with foreign policy and defense could simply be raised above the parties, as it was called in those parties. And then it was that quite a few people found each other and began to collaborate on the impossible. Most parishes for the Labor Party, and common to them was the belief that Norway, as a NATO member, would go after the Great, especially the United States, in a worldwide power struggle where our own national interests would not count. The alternative was a stronger unity between the Nordic countries, an alliance-free Nordic region. From the beginning, the small group marked a critical stance both on the Soviet bloc and on NATO – this view was later called "the third position".
When we reacted so strongly, and held on to our view despite a massive overcrowding of the old parties, it was due in particular to Norway necessarily having to become an advanced military outpost for the West, despite politicians' assurances that it was only a national one. defense. And this happened at a time when the race armor was shooting at both sides. Most importantly, in this context it was the development of the nuclear weapons after Hiroshima. Just then, both the Soviet and the United States received their hydrogen bombs. We took strong impressions from Albert Einstein, who once gave his warnings to humanity in this simple form: I do not know which weapons will be used in a third world war, but I do know that the fourth will be fought with wooden clubs.
The impossible which we started 15 years ago first consisted of publishing the little 14-day newspaper Orientering. A few veterans from the Labor Party played a significant role in the early days. It was Christoffer Hornsrud, prime minister of the first labor government in 1928, now well over 90 years old, but still vigilantly facing the contemporary. The other was Jakob Friis, a parliamentarian for many years.
Contrary to all likelihood, the small leaflet continued to exist year after year, despite systematic concealment in the early days, and later despite McCarthy methods that accompanied the Cold War in Norway as well. Regularly the so-called circle was reversed Orientering labeled as communist, so as to easily finish it.
But the newspaper still refused to die. The decisive reason for this unnatural phenomenon was that the development of the world created growing unrest and a stronger need for an alternative to the policy pursued by the old parties: West Germany was re-armed with Norwegian blessing, soon the country was a leading military force in Europe, and we got the impression of German officers at Kolsås and an increasingly intimate military cooperation. France waged war in Vietnam with moral support from the other NATO powers, including Norway. The developing countries, the poor and hungry part of the world, emerged as a major problem and a challenge, but Norway was on the rich side and had little to offer. And all the time, the threat from nuclear weapons grew, partly because even this country became part of the nuclear strategy and provided a defense with nuclear weapons. There was a wide and strong protest movement, and it left a trail.
But neither campaign against nuclear weapons or other signs of growing political opposition could be expressed by elections, with the parties that existed. And forming a new party could seem far more hopeless than creating an opposition newspaper. But the need grew. In 1954-60, a number of Orienterings employees excluded by the Labor Party. And now it was just such a push that was needed.
When the Socialist People's Party was formed in 1961, one of the editors of the Labor Party wrote that this was basically good, because now all the tolls were collected in one party. A few months later, the parliamentary elections showed that no less than 45 voters were the kind of fools, and that only in six counties. Two years ago, the figure rose to 000, so that today's voter turnout is insignificant below the Christian People's Party. With a fair election scheme, SF would get 122-000 representatives in the Storting. Today, the party has two known, while Christian People's Party sits with 10.
The new radical movement in Norway began in a couple of cramped attics in a backyard with trash cans and rats in Akersgata. It took 15 years to reach from this invisible existence to a firmly established position in Norwegian politics. It can be useful for the little ones to get some distance, and then we see if it should not be possible to reach even a little further. For us, there is no material difference between a parliamentary election and a municipal election. Both apply to a long-term struggle for influence on Norwegian politics, outwards and inwards.
