Farewell

Page Two/Per T Ohlsson

FAREWELL TO THE IDYLL

September 14, 2003

At half past twelve Per Albin Hansson walked away from the card game and highballs at the Opera Cellar, a favorite Stockholm restaurant.

Outside he was offered a taxi ride but declined such extravagant transportation. He walked to Rödbo Square at Tegelbacken in order, as was his wont, to take the number 12 streetcar home to Ålsten. He got off at Ålsten Square and collapsed.

People hurried up and somebody suggested that they carry Per Albin to his row house while \waiting for an ambulance. But no one opened the door. When the ambulance arrived, postal supervisor F. H. Karlsson offered to go along with the prime minister.

The Father of Our Country, the fourth and final part of Anders Isaksson's monumental biography, begins with this story of Per Albin Hansson's death in October 1946: "Thus per Albin ended the last evening of his life with his letter carrier as escort, a man of the people who happened to be chosen as surrogate kin to a man of the people."

The prime minister who took the streetcar, just like "ordinary people." This idyllically egalitarian image of “the people's home,” our welfare state, and its creator, has become engraved in our collective consciousness. Sweden is the country whose government leaders move about freely and unconcerned among the governed.

Body guards and armored limousines? Such things are used only on truly solemn occasions and at visits from foreign potentates. Sweden is the country where the prime minister should preferably not travel in the government plane. Olof Palme was shot from behind when he and his wife were walking home without a bodyguard one winter evening in 1986. It was a shocking tragedy which, as a result of blunders by the police and politicians, turned into a national trauma: the statute of limitations on the Palme murder, still unexplained, is going to expire in eight years.

But the image of Per Albin on the streetcar lingers on: Palme was the exception. Per Albin was the rule.

Now Palme is no longer an exception. Anna Lindh is also dead, cut down on a visit to NK in Stockholm. She went there last Wednesday, on foot and in the company of a female friend. In the midst of a heated, intense election campaign, the very vulnerable foreign minister of the country had no personal protection.

This arouses admiration and surprise in the world around us. How could it happen in Sweden once again? The pattern appears gruesomely familiar: the sudden attack, the perpetrator disappearing, the police fumbling around...

"Our country is known for its openness, known for being a democratic society where there is and should be little distance between people and those elected by the people. Tolerant people, unique in their cohesion," said Prime Minister Göran Persson after the news of Anna Lind's death. Proud, beautiful words. But was it a description or an invocation? Where is the line between openness and cluelessness?

It is said of Anna Lindh that she was "ordinary." She was not. Anna Lindh was exceptional: exceptionally gifted, exceptionally receptive, exceptionally energetic, exceptionally influential, and—above all-exceptionally visible. Is it reasonable to ask persons defined precisely by their uncommonness—in power, position, reputation--should live like "ordinary people"?

Perhaps it was in 1946. But it wasn't reasonable in 1986. And it certainly is not reasonable in 2003.

In other words, Sweden's democratic culture must find a new balance between openness and security, between desirable proximity and necessary distance. It ought to have happened seventeen years ago. It must happen now.

Naturally it was a coincidence, but it was a coincidence filled with symbolism, with the irony of history: On the 11th of September, on the day of Anna Lindh's death, the family pages of the newspapers reported that dance teacher and author Brita af Geijerstam had passed away, at age 101. She was best known for her translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh.

But Brita af Geijerstam was also the last surviving witness from that October night in 1946. She was riding on the same streetcar as Per Albin Hansson and immediately noticed that he wasn't really feeling well. She saw him leave the car--and life.

Per Albin's last trolly ride is no longer on anybody's mind. This idyllic epoch is finished, irrevocably over. So let us finally erase our collective image of Per Albin on the way home to Ålsten: it shows a different Sweden, a Sweden that no longer exists.

The tone has hardened. Hate and bitternes are corroding the exchange of political opinions. This was already commented upon in 1986. The hatred of Palme --rumors about his mental illness, charges that he intended to betray the country--were perhaps not what triggered the murder directly, but in certain circles it may have created a climate, a psychological atmosphere, that made someone move from words to action.

Things have not got better since then. On the contrary. Threats and violence are growing increasingly common--and are directed not only at top politicians.

The other year a study from the Municipal Association and Central Statistics Bureau showed that 17 percent of the country's leading municipal politicians had been subjected to violence or threats of violence.

There were, the security police said immediately after the assassination of Anna Lindh, no concrete threats against her. That judgement was wrong. With her internationalism and her deep commitment to ethnic and cultural tolerance, Anna Lindh was obviously an object of hatred for the extreme right. For that reason alone she ought to have been under constant surveillance. On the 26th of August Dagens Nyheter published a euro article that Lindh signed together with Carl-Henric Svanberg, the CEO of Ericsson. It provoked senseless reactions. A youth organization of the far left wrote on its home page that Lindh stood "side by side with an enemy of the Swedish working class, indeed, of Swedish society in general." The attack concluded this way: "Shame on people like Lindh and Svanberg. Dip them in oil and roll them in feathers, that's a fitting treatment for traitors like them."

In a climate like this somebody should have reacted, someone ought to have stopped the foreign minister last Wednesday and said: "Wait a bit, Anna. We'll drive you and your friend to NK and go inside with you and then we'll drive you back."

Imagine if that's what had happened. Imagine if she hadn't been assaulted. But also imagine this: that a black car had been standing parked right by the entrance of NK and that hefty security police had carried out shopping bags from an exclusive clothing store.

It's not hard to imagine the comments among passing Swedes.

"Can't she go shopping by herself?"

Or:
"Uh-huh, so that's what our tax money's going for."

And:
"In the old days the streetcar was good enough...."

Let's hope that we’ve learned the lesson now.

--trans. Verne Moberg