Prydanian Historical Review
A History of the Syndicalist Party
by Dr. Raghild Borgström
Professor of History, University of Hadden
The Prydanian Historical Review decided to embark on an initiative- contact academics in the field of Prydanian history to write articles aimed at a general audience. The aim is to provide people with a general base of knowledge of our own history. It's a goal I agree with but I admit I was unsure how to approach this topic.
Almost five years on since the end of the War and the scars of the Syndicalist era are still not fully healed. Are people ready to read that the Syndicalist Party was not always the instrument of tyranny it became? That much of its history was fuelled by the best of intentions?
Then again you know what they say about the road to Hell.
Regardless, I'm a believer in democracy. And a democracy is only as healthy as its population is informed. I only hope that as I explain the history of the Syndicalist movement in this country it's understood that I'm not making excuses for the terrible tyranny it inflicted on this country. That a movement that began with such a hopeful vision of the future became regime with the blood of millions in its hands is tragedy.
Which is how I intend to approach this project.
Political Beginnings
The Alþingi of the Prydanian realm was first called in 1030 by King Vortgyn I and has existed in some form since then. Factions had always existed in some form but they consolidated during the reign of Robert II into Court and Anti-Court factions. By the 1830s and the reign of Queen Alexandria these had morphed into the Conservative and Liberal Parties. A decade later the Agrarians emerged to represent the interests of the farmers.
This created a status quo whereby the Conservatives and Agrarians supported each other and their interests and the Liberals attempted to build their own coalition of professional middle class and rural working class votes. This state of being existed until the turn of the twentieth century.
Rise of Organized Labour and the Beginning of the Syndicalist Party
The beginnings of organized labour were slow, but steady. The industrial revolution's arrival fundamentally altered the social landscape, and therefore the political landscape.
Many people moved from the countryside to cities to find work in factories, docks, or shipyards, or to the towns that sprung up around expanded coal mines. For the first time Prydanian society had to adjust to a new social group- the industrial worker.
Previously labourers in urban centres were skilled- trained sailors did dock work, smiths, glassmakers, masons, and artists filled the cities. They were descended from the medieval guilds and made up large segments of the middle "professional" class; ie natural Liberal voters.
This new labour class, however, was not "skilled" in the traditional sense. One did not need to apprentice for years to become a factory worker or miner.
What was fascinating about this was that it represented the birth of an entirely new class of people. The previous social structure was made up of groups or classes that had been around for thousands of years- royalty, nobility, merchants, tradesmen, farmers, rural labourers. Já, the eleventh century had seen the "emergence" of what we would today call the bourgeois, and the early modern period of the sixteenth century onward had seen this class rival (or in some cases eclipse) the old nobility in wealth and influence, but the bourgeois ultimately grew from tradesmen and moneylenders. Professions which have existed for thousands of years. No, this emergence of industrial labour was something entirely new. Society at the time, in the mid-nineteenth century hardly understood it.
It was the Callisean anti-capitalist
Remy Picard who provided something of a guiding light to industrial labour as they began to band together and advocate for their collective interests. Picard pre-dated the rise of the industrial revolution and the emergence of a truly industrial labour class, but his radical political theories that put him at odds with even the leaders of the Callisean Revolution provided a set of principals that the industrial worker could gravitate towards. Picard's demand for a revolutionary dictatorship of craftsmen was fundamental in the development of communist and socialist political theory. And as Liberal ÞM* Yngvar Otness said in 1871 "these socialists are the descendants of that Callisean Picard."
As industrial labour grew more and more organized there was pressure on the political establishment to address their concerns. The Conservatives and Agrarians were overtly hostile for their own reasons; the Conservative view of society as an organic whole contrasted with the emerging left wing's view of society as a series of class struggle. The Agrarians believed that organized labour's nascent political platform would artificially keep the price for agricultural products low. The Liberals, traditionally the power of the middle class and the professional tradesmen, seemed the most likely to be receptive.
The Trade Union Assembly, or Stéttarfélagþingi (SFþingi) was formed in 1870. The SFþingi was a board that included representation from the larger trade unions across the country. Soon after forming they hoped to ally with the Liberal Party. The costs of running for office normally put the prospect out reach of the industrial working man, but with labour unions footing the bill as it were it was possible. And the backing of the established Liberal Party machinery would give them validity. Stefan Bjorgen, a radical Liberal ÞM, championed this cause. He was partially successful, though it would take until 1885 for the first of these "union Liberals" to be elected.
By the 1890s, however, the partnership was fraying. Traditional Liberal voters resented the party seemingly championing newer causes over their more traditional platform, and traditional Liberal power brokers found themselves at odds with organized labour representatives for power and influence.
In 1898 the SFþingi called on its member unions and other organized labour groups such as the Knights of Labour, Shaddaist Labour Bund, and the Industrial Workers' Committee to form a new political party to represent the needs of labour. The result was the Syndicalist Party. Syndicalism had emerged as a sub-current of socialism in the late nineteenth centuries, that advocated for trade unions as the fundamental building blocks of political and economic life. It gained currency among Prydanian leftists as left wing political discourse was more and more being directed by organizations made up for trade unionists. The Syndicalist Party's embrace of the ideology was merely a culmination of this rise in prominence. By 1900 every trade union-backed Liberal Party ÞM had changed affiliation to the Syndicalist Party.
The Syndicalist Party from Karl Holsen to Rune Leth
Karl Holsen, a trade unionist and ÞM from Krummedike, was elected the Syndicalist Party's first Alþingi caucus leader in 1900. The party that Holsen found himself leading would set the tone for Syndicalism's history- fractious. The Syndicalist Party's early founders included those who felt that the party should only focus on representing the interests of trade unions and the working man, those who felt it could be a viable political vehicle to form a government, those who wanted to moderate to attract supporters, radicals who insisted on Picardist orthodoxy, republicans, and those who felt trying to fight the broadly popular Prydanian monarchy would be a fool's errand.
What united this early Syndicalist Party was advocating for the needs of the working class, and so Holsen focused on that, rather than trying to appease the different demands of various factions. Though Holsen did indulge the radical element in one grand way, by refusing to stand in a moment of silence upon the death of Queen Alexandria in 1902. He insisted that it would be a betrayal of his own conscious to do so, given that the Alþingi did not stand in respectful silence at the deaths of miners or workers in industrial accidents.
The Syndicalist Party grew its base, eventually establishing itself in the mining heartland of Krummedike and the industrial centres of Býkonsviði, Hadden, and Keris. Its success proved a threat to the Liberal Party, as the Syndicalist support base grew among the urban worker, and the line between skilled and unskilled urban labourer blurred. As a result the Conservative-Agrarian electoral alliance saw a series of electoral victories through the first two decades of the twentieth centuries.
It was in this environment- a Liberal/Syndicalist turf war allowing the Conservative-Agrarian coalition to win at the ballot box and a Syndicalist Party increasingly comfortable finding its feet- that Rune Leth emerged as the leader of the Syndicalist Party.
Leth came from a working class background in Keris, but had managed to put himself through law school. Leth dedicated himself to representing organized labour groups legally, before entering the political arena as a Syndicalist. Leth was a moderate though, and he was one because he had a vision. One he began to execute upon winning control of the Party.
Radicals were sidelined and moderates installed in positions of authority. This allowed him to present the party as a viable option to moderate middle class Liberal voters. Leth also promised that a Syndicalist government would fairly protect and subsidize the agricultural sector. Not only did this win many Agrarian-voting farmers to the Syndicalist banner, but it also won many Liberal-voting agrarian labourers to the party, as they no longer had to fear that a Syndicalist government would threaten the economic well-being of their employers. Further, Leth was the first to openly speak about a "Syndicalist government" as if the Party could achieve that electorally.
They did.
The 1921 general election saw Rune Leth's Syndicalists sweep into power. It's said that when Leth met with King Rikard V for the formal act of the King asking the election's victor to form a government Leth broke the tension by announcing "Your Majesty, I come baring gifts of governance, not revolution!'"
Leth's government would go on to essentially build the modern Prydanian welfare state from scratch, and his efforts were rewarded by being returned with a majority in 1926.
Leth's collective accomplishments have been referred to as the "Workers' Bill of Rights," as that was what the agenda of the Syndicalist Party under him was referred to in electoral material. Yet it was never one comprehensive piece of legislation. Instead Leth's Syndicalist administration removed barriers from collective bargaining, instituted the thirty hour work week, established the pensions system, laid the foundations for nationalized healthcare that would come decades later, and the creation of a slew of regulatory departments of the state that oversaw everything from consumer protection to workplace safety standards.
Leth's reforms proved so popular that when the Conservative-Agrarian coalition wrestled power back in 1931 they had to do it off of a promise not to dismantle what had been built.
The Tragedy of Rune Leth and What Could Have Been
Rune Leth's grand coalition that ushered in two Syndicalist majority governments mirrored the development of the National Party in Saintonge. Like that political party Leth's version of the Syndicalists managed to marry industrial workers with moderate middle class voters and smaller farmers. Had this coalition held it could have been transformative and utterly smashed the old status quo. Instead the status quo re-asserted itself.
To be sure it wasn't a reactionary victory. As stated above the Conservative-Agrarian alliance that won the 1931 general election did so with the explicit promise that the welfare state apparatus would not be turn down. In that regard Rune Leth won. His vision persists even to today, when a Peace not Blood-Conservative coalition government actively works to regulate the market and provide substantive pensions. Rune Leth's legacy became political orthodoxy.
His moderate Syndicalist coalition, however, couldn't last.
The Conservative-Agrarian victory in 1931 proved that the established parties were willing to modernize their approach to the electorate rather than fade away. And then Bloody Rakjandi.
Rakjandi, which will re-appear in our story later, was one of the Syndicalist heartland cities. A town built around the mines. In 1931, shortly after the general election, the local miners' unions went on strike. Negotiations between the union and management ended quickly and Syndicalist Party leaders emerged in Rakjandi to offer support to the miners. Mine owners, in turn, accused the Syndicalist Party of "stoking the fires of revolution."
Mine owners appealed to the Thane of Krummedike, who formally requested the government send soldiers in to put down the strike. The government, now lead by the Conservative PM Ivar Froseth, was sympathetic. Rune Leth, now the leader of the opposition, personally pleaded with the King to intervene and stop the deployment of the Army, as he and Rikard V had developed a friendship of sorts over Leth's ten year tenure as Prime Minister.
Rikard V, however, believed that to overrule the decisions of the Prime Minister would be to overstep himself. Froseth was allowed to send soldiers into Rakjandi. The brief but violent clash with militant miners ended with a government victory in 1932.
The crisis did three things. First, it revitalized the radical elements of the Syndicalist Party Leth had previously managed to sideline. Second, it pushed many of the new converts Leth had brought in out of the Syndicalist Party, as they now saw the Party as associated with the unrest in Rakjandi. Finally, it energized the nascent Social Commonwealth fascist movement.
The Turbulent Years
Leth was barely able to fight off a radical takeover of the Syndicalist Party, and only managed it by conceding and granting radicals key positions of influence within the party. The 1936 elections were extremely contentious and fractious. Syndicalists, Conservatives, Agrarians, Liberals, Reformists, Centrists, and Social Commonwealth fascists all emerged. The fascists managed to make the most of the chaos, presenting the mass of parties that now contested elections as a sign of a dying democracy. They promised that they alone could restore order. And while they did emerge with the highest number of seats in the 1936 election, they still fell well short of a majority.
The issue was that none of the other parties, or the Peers, could agree to unify to form a government. The wounds from Bloody Rakjandi were too fresh, and attempt after attempt to form a coalition fell flat. A caretaker government led primarily from Ministers of the last Conservative-Agrarian government took over, and the in 1937 King Rikard V died. His son, Rikard VI, immediately dismissed the government and elevated fascists to positions of power. Prydania soon entered the Fascist Wars on the side of the Dominion, and the non-fascist parties were branded as "subversive."
Syndicalists, despite what they would later claim, were not the only ones involved in the anti-fascist resistance of 1937-1951. They weren't even the majority of it. Yet they did contribute, and the resistance years hardened the party. Leth's vision of a big tent moderate Syndicalist Party was all but dead as Richard VI and his Social Commonwealth government provided an outward enemy that Syndicalists believed they had to steel themselves to fight.
In the end the War was won by the Allies. With Prydania's soldiers bogged down fighting Cogorians in Kanada and the Dominion faltering on every front, a democratic coup brought the first Social Commonwealth regime down. Richard VI bitterly conceded to defeat and died three years later. His liberal-minded son, Robert VII, flushed the fascists from every corner of government and invited all of the political parties that had been persecuted under their regime to help in rebuilding democracy in Prydania.
Yet this was not the end of the Syndicalist Party's turbulent years. The Social Commonwealth Party continued to linger on the fringes of Prydanian politics. The Liberals merged with the Reformists and Centrists to form the Free Democrats, revitalizing their fortunes. The Conservatives and Agrarians began to emerge as a force once more, all as the Syndicalists debated amongst themselves what they would stand for. The result was a power struggle between moderate social democrats and more forceful radicals. It also saw the party drop to a consistent third, never rising above either the Free Democrats or Conservative-Agrarian coalition.
Radicalization
1983 saw the rise of a young union rep from Rakjandi-turned Syndicalist ÞM Thomas Nielsen as leader of the Party. That Nielsen was able to navigate the divided Syndicalist caucus to win the leadership so early in his tenure spoke to his abilities from a young age. Nielsen was salt of Eras. He grew up in Rakjandi, he worked in the mines, who rose to a position of leadership in the local miner's union, and he entered politics. He had the makings of a true, red blooded Syndicalist radical.
Only he wasn't. Not at first.
Nielsen's strength was his conviction. He unapologetically defended the uniting principals of the Syndicalist Party, and made an early enemy of the likewise-rising Stefan Toft of the Social Commonwealth Party. This passion, conviction, and willingness to lead an ideological charge- along with his bonafide working class background- made him incredibly popular among the radical wing of the Syndicalists. Yet his promises to them were never lofty. He never committed to republicanism, he never committed to a fully socialist economic platform.
In 1984 King Robert VII, his wife Queen Loke, and eldest son Prince Baldr, Grand Thane of Stormurholmr were killed in an act of political terrorism. In the fallout the King's second oldest son, Anders, ascended to the throne as King Anders III. The chaos surrounding this monumental event led to King Anders III dissolving the Alþingi, and ordering new elections. The validity of which continue to be debated to this day.
The Social Commonwealth government that was elected under Stefan Toft, however, wore the perceived legitimacy like a shield. And out of an act of terrorism that was blamed on radical Syndicalists, Prydania found itself once again under a fascist regime.
This fascist regime had learnt from the past one, however. And lacked the outward facing enemy they did. There was no world war this time. Shaddaists were restricted in public life, but not forced into ghettos. Enemies of the state were hounded through both legal and extra-legal means, but overt persecutions were never attempted. And the appearances of political pluralism had to be maintained. It was that last element that allowed figures like William Aubyn, Gætir Ravn (a Shaddaist himself), and Thomas Nielsen to escape a political purge.
Nielsen did launch a series of large-scale strikes aimed at protesting the new Toft government under Anders III, but the government was not afraid to use force, and Nielsen, back then, was not ready to risk open revolution.
It was during this period of Social Commonwealth control that an unlikely friendship developed. That between Thomas Nielsen and Prince Robert, Anders III's younger brother. To what degree this friendship influenced the politics of each of them is hard to gauge. The very nature of the Social Commonwealth police state meant secrecy.
What can be gauged is that the turning point seems to Kleifar. Prior to Kleifar Nielsen and his Syndicalist caucus seemed supportive of the Conservative-Agrarian coalition and the Free Democrats as a sort of unified front against the Social Commonwealth government of Toft. Yet just over a year after the violent Social Commonwealth purge of Kleifar for its support of underground Syndicalist functionaries Nielsen led the coup that topped the regime and ended with most of the Royal family did- including Prince Robert.
Thomas Nielsen and Jannik Lieftur
History is a tricky subject. My job is to analyze and contextualize the past. Teach it, and draw lessons from it. My job is not, however, to psycho-analyze the dead. And yet that seems to be what others expect from us.
"What was Vorgtyn thinking when he met Bram and the Bayardi on the battlefield at Stormurhofn?" I don't know. All I can tell you is the context of that battle, what Vortgyn said, and what he did both before and after he won. I cannot begin to tell you the thoughts and feelings of a man who lived and died nearly a thousand years ago, whose context is so divorced from my own that we might as well be aliens.
Thomas Nielsen and Jannik Lieftur are not a thousand years old. Their deaths are far more recent. And I have a better understanding of the context of the times they lived in than I do Vorgyn I. It would be a mistake, however, to assume this gives me the agency to say I know them. Or what they thought and felt. I must resist the calls of people asking me to try and understand the deep meanings behind their actions that only they know. And indeed I must resist that call within myself.
It's one I desperately want to. I study the career of Thomas Nielsen before that faithful day in the early fall of 2002. I see a man who could have been a freedom fighter. Who could have been a positive force for change. I can't be the only one. Millions wilfully followed him.
Followed him to the abyss.
For all of that promise Thomas Nielsen's legacy isn't what he could have been. Or what his intentions were. His legacy is that he oversaw a tyrannical state- the Syndicalist Republic of Prydania- that murdered four million of its own people. Be it in the form of executions or by working them to death in labour camps, agricultural homesteads, and "conscripted work colonies." All labels to describe essentially class warfare-based slavery. It's Thomas Nielsen's legacy that a breadbasket economy was rendered nearly barren through mismanagement and political nepotism.
The regime of Anders III and Stefan Toft was an assault on the basic human decency of Prydanians everywhere. And the Syndicalist reaction was so monstrous it was
worse. So I would desperately like to climb inside the head of Thomas Nielsen and understand why this happened. How he let it happen. And how it was supposed to lead to anything but the years of misery and violence it did. I cannot though. And that brings me to Jannik Lieftur.
Jannik Lieftur was no doubt a radical, and in all likelihood was the one responsible for pulling Thomas Nielsen into that camp after Kleifar. Yet I cannot tell you this for sure. I cannot tell you Nielsen's motivations beyond what the historical record provides, and I cannot tell you, dear reader, why Lieftur was the man he was. I have heard stories that his pathological hatred of the church stemmed from abuses from a priest as a child. I have heard that his mother was raped by the son of a mine owner. I have heard so many things that attempt to explain why Jannik Lieftur unapologetically carried out the slaughter of so many of our countrymen. People who attempt to point to this or that as the root of a radical that grew out of control.
And it is all unsubstantiated. Did a Priest victimize him as a child? Maybe. There are no records of it. Not even of an accusation from the time he would have been a child. Maybe a son of the owner of the mine that employed him raped his mother. Again, there is no evidence.
I understand that the War and political turmoil- especially in Krummedike- left many records destroyed. Maybe somewhere, here or in the ether, is the evidence that these stories are true. Or maybe they never were. Maybe Jannik Lieftur was just a butcher. Every movement has them, those souls who see violence as the only solution and the only path forward.
Lieftur's own words, what we do have on record, shine no light on his motivations. He was a dull public speaker, prone to droning on about radical political orthodoxy. The evils of religion and capitalism, or the monarchy and aristocracy, of the rural landowners and urban factory owners. Dull, droning, and masking a capacity for political violence unmatched in this country's history.
He never opens up. He never explains why. Never leverages a personal tragedy for sympathy. I am a historian, not a mind reader or psychiatrist.
The tragedy of the Syndicalist Party was that it was formed to give the industrial working man and trade unions a voice. They did that. Rune Leth saw it as a means to build a grand coalition that could usher in a modern Prydania. He did that, for a time. And it was a movement that stood for freedom against the forces of tyranny, twice.
Yet in the end they succumbed to that same tyranny within themselves. I myself was a believer once, but I can't be now. Not when I see the extent of what Syndicalism has brought this country.
The tragic history of the Syndicalist Party was that it was, more often then not, led with the best of intentions.
And you know what they say about the road to Hell.
*ÞM- MP
