The Norwegian Workers’ Education Association: A Midwife of Labor's Breakthrough in Norway

Abstract

Norway in the year 1900 would be more easily recognizable to a person from the global South than to a citizen of present-day Norway. One of Europe's smallest countries, with a population of 2.2 million, it was also one of the poorest. Still a predominantly agrarian country, it suffered from the side effects of early industrialization that other European countries had known for decades. Under pressure from a growing labor movement and an increasingly restive citizenry, the Liberal Party was spearheading reformist social policies and further democratization in Norway, whereas the Conservative Party resisted such reforms. A third party—the Norwegian Labour party—was founded by some local trade unions in 1887, but remained a marginal influence at the turn of the century even if the party won sixteen percent of the votes cast in the election of 1900. However, it was about to begin its meteoric rise from obscurity to political dominance. In 1899 a number of trade unions came together to found a national superstructure—the LO—with 1,500 registered members. This prompted employers to do the same. The Employers’ Association dates back to the year 1900. Next, the right to vote was extended to new groups of voters. Before 1898 only men with an income above a certain minimum could participate in elections, but universal suffrage for men was introduced in 1898. Women were then given the right to vote in local elections in 1910 and in parliamentary elections in 1913. These reforms were introduced by the Liberal Party.