373 political expression. Against this, conservative voices pointed out that the new penal provisions might be considered inadequately designed to suppress socialist propaganda. Although the socialist propaganda that appeared often aimed at informing the so-called proletariat that the ruling order would be transformed by violent revolution into a classless society, it was in fact rare for an agitator to explicitly incite his audience to violently attack people or property. The above-mentioned criticismwas answered by the Minister of Justice advising that the new legislative provision did not aimat suppressing certain agitation but was only intended to plug a legal-technical gap in the legislation. The government bill was passed by both chambers of the Riksdag. Finally in 1888, FPA was extended in a manner corresponding to the CLA. The penal provisions against incitement to violence against a person or property at that time did not however limit freedom of speech or freedom of the press more than marginally. 2.2. Extension of the Sedition Act in 1889 In April 1889, the Swedish Social Democratic Party {Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti), the SAP, was formed. As a direct reaction to the formation of the SAP, a government bill was prepared which proposed that the penal provisions against sedition should embrace incitement to commit any crime under the Criminal Law Act together with attempts to entice disobedience of the lawor lawful public authority and sedition or other act or measure involving a threat to the social order or a risk to its existence. In contrast to the creation of the sedition offence in 1887, this legislative proposal was directly aimed at counteracting socialist propaganda. However, the proposed criminalization of acts of sedition involving a threat to the social order or risk to its existence, was not accepted by the liberals in the Second Chamber. This part of the legislative proposal was therefore not included when the Riksdag passed the government bill. The Sedition Act of 1889 came to be known as the Gagging Act but docs not appear to have been of such a nature that it could check either reformationist social democratic propaganda or purely theoretical revolutionary agitation. However, the new legislation made it possible to punish explicit revolutionary expression of views. The number of prosecutions for offences contrary to the 1889 version of the Sedition Act appears to have been low. The reasons for this may have been, inter alia, that the SAP developed in a reformationist direction during the 1890s. Duringthe years 1889 to 1906, only six cases of prosecutions under the Sedition Act were appealed to the Supreme Court. Three of these cases related to attempts to persuade a crowd to disobey a police authority in attendance. The other three cases concerned prosecutions for political speeches
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