This collective threat to the stability of working life and society was quite a new phenomenon in the country. The workers and their trade union organisations joined together in1898 and formed the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions (Sw. Landsorganisationen, LO), which would to co-operate with the Social Democratic Party, (Sw. Socialdemokratiska arbetarepartiet, SAP), founded in1899. Massive and successful collective actions by the workers promoted the formation of employer organisations. A three-day general strike in May 1902 for voting rights was an incentive for the creation of the Swedish Employers’Organisation, (Sw. Svenska arbetsgivareföreningen, SAF), a project which had already begun in the 1890s. During the years that followed, the employers’ organisation grew considerably in strength. Simultaneously, the legislators in the two-chamber parliament changed their attitude. Still in 1890 they rejected state intervention in the relationship between worker and employer and considered that it was up to the individual parties themselves to regulate the contents of contracts.255 Just a few years later, the parliamentary majority had moved from laissez-faire to supporting some kind of state intervention.256 Concurrently, the calls for legislation came from different political camps.The antagonism between the political right and left respectively became more obvious in the formation of political parties in parliament.257 As one manifestation of this process, different opinions about the legislative problems of the labour market were included in the political parties’ general social programs. The Conservatives had on their programme general control of workers by legislation. They seem to have based their opinion not only on group interests but also on the ideological notion that the trade unions were closely associated with the socialists. p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 5 128 255 LU1890:53, p. 3. 256 MFK1897:42, 43; MAK1897:170; MAK1899:52; LU1897:50, p. 16; LU1898:12, p. 6; LU1899:14, p. 9;Westerståhl 1945, pp. 246-248, 260-261; Göransson 1988, pp. 160-168. 257 Carlsson, S 1953.
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