RB 64

Liberals and Social Democrats rejected the government’s proposal. The debate focused, among other things, on the view of state intervention through legislation, the importance of custom as a source of law, the proposals to make section23 legally binding and the establishment of a labour court. However, it is worth pointing to an important principle difference between the criticism made by the two groups, namely, that the Liberals did not share the distrust that the Social Democrats harboured against jurists in general and the labour court in particular. The liberal members of parliament, Per Axel Viktor Schotte and Gustaf Sandström, who were both jurists, themselves, as well as industrialist, Hjalmar Wijk and Nils Larsson from Klagstorp all demanded that the questions be more thoroughly investigated.The large number of differences of opinion namely revealed that the time was not ripe for legislation.The proposal also had the principle deficiency in that it tried to create uniform rules for a varied area. The Social Democratic members of parliament marked a massive resistance to the entire package of measures.The chairman of the SwedishTrade Unions Confederation, Herman Lindqvist together with thirty-three other cosigners, including the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Hjalmar Branting (1860-1925) and the orator and “left-wing maverick”, Carl Lindhagen protested against the proposal in an extensive “resolution” (Sw. motion).They defended their resistance by stating that the proposal was not deeply rooted in public opinion, and that the customs that the government referred to were either not firmly established or lacked legitimacy among the workers. Those behind the resolution argued that the bill had come about without the participation of representatives of those most immediately affected and that therefore it appeared to be “a hastily put together, energetic work of law, in which factual knowledge was disdained p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 8 204 8. 3. 3 re j ect ion by l i be rals and social democrats

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