In its main features the Swedish road to collective self-regulation in the period 1885-1930 followed the common path as described by Antoine Jacobs. Still, from a comparative perspective, the indications of repression were not particularly predominant. It is true that several legislative initiatives were taken to establish criminal law sanctions against striking workers; among them the most famous was the Åkarp Act of 1899, but the Swedish legislature did not establish any kind of open oppressive means against the workers’ professional or political organisations. Thus, the Swedish trade unions could develop during the last decades of the 19th century without being subjected to any real legislative restraint and without facing the same barriers to surmount as, for example, was found in the German Bismarck legislation or the decisions by the English judiciary. Another Swedish feature might be that in contrast to England, Germany and France, the Swedish legislature never expressly recognised the right to organise and the freedom to strike. Instead the rise of those rights was seen as consequences of the free market and the free contract of service.600 The founding of LO and SAF in1898 and1902 respectively, the p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 1 0 318 10. 2. 1 a path of re pre s s ion-tole rat ionrecogni t ion- integrat ion? . The interaction between the contract of employment and collectivism? 600 Göransson 1988, p. 415.
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