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Social Democratic Party of Finland Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue[a] Finlands socialdemokratiska parti
Abbreviation	SDP
Leader	Antti Rinne
Founded	1899; 120 years ago (1899)
Headquarters	Saariniemenkatu 6, Helsinki
Newspaper	Demokraatti
Student wing	Social Democratic Students
Youth wing	Demarinuoret
Membership (2017)	nearly 40,000[1]
Ideology	Social democracy[2]
Political position	Centre-left
European affiliation	Party of European Socialists
International affiliation	Progressive Alliance, Socialist International
European Parliament group	Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Nordic affiliation	SAMAK
Colors	Red
Parliament	35 / 200
European Parliament	2 / 13
Municipality councils	1,696 / 8,999
Website
https://sdp.fi/
Politics of Finland Political parties Elections ^ For historical reasons, the party's name is spelled in the old-fashioned way, with a short "a".

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The Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP, Finnish: Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue, Swedish: Finlands socialdemokratiska parti), shortened to the Social Democrats, is a social-democratic political party in Finland.^[2] The party holds 35 seats in Finland's parliament. The party has set many fundamental policies of Finnish society during its representation in the Finnish Government. Founded in 1899, the SDP is Finland's oldest active political party. The SDP has a close relationship with Finland's largest trade union, SAK, and is a member of the Socialist International, the Party of European Socialists, and SAMAK.

Since 2014, the SDP's leader has been Antti Rinne. For the parliamentary term 2015-2019, the SDP is in opposition, and has provided extensive criticism on the actions of the Sipilä Cabinet on matters such as alcohol policy, cuts to education spending, and the so-called "active model".^[3]

History

The traditional emblem of the party

The SDP was founded as the Finnish Labour Party (Finnish: Suomen Työväenpuolue) in 1899. The name was changed to the present form in 1903. SDP was closely associated with the Finnish Trade Union Federation (SAJ), established in 1907, as all of its members were also members of the party.^[4] The party remained a chiefly extra-parliamentary movement until universal suffrage was introduced in 1906 (before Finland's independence from Russia in 1917), after which the SDP's share of the votes reached 47% in 1916, when the party secured a majority in the parliament — the only time in the history of Finland when one party has had such a majority. The party lost its majority in the 1917 election, and in 1918 it started a rebellion that escalated into the Finnish Civil War.

SDP members declared Finland a Socialist Republic, but were defeated by the forces of the Finnish Senate. The war resulted in most of the party leaders being killed, imprisoned or left to seek refuge in Soviet Russia.^{[citation needed]} In addition, the process leading to the Civil War and the war itself had stripped the party of its political legitimacy and respectability in the eyes of the right-wing majority. However, the political support for the party remained strong, and in the election of 1919, the party, reorganised by Väinö Tanner, received 80 of the 200 seats of the parliament. Former exiled SDP members founded the Communist Party of Finland in Moscow in 1918. Although the Communist Party was banned in Finland until 1944, it was represented by front organizations, leading to the support of the Finnish working class being divided between the communist party and the SDP.

It became the life's work of Väinö Tanner to re-establish the SDP as a serious, governing party. The result was a much more patriotic SDP, which leaned less to the left and was relatively isolated from its Nordic sister parties the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the SD in Denmark, and the Norwegian Labour Party. President Pehr Evind Svinhufvud's animosity kept the SDP out of government during his presidency from 1931 to 1937. With the exception of a brief period in 1926, when Tanner formed a minority government, SDP was excluded from cabinet participation until Kyösti Kallio was elected president in 1937. During World War II the party played a central role in a series of broad coalition cabinets, symbolising national unity forged in response to the threat of the USSR in the Winter War in 1939–1940.

The SDP was a member of the Labour and Socialist International from 1923 to 1940.^[5]

During the first few months of the Continuation War (1941–1944), the country, the parliament, and the cabinet were divided on the question of whether Finland's army should stop at the old border and thereby demonstratively refrain from any attempt of conquests. However, the country's dangerous position called for national unity, and the SDP's leadership chose to refrain from any visible protests. This decision is sometimes indicated as one of the main reasons behind the post-war division between the main left-wing parties — the SDP and the Communists — and the high percentage of Communist voters in the first elections after the Continuation War.

After the Continuation War, the Communist Party was allowed to continue working, and the main feature of Finnish political life during the 1944–1949 period was the competition between the Social Democrats and the Communists, both for voters and for the control of the labor unions. During this time, the political field was divided roughly equally between the Social Democrats, Communists and the Agrarian League, each party commanding some 25% of the vote. In the post-war era, the Social Democratic Party adopted a line defending Finnish sovereignty and democracy in line with the Agrarian League and other bourgeois political parties, finally leading to the expulsion of the Communists from the cabinet in 1948. However, the Soviet Union remained more openly critical towards the SDP than the centre-right parties.

SDP municipal election poster from 1933. "Municipal power to those who work"

Because of the SDP's anti-communist activities, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supported the party by means of funds laundered through Nordic sister parties, or through organizations that bought "luxury goods" such as coffee abroad, then imported and sold them for a high profit, as post-war rationing served to inflate prices.

In the presidential election of 1956, the SDP candidate Karl-August Fagerholm lost by only one electoral vote to Urho Kekkonen. Fagerholm would act as Prime Minister in the Fagerholm I Cabinet, which ran from 1956 to 1957, and the Fagerholm II Cabinet, which ran from 1958 to 1959. The latter cabinet was forced to resign due to Soviet pressure, leading to a series of cabinets led by the Agrarian League. In 1958, due to the election of Väinö Tanner as party chairman, a faction of the SDP resigned and formed the Alliance of Finnish Workers and Small Farmers (TPSL) around the former SDP chairman Emil Skog. The dispute was over several issues, namely: whether the party should function as an interest group, and whether it should co-operate with the anti-communists and right-wingers, or with president Kekkonen, the Agrarians and the Communists. During the 1960s, the TPSL dwindled, its members returning one by one to the SDP or joining the Communists. The founder himself, Emil Skog, returned to the SDP in 1965. In the parliamentary election of 1970, the TPSL failed to gain any seats in parliament.

Only in 1966 was the SDP able to satisfy the Soviet Union about its friendly attitude towards it, and could thus return to the cabinet. Since then, the SDP has been represented in most Finnish cabinets, often cooperating with the centrist-agrarian Centre Party (formerly the Agrarian League), but sometimes with the liberal-conservative National Coalition Party. The SDP was in opposition from 1991 to 1995, when the main parties in the cabinet were the Centre Party and the National Coalition Party.

The parliamentary election of 1995 saw a landslide victory for the SDP, achieving their best results since World War II. The SDP rose to government from the opposition, and leader Paavo Lipponen headed two consecutive cabinets from 1995 to 2003. During this time, the party adopted a pro-European stance and contributed actively to the Finnish membership in the European Union in 1995 in concert with the cabinet. In the 2003 parliamentary election, the SDP won 53 of the 200 seats, ending up a close second to the Centre Party. As a result, Lipponen became the speaker of parliament, and the Centre Party leader Anneli Jäätteenmäki became the new Prime Minister, leading a coalition cabinet that included the SDP, which got eight ministerial posts. After two months in office, Jäätteenmäki resigned due to a scandal relating to the Iraq leak and was replaced by Matti Vanhanen, another Centre Party representative, who commanded the Vanhanen I Cabinet.

There was an uninterrupted 30-year period of social democratic presidents between 1982 and 2012.

Ideology

The SDP is a centre-left social democratic party. The SDP is opposed to Finland joining NATO; the party is for Finland remaining in the Partnership for Peace. In the 2015 parliamentary election, 91% of SDP candidates were opposed NATO membership.^[6]

The SDP is in favor of LGBT adoption rights, the construction of nuclear power plants, the conservation of Swedish as one of Finland's two official languages, and the increase of funding to public universities.^[7]

The party is advocating for Finland to become oil-independent by 2030.

The SDP has advocated for policies preventing foreigners from working in Finland.^[8] In the 2015 parliamentary election, only the Finns Party had a higher share of candidates opposed to the easing of work-based immigration.^[9]

The party opposed economic reforms in the 2011 parliamentary election and in the subsequent government program negotiations.^[10][11][12]

The party maintains a close relationship with trade unions. The party has opposed social reforms that would reduce the role of earnings-related unemployment benefits. The government pays them to recipients through financial middlemen that are almost exclusively trade unions.^[13]

Voter base

The average age of an SDP member is 61.5 years.^[14] Over one half of all SDP voters are active members of the workforce.

Recent elections

Party leader Antti Rinne

Support for the Social Democrats by municipality in the 2011 parliamentary election — the party fared strongest in southern and eastern parts of the country.

In the 2007 parliamentary election, the SDP gained the third-most votes. The chairman of the then-largest Centre Party, Matti Vanhanen, became the Prime Minister, and formed a coalition cabinet consisting of the National Coalition Party, the Green League, and the Swedish People's Party, leaving the SDP to the opposition. SDP leader Eero Heinäluoma did not immediately resign as party chairman, but he did announce his withdrawal from running for party chairman in the following party conference. He was replaced by Jutta Urpilainen. The SDP suffered further losses in the 2008 municipal election and the 2009 European Parliament election.

In the 2011 parliamentary election, the SDP lost three more seats, ending up with 19.1 percent of the vote which corresponded to 42 seats, the party's worst-ever result. However, as the Centre Party lost even more voters, the SDP became the second-largest party in the country after the National Coalition Party, receiving only some 1,500 votes more than the Finns Party, which came in third. After lengthy negotiations, a six-party coalition government, the Katainen Cabinet, was formed with the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats as the two main parties. SDP leader Jutta Urpilainen became the cabinet's Minister of Finance, with NCP chairman Jyrki Katainen serving as Prime Minister.

In the 2015 parliamentary election, the drop of support continued for the SDP. The party lost eight more seats compared to the 2011 election, ending up with 34 seats and 16.5 percent of the vote. With the repeat of the worst-ever result, the SDP dropped to being the fourth largest political party in Finland, receiving 50,110 fewer votes than the National Coalition Party, yet 237,000 more votes than the Green League.

On 22 June, 2016 Maria Tolppanen, a Finns Party representative, joined the SDP. This increased the SDP's parliamentary seat number to 35.^[15]

Prominent Social Democrats

Leaders of the Social Democrats

^[16][17]

Election results

Parliament of Finland

Municipal

European Parliament

Presidential elections

Indirect

1988⁰
Mauno Koivisto
128
1,175,209
39.36%

Direct

⁰ The 1988 Presidential election was partially indirect: after Koivisto had failed to get a majority of the popular vote, he was elected president in the electoral college, which the voters voted for alongside the direct vote.
¹ first round
² second round

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Social Democratic Party of Finland.

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