Olof Palme murdered 30 years ago - what is the meaning of closure?

The Rhetoric of Olof Palme – is it today a matter of pride or irrelevance?

Five minutes ago it was precisely 30 years since Olof Palme was murdered on a street in central Stockholm. There is a lot to say about this tragic event, as well as about how it is remembered by the people of Sweden.

The commemoration this time is telling. Thirty years have passed and yet there is no closure. The murderer is not identified according to the police, even though the Palme family think they know who it was (Christer Pettersson, a loner and an alcoholic, now dead). Few Swedes believe that the murder was just an act by a lunatic, a thing done at random. There is, still after thirty years, a sense that there is more to it, much more.

Two documentaries were sent on Swedish TV 4 on Wednesday and Thursday evenings last week, produced by Ellung. These very skilfully made documentaries clearly prove two things: very few Swedish leaders have had such an international outreach as Palme, but on the domestic scene rather than on the wider scene, Palme was either intensely hated or loved.

At the time of his death there were people in Sweden who seriously thought that Palme was a security risk. Why was this so?

Internationally he caught attention when he marched against USA’s war in Vietnam. He marched with the Communists of north Vietnam. He was consistent in his criticism of those violating human rights. He early on spoke powerfully against apartheid South Africa as well as Smith’s Rhodesia. For example, when visiting Zambia in the 1970s he declared to his host Kaunda whilst looking southwardly towards Rhodesia/Zimbabwe: here we are facing the border of decency. I once met an African pastor in northern South Africa who had had a vision in connection with Palme’s visit to Zambia and he told me that Palme was sent by God. He subsequently named the son born soon after to Olof Palme, as first names!

Palme was, to be sure, seen very differently on the domestic scene. To start with, within the Social Democratic party itself there were various inhibitions regarding him as a leader. His bright intellect and high mobility made it difficult to be on par with him. In addition he came from a genuinely bourgeois family on Östermalm in Stockholm, and was to start with a total alien when it came to the labour movement. But, and make no mistake about it, he made the social democratic party his own and he was absolutely consistent in his convictions.

For example he made a statement that was crystal clear to everyone who cared to listen, saying: I am a democratic socialist, and I am proud of it. He did indeed mean it literally, but still this is just the remaining question, even after thirty years, what did this exactly entail?

One interviewee said in the documentary that everybody in Palme’s surrounding was much more on the left than the whole present Social Democratic government (coalition government together with the Environmentalists). So he said (Jan Guillou): that means that what happened around Palme at that time (in the 1980s) is purely history and can hardly be related to what takes place within this party today. I am of the opinion that there was, and still is this resentment against Olof Palme within his own party.

Secondly, one has to deal with the opposition. Sweden has had an opposing coalition for decades now, which is a kind of centre-right coalition. There was reason to recall some of the debates that took place before elections. Palme was in general just superior. In a debate with Torbjörn Fälldin, of the Centre Party who was Prime Minister at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Palme simply “cut him to pieces”. But it was done in such a highhanded way that the sympathy went to Fälldin instead of Palme.

It is not difficult to understand that the capitalists of Sweden intensely disliked the existence of Palme, and it came to an absolute confrontation when the Social Democrats, together with the Labour Union, tried to enforce the introduction of “löntagarfonder”, huge state funds that would draw capital from the private sector; this was however stopped at the last minute.

A good question remains to be answered: what did this being a democratic socialist entail?

The remainder of my comment on Olof Palme, our most gifted politician ever, will contain three things. But let me first add: it is one thing that he was disliked by many, but as a person, and anyone with senses must understand that rhetoric in debate is one thing and does not warrant a judgment on the whole person, he was very accommodating, fair and evidently easy to get along with.

I want to comment on three things. First, why was he so soft on the communists? Secondly, why did Swedish police and media handle his murder in such a bad way? Finally I want to say something about the fact that things have changed since 1986 to such an extent that one could be justified to ask what relevance Olof Palme could possibly have today.

He freely associated with various communist leaders, especially in the socalled third world; in a way that is what you did in those days if you had any leftist tendencies. So there was Fidel Castro and there were leaders in Vietnam, Cambodja, there was a Moammar Khadaffi etc. In hindsight one has to admit that many of these associations do not sit well with a democratic understanding of life. Palme repeatedly expressed criticism against violent acts among communist regimes in principle, but was soft on these at specific occasions. For example in 1982 foreign submarines invaded Swedish waters and everybody understood that the Russians were coming (this is an old saying in Sweden about the enemy from the east, i.e. the Sovjets). Palme expressed concern but never pointed out any particular suspect, but the day came when a submarine from the Soviet Union was stranded in open air on the Swedish coastline of Karlskrona.

A simple answer could be that Palme simply was quite far out on the left, but did not want to achieve his goals with violence but with democratic means, i.e. peaceful means.

Ellung’s documentaries are merciless in revealing two things: the total mess that the Stockholm police proved to be, losing possible leads from the very start. It was Friday night, for God’s sake, and in Sweden things close down. While the police were in disarray, media were simply absent. Swedish television did only send the news of Palme’s death at 04h00 a.m. and then he had already been dead for 4½ hours! Leading social democrats got phone calls from England and USA as news channels there already had picked up what had happened. Several questions have to be asked. What is wrong with this country? Why could we not even be on the alert and react swiftly when such a tragic thing takes place? Secondly, one almost gets the sense that some of the police at least (rather not media, for they were basically “in love” with Palme) were rather loathing anything that had to do with Olof Palme.

My third comment should be far more extensive than it could be allowed to be at this moment. It has to do with a strong sense I have that the whole world around Palme including himself somehow has lost relevance. We do live in a different world now.

He paved the way for some of it. He did not come to see changes in South Africa, nor in the Soviet Union for that matter. And what would he have said about the collapse of this world power? A good question.

Another ten years beyond Palme’s era could live off the ideals that were forged in the decades before about a democratic world with justice for all. Still 1996 we were able to say that many things have been achieved and one would naturally think about the fall of apartheid South Africa, the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was also a sense, and Palme embodied exactly this conviction, that it was possible to build this kind of world on the basis of human good will (and mind you, free will). Deep down the human is endowed with goodness and the role of the politician is simply to open the doors for it, give people their freedom and things will start happening by themselves.

We are writing 2016 or see it printed in our almanacs or find it on the cell phone. It is a different time now. Peace does not come just like that. Democracy is not born naturally as soon as there is space for it so to speak. If we in 1986 were prepared to fight the big issues, and rightly so, in 2016 it stands very clear that what is hindering development and progress, peace and stability is some kind of evil. It is there, in human beings, and between human beings. I simply don’t know how politicians are called to deal with evil in our midst.

Nothing of what was done from the 1986 onwards should be seen to have been in vain, but a sobering fact is that we have not at all achieved what we thought we had achieved.

Evil is around and how does one tackle it?

There can only be glimpses in terms of reflections here but I want to end with one last comment. There is one learning that could sustain the whole situation at this very moment (the war in Syria, the resurgence of a Stalinist cult in Russia, the advance of Isis, and frustrated, alienated Islamists in Western European capitals, etc.) and that is what took place in South Africa after the down fall of apartheid. The wisdom of the leadership in the 1990s cannot be overestimated. It was decided, and leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were far from the only ones to appear on the scene, to sort out the past history of violence and oppression and racism with a view to, not primarily of meeting out severe punishments, but to finding the truth, the perpetrators, the victims and their various shades, and in doing that seeking an outcome of reconciliation. And we know now that reconciliation goes with forgiveness.

This learning is the only lesson that we have now that can sustain us today. Already a lot of those reconciliatory measures have been forgotten and again, there is rhetoric of the need for justice without mercy, reminding one of the rhetoric also of Olof Palme, on the domestic scene as well as on the international scene.

2016 is a different era and the sense is that pretty little can be drawn from what was going on in the 1980s. We should therefore now, not least we as Swedes, allow Olof Palme to rest in peace. His family wants it that way. The rest of us should concede.