1900-1903: Adolf Lagerheim (National majority)
1902: National (177), Liberal (84), Radical (64), Labour (17)
1903-1907: Adolf Lagerheim (National leading War Government with Liberals and Radicals)
1907-1908:
Adolf Lagerheim (National minority)
1907: National (183), Labour (116), Liberal (66), Radical (51), Middle-Class (5), others (4)
The Great War came to an end. Three and a half years of mindless slaughter on the Karelian front was over, and the soldiers brushed the mud off their uniforms and looked out at the cratered landscape. Borgå, the second-oldest city east of the water, with its prized wooden houses and Romanesque cathedral, lay in ruins, and the harbour of Svensksund was so riddled with mines that it wouldn't reopen for two years. Between the two cities was a swath of death and destruction several miles wide, running from the lakes of Itis to the shore at Strömfors. A generation of Swedish men, as many as a hundred thousand including civilians, lay dead.
And what had it all been for? Almost no territory changed hands at the negotiating table. Viborg, the main war goal of the Swedish Army, remained firmly in Russian hands. Not only that, Sweden bound itself to accept a population transfer of all Swedish-speakers and Protestant Finns east of the border. And Russia had allegedly lost the war - but didn't even have to pay reparations to Sweden for the cities it flattened.
Needless to say, when the news broke, Stockholm erupted into riots that would last four days. It briefly looked as though the monarchy would be overthrown, but the situation was salvaged when the Foreign Office negotiated food relief from the United States (which had remained neutral but was favourably disposed to the Coalition side) and Lagerheim pledged two major changes: firstly, universal suffrage under proportional representation, and secondly, his resignation within a year of the new Riksdag meeting.
The elections were held in September, and were less of a disaster for the Hats than generally expected - though decimated in the major cities, the countryside remained behind Lagerheim and his programme. The big news was the rise of the Labour Party, who captured more seats than the Riksdag had grown by and became the largest party in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Åbo. Lagerheim was able to form his third ministry, a pure National minority administration, and resigned the following spring as promised. Perhaps he was tired of frontline politics, but probably not of politics - he was made a Baron, continued to act as a grey eminence within the party, and died in 1934 at the age of 77.
1908-1910:
Gustaf Serlachius (National minority)
Lagerheim was followed by his Finance Secretary, a dull man from the upper end of the Åbo bourgeoisie who had become known for a laconic wit that matched his stringency with public finances. Expected by everyone to serve in the ministry with quiet distinction and then retire to a barony, he instead found himself thrust into power when Lagerheim resigned. He seemed like a good choice - quietly effective, views that matched the post-war direction the Hats were taking, and no faction of the party disliked him particularly. In his time as Chancery President, Serlachius would prove a paradox - at once firmly principled and willing to compromise, at once arrogant toward other parties and able to form composition ministries and hold cabinet with their leaders by his side. These qualities allowed him to pass two budgets in a minority administration, and dissolve the Riksdag in the summer of 1910 to coincide with the Coronation of King Gustav VI.
1910-1912:
Hjalmar Munck (National-Radical composition)
1910: National (152), Labour (135), Liberal (54), Radical (43), Left-Socialist (34), Patriotic Electoral League (5), Middle-Class (2)
It was an odd match. If one went back into time and told Augustin Beck-Friis that his party would one day govern alongside the "Phrygians", not ten years after his death at that, the old arch-Hat would probably not have believed it. And yet that was what had happened. Of course, it had already happened during the war ministry, and perhaps that was when the two parties realised their differences weren't as great as either thought. For one thing, they both hated the Caps, and maybe that was enough. For another, the Radicals' centrepiece demand had already been brought in by the Nationals. Serlachius stepped down in favour of Munck, on one hand a nobleman, on the other a known moderniser within the Hats who the Radicals felt they could work with. The budget negotiations were surprisingly smooth, with the parties agreeing on speedy disarmament and generally restrained government spending as the economy began to recover.
Much as this pleased the Phrygians, it went over none too well with the paternalistic, relatively statist rural wing of the National Party, who came more and more into collision with the leadership over the course of 1911. At its congress in the spring of 1912, the National Association of Farmers voted to withdraw support from the Nationals, form a new party and invite individual Hats known to be sympathetic to form a rural faction in the lower chamber. Fifteen members did, and the Munck cabinet fell to a vote of no confidence within days. Munck chose to dissolve the Riksdag rather than cobble together a new composition.
1912-1914:
Hjalmar Munck (National-Radical composition)
1912: Labour (141), National (113), Rural (50), Radical (37), Communist (37), Liberal (36), Patriotic Electoral League (11)
The composition government was reformed after all other alternatives had been exhausted, and continued to govern with quiet restraint for the most part. It dealt with the Hats and the Rural League when budget time came around, but didn’t do much the rest of the year. The lack of drama in the Munck II cabinet was all the more conspicuous given the increasing instability of the country as a whole. The Communist Party on the left was increasing its agitation, organising miners in the far north, shipbuilders in Gothenburg and Åbo and indentured farmworkers in the plains of central Sweden against the existing social order. On the right, a group of anti-disarmament Hats had joined with the Front Fighters’ Association and parts of the National Youth League to form the Patriotic Electoral Association (
Fosterländska Valmansförbundet, FVF), which blamed the labour movement for stabbing Sweden in the back and inspiring the mutinies that ended the war, and held regular rallies calling for a restoration of national glory. The FVF were fast nicknamed the "Helmets", a name that stuck with them throughout their existence.
Things were inevitably headed for chaos, and it arrived in June 1914, when news broke of the Boliden conflict. Miners at Boliden in Västerbotten had come out on strike that spring, and finding no replacement labour in the company town, the management had applied for relief workers from the College of Social Affairs, which was granted. The news that the government was employing strikebreakers caused outrage in leftist circles, and a demonstration at Kungsträdgården led to street brawls between left-wing and right-wing mobs. Sporadic clashes continued throughout the summer, and when the Riksdag reconvened in August, the government was voted out.
1914-1915:
Erik Andersén (nonpartisan caretaker cabinet)
With Munck and Serlachius refusing to take the premiership and no opposition coalition able to muster a majority, the King appointed a caretaker administration led by the first nonpartisan Chancery President since the reign of Gustav III. Andersén had been a leading law professor at the University of Uppsala, then served as Chancellor of Justice under Lagerheim and Serlachius. While tied to the Hats in this, he had never joined the party, and commanded broad respect across both chambers of the Riksdag. His cabinet achieved little of note - it wasn't meant to - and presided over a Riksdag election every bit as chaotic as that of 1912, resigning as soon as a new composition could be formed.
1915-1917:
Carl Albert Albertsson (Labour-Radical composition)
1915: Labour (153), National (98), Radical (46), Communist (43), Liberal (41), Rural (37), Patriotic Electoral League (7)
At last, it was Labour's turn. It had been twenty years since they were first elected to the Riksdag, and they had beaten the Hats into first place in two consecutive elections. Perhaps tennis rules had brought them to power - or perhaps it was the change in leadership in the Radical Party that caused them to break with the Hats in favour of an untested new centre-left composition. It very nearly captured a majority of the lower chamber - only passive Communist support was needed to pass a radical budget for 1916. The Lords initially threatened to block it, but a demonstration outside the House of Nobility reminded them of their narrow mandate, and convinced enough noble Lords to abstain from voting. The first public pension, the progressive estate tax, the payroll tax, were all brought in by the 1916 budget, and the following year would see thoroughgoing poor law reform and the introduction of equal suffrage in local elections. It was when the turn came to labour issues that the composition began to crack. The Labour backbenches wanted the 40-hour work week to be made mandatory, as did the Communists, but the Phrygian leadership was divided on the issue. Twenty-two Radical members ended up voting against the bill, enough for it to fall, and Albertsson tendered his resignation the following day.
1917-1918:
Kaj Boije af Gennäs (National minority)
The new ministry was as unexpected as its Chancery President, a geriatric Hat baron whose only previous cabinet experience was under Beck-Friis back in the 1890s. Boije's only real recommendation was the fact that he was a regular Saturday guest at Drottningholm, and the fact that he held dirt on nearly every senior member of the National Party in the Riksdag (the latter fact only becoming known upon the release of his memoirs, which precipitated three high-level resignations in the cabinet and, according to legend, multiple suicide attempts). His administration was a caretaker one in practice, with little to differentiate it from the Andersén cabinet except insofar as nearly all the members were Hats.
1918-1921:
Johan Adolf Boberg (National-Rural-Liberal composition)
1918: Labour (133), National (123), Rural (59), Radical (41), Communist (36), Liberal (28), Patriotic Electoral League (5)
The new composition was the first majority administration since the war, and represented a coming together of the entire opposition during the previous Riksdag except the Helmets. Johan Adolf Boberg was known as a dynamic man of the younger generation, not unlike Lagerheim when he came to power, although he was in fact only six years younger than Lagerheim (then again, most people would look young and dynamic next to Boije). He was the first Chancery President to have served in the Great War - obviously not as a frontline soldier, but as an officer in the Lappland Rangers. He had led the capture of Pechenga, one of few Swedish victories in the late phase of the war, and this made him famous well before he stood for the Riksdag as a Hat in 1910.
Another peacetime first was the inclusion of both Hats and Caps in a composition - the latter party had been decimated by the Hats, Phrygians and Rural League, and retained its former strength only in a few peripheral regions. They were now the smallest party in the composition, which ended up dominated by the Hats and the ex-Hats and other conservatives who made up the Rural League. When the "wolf winter" of 1918-19 brought about a four-week delay in the planting season, the government acted fast to save the livelihoods of Northern farmers, and tax breaks for smallholders was a major thrust of the 1920 budget. The trend of disarmament was reversed for the first time since the war in the 1920 Defence Order, which provided for two new regiments to be raised and the construction of six new armoured hemmemas for the Archipelago Fleet.
Perhaps it was appropriate that the first Hat-Cap composition in decades would fall apart over trade policy. The agricultural crisis had not been staved off by the emergency aid, as fields decayed and grain importation began to become feasible again. The Rural League proposed a new grain tariff, and after a long and raucous cabinet debate, the Hats and the College of Commerce came out in support. The Liberals saw no recourse but to go into opposition, even though the bill failed - Labour were not about to vote for a deliberate hike in food prices.
1921-1922:
Johan Adolf Boberg (National-Rural composition)
Boberg was able to reform his administration as a Hat-Rural composition, with the Liberals providing outside supply and confidence on the condition that the tariff issue not be revisited. This was honoured, and indeed, the Boberg II cabinet would be unable to get much of anything done given the global economic crash that began in the autumn of 1921. A budget for 1922 with reduced expenditure in nearly every field was passed, and the remaining time was spent battling crisis after crisis, both in the treasury and in the streets of Stockholm. The situation grew tense, but when elections were called for September of 1922, Boberg had at least survived an entire term as Chancery President and dissolved the Riksdag on his own terms - something few heads of government can claim even today.
1922-1923:
Johan Adolf Boberg (National-Rural-Liberal composition with Patriotic support)
1922: Labour (154), National (83), Rural (59), Communist (46), Patriotic Electoral League (38), Radical (21), Liberal (21), Monetary Reform (3)
And indeed, he would return for the new Riksdag, even though the parliamentary arithmetic was far less favourable. The three parties that had held a majority in 1918 controlled only about forty percent of the seats in 1922, and passing legislation would require support from the Helmets as well as the various "middle-class" independents elected amidst the chaotic 1922 campaign. It was untenable from the beginning - even a man like Boberg could only barely juggle three parties, let alone four and a half. Staying in office for eight months was itself a remarkable achievement.
1923-: Axel Wahlberg (Labour-Rural composition)
1923: Labour (179), National (68), Rural (57), Communist (47), Radical (25), Patriotic Electoral League (25), Liberal (23), Monetary Reform (1)
The second Labour government, the first one to survive a full parliamentary term,
