The early parties of Finland were born after the mid-19th century. At that time, the divisions between parties were based on language and nationality issues. The first political party, the Finnish Party (SP) of the 1860’s, was clearly a language-based party, and its most significant leaders included Professor and Senator Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen. The Swedish Party developed as a counterforce in the 1870’s and 1880’s. In the 1880’s, Finland also had a short-lived Liberal Party.
At the turn of the century, the language issue was replaced by two other major problems, the general reform of society and the relations with Russia. The Finnish Party split into two. Most of the Old Finns adopted a conformance policy, whereas those who opted for passive resistance joined the Young Finns and established a constitutionalist pro-Finnish party (NSP) in 1902.
The first rise of the
Finnish labour movement started during the
so-called Wrightist period of the 1880’s.
A convention of workers’ associations in 1899 established the Finnish Labour
Party, which was renamed the Finnish Social Democratic Party four years
later. The Social Democratic Party with its extensive organisation and
programmes was the first modern political party in the country. Other political
organisations were still incoherent. The party achieved 80 seats in the first
unicameral Parliament of 1907, which started the party’s actual rise.
The Swedish People’s Party (Svenska Folkpartiet, RKP) was established in 1906, with the intention of forming a coalition of the entire Swedish-speaking population. In the elections of 1907, the party achieved 24 seats in Parliament.
As the language issue diminished, the Agrarian Party was established in 1906 to advocate for small farmers. In the elections of 1907, the Agrarians were still divided into two groups, with the Agrarian Young Finns’ League of Southern Ostrobothnia founded by Santeri Alkio outside the Agrarian Party. In 1908, the two groups merged their programmes and started to run the party purely on the basis of national ideology. The Agrarian Party achieved 9 seats in the elections of 1907, but grew rapidly and had as many as 42 seats after the elections of 1919.
The Civil War and the battle over the form of government caused significant changes in the party system. The Agrarians supported a republic, with RKP going for monarchy. The Finnish parties became divided. Within the Young Finns Party, monarchists headed by Svinhufvud and republicans headed by Ståhlberg confronted each other. As a consequence of this division, representatives of the People’s Party joined forces with the republican group in 1918 and became the National Progressive Party, whereas the old Finnish party was succeeded by the National Coalition Party (KOK) in 1918.
In August 1918, the rebellion leaders who had fled to Russia established the Finnish Communist Party (SKP) in Moscow. The objective of their programme was to abolish the bourgeois apparatus of government and turn Finland into a Soviet state. In August 1923, Kallio’s Cabinet had the leading Communist characters imprisoned, including the entire parliamentary faction, and the party as well as its newspapers were banned. The Communists were ultimately suppressed from open action in the early 1930’s through the influence of the Lapua movement.
The elections of 1933 were the first for the Patriotic Popular Movement (IKL), created by the state of ferment in domestic politics and participating in the elections in an alliance with the National Coalition (KOK).
After the Second World War, the political map changed. IKL was discontinued in 1944 on the basis of the interim peace treaty, and in the same year, the Communist Party was registered as a legitimate association. The opposition faction of SDP started to co-operate with the Communists, which led to the establishment of the People’s Democratic League of Finland (SKDL) in 1944.
Confronted by rapid changes in the structure of society, the Agrarian Party
approved a new basic programme and action programme in 1962 and changed its
name to Centre Party (KESK). The party continued its reform towards a general
political centre movement and changed its name to Finnish Centre in 1988. The
Liberal Party (LKP), established in 1965, also tried to appeal to the centre
groups. Dissension inside SKP culminated in an open conflict in 1969,
dividing the party into a majority faction and a minority faction. In the
1980’s, the trend was towards unification, eventually merging SKP and SKDL
into a new party, the Leftist Alliance (VAS) in 1990.
A variety of small factions has emerged since the 1960’s, from time to time causing significant fragmentation in the Finnish political system. The Finnish Rural Party (SMP), a spin-off from the Agrarian Party in 1959, emerged with surprising strength and, headed by its founder Veikko Vennamo, gained an enormous avalanche of votes in 1970. SMP soon split into two, however, and eventually fell into financial difficulties in the early 1990’s. The elections of 1970 brought a new party, the Finnish Christian League, to Parliament.
In 1988, the open ecological popular movement registered itself as a political party, the Greens.
Finnish party life has been
characterised by the central - in some periods even
predominant - position of a large agrarian party. The political division of
the labour movement has been manifested in an extraordinarily strong leftist
radicalism movement from a Western point of view. The period until the
mid-1930’s has been described as the period of right-wing co-operation. The
majority alternative of the centre and left-wing parties, the so-called
agrarian-socialist alliance, was only broken after the elections of 1987 when
SDP and KOK formed their first common Cabinet.