Farewell Sigmundur Davið

Iceland's Prime Minister, Sigmundur Davið Gunnlaugsson from the poorly named Progressive Party, Framsóknarflokkurinn, has graciously admitted this evening that he has actually resigned and not just asked a colleague to stand in for him for a bit. This only happened because of the enormous demo this week against Sigmundur Davið by tens of thousands of ordinary people sick of the corruption that appears to be endemic to Iceland's elite. Here's an article I wrote yesterday about the situation. And here's hoping the Icelandic left are working on a coherent strategy now that they have a new opportunity to fight austerity and get rid of everyone in the government who has got richer from the financial crisis.

How long will Iceland's Tory-Liberal coalition last?

Anti-government protests in Iceland appear to be growing again as the Tory-Liberal coalition slides down the polls. Some 4,500 people rallied last Monday in Reykjavik, a city of 120,000 [1], in support of striking doctors and music teachers and against government cuts. Some were also protesting the recent bizarre instance of the police and the Icelandic Coast Guard getting submachine guns. The next protest is planned for 5pm tomorrow, 10 November outside Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament.

Austerity grinds on with liberal Framsókn MP Karl Garðasson announcing last month that the state broadcaster was “bankrupt” and the government would have to “review” it and all publically owned institutions. Obviously this means more cuts and job losses, as it does in districts such as Reykjanesbær in the southwest with the town of Keflavik and its international airport and debt of over ISK 40 billion (£200 million). Fortunately accountants KPMG are on hand to advise on what to cut starting with 5% across the area’s public services budgets.  

Nothing is safe; in the far north east of Iceland, Kópasker and Raufarhöfn villages stand to lose their ambulances in the latest round of cuts. If this happens the nearest ambulance will be 60 miles away—and for a small amount of money affecting only about 300 people somebody will die soon who otherwise could have been saved.

Today, 9 November, is the anniversary of the 1932 Battle of Good Templars House—Guttóslagurinn when in the depths of world depression, a small Communist Party led mass campaigns against wage cuts that shook Iceland for the rest of the decade. Read more about Guttóslagurinn in an article I wrote in Socialist Review in 2008 when the world financial crisis had just crashed on Iceland’s shores and it quickly became clear who the ruling class was going to make pay. 

It wasn't just the Reykjavik authorities who tried to pull wage-cutting stunts in 1932. Just a month later in December the town council in Akureyri, Iceland's capital of the north tried to slash workers wages to 70 aurar or 0.7 Kr an hour - almost a third less than the Reykjavik town council's plan that was stopped by Guttóslagurinn. So my next post will be about the great Nóvu boycott to stop it when after Guttóslagurinn the authorities tried to defeat the workers by flooding the town with their hired thugs, the hated "White Team". That's the point of knowing our history, to understand that we have won before and we can win again. So how long this Icelandic government lasts will partly depend on what workers there do and learning the lessons of their own history will help.

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[1] 200,000 people including all the small towns in the Greater Reykjavik area 

Racism, Islamophobia and opportunist politicians in Reykjavik

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister and chair of the liberal Progressive Party,[1] has finally joined the row about Islamophobic comments made by the party’s lead candidate in last month’s Reykjavik elections. Sveinbjörg Birna Sveinbjörnsdóttir said, “While we have an established church we should not allocate building land for mosques or Greek orthodox churches”.[2] She then tried to claim that she wasn't prejudiced but had lived in Saudi Arabia and therefore knew what she was talking about.

Ludicrously, Sigmundur has claimed that anyone criticising Sveinbjörg's comments is playing “pathetic politics”. But Sveinbjörg's comments, repeated on her Facebook page, attracted vicious racist ranting about Muslims, crime and ill treatment of women and girls—a comment that she “liked”.  There is another Facebook page, "protest a mosque in Iceland", with 4,500 likes which says that its objection is a “security issue”, and that any such mosque will become centre for terrorism.

Permission to build a mosque was finally approved in January last year and a plot of land allocated in Sogamýri, a suburb of Reykjavik last September. All this has taken 13 years since an application was first made in 2000. There are around 700 Muslims in Iceland, some immigrants and some converts, and understandably they would like to have a purpose built community center, library and suitable prayer room.

Sveinbjörg Birna Sveinbjörnsdóttir knew exactly what she was doing. She chose to make Islamophobic comments in the election hoping to get a few more votes because since the site was chosen there have been some nasty racist incidents with pig heads left there.

The ill-named Progressive Party won two seats with 10.5 percent up from no seats.  Jón Sigurðsson, the party's former chair and Minister of Industry and Commerce recognised the opportunism of his party’s leaders. He said that it should sound alarm bells if Sigmundur as prime minister was prepared to endorse racist populism to win seats, and shamefully that he didn't expect his fellow liberals to object because it had worked.

The good news is there are at least two other Facebook pages with twice as many people supporting the mosque.[3] But as opportunist politicians across Europe encourage racism to deflect anger at austerity onto immigrants and Muslims, anti-racists everywhere need to build high-profile public coalitions to fight their poison and push the racists back in the gutters where they belong.

In Britain anti-racist activists, trade unionists and socialists got rid of Nazi BNP leader Nick Griffin, European MP for north west England by building a united front with Labour Party councillors, MPs and anyone else on the left who wanted to fight racism. Here's an article from Socialist Worker where the activists described how they went about it.

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[1] Framsóknarflokkurinn

[2] http://www.visir.is/oddviti-framsoknar-vill-afturkalla-lod-til-muslima/article/2014140529463

[3] Styðjum byggingu mosku á Íslandi http://on.fb.me/1rVN4M3,

Vid motmaelum Ekki mosku á Íslandi http://on.fb.me/1k6lSR1

Iceland's Tories are back

Here's an article I wrote in this month's Socialist Review about the return of the Icelandic Independence Party, Sjálfstæðisflokkurin  

Iceland's Tories are back in power just five years after their spectacular disgrace. Though their vote only increased by 3 percent, the conservative Independence Party has returned to government in coalition with the liberal Progressive Party.

This is a dramatic turn of events. In 2008, as the shockwaves of the global financial crisis hit Iceland's economy, the then Tory prime minster Geir Haarde had to announce, "There is a real danger that the Icelandic economy could be sucked with the banks into the whirlpool and the result could be national bankruptcy."

The Tories, particularly under Davið Oddson, who served first as prime minister and then as governor of the Central Bank, were responsible for deregulating and privatising the banks. They had turned Iceland into a giant hedge fund and when Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in America, went bust it almost took Iceland with it. Around 10 percent of the population took part in the protests that drove Haarde's government out.

Their replacements were Social Democrats (SD) in coalition with the Left/Green Alliance (LGA) and which initially enjoyed serious support. They had a reputation for honesty - especially Social Democrat Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir who became the new prime minister and who had refused to work with the Tories even before they were disgraced. The Left-Green Alliance represented a more radical left than the mainstream Social Democrats. They wanted the American airbase out of Iceland, called for greater environmental protection, and raised demands for a new constitution written by ordinary people selected by a lottery.

The myth about Iceland since the crash is that it has taken a different path from the road of relentless austerity taken everywhere else in Europe, with the IMF thrown out, banks allowed to fail and people protected from the destruction of society wrought on Greece. The reality has been more like a war of attrition against ordinary Icelanders presided over by the ruling left coalition of the SD/LGA.

In the immediate wake of the crisis pensions were slashed, interest rates shot up, and the value of the Iceland krona plummeted. Unemployment reached 10 percent. Since then interest rates and unemployment have fallen and tourism has boomed but so have prices and household debt. Homes have been lost and mortgages on ordinary family houses bought in the boom years have gone up by the equivalent of tens of thousands of pounds. Rents have risen by over 50 percent in the capital, Reykjavik, and its surrounding sprawl. Staple foods such as buttermilk, rye bread, flour, vegetables and fruit have gone up by between 61 and 233 percent. A cinema ticket that was 800 kr in 2008 is now 1,350 kr. Public services have been cut, including the health service, and wages are stagnant.

While absolute unemployment has fallen, underemployment has not. Tens of thousands rely on benefits and government support in various ways but unemployment benefit runs out after 42 months. A new work programme, set up in January this year to provide "2200 new temporary jobs for long-term jobseekers" is the latest government funded scheme. These jobs are supposed to be created mostly in the private sector. In fact employers will be paid the rate of unemployment benefit for six months to create a job. By this time if it isn't a real job the worker will be entitled to unemployment benefit again. It's depressing thinking about it, let alone living it.

There were near riots in 2009-10 but the unions signed up to austerity practically before Haarde had finished his announcement. This explains why the recent nurses' dispute was a threat of mass resignations, not a strike.

The lack of resistance has worn people down and allowed the Tories to regroup. The lowest turnout in any general election since Iceland's independence from Denmark was a reflection of this.

Promises by the Independence Party and the Progressive Party to deliver jobs and debt relief, in contrast to the austerity delivered by the ruling left coalition, allowed them to return to office.

The Social Democrats, Samfylkingin and Left-Green Alliance combined lost 27.7 percent of their vote - the biggest swing in the country's history, while the Progressive Party's election promises included a 20 percent mortgage write-off. Their vote went up 10 percent and two new parties emerged: Bright Future - liberal democrats - and the local wing of the Pirate Party. Between them they took 8.3 percent and nine seats in the parliament.

The leadership of the Left-Green Alliance clearly have no idea why they only got 9 percent, down from nearly 22 percent. Steingrímur Sigfússon, a founder of LGA and finance minister in the post-crash government, wrote last month in the Financial Times. He said they lost the election, "despite guiding the country through a difficult but impressive recovery...can any politician meet the unrealistic expectations of Europe's voters?"

In Steingrímur's world view there is no alternative to being forever at the mercy of the markets - austerity cannot be fought so it must be endured. The election results suggest more of a quiet desperation and the lack of a clear left alternative.