The Hand that Trembles

November 1993

Åke Sandström was pursuing his point as slowly and painstakingly as ever. Sven-Arne Persson had almost forgotten what it was.

Amazing how many words could be used to say nothing, he thought, and glanced at his watch. A quarter to two.

The meeting had been under way since the early morning, with a break for lunch.

‘If we regard all the circumstances, there is still much that indicates that proceeding according to the existing plans will go against the spirit as well as the letter of current county regulations, but on the other hand there are no actual reasons for…’

‘Åke, if we are to arrive at a-’

‘I’m getting there. It is not as simple as some appear to believe.’

Sven-Arne Persson sighed, pointedly closed his folder, and started thinking of other things. There was not much competition for his attention except the ‘big question,’ as he called the line of thinking that had been claiming more and more of his time the last year.

Is it time? Can Sandström’s soulless droning be the signal I have been waiting for? Sven-Arne drew a deep breath, which caused Sandström to pause for a second. But then he continued implacably.

Sven-Arne looked around at the assembled, all familiar to him for many years. Some he would have called his friends, others simply party colleagues. But he knew that fewer and fewer of them were listening to him. He suspected it was more an expression of his own frustration and growing indifference for the burning county issues than the party’s view of him as a politician, for surely they considered his views as seriously as before.

They did not like him. He knew that without a doubt. There was an aspect of his personality that few of them could stand. He was generally held to be personable and normally had no problems circulating around the city, getting to know the town’s citizens and voters. He was a good listener, allowing others to finish talking, had the knack of looking genuinely interested, and could be either serious or joking, as the situation demanded. As with all elected officials in the public sphere, there was a measure of calculation in his attitude, and adaptability, but his concern for those he had been elected to represent was generally acknowledged. This was also his foremost ability and it made him a party asset. If at times he came across as a pompous ass there were few who regarded him as one.

In his internal work the situation was more complicated. In county administration his flexibility was nowhere to be seen. He was a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of county politics, impatient and often abrupt, and always seemed in a hurry to bring the matter at hand to a close under his hammer.

Toward the latter half of the 1980s, a number of party colleagues – mostly from the women’s caucus – had tried to get rid of him. Gerda Lyth, who was his harshest critic, had called him a power-hungry chauvinist pig.

At first he had taken the matter lightly. She had difficulty making inroads since she had no base in the city. She was a political blow-in from the south and therefore also had her dialect against her. Gerda Lyth was employed at the university. Sven-Arne was from the working class and had at least ten years of physical labour behind him, before he had been lifted into the union ombudsman position and later into county assignments, and there was a dearth of his kind of experience in the Labour Party.

In his battle with Gerda Lyth and her followers he made conscious use of this class background, which appeared spectacular in this city so dominated by academics and the bourgeoisie. It was first in hindsight that he fully realised how close they had come to removing him from power in the Labour community and thereby the county board.

When pressed in some way, he could fall back into the naked Uppsala dialect that had dominated his childhood, above all through his uncle Ante. There were those who claimed that Uppsala had no dialect, but nothing could be more wrong, in his view. He could identify a genuine native after only a couple of sentences, someone sprung from the Uppsalian working class, but had to admit that this rare tongue was heard increasingly seldom. Everything was getting mixed, the language was getting smoothed out. Class sensibility and class language were awkward tools for a Labour Party flirting with the middle class. They functioned more as flourishes, markers of a proud past that lent a legitimacy in speaking for the masses.

But they could also be used as weapons in the internal struggles, and Gerda Lyth had had a taste of it. After the first few attempts, which he had mainly waved away in irritation, the attackers had gathered in a renewed and more organised offensive and then Sven-Arne Persson had to show his colours.

He mobilised his old war buddies, calling upon a former county commissioner, and won over the older ones in the city districts; there was intrigue behind the scenes and thundering argumentation at the meetings. He reached out to the media, writing up something called the ‘Persson Appeal,’ a skillfully constructed document centred on ‘caring for the city of Uppsala’ and ‘moving the centre.’ The second expression could be taken literally, as the majority of his power base lay in the old working-class parts of Salabackar, Tunabackar, Almtuna, and Svartbäcken, but it could also be interpreted ideologically.

In the article he talked about ‘good work’ as an independent, almost magical concept, and used a couple of anecdotes from his days as a plumber, with a metaphorical language that characterised class-bound supremacy and the secretive language of the craft, which he knew presented a temptation for both the knowledgeable and the ignorant.

He spoke of tradition and renewal, worn concepts that in his appeal emerged as genuine since he skillfully connected his and others’ experiences of the poor Sweden, tradition with class, the smell of wet wool and dreams of holiday and dental care, with those of new technology within the fields of computer and biomedical research that would put Uppsala on the world map.

An area that he touched on only briefly was that of ‘the new Swedes,’ which truth be told he did not know, more than the fact that they lived in the outskirts of the city. Even here he successfully employed symbols. He was able to squeeze in Vilhelm Moberg’s Karl Oskar, Walloons, and Greek feta cheese in a piece that, viewed superficially, was unassailable, but that did not articulate a single problem and was not beholden to anything.

Sven-Arne Persson received flowers. His office at City Hall smelt of greenery. A multitude of Letters to the Editor streamed in to Upsala Nya Tidning, all positive. ‘At last someone who dares to talk ideology,’ someone wrote. ‘This is a Social Democracy we can recognise,’ said another.

The opposition was wise enough to hold off. The article was too generally supported and rhetorically so well constructed as to rule out the possibility of a counter-attack. Persson’s foremost opponent, the commissioner Herbert Gunnarsson of the Moderate Party, realised this gesture was intended for internal affairs. Privately he detested women in politics, and above all those with socialist leanings, and he was happy that Lyth was struck a blow, even though she was not actually referred to by name.

The only one who offered any criticism was Ante. He called right after the piece was published and laughed abrasively. He was not tricked. He undressed the words, and Sven-Arne silently cursed this person who stood nearest to him. Ante’s words would become etched in his body like rusty staples. Each time he employed this method, the rhetoric and the compelling but intentionally vague political language of the political appeal that he had mastered so well, the staples twisted and turned inside him.

Sven-Arne did not engage his uncle in debate. There was no point in gilding the lie. After Ante was done with his sarcastic tirade, Sven-Arne enquired about his hip. This was his uncle’s Achilles’ heel, since he was no longer able to move about without effort and was dependent on his nephew if he needed to travel any distance.

The result of Sven-Arne’s offensive was that Gerda Lyth had to back down. Sven-Arne pitied her for a moment, but immediately put this thought behind him. He was a power player and knew it. There was no room for doubt or regret.

Not a single word in his text was incorrect but he knew the whole was flawed. It was not an ideological manifesto, but an Orwellian betrayal.

After his victory over his internal critics, Sven-Arne sank into a deep depression. It went on for six months. After the refreshing power struggle, only indifference remained.

It was as if his disingenuousness not only revealed his true self but that of his colleagues, the ones who had supported him, cheered, and slapped him on the back. Shouldn’t everyone have been able to see through the dishonesty? Was his oration so convincing or was his party colleagues’ longing for ideologically coloured argumentation so great that they allowed themselves to be tricked by fanfare, which after it had died away left the same vacuum that they were looking to escape?

After hardly a year, Gerda Lyth left Uppsala for Gothenburg, where she had applied for and received a position within the university administration. When Sven-Arne met Gothenburg’s strong man in politics at a conference, he had asked about Gerda Lyth but the politician had never heard her name. Perhaps she had had enough of politics?

‘What do you think, Sven-Arne?’

The county commissioner was jolted out of his reverie and stared blankly at Sandström.

‘I have to admit I haven’t really followed you.’

‘Are you unwell? You look a little pale.’

‘A headache,’ Sven-Arne Persson said. ‘Perhaps I’ll take a break, if that’s all right with you.’

He did not expect any protest, just stood up and left the room. And in so doing, also his wife, municipal politics, Uppsala, and Sweden.