Kings Bay Affair
The Kings Bay Affair ( Norwegian : Kings Bay-saken ) was a political scandal in Norway that culminated in 1963 with the resignation of Einar Gerhardsen's government . It paved the way for the first bourgeois government in Norway after World War II .
background
The Kings Bay Kull Company was then a coal mining company based in Ny-Ålesund on the Norwegian-managed island of Spitzbergen in Svalbard . Since 1933, the company was wholly owned by the Norwegian state and was therefore administered by the government.
Between 1945 and 1963 at least 64 people lost their lives in three serious accidents in the mines. In the summer of 1963, a commission appointed by Storting (Norwegian Parliament) discovered several deficiencies in the management of the mine. Among other things, the commission accused the then Minister of Industry, Kjell Holler .
Political Consequences
The bourgeois opposition to the Arbeiderpartiet called for Holler to be fired, but Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen argued that Kings Bay was not accountable to parliament because the company was run as a business and not as an authority. The opposition saw this as an excuse and feared that it threatened to shift the influence of power away from the legislature to the executive.
In the period after the Second World War , the social democratic government had always enjoyed great confidence. Now, for the first time in his reign, Gerhardsen had to appear before parliament and justify the work of his cabinet. The previously divided opposition was able to agree on a motion of no confidence in the ruling party. She justified the motion with the fact that shareholders can also dismiss a board member in the event of mismanagement, so a government that runs a company can also be held responsible accordingly. For understandable reasons, the parliamentarians of the Arbeiderpartiet did not support the motion. Since the bourgeois opposition and the ruling party both had exactly 74 seats, the decision fell to the two representatives of the left-wing Sosialistisk Folkeparti .
The Sosialistisk Folkeparti decided the vote through its own motion of censure, according to which it would trust the ruling party, but not the current government. The picture, published by the newspaper Aftenposten , showing Gerhardsen leaving and John Lyng entering the lectern in Storting, has become a symbol of Norway's political history.
Change of government
The government, founded by John Lyng of the Høyre party, was Norway's first non-social democratic country since World War II. However, it was only able to stay at the top for three weeks, as the first government declaration failed due to a motion of no confidence, this time by the Arbeiderpartiet and the Sosialistisk Folkeparti. Lyng's successor was again Gerhardsen.
The affair was a dramatic episode in Norwegian history as it led to the end of the Gerhardsen dynasty and the emergence of a more articulate and coherent political alternative in the non-socialist camp. Despite Lyng's short reign, it had become clear that the right-wing parties could also unite in a coalition. In 1965, in the parliamentary elections that followed the affair, the non-socialist center-right parties won enough seats to be able to form a government with Per Borten again.
Web links
- On the history of Ny-Alesund (English)