Liberal Youth of Sweden - History

History

See also: Liberal People's Party (Sweden)#History

The Liberal Youth of Sweden traces its roots back to Verdandi, a radical student organisation founded in 1882 by Karl Staaff, the future prime minister and leader of the Liberal Coalition Party. In 1910 the Swedish Freeminded Youth League (Swedish: Sveriges frisinnade ungdomsförbund) was formed as the youth wing of the Freeminded National Association, Sweden's first grassroots liberal organisation, with Eric Festin as its first chairperson. The youth league was active during the First World War, but lost members afterwards. In 1923 the Freeminded National Association split over the prohibition of alcohol, and though the youth league tried to stay together it too split in 1927.

The two liberal parties reunited in August 1934 as the People's Party. The youth league was reunited in the same year as the Youth League of the People's Party (Swedish: Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund, FPU) with Bertil Ohlin as its first chairperson. When it was founded it had 1000 members in about 100 local associations, but many new members soon joined. In the 1930s FPU campaigned on issues such as the abolition of school fees, and in the 1950s began to demand that a proportion of GDP should go to aid. FPU also campaigned for Sweden to join NATO and for the TV and radio monopolies to be abolished. In the 1960s FPU became prominent under the leadership of among others Per Ahlmark and Ola Ullsten and influenced its mother party in a radical direction. However, a time of internal battles followed in the early 1970s, culminating in the chairmanship election of 1971 where the incumbent Per Gahrton was defeated by Lars Leijonborg by one vote's margin.

At the congress in 1991 the youth league changed its name to the Liberal Youth of Sweden (Swedish: Liberala ungdomsförbundet, LUF) after the People's Party had renamed itself the Liberal People's Party the previous year. LUF was (and is) noted for its support of Swedish membership of the European Union, which Sweden joined in 1995. After the mother party's success in the general election of 2002 the membership of LUF increased significantly.