Social Democrats (Denmark)

1932 general election poster

The party was founded as in 1871 by Louis Pio, Harald Brix and Paul Geleff.[17] The goal was to organise the emerging working class on a democratic and socialist basis. The industrialisation of Denmark had begun in the mid-19th century and a period of rapid urbanisation had led to an emerging class of urban workers. The social-democratic movement emerged from the desire to give this group political rights and representation in the Folketing, the Danish parliament. In 1876, the party held an annual conference, adopting the first party manifesto.

The stated policy was as follows:

The Danish Social Democratic Labour Party works in its national form, but is convinced of the international nature of the labour movement and ready to sacrifice everything and fulfill all obligations to provide: Freedom, equality and brotherhood among all nations.

In 1884, the party had their first two members of parliament elected, namely Peter Thygesen Holm and Chresten Hørdum.

In 1906, the party created the Social Democratic Youth Association, lasting until 1920 when the Social Democratic Youth of Denmark and current party's youth wing was founded.

In the 1924 Danish Folketing election, the party won the majority with 36.6 percent of the vote and its first government was put in place with Thorvald Stauning as Prime Minister.[18] That same year, he appointed Nina Bang as the world's first female minister, nine years after women's suffrage had been given in Denmark. Stauning stayed in power until his death in 1942, with his party laying the foundations for the Danish welfare state based on a close collaboration between labor unions and the government.

In January 1933, Stauning's government entered into what was then the most extensive settlement yet in Danish politics, namely the Kanslergade settlement (Danish: Kanslergadeforliget) with the liberal party Venstre.[19] The settlement was named after Stauning's apartment in Kanslergade in Copenhagen and included extensive agricultural subsidies and reforms of the legislation and administration in the social sector.[20] In 1935, Stauning was reelected with the famous slogan "Stauning or Chaos".[21]

Social Democrats election poster for the October 1945 general election

Stauning's second cabinet lasted until the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940, when the cabinet was widened to include all political parties for a national unity government and the Danish government pursued a collaborative policy with the German occupiers. Through the 1940s and until 1972, Denmark's Prime Ministers were all from the party.

The Social Democrats' social policy through the 1990s and continuing in the 21st century involved a significant redistribution of income and the maintenance of a large state apparatus with collectively financed core public services such as public healthcare, education and infrastructure.

Social Democrats-led coalition governments (the I, II, III and IV Cabinets of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen) implemented the system known as flexicurity (flexibility and social security), mixing strong Scandinavian unemployment benefits with deregulated employment laws, making it easier for employers to fire and rehire people in order to encourage economic growth and reduce unemployment.[22]

The Cabinets of Poul Nyrup Rasmussen maintained a parliamentary majority during the period from 1993 to 2001 by virtue of their support from the Socialist People's Party and the Red–Green Alliance.

Towards the end of the 1990s, a trade surplus of 30 billion kroner (US$4.9 billion) turned into a deficit. To combat this, the government increased taxes, limiting private consumption. The 1998 initiative, dubbed the Whitsun Packet (Danish: Pinsepakken) from the season it was issued, was not universally popular with the electorate which may have been a factor in the Social Democrats' defeat in the 2001 Danish general election.

After being defeated by the Liberal Party in the 2001 Danish general election, the party chairmanship went to former finance and foreign minister Mogens Lykketoft. Following another defeat in the 2005 Danish general election, Lykketoft announced his resignation as party leader and at an extraordinary congress on 12 March it was decided that all members of the party would cast votes in an election of a new party leader. The two contenders for the leadership represented the two wings in the party, with Helle Thorning-Schmidt being viewed as centrist and Frank Jensen being viewed as slightly more left-leaning. On 12 April 2005, Thorning-Schmidt was elected as the new leader.

In the 2011 Danish general election, the Social Democrats gained 44 seats in parliament, the lowest number since 1953.[23] Nonetheless, the party succeeded in establishing a minority government with the Danish Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People's Party. The incumbent centre-right coalition led by the Liberal Party lost power to a centre-left coalition led by the Social Democrats, making Thorning-Schmidt the country's first female Prime Minister. The Danish Social Liberal Party and the Socialist People's Party became part of the three-party centre-left coalition government. The new parliament convened on 4 October. The government rolled back anti-immigration legislation enacted by the previous government[24] and passed a tax-reform with support from the liberal-conservative opposition.[25] The tax reform raised the top tax threshold, which had previously applied to over half the working population. The aim of the tax reform was to increase labour output to fend off a projected labour shortage within the next decades. The stated goal was to entice Danes to work more in order to compensate for the decreasing workforce by lowering tax on wages and gradually lowering welfare payments to those outside of the labour market to increase the economic benefit of working relative to receiving welfare.[26]

On 3 February 2014, the Socialist People's Party left the government in protest over the sale of shares in the public energy company DONG Energy to the investment bank Goldman Sachs.[27] Because of the government's minority status and of its dependency on the support of the Danish Social Liberal Party, the government had to jettison many of the policies that the Social Democrats–Socialist People's Party coalition had given during the campaign. Although critics have accused the government of breaking its promises, other studies argue that it accomplished half of its stated goals, blaming instead poor public relations strategies for its increasingly negative public image.[28] The government pursued a centrist compromise agenda, building several reforms with support from both sides of the parliament. This caused friction with the supporting Red–Green Alliance which was kept outside of influence.[25]

In the 2015 Danish general election, the Social Democrats gained seats and became the biggest party in the parliament again since 2001, yet lost the government because the right-wing parties had a majority. The results of the 2015 election and the defeat of the left-bloc led Thorning-Schmidt to resign as Prime Minister on election night and making way for the next leader Mette Frederiksen.[29] Under Frederiksen, the Social Democrats voted in favor of a law allowing Danish authorities to confiscate money, jewellery and other valuable items refugees crossing the border may have,[30] despite harsh condemnation from the United Nations Human Right Council[31] and widespread comparisons between the plan and the treatment of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.[32]

Similarly, the Social Democrats voted for a law banning wearing of burqas and niqabs while abstaining during a vote on a law on mandatory handshakes irrespective of religious sentiment at citizenship ceremonies and on a plan to house criminal asylum seekers on an island used for researching contagious animal diseases. Frederiksen has also backed the right-wing populist Danish People's Party in their paradigm shift push to make repatriation rather than integration the goal of asylum policy. She has called for a cap on non-Western immigrants, expulsion of asylum seekers to a reception centre in North Africa and forced labour for immigrants in exchange for benefits. Labeling economic foreign policies of Europe as too liberal, Frederiksen has criticised other social democratic parties for losing their voters' trust by failing to prevent globalisation chipping away at labour rights, increasing inequality and exposing them to uncontrolled immigration.

In the 2019 Danish general election, the Social Democrats gained one further seat and the opposition red bloc of left-wing and centre-left parties (the Social Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal Party, the Socialist People's Party and the Red–Green Alliance along with the Faroese Social Democratic Party and Greenland's Inuit Ataqatigiit and Siumut) won a majority of 93 out of 179 seats in the Folketing while support for the Danish People's Party and the Liberal Alliance collapsed, costing Lars Løkke Rasmussen his majority. With the result beyond doubt on election night, Rasmussen conceded defeat and Frederiksen has been commissioned by Queen Margrethe II to lead the negotiations to form a new government.[33][34] On 27 June 2019, Frederiksen was successful in forming the Frederiksen Cabinet, an exclusively Social Democrats minority government supported by the red bloc, becoming the second woman in the role after Thorning-Schmidt as well as the youngest Prime Minister in Danish history at the age of 41.[35]

Despite having run on an anti-immigration stance during the election, Frederiksen shifted her stance on immigration by allowing more foreign labour and reversing government plans to hold foreign criminals offshore after winning government.[36][37][38]

• 1871–1872: Louis Pio
• 1872–1873: Carl Würtz
• 1874–1875: Ernst Wilhelm Klein
• 1875 – February 1877: Louis Pio
• February 1877 – July 1878: Chresten Hørdum
• February–July 1878: A.C. Meyer
• 1878–1879: Saxo W. Wiegell
• 1880–1882: Chresten Hørdum
• 1882–1910: Peter Christian Knudsen
• 1910–1939: Thorvald Stauning (Prime Minister: 1924–1926, 1929–1942)
• 1939–1955: Hans Hedtoft (Prime Minister: 1947–1955; Alsing Andersen as de facto leader in 1941–1945)
• 1955–1960: H. C. Hansen (Prime Minister: 1955–1960)
• 1960–1962: Viggo Kampmann (Prime Minister: 1960–1962)
• 1962–1972: Jens Otto Krag (Prime Minister: 1962–1968, 1971–1972; Erling Dinesen as de facto leader from October 1972 to September 1973)
• 1973–1987: Anker Jørgensen (Prime Minister: 1972–1973, 1975–1981)
• 1987–1992: Svend Auken
• 1992–2002: Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (Prime Minister: 1993–2001)
• 2002–2005: Mogens Lykketoft
• 2005–2015: Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Prime Minister: 2011–2015)
• 2015–present: Mette Frederiksen (Prime Minister: 2019–present)