Pierre Schori Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 2 of 9
What led you into politics?
It was just a hazard, because I was a tour leader in Tunisia for a Swedish travel agency. I was going to replace a man who had fallen sick, so I went to replace him, and we talked for about three days before he left. He was engaged in student politics, he was a Social Democrat, and he thought it was a shame that I would be down in the south just enjoying student life. I spoke languages, which not many of his friends did. So he said, "You should come to Stockholm and join the Social Democrat Student Club and get engaged."
What turned me to that was his argument about the nuclear threat. Sweden, as you know, just took the decision in 1968 not to produce a nuclear bomb. There was a big debate around that, whether we should have one or not. We do could it, actually. So I got very much engaged in that, against the nuclear bomb. He was the one who convinced me of that, that the Social Democratic Party and the politics, so to say, would be one way of participating in that struggle.
Did you have a leadership role in student politics, and in the Party, or was it only once you formally joined the Social Democratic Party as an adult?
Well, leadership; it trained me, so to say, it educated me, because I was international secretary of the student club of Stockholm, which was not a big deal, but it was fascinating, because this was just before 1968, during the late sixties, which was a period of turmoil of real interest. But after that I was asked to join the Social Democratic Party as an assistant international secretary, and that's how I got to know Olof Palme, who was Minister of Education. That was the beginning.
He was your mentor in Social Democratic politics, and you worked with him for a number of years.
Yes, he was. There were also a couple of others, but he was the shining star, because he was constantly pushing an agenda, opening windows. We were pretty isolated in Sweden at the time. We had been very active in different solidarity movements, because the Social Democrats had the government for such a long time, and internationalism was in the blood, so to say. It was directed towards Spain during the civil war, and Finland, and the neighborhood ... and then, of course, the war. But Palme also had experience from the Third World, from Vietnam, from Africa, and from communist Europe. He was very much engaged and was really an internationalist, and as well [being] a nationalist, in the sense that he was very much involved in domestic policy.
That's how I learned how domestic policy and foreign policy are one and the same thing, and you must have the same message, the same values for it. You cannot be a progressive person at home and then be conservative abroad, or the other way around. You must have the same message.
You were in the Swedish Parliament and then in the European Parliament for a brief period. Talk a little about the politics of doing what you just described, because it is often the case that politicians don't make the same speech to the domestic audience. Does that come naturally in Sweden, or is there a political education that's involved in your work as a legislator when you have a constituency? You were on the foreign affairs committee, and so on. Talk a little bit about that set of problems of legislating, about foreign policy in a democracy.
Sweden was unique in that it was, first of all, not a member of NATO, among the democratic European nations, and also we had a long rule of Social Democrats. The first party leader we had, who also became our first prime minister, was a Social Democrat, Hjalmar Branting, who got the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the League of Nations. His message was that we cannot do anything sustainable at home unless we also contribute to a safer world, and that was not by military means, but by values and by solidarity. This was also strongly imbued in the Nordic context, and all the Nordic countries were more or less Social Democratic for a long period.
So this is very important to understand: a constant message of international solidarity, and that link to the national story. It was the same struggle for the workers in Sweden to have an eight-hour working day, the right to vote, and then also women's vote -- the same struggle, the same values abroad. Others should also have it: in Apartheid South Africa, for instance. Hjalmar Branting, in those days, was involved in Southwest Africa, at the League of Nations, to get them free from South Africa.
I notice that very often in this country when you hear from leading politicians, "We can't do that because the people wouldn't approve it." Well, but there is no message from the top. It's like democracy; you must reconquer it every day, and you must reconquer the sense of solidarity in the nation, between nations, also every day. It's a constant thing.
So this has been in the Swedish society for a long, long time. When I came into politics, it was first through the party, the student movement, and then I started to work with Olof Palme, and then later on, for him. I was very much a creature within the cabinet in government before I became a parliamentarian. I became a parliamentarian when the Social Democrats lost the elections in 1976, for six years. Then I came to the European Parliament just before I went to the UN, after having served the government.
Next page: Sweden and Europe
© Copyright 2004, Regents of the University of California