Johan Pries

Tracing the events surrounding the 1909 general strike (storstrejken), this article explores the role of a network of People’s Parks and People’s Houses, since the early 1890s established by the labour movement to counterweight the difficulties of ensuring stable meeting spaces. As regional and local authorities during the 1909 strike banned striking workers to access many public spaces and conditioned the meetings allowed on city land, labour-controlled spaces played a crucial role as spaces were striking workers could congregate, regain energy, and share news about the strike. But despite having access to hundreds of such spaces, organised labour was after a month defeated, leaving us to ask whether the possibility of assembling on land controlled by organised labour rendered the general strike too non-confrontational – and thereby ineffective.