APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6
to Radical Liberal thinking. The Radical Liberals theorize that the stability of Danish society rests upon the strength of the family. Thus, they enthusiastically support Socialist welfare efforts, such as the improvement of housing, old-age pensions, and health coverage. On economic matters, however, the Radicals remain the ideological cousins of the Moderate Liberals, endorsing the principle of private ownership and initiative on the one hand but admitting on the other the need for certain government interventions, as in the case of monopolies and prolonged labor disputes, to protect free enterprise.
The RLP is organized nationally in a manner similar to the other Danish democratic parties, although its discipline is perforce more slack. It has an annually convened national congress composed of local and provincial party representatives, cabinet ministers (if any), members of and candidates for the Folketing, and the editors of the party newspapers. Only the local constituency representatives and those members chosen to sit on the national committee have voting rights, however. The congress recommends policy, adopts platforms, elects the national party chairman and some members of the national committee.
The national committee includes the national chairman, the chairman of the Folketing group, and representatives from the provincial organizations, the Folketing group, the party press, and the youth organization. The national committee may only include five Folketing members at any one time - chosen by the entire party Folketing delegation, in 1973 numbering 27. A small executive committee monitors the party's day-to-day activities. The leadership of the party devolves upon the chairman of the Folketing group rather than on the national chairman.
Like the Moderate Liberals, albeit less pronouncedly, the Radical Liberals enjoy an influence with the Danish press disproportionate to their electoral strength. Radical Liberal-oriented newspapers, hold about 18% of the total daily circulation, and include Politiken (Politics), Denmark's third largest (about 130,000 circulation) and one of its most influential newspapers.
d. Conservative Party
One of the oldest and largest political groups, the Conservative Party draws its support, as it has throughout its history, from the urban upper middle class - the industrialists, financial and business interests, white-collar workers, and state officials - and from the large landowners. During the latter part of the 19th century, it held, with the Monarch's assent, the reins of power, to the deep chagrin of the more numerous Moderate Liberals. In the 20th century is became a close ally, either in government or out, of the Moderate Liberal Party, with which it began to share common policies and interests.
The modern Conservative Party traces its antecedents back more than a century, but the early loose amalgam of conservatives, the "right," had little of the blood, bone, and fiber of the mid-20th century party. First formed in 1870, this direct antecedent did not become a political organization in the modern sense, with close cooperation between the national organization and its parliamentary group, until 1883. It was not until 1896 that the party was able to become sufficiently unified to write a platform. When parliamentary government based on majority rule was established in 1901, the right, with its interior strength in the popularly elected lower house, fell into decline and some disarray. Reorganized and revived in 1915 as the Conservative Party, it shortly found a political soulmate in the old enemy, the Moderate Liberal Party. The new enemy was the rising Social Democratic Party. With the exception of the National Coalition Government during World War II, the Conservatives spent a half-century outside of the government before gaining another, though brief, taste of power, by joining the Moderate Liberal government of 1950-1953. In the mid-1960s the ardor of the Conservatives for the Moderate Liberals cooled, as the Moderate Liberals moved leftward toward the Radical Liberals, but by 1968 the Conservatives felt sufficiently at home with both Liberal parties to join with them in a three-way governing coalition.
The Conservatives desire gradual social and economic development, but, as their name suggests, they abhor radical change. They agree with the Moderate Liberals on the sanctity of private ownership and the superiority of private enterprise over socialism. The state is to be given regulatory powers only in those activities which restrict free enterprise - monopolistic practices, price agreements, and large-scale industrial disputes. The government must also act to promote economic growth. Traditionally the high-tariff party of the Danish businessmen, the Conservatives had shifted their position by the early 1960s, and were staunch proponents of Danish accession to the EC. Social welfare payments should be adjusted to render the greatest assistance to those who deserve help, particularly those who through insurance arrangements have paid the most into health and pension plans. New government-sponsored projects should be tailored to the nation's ability to support them financially.
20
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110016-6
