The 1949 Kemi strike was a strike in July–August 1949 by the workers of Kemi Oy (today a part of

Metsä Group Metsä Group (previously Metsäliitto Group) is a Finnish forest industry group present in about 30 countries. Metsä Group's core businesses are tissue and cooking papers ( Metsä Tissue), board ( Metsä Board), pulp (Metsä Fibre), wood produc ...

) in the Northern Finnish town of

Kemi Kemi (; ; ; ) is a cities of Finland, town and municipalities of Finland, municipality of Finland. It is located approximately from the city of Tornio and the Finland–Sweden border, Swedish border. The distance to Oulu is to the south and t ...

. On August 18 the strike escalated on a violent clash called "Kemi Bloody Thursday" between strikers and local police, two workers were killed and several injured. Kemi strike is so far the last fatal political protest in Finland. The Kemi strike is seen as a struggle between

Communist Party of Finland The Communist Party of Finland (, SKP; ) was a communist political party in Finland. The SKP was a section of Comintern and illegal in Finland until 1944. The SKP was banned by the state from its founding and did not participate in any elec ...

and the Prime Minister K-A Fagerholm's cabinet. The cabinet controlled a large part of the trade unions through the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

and the communists wanted to regain the power their parliamentary organization

Finnish People's Democratic League Finnish People's Democratic League (, SKDL; , DFFF) was a Finnish political organisation with the aim of uniting those left of the Finnish Social Democratic Party. It was founded in 1944 as the anti-communist laws in Finland were repealed due ...

had lost in the 1948 legislative election.Hanhimäki, Jussi M.: "Containing Coexistence: America, Russia, and the "Finnish Solution" 1945–1956"
p. 74–77. Kent State University Press, 1997.

The clash

The strike began on July 1, as the government wanted to cut the wages of Kemi Oy's lumber workers with more than 30 percent. It was soon joined by local

lumberjack Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled us ...

s, employers of the Kemi Oy sawmill and the dockers of Port of Kemi. Prime Minister

Karl-August Fagerholm Karl-August Fagerholm (31 December 1901, in Siuntio – 22 May 1984, in Helsinki) was a Finnish politician. Fagerholm served as Speaker of Parliament and three times Prime Minister of Finland (1948–50, 1956–57, and 1958–59). Fa ...

declared the strike illegal as it went on for several weeks. The strike caused a jam of 20,5 million

cubic foot The cubic foot (symbol ft3 or cu ft)
, . is an Logging, logs to the mouth of

Kemijoki The Kemijoki or Kemi River (, ), with its length, is the longest river in Finland. It runs south through the towns of Kemijärvi and Rovaniemi before reaching the Gulf of Bothnia at Kemi. Facta 2001, part 8, ''finnish'' At Rovaniemi the Ouna ...

river. The employers recruited

strikebreaker A strikebreaker (sometimes pejoratively called a scab, blackleg, bootlicker, blackguard or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers may be current employees ( union members or not), or new hires to keep the orga ...

s, bringing them to work under police protection. On August 18 a peaceful march of more the 3,000 strikers was on its way to the estuary, where the strikebreakers were driving logs and releasing the jam. As the march was stopped by armed policemen, a violent riot burst out. Protesters were equipped with sticks and rocks, while the police were using their batons and guns. One striker was shot and a female worker was fatally hit by a truck. It is still unclear who fired the deadly shot. According to official forensic examination the bullet was not shot from any of the police guns,{{cite web, url=http://www.palkkatyolainen.fi/pt99/p990907-p2.html , title=Kemin lakosta puoli vuosisataa , publisher=Palkkatyöläinen , date=7 September 1999 , language=fi , accessdate=11 April 2014 , url-status=dead , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927222436/http://www.palkkatyolainen.fi/pt99/p990907-p2.html , archivedate=September 27, 2007 although declassified secret police documents reveal that the police were shooting at strikers. One police officer stated he was prevented from shooting at a violent striker only by his gun jamming.Pohjolan Sanomat 16.8.2009

Aftermath

As a result, president

Juho Kusti Paasikivi Juho Kusti Paasikivi (, 27 November 1870 – 14 December 1956) was a Finnish politician who served as the seventh president of Finland from 1946 to 1956. Representing the Finnish Party until its dissolution in 1918 and then the National Coaliti ...

called a general alert of the armed forces and the government sent army troops to Kemi. This ended up with an arrest of 22 leading activists. A total number of 127 strikers were later accused of uprising, 63 of them were sent to prison. The police violence caused a series of sympathy strikes around Finland by communist dominated trade unions like the seamen's union led by

Niilo Wälläri Niilo Frans Wälläri (1897–1967) was a Finnish trade unionist and politician. He led the Finnish Seamen's Union The Finnish Seafarers' Union (FSU, formerly known as Finnish Seamen's Union; , SMU) is a trade union representing maritime and i ...

and a large number of metal workers. Finnish government was even afraid of communist uprising and

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

intervention. Communists in turn, were accusing the government for violating the

Paris Peace Treaty The Paris Peace Treaties () were signed on 10 February 1947 following the end of World War II in 1945. The Paris Peace Conference lasted from 29 July until 15 October 1946. The victorious wartime Allied powers (principally the United Kingdom, ...

since they had sent military against the striking workers. The American press characterized the incident as a "test for Finnish democracy". Soviet newspaper

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

was talking about "police terror" and "Prime Minister Fagerholm's collaboration with American imperialists". The sympathy strikes were finally put down on 22 August, as the Social Democrat controlled

Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, usually referred to by the acronym SAK (; ) is the largest trade union confederation in Finland. Its member organisations have a total of more than one million members, which makes up about one fif ...

expelled the striking unions. Several other unions decided to cancel their planned strikes. Some trade union leaders were later put on trial and given short sentences.

References

External links

Kemi strike
Archives of Finnish Broadcasting Company Labour disputes in Finland Social history of Finland Kemi strike Kemi Rebellions in Finland Kemi strike Kemi strike Kemi strike Political violence