Five people are killed in an arson attack on the offices of the communist newspaper Flamman in Luleå, Sweden.
Flamman (meaning The Flame in English), also known as Norrskensflamman (meaning The Flame of the Aurora Borealis in English), is a Swedish socialist newspaper.
The Left Party (Swedish: Vänsterpartiet [ˈvɛ̂nːstɛrpaˌʈiːɛt] (listen); V) is a socialist political party in Sweden.
On economic issues, the party opposes privatizations and advocates increased public expenditure. The Left Party was against accession to the European Union, and supported a Swedish exit from the EU until February 2019. It attempted to get Sweden to join the Non-Aligned Movement in 1980, but did not succeed. The party supports feminism.From 1998 to 2006, the Left Party was in a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the ruling Social Democrats and the Green Party. Since 2014, it has supported the minority government of Social Democrats and Greens in the Swedish parliament, as well as in many of Sweden's counties and municipalities.
The Left Party is a member of the Nordic Green Left Alliance, and its sole MEP sits in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group. In 2018, the party joined Maintenant le Peuple.
The party has never been part of a government at the national level, though it lends its parliamentary support to the Swedish Social Democratic Party-led government in the Riksdag.
The party originated as a split from the Swedish Social Democratic Party in 1917, as the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska vänsterparti [ˈsvæ̌rjɛs sʊsɪˈɑ̂ːldɛmʊˌkrɑːtɪska ˈvɛ̂nːstɛrpaˌʈiː] (listen); SSV), and became the Communist Party of Sweden in 1921. In 1967, the party was renamed Left Party – the Communists (Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna [ˈvɛ̂nːstɛrpaˌʈiːɛt kɔmɵˈnɪ̌sːtɛɳa] (listen); VPK); it adopted its current name in 1990.