S crises in historically red Ådalen: "We must be more responsive"

Hardly any place is as sacred in the history of the labor movement as Ådalen. It was in Kramfors that the shots against demonstrating workers fell in 1931.

As recently as 2014, the Social Democrats here had a support of 52 percent in the parliamentary elections. Now it has fallen to 34.4 percent. In this year's election, a decrease of 7.25 percentage points compared to 2022. In the municipal election, it was even worse – a drop of over 20 percentage points.

Calls for self-criticism

Making a really bad choice in Ådalen hurts the social democratic self-image.

- You cannot say that Ådalen and the people here have failed. We have to look at ourselves and think about what we could have done differently, says Tomas Litström, long-time S politician in Kramfors municipality.

In the past, Ådalen was a bustling industrial area with paper mills, timber rafting and around forty steam sawmills. The unions were powerful and the will to fight strong. Today everything is different. Depopulation, industrial closures and distrust of the authorities in Stockholm have left deep traces - and perhaps this is where we find an explanation for the crisis of social democracy?

Why did the Social Democrats make a historically bad choice? Hear what Kramfors S politicians and ordinary voters think in the video above.

In Current affairs tonight at 21.00 - meet the Kramfors residents in a longer report.