British left-wing politics does not know what to think about mothers. In left-wing women’s movements, motherhood has been recognised as essential and difficult; necessary for future revolutions, not least in raising future revolutionaries. In less radical circles, it has been understood as a crucial contribution to the functioning of society, often forming the basis of women’s claims to citizenship and maternalist forms of politics. On the other hand, motherhood has been seen as a ‘natural’ function of women and a private responsibility, rather than a public good or a collective act which needs comprehensive state support. The family, in this reading, is a rather conservative force, better left to social reactionaries. Mothering has added additional hurdles to the gendered obstacles women already face in pursuing politics as activists or elected representatives. Perhaps because of this, many mothers in politics have sought to downplay or distance themselves from their roles as mothers, emphasising instead their contributions as workers and activists who can be fully committed to the left cause. Feminist historians have often followed their lead and have tended to write around political mothers’ maternal roles in their scholarship. This roundtable develops themes first explored in our November 2023 workshop, generously supported by the Royal Historical Society.

This article contributes to ongoing debates about the impact of exile on the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC). In particular, it explores the lives of the small group of ANC members who were in exile in Sweden from the early 1960s until 1994. Inspired by Dorothy E. Smith’s work on institutional ethnography, it aims to recreate the working practices and experiences of those who worked in or around the ANC office in Stockholm using interviews, auto/biographical and organisational sources. In doing so, the article examines the role that the ANC in Sweden played in transnational anti-apartheid activism and solidarity politics, and the specificities that allowed this small group of individuals to have a much larger impact on the struggle against apartheid than might be first assumed. Sweden’s financial and moral support for the ANC is an important factor, as is its developed welfare state that afforded exiles some stability in times of precarity.

This paper will explore the liminal space and interconnectedness between a radical NGO and a consensus-driven centre-left political party, and how these combined to create Swedish policy on apartheid-era South Africa from the 1970s until 1990s.

The political party is the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), a dominant force in Sweden during the 20th century. In the early 1970s, a SAP government launched a direct aid programme that helped fund African liberation movements until the 1990s. Among the beneficiaries were PAIGC of Guinea-Bissau, SWAPO of Namibia, MPLA of Angola and the ANC of South Africa. The latter became the longest-standing recipient, receiving nearly 1 billion SEK between 1973 and 1994.[1] The aid programme was secret as Sweden maintained diplomatic relations with apartheid South Africa and as the South African government had banned foreign government support to NGOs on the ground. The international campaigns for sanctions against South Africa also threatened a public relations disaster should the channelling of Swedish funds into the country be discovered. As a result, NGOs were used as a cover to fund projects run by the ANC and its allies in the struggle against the apartheid government. 

One such NGO was the Africa Groups, founded in 1974 to fundraise for liberation movements in Africa. The collected funds went directly to the liberation movements, with no strings attached; this was not without controversy as some movements spent their funds on their armed struggle. Throughout this era, there was a distinct overlap between state and NGOs, formalised in 1986 as one of the Africa Groups first employees – Lena Johansson Blomstrand – was hired by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) to facilitate the channelling of funds towards southern African recipients. This paper asks questions about conflict and consensus, the co-option of radical action and the impact of these close links on Swedish government policy. 

 [1] Sellström, Tor, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa – Volume I: Formation of a Popular Opinion 1950–1970 (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999), p. 254. 

This paper examines the ways in which Labour Party MPs who happened to be mothers talked about their experiences of combining the political and private lives. Based in part on interviews conducted with Rachel Reeves MP in 2017-2018, politicians’ memoirs and other first-hand sources, it will use Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper, Diane Abbott and Oona King as its main case studies, outlining in which way and why some women provoked greater interest in their private lives at certain points in their careers.

In December 1970, Birgitta Dahl – a 33-year-old Swedish Social Democrat and recently-elected Member of the Swedish Parliament – was trekking through the dense forests of Guinea-Bissau, wearing the uniform of the liberation movement led by Amílcar Cabral, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). By her side was the photographer Knut Andreassen, a political scientist called Lars Rudebeck, a Social Democratic Youth Party activist called Gunnar Hofring, and soldiers of the PAIGC. The recently liberated terrain was hotly contested by the Portuguese army, and the Swedish visitors felt the presence of war. In the book they published on their return to Sweden, Dahl and Andreassen vividly depict the Portuguese reconnaissance planes that were regularly spotted above the canopy during daytime, the Alouette helicopters that fluttered across rice paddy fields, and the Fiat bombers that roared past on their trek. The idea of Dahl, a Swedish social democrat, trekking with and donning the uniform of an armed revolutionary movement in Africa might seem almost fantastical today. Such stories and images can have a tendency to prompt imaginations of an era of solidarity and anticolonial struggle that no longer exists. But what does Dahl’s trip reveal about the politics of solidarity that connected her to the anticolonial national liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau? How might dissecting the conditions and motivations of the various agents involved allow us to see beyond romanticised or nostalgic visions of such past encounters?

The anthology Cross-Sections: Historical Perspective from Malmö University contains contributions from researchers sharing historical perspectives, but representing different disciplines, such as arts, ethnography, history, literature studies, religion and sports science. The seventeen contributions clearly demonstrate the breadth and diversity of historical research carried out in different departments at Malmö University.