Marcus Thrane, born on this day in 1817, was a socialist labor activist who founded the first organized workers’ movement in Norway. After a union he founded petitioned the King for universal suffrage and legal equality, Thrane was imprisoned.
Born into a bourgeois family, Thrane was orphaned at the early age of 15 and spent the rest of his youth studying abroad in Europe. He returned to Norway, working as an educator.
In 1848, Thrane began working as the editor of the local newspaper Drammens Adresse. Inspired by the February Revolution in France, Thrane expressed radical political opinions and was dismissed from the position after less than a year.
Around this time, Thrane founded the Drammens arbeiderforening (Drammen Labour Union) and began publishing the union’s paper. Between 1849-50, the trade union movement (also called the Thranite Movement) grew very quickly, to approximately 30,000 members.
Members of the Thranite Movement were both urban and rural - both small farmers in the countryside and urban craftsmen participated.
This trade union movement is often associated with a petition presented to King Oscar I on May 19th, 1850. The petition, backed by nearly 13,000 signatures, demanded universal suffrage, abolition of protective tariffs, reform of the public school, and improvement of householders ’ conditions.
Over the following years, this growing labor movement was repressed by the state - its leadership, including Thrane, were surveilled, arrested on false charges, and imprisoned. These tactics successfully broke the Thranite Movement, and Thrane himself left Norway for the U.S. in 1863.
In 1890, Thrane died in Wisconsin. His remains were returned to Norway in 1949, and he is buried in the Æreslunden at Vår Frelser’s cemetery in Oslo.
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