The oldest political parties in Europe

Two of the continent's oldest parties, the UK Conservatives and Germany's Social Democrats, have suffered heavy recent defeats; how old are our parties?

The dismal performance of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany or SPD) in last month’s election for the Bundestag sent journalists scurrying for the historical records to give the party’s defeat some context. I was as guilty of it as anyone else. For reference: the SPD’s total of 120 seats is its worst result since the Reichstag election in May 1924, when it won just 100 seats, admittedly from a smaller total number; its share of the vote, at 16.4 per cent, is the lowest it has recorded since February 1887, when it only attracted 10.1 per cent. For another hammer blow, the SPD ended up in third position, behind the CDU/CSU Union and the Alternative für Deutschland; that 1887 election was also the last time the party finished outside the top two.

That commentators are able to frame the SPD’s performance in such catastrophic, epochal terms, however, tells us something else: it is a very old party. It takes its foundation date as 27 May 1875, so it is approaching its 150th anniversary. On that date, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein (General German Workers’ Association or ADAV) and the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany or SDAP) merged to form what was at first called the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany or SAPD), adopting its current name in 1890.

The SPD is the only major political party in Germany to date from before the Second World War, and one of only two altogether: the Deutsche Zentrumspartei (German Centre Party or Zentrum) was founded in 1870 as a centre-right largely Catholic party and was regularly part of governing coalitions in the Weimar Republic, but now has only around 600 members and last won seats in the Bundestag in 1953. This is no criticism of other pre-war German political parties. The Law Against the Formation of Parties enacted by the cabinet of Chancellor Adolf Hitler in July 1933 decreed that the only party in Germany was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP or Nazi Party).

In the United Kingdom, it is axiomatic that the Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful political parties in the world. Setting aside the second attribute, the first is certainly true: its foundation is usually taken as the publication of Sir Robert Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto in December 1834, which makes it the oldest surviving party in Europe and one of the oldest in the world. The Democratic Party in the United States dates its foundation as 8 January 1828, when the old Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison split and Andrew Jackson’s supporters created the new organisation. But the Conservative Party of 1834 was very much built on the foundations of the old Tory Party which could trace its roots back as far as the Exclusion Crisis of 1679, or at least to those who coalesced around William Pitt the Younger when the 24-year-old became Prime Minister in December 1783.

The Labour Party, meanwhile, is venerable itself, being formed as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) on 27 February 1900. It was originally an alliance of socialist organisations and trades unions set up to sponsor parliamentary candidates, and had no formal leader at first. Ramsay MacDonald, then a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), became secretary of the organisation, and in February 1906, having seen 26 candidates elected to Parliament, the LRC changed its name to the Labour Party and Keir Hardie, MP for Merthyr Tydfil, was elected Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. There would not be a formal “Leader of the Labour Party” until 1922.

All of this made me wonder what the oldest extant political parties in Europe were. So here is as best as I can ascertain a list, up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. My loose criteria are they they must be represented in a national legislature (with a couple of exceptions) and they must have a largely unbroken lineage to the date given, though I have allowed for some caesuras, especially for parties which were banned in totalitarian or autocratic states but either continued some kind of formal existence or were revived pretty much along their previous lines. It is not therefore absolutely rigorous, but that’s my prerogative.

1. Conservative (and Unionist) Party (1834) (United Kingdom)
2. Venstre (Left) (1870) (Denmark)
3. Social Democrats (1871) (Denmark)
4. National Liberal Party (1875) (Romania)
5. Social Democratic Party of Germany (1875) (Germany)
6. Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party (1878) (Czechia)
7. Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) (1879) (Spain)
8. Venstre (Left) (1884) (Norway)
9. Høyre (Right) (1884) (Norway)
10. Labour Party (1887) (Norway)
11. Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (1888) (Switzerland)
12. Social Democratic Party of Austria (1889) (Austria)
13. Swedish Social Democratic Workers’ Party (1889) (Sweden)
14. Basque Nationalist Party (1895) (Spain)
15. Social Democratic Party of Lithuania (1896) (Lithuania)
16. Social Democratic Party of Finland (1899) (Finland)
17. Labour Party (1900) (United Kingdom)
18. Radical Party (1901) (France)
19. Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (1902) (Luxembourg)
20. Moderate Party (1904) (Sweden)
21. Ulster Unionist Party (1905) (United Kingdom)
22. Radical Left (1905) (Denmark)
23. Sinn Féin (1905) (Ireland/United Kingdom)
24. Union Party (1906) (Denmark)
25. Swedish People’s Party of Finland (1906) (Finland)
26. Centre Party of Finland (1906) (Finland)
27. Labour Party (1907) (Ireland)
28. Centre Party (1913) (Sweden)
29. Conservative People’s Party (1916) (Denmark)
30. Progressive Party (1916) (Iceland)
31. Left Party (1917) (Sweden)
32. Progressive Citizens’ Party in Liechtenstein (1918) (Liechtenstein)
33. Reformed Political Party (1918) (Netherlands)
34. Manx Labour Party (1918) (Isle of Man)
35. Communist Party of Greece (1918) (Greece)
36. National Coalition Party (1918) (Finland)
37. Christian Democratic Union—Czechoslovak People’s Party (1919) (Czechia)
38. Centre Party (1920) (Norway)
39. French Communist Party (1920) (France)
40. Portuguese Communist Party (1921) (Portugal)
41. Labour Party (1921) (Malta)
42. Sardinian Action Party (1921) (Italy)
43. Plaid Cymru (1925) (United Kingdom)
44. Social Democratic Party (1925) (Denmark/Faroe Islands)
45. Nationalist Party (1926) (Malta)
46. Fianna Fáil (1926) (Ireland)
47. Progressive Party of Working People (1926) (Cyprus)
48. Independence Party (1929) (Iceland)
49. Republican Left of Catalonia (1931) (Spain)
50. Christian People’s Party (1933) (Norway)
51. Fine Gael (1933) (Ireland)
52. Scottish National Party (1934) (United Kingdom)
53. Liberals (1934) (Sweden)
54. Patriotic Union (1936) (Liechtenstein)

I won’t try to draw any deep conclusions, but a few notes. Of the 54 parties, 22 are Scandinavian, which may well say something about those countries’ political stability or their ability to stay out of the way of the rough-and-tumble of European politics (although Denmark and Norway were occupied by Germany during the Second World War).

There was a flowering of explicitly social democratic parties in the decades of the 19th century, from the Danish Social Democrats in 1871 to the Social Democratic Party in Finland in 1899. This was prompted partly by the publication of Karl Marx’s Capital, the first volume of which was issued in 1867, the second and (unfinished) third volumes being published after Marx’s death by his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels in 1885 and 1894. But it also owed a great deal to the ideas of German activist Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64), who promoted state socialism rather than the class-based revolutionary socialism of Marx. This division between reform and revolution would become acute after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

The absence of parties from Eastern Europe is, of course, easily explicable: most were suppressed during the Communist era, though some names were revived after the fall of the Iron Curtain, like the Polish People’s Party (first established in 1895 and revived in 1990). Not quite making my self-imposed 1939 cut-off is the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), a Hungarian party created in 1944 from the United Christian Party, itself a 1937 merger of the Christian Economic and Social Party, the Christian Opposition and the National Legitimist Party. The KDNP is still represented in the National Assembly, officially as a coalition partner of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz—Hungarian Civil Alliance, though it is now generally regarded as a satellite of the larger group and even members of the Hungarian government have said they do not regard themselves as a multi-party coalition.

It may be worth noting too that, depending on your definition, seven or eight of the 54 parties are nationalist or separatist groups: the Basque Nationalist Party, Sinn Féin, the Sardinian Action Party, Plaid Cymru, the Republican Left of Catalonia and the Scottish National Party are (as yet) unsuccessful in their principal aim, while the Ulster Unionists have enjoyed success but may, in the coming decades, see their cause reversed. The Union Party in Denmark is a Faroese unionist party represented both in Denmark’s Folketing and the Løgting of the Faroe Islands.

Here is not the place for deep pan-European analysis; this merely fulfilled a curious itch in my brain. But it may serve as a useful resource to which we can return later in a quest for greater meaning.