Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders

Social Democratic Union of Workers and Smallholders (Finnish: "Työväen ja Pienviljelijäin Sosialidemokraattinen Liitto, TPSL") was a political party in Finland. The TPSL originated as a fraction of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, headed by Emil Skog and Aarre Simonen. The party was founded in 1959 and was active until 1973. It was generally identified as being politically between SDP and SKDL (a Communist-dominated organization).

The fraction split from SDP in 1959, and retained SDP's party platform until 1967, opining that SDP didn't follow its own platform. The main cause for the rift was that SDP's party leadership, particularly Väinö Tanner and Väinö Leskinen wanted to develop the party towards a "general party" appealing to the entire public. TPSL in contrast, as the name suggests, wanted SDP to be a special interest party for the workers and small farmers. [Rauli Mickelsson. Suomen puolueet - Historia, muutos ja nykypäivä. Vastapaino 2007.] Leskinen wanted to co-operate with the right wing, based SDP politics on the general population, and his economic policy was conservative and deflatory, and he criticised agricultural subsidies. In contrast, Skog's fraction wanted to co-operate with the agrarians and other leftists, and base their politics exclusively on the trade unions. For example, Heikki Laavola has written that the disagreement was not over left vs. right ideology; all of Tanner, Leskinen, Skog and Simonen had been formerly active in anti-Communist pursuits. Disagreements between and about individuals played a role; Tanner had actually been convicted (under Soviet pressure) for being responsible to the Continuation War, and as such, he being the leader of SDP was a problem to the Soviets.

The rift was accompanied by a division in associated societies and the trade unions. The main trade union SAK was controlled mostly by Skog's men, as was the youth league, sports federation and women's league. The first example was that SDP's leadership wanted the worker's sports federation to associate with the right-wing sports federation in order to qualify for entry to Olympics, which Skog's fraction disputed as bourgeoise.

TPSL had 13-15 representatives of 200 in the parliament after the split in 1959, gained only two in 1962 elections, got seven representatives in 1966 and permanently dropped out of the parliament in 1970. Significantly, TPSL co-operated with the especially powerful President Urho Kekkonen, and was a partner in coalition cabinets (Karjalainen I, Paasio I, Koivisto I). In 1963, SDP changed its policy such that good relations with Kekkonen and Soviet Union were a new priority, thus removing a significant cause for disagreement. Skog himself returned to SDP in 1965. TPSL radicalized and became more Soviet-friendly, but lost its popular support, and was dissolved in 1973. A minority faction formed the Socialist Workers Party.

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