THE LIBERAL PARTY (Venstre) and the Conservative Party (Høire) were the big political players at independence from Sweden in 1905. Our first (and Liberal) Prime Minister, Christian Michelsen, told the Norwegian people in 1905 that ‘a new working day’ had begun. The breakthrough for the Labour Party, founded in 1887, came in 1927 when they obtained 59 seats.

The Agrarian party (Centre) held power from 1931 to 1933 and appointed Vidkun Quisling as Minister of Defence. His fascist ideology began to emerge. At the election in 1933 Labour gained 69 seats (of 150). The Liberals (Mowinckel) led the government for two years until Labour's Johan Nygaardsvold took over as Prime Minister and continued to represent Norway in exile in London during the war. Labour advanced in power between 1945 and 1965, only interrupted by a coalition for twenty-eight days in 1963. For sixteen years Einar Gerhardsen was Labour's Prime Minister, honoured as the Landsfader(the nation's father) of the recovery after the war.

The prestige of the Soviet Union in 1945, being part of the liberation of Norway, influenced a swing to the political left in the first parliamentary election, not only giving Labour an absolute majority of 76 seats (of 150) but adding 11 seats to the Communist Party. In 1949, the Labour Party increased the majority to 85 seats but now the Communists lost all support, mainly as a consequence of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the year before. The electoral system was adjusted from the d’Hondt method of proportional representation to the Lagué system and Labour increased the share of the vote to 46.7 in 1953 and obtained 77 seats. At the 1957 election Labour obtained 78 seats and the Conservative Party (Høyre) 29.

A new left-wing party, the Socialist People's Party, was founded in 1961 and secured two seats in the election that year. The Labour party was now down to 74 seats and the parties to the right also had 74. This put the new Socialists in a controlling position. Several accidents in the coal-mines of the state-owned company King's Bay at Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard with a total loss of sixty-four lives led to a very critical report and the opposition in Parliament accused the government of severe negligence.