Aksel Larsen

Who was Aksel Larsen?

Aksel Larsen was a Danish politician who was chairman of the Communist Party of Denmark and chairman and founder of the Socialist People's Party. Larsen became leader of the Communist Party in 1932, and was elected to the Danish Parliament in 1932. Together with other Danish communists Larsen had to go into hiding in 1941 when the Danish police began arresting all party members.

After the liberation in 1945 Larsen served as a minister in the interim government, and subsequently led his party to its best-ever result in the October 1945 election, in which it took 10% of the vote. The election, however, brought a Liberal government into office, and Larsen's party was mostly shunned by the other party leaders.

Following the rising in Hungary in 1956, Larsen condemned the Soviet Union's action. This led him into conflict with the members of the party leadership who were more loyal to Moscow; a conflict that ended with his being expelled in November 1958.

Larsen's reaction was to form the Socialist People's Party, which, thanks to Larsen's personal popularity, entered parliament at the 1960 election at the expense of the Communists, who from then on played only a very peripheral role in Danish politics.