by Anthony Shaw
The dry but slushy weather was a good excuse for not being in Fredrikinkatu on Friday night on 16 January to hear Gunilla Carlander’s talk, but you missed an intriguing behind-the-scenes view of Finn-Brit relations in the world of parliamentary bodies.
Starting before an independent Finland even existed, Gunilla explained the background to the regular contacts between Westminster and Helsinki throughout the 20th century. When the first Russian revolution occurred in 1905 Tsar Nicholas II was forced to establish a parliament, the Duma, which opened the door for Finnish democratic forces – and a visit to Westminster the next year by a delegation of 13 Finns (in addition to the Russians) to attend a conference on electoral systems. Apparently, the Brits were interested in the system of proportional representation that the Finns were considering…
Contact continued throughout the early years of the century, and the Finnish-British Society played a small role. It was revealed by an audience member that Prime Minister Risto Ryti (‘a well-known Anglophile’) had been a member of the Society in the 1930s. Also, Gunilla hinted that the one-time head of MI6 had been attached to the British Embassy in these times, a certain Reginald Bosley. Interesting!
Even though the evening’s topic was specifically parliamentary connections we got a clear message that, in addition to the need for timber for rebuilding Britain after the war, behind the scenes there has been an ongoing commitment by British policy makers to follow political events in Finland, with a special interest in developments in the east. As President Koivisto once said regarding these matters, ‘no news are good news’!