A Fight for the Right to Get Drunk: The Autumn Fair Riot in Eskilstuna, 1937

Abstract

This chapter discusses the survival and use of pre-modern protest repertoires in inter-war Social Democratic Sweden by analysing the riots that took place in the industrial city of Eskilstuna in 1937 during the traditional Autumn fair. These riots were described at the time by the Social Democratic Party as pointless and irrational madness. Riots were a form of protest that respectable Social Democrats in the city struggled to explain. Not surprisingly, local party elites unanimously attributed the violence and vandalism to juveniles and farmhands from outside the city. However, as this study shows, most of the protesters involved in the riots and later tried in court were workers from Eskilstuna. Nyzell analyses the reasons behind the violent disorder and the factors that account for the workers’ use of repertoires that had long been repudiated by the Swedish labour movement.