THE LABOUR MOVEMENT The first labour movement in Norway dates from the close of the ’forties. It was initiated by a young socialistic student, Markus Thrane, and was called after him the Thranite movement. After 1848 and in the early ’fifties it had a very large following. Thrane was however arrested and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, and as the movement had no longer any leader it gradually ebbed out. It was not till the ’seventies that the first trade unions were formed in Norway; and in 1887 the Norwegian Labour Party was founded on a socialistic basis. Both the political and the trade union leadership was virtually held by the labour party until the end of the ’nineties, when the trade unions had grown so large and numerous that they insisted upon managing their own affairs. In 1899 the Arbeidernes faglige landsorganisa- sjon (National Federation of Trade Unions) was founded as a joint organisation for all wage- earners’ unions in Norway. Since that year the Labour Party has led the political, and the National Federation the trade union, movement in 158