Set Persson (5 March 189715 July 1960) was a Swedish communist leader.
Persson was born on 5 March 1897 in Stockholm, but as an orphan he was raised by relatives in Hälsingland. He was a good student in school, but left his studies at the age of 14 to start to work in the railroads. Soon he joined the Social Democratic Youth League. Furtheron, the joined the Communist Party of Sweden, which had been founded by the youth league in 1917.
Following the Ådalen massacre in 1931, Persson led a 10-day general strike in Söderhamn during which clashes with the police erupted. The following year he was, together with Anders Bäckström (leader of the 1931 Marma workers strike), the main speaker at a workers rally in Sandarne against strike breakers. After the speeches were concluded, the workers marched towards the dock area. Suddenly the rally was attacked from behind by police, using sables and smoke-bombs. Violence erupted, and three demonstrators were wounded by police bullets. Persson was arrested and charged for having taken part in organizing the rally, and sentenced to four months of involuntary labour. In total 73 months of imprisonment was awarded to different rallyists. One worker, named Zetterström, was sentenced to two and half year in jail. Moreover, Persson was fired from the railroads and lost his pension rights. Twice the government offered to pardon him, but he declined.
Following his release, Persson became a party whole-timer. In 1934 he moved to Stockholm, and was inducted into the central party leadership. He worked closely with the party chairman Sven Linderot. He served as editor for local and trade union matters for the party publication Ny Dag.
In 1940 he was elected to the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament). During the war years, he protested against the government policy of internment of communists into working camps (which were officially military units to which the communists were drafted, but in practice prison camps).
In the 1946 municipal elections, in which the party got 11.2% of the nationwide vote, Persson was elected to the Stockholm municipal council. He left the parliament to become the first communist borgarråd, with responsibility for housing. In 1947 he set up a municipal housing distribution scheme. He promoted building of municipal housing estates to solve the lack of apartments in the city. In many ways, he was a pioneer in Swedish housing policy.
Through his position in the municipal government he also became, for a brief period, the chairman of the police committee of the city. In 1948 he declared publicly that the Stockholm police would not follow the central anticommunist guidelines when recruiting new policemen.
He lost his position as borgarråd after the 1950 elections.
Persson became identified with the leftist minority within the party. Several issues were at stake in the internal party debate, especially concerning the relationship to the governing Social Democrats. After the conclusion of the Second World War, the idea that a peaceful transition to socialism was possible gained ground in the international communist movement. In Sweden the origin of the concept may be traced back to 1944. There was a growing trend in the Communist Party of Sweden to seek to create alliances with the Social Democrats and to give more emphasis to the parliamentary struggle. Linderot had launched the idea of a 'united front' with the Social Democrats, and argued that it had been a mistake to perceive the Social Democrats as identical to the state power. The party adopted a new trade union policy, which was less conflictive than the previous line. Persson and Nils Holmberg formed the nucleus of critics of the new development.
In the 1952 parliamentary by-elections in Jämtland and Kristianstad, the party had decided to withdraw their lists, in order to enable that Social Democrats would not lose the elections. The party leadership argued that communists had to make an effort to "ensure a labour majority in the Riksdag". Moreover, the two concerned counties were electoral districts where it was highly unlikely that any communist MP would be elected. However, Persson and the people around him saw the new line as a capitulation to the Social Democrats.
Another issue concerned the youth league. The party took an initiative to create a broad-based youth movement, looking at similar developments in countries like Finland. In 1952, Democratic Youth (Demokratisk Ungdom) was founded as a broad youth movement, parallel to the existing Young Communist League of Sweden. Persson and his associates saw this as diluting of the political character of the youth movement.