Ola Ullsten

Ola Ullsten (23 June 1931 – 28 May 2018) was a Swedish Liberal politician and diplomat who served as prime minister from 18 October 1978 to 12 October 1979 and as chairman of Folkpartiet (the Liberal People's Party, now the Liberals) from 1978 to 1983. His ten months in office were the only period since the 1930s in which that party alone formed the government. He was born in Västerbotten, in Umeå in the north of the country, the son of the forestry inspector Carl Augustinus Ullsten and the primary-school teacher Kristina Märta Röström.

He qualified as a social worker in Stockholm in 1956, after employment in social and temperance care from 1952 to 1957. From 1957 to 1961 he was secretary of the Liberal parliamentary group; from 1962 to 1964 he chaired the party's youth league and wrote leaders for Dagens Nyheter. At the 1964 election he was the youth league's leading national candidate in its "Rösta ungt" ("Vote young") campaign, won a seat, and sat in the Riksdag from 1965 to 1984, in the second chamber through 1970.

When the non-socialist parties ended nearly four decades of Social Democratic rule in 1976, Ullsten entered Thorbjörn Fälldin's coalition as a minister at the Foreign Ministry, responsible for development aid, and from 7 March 1978 he was also deputy prime minister. He succeeded Per Ahlmark as party leader that spring. In October 1978 the Centre–Liberal–Moderate coalition resigned after failing to agree on nuclear power; Ullsten favoured continued use of the reactors, and the Social Democrats abstained so that Folkpartiet could take office on its own. Swedish public television described him as the first Liberal prime minister since Carl Gustaf Ekman. After the 1979 election Fälldin returned at the head of a new three-party government, with Ullsten as foreign minister.

He held the Foreign Ministry from 12 October 1979 until 8 October 1982, and was deputy prime minister again from 1 August 1980. The 1982 election was a serious defeat for the party, and he left the leadership in 1983. He was then ambassador to Canada from 1984 to 1989, also accredited to the Bahamas from 1985, and ambassador to Italy from 1989 to 1995, also accredited to Albania from 1992. Ullsten died on 28 May 2018, aged 86, after an illness; his daughter Maria Ullsten said he had been living in a dementia care home and had died of age and illness. He was survived by his wife, four children and three grandchildren. The prime minister at the time, Stefan Löfven, said Ullsten had led the country in a time of upheaval and in a difficult parliamentary situation.

Early life and education

Family and childhood in Västerbotten

Ola Ullsten was born on 23 June 1931 in Umeå, in Västerbotten in northern Sweden. Svenskt författarlexikon and the biographical handbook Vem är det give Umeå and that date; the Nationalencyklopedin places the birth in Västerbotten, and SVT gives the same day and province. Vem är det enters him as Ola S. K. O. Ullsten, Ola being the calling name and S. K. O. the initials.

His father was Carl Augustinus Ullsten, a forestry inspector (skogsinspektör), and his mother was Kristina Märta Röström, a småskollärarinna — a teacher in the lower years of the elementary school — listed in the handbook as Stina, née Röström. Those names and occupations, and the realexamen as his recorded school qualification, come from the biography he supplied to the Riksdag register Fakta om folkvalda. At the 2018 farewell for him, Aftonbladet wrote that he had been born in modest circumstances in Umeå, and that Västerbotten was then a frisinnad liberal stronghold, a regional climate the paper tied to the party career he began in 1958 in the youth league of the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet).

The realexamen was the leaving examination of the realskola inside Sweden's parallel school system. After the läroverk was split in 1905, a pupil could stop with that examination instead of reading three further gymnasium years for the studentexamen that opened the universities. Vem är det does not record a studentexamen for Ullsten; its education line begins with the social-work degree of 1956.

Social-work training and early employment

From 1952 to 1957 Ullsten was employed in social- och nykterhetsvården, social welfare together with temperance care, the public services then directed at alcohol problems. In 1956, during that employment, he took the socionomexamen in Stockholm, the professional qualification in social work. The author lexicon, covering publications of 1956–1960, describes him as a socionom and as a secretary in Stockholm.

In Stockholm the school for this qualification was the Socialinstitutet, opened on 1 January 1921 by the Central Association for Social Work and the city. It was founded to give a fixed higher vocational course for social work and other municipal service, and to admit people who had not been able to complete the ordinary school education. Ullsten's examination preceded the later changes: in 1964 the Socialinstitut was renamed a socialhögskola, the course was lengthened and the socionomexamen was set level with a basic academic degree, and in 1977 the school became part of Stockholm University.

The welfare employment ended in 1957. From that year the same handbooks list him as secretary of the Folkpartiet group in the Riksdag, a staff appointment that ran to 1961 and came before the youth-league chairmanship.

Liberal youth politics and the Riksdag

Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund and journalism

Ullsten came into liberal politics on the staff of the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet; later Liberalerna). From 1957 to 1961 he was secretary of the party's group in the Riksdag. In 1960, while in that post, he published Folkpartiet och reformerna: liberala riksdagsinitiativ 1902–1960, a compilation of liberal parliamentary initiatives that the national library catalogue credits to him. He joined the board of Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund (FPU), the party's youth league, in 1960 and chaired it from 1962 to 1964, succeeding Per Ahlmark.

The chairmanship overlapped with other work in Stockholm. In 1962 he was a secretary at the city's cultural department, and from 1962 to 1964 a leader-writer on Dagens Nyheter; until 1966 he also sat on the leisure inquiry appointed in 1962. Fokus later described the early-1960s FPU as no mass organization but one that made itself heard, and Ullsten as the quieter figure among the social liberals around Ahlmark. In 1962 Ahlmark formed the pressure group Grupp 70 to move younger liberals toward influence in the party. For the 1964 election the youth league borrowed American devices—straw hats and dixieland bands—and Ullsten stood as its leading national candidate under the slogan Rösta ungt ("Vote young"), campaigning in that style at Vällingby centrum. Elected that autumn for Stockholm, he took his seat in the Second Chamber in 1965.

Member of the Riksdag

He remained a member until 1984, in the Second Chamber through the end of the bicameral parliament in 1970 and thereafter in the unicameral Riksdag. His first motions already joined domestic administration to development aid. On 27 January 1965 he asked the Second Chamber to add 50 million kronor to the government's proposed grant to the United Nations Special Fund, arguing that increases since the Riksdag's unanimous 1962 statement in favour of aid approaching 1 percent of national income had not moved Sweden materially closer to that aim. He linked the sum to a technical adjustment of the general sales tax, set out in another motion the same day, and the day before had proposed a senior clerical post at Stockholm University to give general study counselling to a student body of about 12,000.

Committee service covered a similar range. He was a substitute on the Second Law Committee (1965–1967), the Banking Committee (1966–1968) and the Committee of Supply (1968–1970); a full member of the Civil Committee from 1971 to 1974 and a substitute there in the 1975/76 session; and a substitute on the Committee on Foreign Affairs from 1971 through 1975/76. Outside the chamber he was a United Nations delegate in 1969 and 1970, sat on the national committee for the UN population conference (1972–1974) and on the delegation drafting humanitarian rules for war (1972–1976), and served on the Riksdag Board from 1969, as a full member from 1971 to 1975/76. In the party he chaired Folkpartiet's Stockholm association in 1966–1967, was vice-chairman from 1967 to 1971 and chairman from 1971 to 1976 of its federation for Stockholm city and county, and joined the national executive in 1975.

In the parliamentary group he was on the executive council and deputy leader from 1974 through the 1975/76 session, the period immediately before he became a minister on 8 October 1976. He kept the seat while in office. From the 1977/78 session to 1982/83 he chaired the Folkpartiet group, and in 1982/83 was again a substitute on the foreign-affairs and finance committees and a member of the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs, the War Delegation and the Swedish delegation to the Nordic Council. The mandate ended in 1984.

Minister for aid and immigration, 1976–1978

The 1976 change of government

The 1976 Swedish general election, on 19 September, ended 44 years of Social Democratic government under Olof Palme. The Social Democrats remained the largest party in the Riksdag, with 152 of 349 seats, but the Centre Party took 86, the Moderate Party 55 and the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet) 39, together 180. The parties were led by Thorbjörn Fälldin, the Moderate leader Gösta Bohman and the Liberal leader Per Ahlmark. On 8 October Fälldin named a coalition of eight Centrists, six Moderates, five Liberals and one independent; Karin Söder of the Centre Party became foreign minister.

Ullsten entered the same day as minister (statsråd) at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, responsible for international development cooperation, and kept the post until the cabinet left office on 18 October 1978. On 7 March 1978 Fälldin told the Riksdag that, at Ahlmark's own request, he had released him as minister for labour and appointed the Liberal Rolf Wirtén; the same letter named Ullsten deputy to the prime minister, which he combined with the aid portfolio until 18 October.

Development assistance

The one-percent target was already set. In the bill of 30 March 1978 Ullsten recalled that the Riksdag had adopted it in 1968, and stated that Sweden, as the first industrial country, reached the separate 0.7 percent target in 1974. On his figures, appropriations had risen from about 400 million kronor in 1968/69 to nearly 4 billion proposed for 1978/79, and already came to slightly more than 1 percent of gross national product. Signed by Fälldin and Ullsten, the bill called solidarity with people in poor countries the main reason for a large programme, and treated 1 percent as a stage: despite economic difficulties, the current and next budgets were set above that share of GNP.

The aims were to support poor countries' efforts toward economic development, social justice, national independence and democracy, mainly through long-term programmes planned with about 20 recipient countries and through international organisations. Cooperation with Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Mozambique was described as a follow-up to support for liberation movements; Ullsten proposed defining a programme country as any state with an approved long-term programme, while still concentrating most direct aid.

On 12 October 1977, in the Second Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, he pledged, subject to Riksdag approval, to cancel remaining principal and overdue interest on development credits to the least developed and most seriously affected countries: Bangladesh, Botswana, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sudan and Tanzania. The Conference on International Economic Cooperation had ended in June 1977 without general debt relief, and new Swedish aid to those countries was already given as grants. On 26 April 1978 he signed a grant to Angola of up to 90 million kronor for 1 July 1977–30 June 1979, at least 60 million of it for Swedish goods and consultants, to be carried out by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Immigration and equality

In 1977 Ullsten also answered in the Riksdag for immigration and refugees. On 20 April he said that guidelines fixed almost two years earlier gave immigrants the same right to public services and community as other residents, and support in combining adaptation with their own culture—freedom of choice, equality and partnership (valfrihet, jämlikhet och samverkan). That, he argued, required controlled entry from outside the Nordic common labour market, with a work permit before arrival, rather than a guest-worker system without a claim on services.

Non-Nordic labour immigration, about 10,000 people a year in the early 1960s, had nearly stopped; those arriving were mainly refugees, relatives and special cases, plus about 20,000 Nordic immigrants a year. He cited nearly 420,000 foreign citizens and about 270,000 naturalised former immigrants. From 1977 municipalities had to offer mother-tongue teaching, then in some fifty languages, to children who wanted it; he also noted press support for immigrant newspapers, basic Swedish for adult illiterates, and overload at the Immigration Board after its move to Norrköping, where nearly 90 percent of the staff had left.

Party leadership and the 1978 cabinet crisis

Succession to Per Ahlmark

On 31 January 1978 Per Ahlmark, leader of the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet) and deputy prime minister, told a press conference in Stockholm that he would leave both posts. He called the reasons strictly personal and denied any connection with reports of a serious split in the coalition over nuclear energy, although the partners were already divided enough on energy for a cabinet crisis to be discussed. Later accounts linked the departure to depression after his partner’s suicide.

An extraordinary party congress on 4 March elected Ola Ullsten, then 46 and minister for international development cooperation, as Ahlmark’s successor. He kept that portfolio. The Liberals were the smallest party in Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin’s coalition. On 7 March Fälldin told the Riksdag that Ahlmark had been relieved, at his own request, as minister for employment. Riksdag member Rolf Wirtén replaced him, and Ullsten was named deputy to the prime minister.

Nuclear power and the fall of the coalition

The cabinet Fälldin had formed after the 1976 election — his Centre Party, Ullsten’s Liberals and the Moderate Party under Gösta Bohman — was divided on nuclear power from the outset. Fälldin had campaigned on a promise that no new reactors would be started. The Centre Party, with the Left Party Communists, later demanded a referendum; the other parties refused. The dispute brought the government down in October 1978.

Loading a new reactor required a further permit under the 1977 Conditions Act (villkorslagen, 1977:140), even where a licence already existed under the 1956 Atomic Energy Act. The owner had to show a satisfactory contract for reprocessing spent fuel and how and where the high-level waste, or unreprocessed fuel, could be finally stored in complete safety. The State Power Board applied on 6 December 1977 to fuel Ringhals 3, and Forsmarks Kraftgrupp on 6 April 1978 to fuel Forsmark 1, citing the KBS waste study and contracts with the French firm Cogema.

Four of a planned thirteen reactors were then operating. About a week before the fall, Bohman and Ullsten agreed to postpone the two completed units until waste storage could be technically guaranteed. Centre opinion, and Energy Minister Olof Johansson, treated the delay as a breach of the 1976 pledge to stop a programme continued by the previous Social Democratic government. Fälldin asked the Moderates and the Liberals to interrupt it. They would not. The Social Democrats, who had carried the expansion, did not back the Centre–Communist call for a referendum.

On 5 October the government rejected both applications, holding that further geological work was needed before a Swedish site for wholly safe disposal could be shown. A communiqué described the treatment of any renewed application. Social Democratic members of the Committee on the Constitution later said the text was read as a promise to follow the Nuclear Power Inspectorate: if the inspectorate found the statutory storage test met, the cabinet would allow the two reactors to be fuelled, which they called an unsatisfactory shift of responsibility. The committee majority rejected that criticism and treated the communiqué as a clarification of a later test.

That evening, at 18:30, Fälldin handed Speaker Henry Allard a written request to be discharged, in Allard’s office and before the press. He blamed Moderate and Liberal refusal to stop the programme. Allard at once discharged the prime minister and the other ministers, noting that under the Instrument of Government they remained in office until a successor government took over. He summoned the party leaders to the consultations the constitution requires. The meetings opened on the morning of 6 October, in the order Olof Palme, Bohman, Ullsten, Lars Werner and Fälldin.

Prime minister, 1978–1979

Formation of the minority government

The Ullsten cabinet was a single-party Liberal minority government, and Ullsten was the first Liberal prime minister in Sweden since C. G. Ekman in the 1930s. It followed the resignation of Thorbjörn Fälldin's three-party coalition over nuclear power. On 13 October 1978 the Riksdag voted on the Speaker's proposal to appoint Ullsten: 39 in favour, 66 against and 215 abstentions. Under the Instrument of Government a nominee is rejected only if more than half the members vote against; otherwise the proposal is approved. The yes votes were the 39 seats of the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet). Olof Palme said the Social Democrats would abstain rather than block a provisional government, after the non-socialist majority had refused them office and an extra election. The Centre Party abstained because of the energy disagreement. The Moderates voted no, treating a Liberal-only cabinet as a break with three-party cooperation, and the Left Party Communists opposed an arrangement they said let the Social Democrats install a non-socialist party. Henry Allard was Speaker.

Ullsten named the ministers on 18 October 1978. Hans Blix became minister for foreign affairs, and Sven Romanus, a former president of the Supreme Court who had entered government in 1976 as avowedly non-party, remained minister of justice. Six of the nineteen ministers were women: Anitha Bondestam (communications), Birgit Friggebo (housing), Birgit Rodhe, Marianne Wahlberg, Hedda Lindahl and Eva Winther. The declaration based the cabinet on the party's social-liberal ideas, but said that, without a majority of its own, each proposal had to find a Riksdag majority and that the government would seek the broadest support it could, issue by issue.

Energy policy after Three Mile Island

On 1 March 1979 the government proposed energy-policy guidelines that would limit the nuclear programme to twelve reactors, with no further construction, more resources for the Nuclear Power Inspectorate, and an inquiry into whether uranium could be mined safely. On 28 March a reactor at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a serious accident. Parties that had opposed a referendum then accepted one. On 3 May the government reported that the parties had agreed that spring to hold a referendum on the future use of nuclear power no later than the first half of 1980, and it proposed a temporary ban on fuelling reactors that had not yet been loaded, running to the end of June 1980 unless the government ended it sooner, with compensation for the delay. The referendum law was left to the next cabinet. A bill of 17 December 1979 set the vote for 23 March 1980 and offered three alternatives, each a phase-out on different terms rather than further expansion.

Legislation and the 1979 election

On 16 November 1978 the government, with Romanus reporting, proposed stating in the Parental Code that a child must not be subjected to corporal punishment or other humiliating treatment. A referral to the Council on Legislation had already been made on 7 September 1978, under Fälldin. The Riksdag approved the law committee's report on 15 March 1979. The same day Gabriel Romanus, minister for social affairs, proposed general parent education from 1980 and changes to parental insurance and leave, including a right in principle for a pregnant employee who could not continue her ordinary work to be reassigned without loss of pay. On 25 May the Riksdag approved the social-affairs and social-insurance committees on that bill.

On 22 March Eva Winther's bill proposed a law on equality between women and men at work, combining a ban on sex discrimination with duties of active measures. On 30 May the Riksdag adopted reservations and otherwise the labour-market committee's report. The resulting text gave the labour-market parties a special responsibility for equal opportunities and forbade an employer to disadvantage an employee or job applicant because of sex in hiring, promotion, conditions or dismissal. On 29 March Birgit Rodhe proposed a new compulsory-school curriculum, covering the passage to upper-secondary school and grading. The Riksdag approved the education committee's report on 5 June. On 17 April the trade minister, Hadar Cars, proposed a ban on investments in South Africa and Namibia, to take effect on 1 July 1979, with exemptions available only to Swedish firms already in business there. The foreign-affairs committee endorsed the bill in full, and the Riksdag approved that report on 1 June.

The marginal-tax cut failed. The October declaration had promised reform and lower marginal rates across broad income bands. Ingemar Mundebo's bill of 1 March 1979 proposed cuts on 1980 incomes from about 34,000 to 114,000 kronor—five percentage points, at most, between 57,000 and 74,000 kronor—and a ceiling of 80 percent up to 30 base amounts (171,000 kronor in 1980) and 85 percent above that. The taxation committee recommended rejection of both the 1980 cuts and the ceiling, and the Riksdag approved that report on 16 May.

At the general election of 16 September 1979, turnout was 90.7 percent. The Social Democrats took 43.2 percent of the valid votes, the Moderates 20.3, the Centre Party 18.1, the Liberals 10.6 and the Left Party Communists 5.6. On 11 October the Riksdag approved Fälldin by 170 votes to 174, with one abstention, again short of a majority of the members against him; the Social Democrats voted no and the Left Party Communists spoke against the nominee. On 12 October he announced a Centre–Liberal–Moderate cabinet and named Ullsten minister for foreign affairs, describing the election as having left a parliamentary balance. Ullsten was also deputy prime minister.

Foreign minister and deputy prime minister, 1979–1982

The second and third Fälldin governments

When Thorbjörn Fälldin returned as prime minister on 12 October 1979, Ullsten left the premiership and became minister for foreign affairs in a majority coalition of the Centre Party, the Liberal People's Party (Folkpartiet) and the Moderate Party. He kept that post until the government left office on 8 October 1982, and from 1 August 1980 he was also the prime minister's deputy.

The line he stated was Sweden's non-alignment, aimed at neutrality in war and backed by a strong defence. On 18 March 1981 he told the Riksdag it should be upheld "with consistency and firmness" for Nordic stability. The government would discuss a Nordic nuclear-weapon-free zone only if states outside the region joined; no Nordic country then stationed nuclear weapons on its territory, and all were parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Cold War had hardened after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A United States embassy telegram of 4 April 1980 called this the heaviest Swedish criticism of the Soviet Union in many years. Fälldin, Ullsten and others condemned the attack on a non-aligned state and demanded withdrawal; Sweden voted with the United Nations General Assembly majority. Stockholm understood the American grain embargo but left an Olympic boycott to the national Olympic committee, and wanted the Madrid meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe to proceed. Martial law in Poland on 13 December 1981 dominated Ullsten's declaration of 17 March 1982. He traced the suppression to Soviet power politics and said Sweden must keep demanding that promises of freedom be honoured. He also cited the submarine in the Karlskrona archipelago as a reason to keep existing Nordic security arrangements.

The U 137 incident

On the evening of 27 October 1981 a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine, numbered 137 (S-363 in Soviet records), ran aground in Gåsefjärden, inside a restricted military area near the naval base at Karlskrona. A fisherman reported it the next morning. Shortly after 11:00 it was identified as Soviet; the crew blamed faulty navigation and asked for Soviet salvage ships.

Fälldin ran the political side. With defence minister Torsten Gustafsson in Oslo, Ullsten and cabinet secretary Leif Leifland handled the talks. On 28 October Ullsten's note to the Soviet ambassador called the grounding a gross breach of Swedish access rules, and Soviet salvage ships were refused entry. The next day the prime minister and foreign minister treated the incursion as probably deliberate: Sweden required questioning of the commander, Swedish salvage only, an apology, and payment of costs.

The commander was questioned on 2 November aboard the torpedo boat Västervik. While the submarine was being refloated that afternoon, two ships thought to be Soviet were reported approaching, and Fälldin told supreme commander Lennart Ljung, "Håll gränsen" ("Hold the border"). On 3 November Ullsten raised the suspicion of nuclear weapons. Moscow answered that a warship at sea carried the arms it needed, unrelated to what it called an accident.

On 5 November Ullsten's second note protested an intentional violation, aggravated because the submarine had in all probability carried nuclear weapons. Fälldin said the same day that nuclear armament was highly probable. Swedish tugs took it out, and on 6 November it was handed over in international waters. The government called the intrusion the most conspicuous violation of Swedish territory since the Second World War; the Soviet Union later paid about 1.6 million kronor in costs. A 1995 commission found the entry deliberate and upheld the nuclear finding. The 2001 inquiry under Rolf Ekéus noted that Soviet forces first searched east of Bornholm, left intent open, and still judged the diplomacy clear.

The 1981 tax agreement

The coalition broke over tax. The top marginal rate was 85 per cent. In December 1980 Ullsten called for a "historic compromise" rather than a deadlock over technicalities. In February 1981 the three parties sketched a 50 per cent marginal rate up to just over 130,000 kronor and a ceiling cut from 85 to 75 per cent, to be discussed with the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the unions.

Kjell-Olof Feldt insisted on limits on deficit deductions. Bengt Westerberg, then a Budget Ministry state secretary, later wrote that the Liberals accepted that price for the compromise Ullsten had sought, while the Moderates refused. After talks that budget minister Rolf Wirtén called a "wonderful night" — den underbara natten — the Centre, the Liberals and the Social Democrats agreed in April 1981 on lower marginal rates plus a deduction limit, for 1983–85. The Moderates, under economics minister Gösta Bohman, stayed out mainly over the deductions and left the cabinet. A Reuters report of 9 May said Fälldin and Ullsten resigned ahead of a likely no-confidence vote.

On 22 May Fälldin presented a Centre–Liberal minority cabinet. Ullsten remained foreign minister, and Wirtén took both the economy and budget portfolios. The declaration undertook to carry out the tax reform "in accordance with the agreement recently reached" by the Centre, the Liberals and the Social Democrats, with a bill in spring 1982. Ullsten held the foreign ministry and the deputy premiership until 8 October 1982.

From opposition to the diplomatic service

The 1982 election and resignation

On 19 September 1982 voters in Sweden elected a new Riksdag. Folkpartiet, led by Ullsten, received 327,770 votes, 5.9 percent, and 21 seats, down from 10.6 percent and 38 seats in 1979. The Swedish Social Democratic Party won 45.6 percent and 166 seats, the Moderate Party 23.6 percent and 86, the Centre Party 15.5 percent and 56, and the Left Party Communists (Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna) 5.6 percent and 20, in a chamber of 349. Turnout was 91.4 percent.

Thorbjörn Fälldin left office on 8 October 1982. His second ministry had, since 22 May 1981, been a coalition of the Centre Party and Folkpartiet. Olof Palme became prime minister the same day and again headed a Social Democratic government, closing the non-socialist period that had begun in 1976.

The result left Folkpartiet the smallest of the three non-socialist parties and opened a long internal debate. After what later obituaries called the heavy defeat of 1982, critics inside the party pressed Ullsten to give up the leadership, and he resigned in 1983. Dagens Nyheter dates his term as party leader to 1978–1983 and that of his successor, Bengt Westerberg, to 1983–1995. A Liberal Party review of earlier leadership changes describes the 1983 contest as an open competition among four candidates—Ingemar Eliasson, Birgit Friggebo, Björn Molin and Westerberg—with only one name left when the congress voted. The party was out of government, and the new leader was not a member of the Riksdag. Westerberg later spoke of himself as Ullsten’s successor and as Folkpartiet’s leader from 1983 to 1995.

Ullsten remained the member for Stockholm until 3 October 1984. The next day the Riksdag entered a certificate from the electoral review board stating that he had resigned the seat and that Westerberg had been appointed in his place from that date.

Ambassador to Canada

The Riksdag biography, based on information Ullsten supplied for the handbook of elected members, lists him as ambassador to Canada in 1984–1989 and, concurrently, to the Bahamas in 1985–1989. In November 1986 the Canadian Department of External Affairs recorded him as ambassador at the Swedish embassy, 441 MacLaren Street, Ottawa. In the department’s order of precedence published in November 1987, the date beside his name is 13 December 1984. Obituaries drawing on the Nationalencyklopedin give the same years for Canada and the Bahamas.

Ambassador to Italy and Albania

The same parliamentary biography dates the embassy in Italy to 1989–1995 and a concurrent accreditation to Albania to 1992–1995. On 13 February 1990 he presented his letters of credence to President Francesco Cossiga at the Quirinal Palace in Rome. Sveriges statskalender for 1995, and again for 1996, still names him ambassador in Rome, marks the Italian post from 1989 and the Albanian accreditation from 1992, and points the Albanian embassy to the mission in Italy. The 1996 volume also lists a consul-general in Tirana. The 1997 calendar no longer lists Ullsten. It names Carl Torsten Wilhelm Örn as ambassador in Rome from 1996, likewise accredited to Albania. SVT and Svenska Dagbladet, citing the Nationalencyklopedin, instead carry both the Italian and the Albanian appointments through 1996. Sweden had maintained diplomatic relations with Albania since 1969.

Later public life and writing

Forests and public roles

In the mid-1990s Ullsten co-chaired the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development with Emil Salim, a former minister of population and the environment in Indonesia. The commission was not a United Nations body. After the 1992 Earth Summit, Ullsten and Salim, supported by the Woods Hole Research Center, convened political leaders, and in 1994 they took up a proposal from the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State and Government, then chaired by Helmut Schmidt, for an independent commission whose members served in a personal capacity. A UN press release in February 1996 called it a non-governmental think tank, distinct from the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, which negotiated. It first met in June 1995 and was financed by several governments, including Sweden. Hearings on the model of the Brundtland Commission opened in Jakarta in March 1996 and continued in Winnipeg, San José, Yaoundé and St Petersburg.

World map of the original global distribution of forests, from the 1999 summary of Our Forests, Our Future.

Cambridge University Press published the report Our Forests, Our Future in 1999, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg issued a summary the same year. The summary said that some 15 million hectares of forest were lost each year, largely in the tropics; that forests had virtually disappeared in 25 countries; and that about 3.6 billion hectares remained of an original cover of more than 6 billion. It traced the crisis partly to valuing forests only as timber, to harmful subsidies and to the exclusion of forest-dependent communities, and it called for prices reflecting ecological and social values and for a Forest Capital Index. Ullsten told the Associated Press that "fixing the forest crisis is basically a matter of politics." In January 1988 he chaired an InterAction Council meeting in Lisbon on global deforestation, and the council's 2008 Stockholm plenary listed him as a former member. By October 2000 the Winnipeg institute listed him as a senior fellow.

Memoirs and honours

In 2013 Ekerlids förlag in Stockholm published Så blev det (ISBN 978-91-87391-11-8), with the subtitle En memoar. Nättidningen Svensk Historia presented it as covering renewal in the Liberal People's Party in the 1960s, the nuclear and tax crises in Thorbjörn Fälldin's governments, the Liberal minority cabinet of 1978, and Ullsten's relations with Fälldin, Olof Palme and Gösta Bohman. David Lindén wrote in Borås Tidning that to remember Ullsten only for the 1978–79 cabinet, later cited as a textbook case of negative parliamentarism, did justice neither to him nor to the non-socialist parties before the 1980s. Lindén noted Ullsten's phrase for equality between women and men, "vår tids rösträttsfråga" ("our time's suffrage question"), and called the memoirs humble, analytical and unusually self-critical.

In 2001 the government awarded Ullsten Illis quorum meruere labores in gold of the twelfth size, citing "mångåriga och betydelsefulla insatser på skilda områden inom svenskt samhällsliv" ("long-standing and significant contributions in various fields of Swedish public life"). Norrköpings Tidningar reported the award on 15 June 2001. Dating from 1785, it marks personal contributions of national importance to culture, science and other public purposes.

Personal life

In 1961 Ullsten married Evi Esko, born in 1931, whom Vem är det listed as an engineer and as the daughter of the senior teacher Roman Esko and the teacher Elsa, née Tammik. As a member of the Riksdag he gave his residence as Stockholm. In the memoir Så blev det, as retold by the journalist Annika Holm, their first child, a daughter, was born during a congress of Folkpartiet’s youth organization in Falkenberg, where he succeeded Per Ahlmark as chairman: Evi gave birth during the vote, and on the flight home he saw the child’s photograph in Expressen. He led the youth organization from 1962 to 1964.

That marriage later ended. The 1985 Vem är det, prepared as he took up the Ottawa post, named no wife; from the 1993 edition he was listed as married to Louise Y. Beaudoin, born in 1954. She is not the Quebec politician Louise Beaudoin, born in Quebec City in 1945. Their sons were Nicolas and Christian. A Dagens Nyheter note on his 75th birthday, 23 June 2006, gave their ages as 17 and 14 and described Louise as running an import firm for orthopedic shoes and accessories. It identified the daughters of the earlier marriage as Katarina, an anesthesiologist in England, and Maria, a freelance journalist married to Håkan, with twin daughters Sofia and Ella, then six, and a daughter Malin, then four.

Home life was divided between Sweden and Canada. In April 1979 he lived in a row house in Sätra, southern Stockholm. He had bought a house in Grötlingbo, on Gotland, in 1969 and kept it as prime minister; neighbors recalled bodyguards among the junipers by Nybrobadet. Both sons were baptized in Grötlingbo church and spent summers there. In 2006 he described splitting his time between Burlington, Ontario, and Grötlingbo. Holm wrote in 2018 that he had become a year-round resident, using the house as a base for work and for visits to family in Ottawa, while the sons, whom she called Canadian, still lived with their mother and he was often there alone. A family notice in Dagens Nyheter on 31 May 2018 gave his home as Grötlingbo and named his wife Louise and the children Katarina, Maria, Nicolas and Christian, with their families.

Death and historical assessment

Ola Ullsten died on 28 May 2018, aged 86. Liberalerna announced that the former prime minister and party leader had died after a period of illness. His daughter Maria Ullsten told Aftonbladet that he had lived with dementia for several years. Expressen reported that he died, of age and illness, in the dementia care home where he had spent his last period. A notice in Dagens Nyheter gave his residence as Grötlingbo and named his wife, Louise, and the children Katarina, Maria, Nicolas and Christian. The funeral was held on 6 July 2018 at Grötlingbo Church on Gotland.

Jan Björklund, then Liberal leader, called him "a warm person with a big heart," analytical and thoughtfully social liberal, and said that results came through cooperation on issues, sometimes with opponents. He linked Ullsten to the non-socialist governments of 1976–82, the one-per-cent aid target, the 1981 marginal-tax reform and energy policy, and, at the funeral, to a ban on corporal punishment and early equality law. Hans Blix, foreign minister in the 1978–79 cabinet, described "an easy-going person with a clear social-liberal compass" and a willingness to cooperate with the Social Democrats. Bengt Westerberg, his successor as party leader, told TT that Ullsten had been skilful as both leader and prime minister, though the last election went badly. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven wrote that he had led Sweden "in a time of upheaval and in a difficult parliamentary situation." Ulf Adelsohn, Moderate leader in the early 1980s, called him a vänsterfolkpartist—a left-leaning Liberal—whose dream, Adelsohn thought, was to govern with the Social Democrats and possibly the Centre Party, but not readily with the Moderates.

The premiership, from 18 October 1978 to 12 October 1979, lay inside the non-socialist years from Thorbjörn Fälldin's arrival in 1976 to Olof Palme's return in 1982. The Ullsten cabinet followed the three-party coalition's resignation over nuclear power and a third reactor at Ringhals. On 13 October 1978 the Riksdag record shows the Centre abstaining over energy policy and the Moderates voting no, calling a Liberal minority government, enabled by Social Democratic abstention, a step away from three-party cooperation. Ullsten was the first liberal prime minister since Felix Hamrin, whose Freeminded People's Party government lasted only from 6 August to 24 September 1932, the day Carl Gustaf Ekman's second term ended. An SVT note placed Ekman in the 1920s; Aftonbladet said since the 1930s. No later prime minister has been a Liberal.

An editorial in the conservative journal Svensk Tidskrift in 1979 wrote that bills were ground down in committee, that the energy question which had brought the cabinet to office was unsettled, and that the Centre and the Social Democrats blocked a cut in marginal taxes. It put the government's ordinary committee base at two seats out of fifteen. The Liberal share of valid Riksdag votes was 11.1 per cent in 1976, 10.6 per cent in 1979 and 5.9 per cent in 1982; after that defeat Ullsten resigned the party leadership in 1983. On 22 May 1981 the Moderates left the second Fälldin coalition, in which Ullsten was foreign minister; the Centre and the Liberals continued until the 1982 election. Reviewing Mats Bergstrand's 2010 biography, Claes Arvidsson called him a shrewd player for power rather than a popular leader, and traced Moderate distrust to secret talks with the Social Democrats: first to install the Liberal government, then in the 1981 "wonderful night" tax deal, as part of an effort to break bloc politics from the non-socialist left.