Mette Elvensar

The Most Honorable Mette Elvensar OKI, LKV, ODE, KC
Chancellor of Delkora
In office 5 March 1959 – 5 March 1967
Monarch	Klara III
Preceded by	Thalbius Sörbengaard
Succeeded by	Gymir Feldengar
Leader of National Labor
In office 12 March 1948 – 01 January 1967
Minister of Education and Culture
In office 4 March 1936 – 6 March 1940
Minister of Agriculture
In office 9 March 1932 – 4 March 1936
Member of the Federal Parliament
In office 6 March 1928 – 5 March 1967
Constituency	Northern Cybria
Personal details
Born	Margrethe Ellinor Elvensar (1901-01-07)7 January 1901 Börnendren, Cybria, Kingdom of Delkora
Died	(1984-05-02)2 May 1984 Tjærenbor, Cybria
Nationality	Delkoran
Political party	National Labor
Spouse(s)	Otto Elvensar (m. 1932)
Alma mater	Tordenhelm University (B.A., M.L.)
Occupation	Teacher Politician

Mette Ellinor Elvensar (1901-1984) was a Delkoran stateswoman, teacher, and political reformist who served as chancellor of Delkora from 1959 to 1967. Entering office in the midst of a major economic depression, her government introduced the beginning phases of the New Kingdom economic reforms, an ambitious agenda that sought to begin transitioning the economy toward socialization of the means of production and laid the foundation for the modern Delkoran welfare state. Although opinions of her tenure vary by political affiliation, Elvensar is almost universally recognized by historians as one of the most effective chancellors in Delkoran history, consistently ranking in the top three of scholarly listings of the most influential chancellors.

Early years

Elvensar was born on a varden commune in the municipality of Börnendren in northern Cybria in 1901. Her mother Agnes worked as a tailor in the commune, while her father was a carpenter. While attending secondary school, she was introduced to Marxist political philosophy by her mathematics teacher and began closely following local politics. She would later reflect that her experience growing up in the varden profoundly shaped her political outlook, remarking in her autobiography that, "Having seen how well society could function when operating on the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, and equity as was the case in the varden, I knew upon becoming chancellor that it would be my goal to replicate this on a national scale."

Elvensar's first political experience came in 1914 when the municipal council of Börnendren voted to seize a major portion of her varden's farmland through eminent domain for the purpose of building a lead smelter. Against her parent's wishes, she joined a group of the commune's members in staging an act of civil disobedience, chaining themselves to the fence surrounding the property to prevent the construction crew from gaining entrance. When the state police were summoned, a large fight broke out that left dozens severely injured. Elvensar was arrested along with her co-conspirators, but was not charged due to being a minor. Although the commune's act of defiance attracted the attention of local newspapers and gained it sympathy throughout the state, construction of the lead smelter proceeded as planned.

University and early career

After obtaining a scholarship to attend Tordenhelm University, Elvensar began studying economics in 1918. While attending Tordenhelm, she became involved with the United Residents Guild, an anarchist group engaged in direct action in the city's working class neighborhoods. A self-described anarchist without adjectives at the time, Elvensar remarked in one interview that, "Up to that point in my life, I had only experienced government as a violent, oppressive force, and so I had no interest in working within the system or waiting on incremental change." After completing her economics degree, she enrolled in the school of law at Tordenhelm, graduating in 1925.

That year, she returned to Börnendren, where she took up a job as a history teacher at a local secondary school. There, she successfully led efforts at unionizing the school system, and subsequently began working with other organizers in the area to unionize other schools throughout the county. In 1926, teachers in Börnendren and seven other municipalities went on strike and, under Elvensar's leadership, successfully negotiated a major salary and pension increase. Elvensar's efforts during the strike gained her significant publicity in the region, and prompted the local National Labor party organization to approach her about running for office. Still an anarchist, Elvensar later reflected that at the time she believed National Labor to be a corrupt party that was "only marginally better" than the alternatives, but believed it might be possible to radicalize it from within. She subsequently ran for municipal council on the National Labor list in 1927, failing to be seated.

Nonetheless, she was placed on the ballot for the federal election the following year in her home constituency of Northern Cybria, and won a seat after personally knocking on thousands of doors and making a concerted effort to speak to voters in every city and town in the district.

Member of the Federal Parliament

As a member of parliament, Elvensar served on the Committee on Labor and Pensions and the Education Committee. Early on, she developed a reputation as an independent voice in her party who frequently went against leadership. In 1929, she successfully led a group of National Labor MPs in opposing the federal budget that year because of significant cuts to healthcare spending, defying party leader Johannes Löfgren, who had negotiated an agreement with the government of Chancellor Frederik Borenyr whereby National Labor would support the budget in exchange for concessions on other bills. The group's efforts led to a month-long standoff that nearly forced an election, with the budget only winning passage after significant amendments.

While serving on the Labor and Pensions Committee, she formed a close relationship with her future minister of foreign affairs and successor as chancellor, Gymir Feldengar. The two formed an informal working group of democratic socialists and anarcho-syndicalists within their party that came to be known as the Red-Black Faction. Under the pair's leadership, the Faction launched multiple efforts to oust Löfgren throughout the 1930's and 40's and campaigned to get socialist candidates placed on the party's lists in federal elections. In part as an effort to appease the Faction and co-opt its leaders, Löfgren worked to secure low-ranking ministerial posts for both Elvensar and Feldengar after the 1932 Federal Election, when National Labor entered government as the Liberal Party's junior coalition partner.

Nonetheless, Elvensar did not hesitate to speak out against the government as a minister. While serving as minister of agriculture, she introduced legislation to break up large estates throughout the country and, after Chancellor Westergren and Löfgren worked to stop the bill in committee, Elvensar railed against the government in a famous speech before parliament. Still, Löfgren urged the chancellor not to ask for her resignation, believing she would cause more problems for the government as a rank and file member of parliament. In 1936, Elvensar was shifted to the ministry of education after a cabinet reshuffle.

After the 1940 Federal Election produced a Conservative-Agrarian government, Elvensar stepped down from her post as education minister, spending much of the 1940's as one of the leading voices in her party speaking out against the neoliberal economic policies of Chancellor Veidnar Albendor. She later cited this time period as the start of her ideological transition from anarchism to democratic socialism, saying, "Whereas before I had conceived of government as a necessarily counterrevolutionary force that was to be eventually overcome, I then started to see it as a neutral weapon that would always be wielded against some element of society. My work would be to ensure it was wielded against the banker, the warmonger, and the racist, and not the worker, the disabled, or the migrant."

After National Labor's poor showing in the 1944 Federal Election, Elvensar challenged Löfgren for party leader, losing narrowly. Continuing to forge relationships with the party's newer, younger cohort, she mounted a successful bid four years later after Löfgren was forced to resign following National Labor's worst showing ever in the 1948 Federal Election. Prevailing over Löfgren's handpicked candidate, Elvensar assumed leadership of National Labor in March of that year.

Leader of National Labor

As leader, one of Elvensar's first initiatives was to implement democratic reforms of the party's internal proceedings. In 1948, she issued a memo calling on National Labor organizations from the national to the local level to open all meetings and official proceedings to the public. At the National Labor Convention of 1950, she pushed for amendments to the party's constitution that permitted state and local organizations to develop their own platforms and banning the national party from interfering in their leadership contests. A rule change she successfully pushed for in 1952 requiring local organizations to elect their leadership brought her into conflict with the National Labor political machines of the major cities and led to a failed effort by the party bosses of Norenstal, Gothendral, and Tordenhelm to oust her.

Elvensar made it a priority of her tenure as party leader to rebuild the party's relationship with the labor movement, which had deteriorated under Löfgren's leadership. According to one historian, National Labor became a truly "class mass" party under Elvensar's leadership to such an extent that, "The previously transactional relationship between the party and the labor movement had been replaced by one built on organic relationships such that a National Labor party operative sitting behind a desk in Norenstal and a union steelworker in Halmodryn no longer thought of themselves as belonging to functionally separate organizations." This was further aided by Elvensar's efforts at recruiting more working-class and non-white candidates for office, making National Labor more reflective of the groups it claimed to represent.

The cumulative effect of these and other initiatives was a strong showing by the party in state and local elections throughout the 1950's, as well as a slow rebuilding of its numbers in the Federal Parliament. Known for her passionate speeches on the floor of the Chamber of Representatives, Elvensar was a vocal critic of Albendor's economic policies, warning that the de-funding of public services and lax enforcement of anti-monopoly laws were doing untold harm to working people throughout the country and were not sustainable. Her fears proved to be well founded as Delkora entered a severe recession and eventually a depression in the aftermath of the 1953 Banking Crisis.

After passing a controversial economic stimulus bill in 1956, Albendor announced his intention to step down ahead of the federal election that year and was replaced as leader of the Conservative Party by Hjalmar Gameryn. After retaining a narrow majority, the Conservative-Agrarian coalition continued to govern, but faced growing instability throughout the Kingdom as rioting began to spread in the major cities due to record high unemployment. In 1959, Gameryn was assassinated after giving a speech in Grafholmen, and subsequently succeeded by foreign minister Thalbius Sörbengaard. By this time, civil unrest had turned into widespread rioting in the major cities.

With Sörbengaard ultimately unable to bring the deteriorating situation in the country under control, Elvensar led a successful motion of no confidence against his government that year. In the resulting election, National Labor picked up an unprecedented number of seats, winning 312 out of the Chamber of Representative's 500 seats and enabling Elvensar to form the first single party government in Delkoran history.

Chancellor

Shortly after taking office, Elvensar gave a televised national address from the Chancellery Building calling for peace even as rioting continued throughout the country. The same day, she lifted the state of emergency that had been in place since 1958 and ordered the Royal Army garrison in Norenstal to begin demobilizing. One of her first major acts was an executive decree ordering a nationwide bank holiday to prevent an impending bank run and enable parliament to take action. Her government subsequently secured passage of the Banking Insurance Act of 1959, creating a federal deposit insurance program that succeeded in restoring public confidence in banking institutions.

With civil unrest temporarily quieted by these actions, Elvensar turned her attention to providing emergency relief to those driven into extreme poverty by the depression. The Emergency Services Act of 1959 provided funding for food, clothing, medicine, and emergency housing for those most in need, primarily in the inner cities and remote rural areas. Her government followed this with the Federal Food Security Act, which provided aid for farmers and attempted to raise crop prices to remedy the effects of the major overproduction that had occurred in preceding decades. In early 1960, the Elvensar government passed federal rent controls and re-instituted the minimum wage.

With these early actions helping to mitigate the worst effects of the depression, Elvensar's attention turned to implementation of the New Kingdom agenda. In a televised address in late 1960, she announced the creation of the Federal Public Works Commission, an agency which would provide a national job guarantee by employing people in the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects such as highways, bridges, dams, hospitals, and airports.