Haijby Affair 1952
In 1952 the Haijby affair broke into public view — restaurateur Kurt Haijby was tried and convicted for attempted blackmail involving allegations that the late King Gustaf V had had a homosexual relationship with him, and that the royal court and security services had paid him off in the 1930s. The case tormented Erlander's government and pulled state institutions into the crown's shadow.
In 1952 the Haijby affair broke into public view. Restaurateur Kurt Haijby was tried and, in 1953, convicted of attempted blackmail involving allegations that the late King Gustaf V — who had died in October 1950 — had had a homosexual relationship with him. Around the criminal case ran a second, more politically explosive set of allegations: that the royal court and security services had paid Haijby off in the 1930s to silence him, and that police, prosecutors, and the Erlander government had been drawn into managing the cover-up.
The affair tormented Erlander’s administration. Even after his death the king cast a shadow over the SAP government because the apparent court arrangement implicated state institutions in protecting the crown — at a time when homosexuality had only just (1944) been decriminalised and the constitutional position of the monarchy was already contested inside the Social Democrats. Writer Vilhelm Moberg pushed the case into the open as a public-conscience campaign against state cover-up.
In long retrospect, Haijby is one of the formative scandals of post-war Swedish politics. It joined the chain of reasons that would carry through to the 1968 unicameral-Riksdag reform and the 1974 Instrument of Government, which reduced the monarchy to ceremonial functions.