From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reiulf Steen (b. August 16, 1933 in Hurum, Buskerud) is a Norwegian politician who was active in the Norwegian Labour Party from 1958 to 1990. He served as the party's deputy-chairman from 1965 to 1975 and chairman from 1975 to 1981.

Steen was elected leader of the regional Labour Party affiliate at age 14. He started out his professional career as a factory worker but soon took a job as a journalist in the newspaper Fremtiden, in Drammen. He rose quickly through the ranks of his party, and served as minister of transportation 1971-72 and minister of commerce and trade 1979-81. From 1977 to 1989 he was a member of Parliament. He maintained a long-standing interest in Latin America and was appointed Norway's ambassador to Chile in 1991, a tenure that lasted five years.

He was long a somewhat controversial figure within his own party; loved by the grasroots, but viewed with sceptisism by many of the party's leading figures after having been at the centre of political scandal around 1980 where high-placed politicians within the Labour party had been leaking sensitive information to the press, much of it at the expense of the new party-leader (1981), Gro Harlem Brundtland.

In later years, his memoirs and personal recollections have affected public opinion. He has related accounts of his own psychiatric problems, difficulties within the Labour Party, and other contemporary issues. He has also engaged himself writing columns for several of the country's leading newspapers, dealing with matters such as the EU, the war in Iraq, and the shift to the right of his party in recent years. He has also been active in ATTAC and the European Movement.

This article about a Norwegian politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

 This article about a Norwegian writer or poet is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.