It's getting more and more expensive to use the subways in Stockholm. September 1st, the price for a card valid for one month was raised from 450 to 500 SEK. The same day SUF, the Syndicalist youth federation, started the campaign Planka.nu.

Planka.nu is a kind of autoreduction-campign, promoting freeriding in the subway. The goal is to make the public transport in Stockholm free, payed by public means and without any ticket guards. But before that happens, we'll try to organise the freeriders (who are approximately 5-10 % of the travellers).

Right now the campaign has two components: The first is the website, www.planka.nu, with advices of how to travel without ticket, getting away from the guards and also arguments for why public transport should be free of charge. The second is something we call "P-kassan".

P-kassan is a fund where anyone can be a member by paying 100 SEK per month. If a member gets caught without ticket by a guard in the subway, then the fine (600 SEK) is paid by the fund (except for an excess of 100 SEK). Many people who has been freeriding for years has found the concept very helpful. The membership is steadily raising, and is right now at almost 100.

We think that refusing to pay in the subway is the only effective way to force the prices down. As the most people use it to travel to and from their workplaces, the subway is a part of the social factory and should be an area for economic class struggle as well as the workplaces.

Organised freeriding can be seen as a strike, a form of expanded unionism. Similar autoreduction-campaigns run by the unions in Turin, Italy, in the 70's, managed to cut down the prices. Now we think it's time to do the same thing in Stockholm. Recently the public transport was privatised, and although half of it is still payed by the taxpayers, and most people really thinks it isn't worth it's high price. Making it free would benefit almost every citizen in Stockholm, calculations has shown, only a small group of extremely rich would loose money if the public transport was payed by public means instead of fees.

The campaign Planka.nu has already been subject for quite much public discussion and media coverage. Recently, the Green Party's youth branch (Grön Ungdom) announced that they are starting their own fine-fund for their members, run after the same principles as P-kassan. Of course a lot of politicians in Stockholm are getting really provoked and are furiously condemning both our campaign and Grön Ungdom's rip-off.

Planka.nu and SUF-Stockholm would like to get in touch with similar initiatives elsewhere.