Axel Lille

Axel Johan Lille was a Finland-Swedish journalist, lawyer and politician. He was a founder of the Swedish People's Party and its first chairman from 1906 to 1917. As editor-in-chief of Nya Pressen from 1883 to 1900 and again from 1906 to 1917, he made the newspaper a leading voice for the Finland-Swedish minority and one of the foremost constitutionalist organs during the Russification period under Russian imperial rule. After Nya Pressen was shut down by the censors in 1900, Lille lived in exile in Sweden from 1902 to 1905. He served as a member of the Diet of Finland for the Burgher Estate in every Diet between 1885 and 1900, and was elected to the Parliament of Finland in 1916. Under his chairmanship, the SFP in the spring of 1917 became the first Finnish political party to publicly call for Finland's independence.