True Finns MP's off-colour floor show gets unplugged by Viking Line crew

Party training seminar attendees seriously outnumbered by Iraqis going to Stockholm to vote

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A training seminar arranged by the True Finns party for prospective election candidates brought around 300 party activists on board the Viking Gabriella at the weekend, on a two-day cruise to Stockholm and back.
      The ship's crew groaned inwardly at the prospect of a large group of the anti-immigration party's mostly male members meeting with another sizeable group of pasengers on the ship - some six hundred Iraqis living in Finland who were travelling to Sweden in order to vote in their country's elections. Stockholm was the closest polling station to Finland.
     
For the most part the potentially volatile encounter - in which the True Finns actually constituted an ethnic minority of their own - went off without incident, but there were a few close calls.
      As the first evening wore on and the onboard refreshments began to take their toll, one older deputy council member from the True Finns ranks chose to harangue a group of five Iraqi Kurds with the "What the **** are you doing in Finland?" speech and lectured them on the salient points of the Winter War with the Soviet Union.
      He was seen the next morning looking somewhat pale and possibly as if he had accidentally walked into a door.
     
The True Finns party chairman Timo Soini left the ship in Stockholm and travelled on by train to Brussels, where he is currently an MEP.
      He was thus not present for the impromptu show put on in the ship's nightclub on the Stockholm-Helsinki leg of the voyage, when True Finns MP Pertti "Veltto" Virtanen entertained the troops and anyone else who was present.
      Virtanen's show was a rambling monologue in which he interspersed songs with stories of his achievements as a singer and mental coach of an ice hockey team.
     
He amused the audience of True Finns faithful - and caused furrowed brows among the Viking Line cruise hosteses - by switching the titles of songs on the set-list from the original name to "Astrid" or "Thors".
      Minister for Migration and European Affairs Astrid Thors (Swedish People's Party) has been very much in the sights of the anti-immigration lobby of late, and she has even been the subject of death threats.
     
The audience clapped along rhythmically when Virtanen sang an old children's song, originally written by a Norwegian and translated into Finnish in the early 1960s.
      The song, about a little Hottentot boy, ticks all the "Golliwog" boxes for lack of political correctness, and it was a ditty too far for the Viking Line personnel.
      The PA system was abruptly cut off in mid-verse, and Virtanen yelled in the direction of the mixing desk: "The censor strikes! Go and see what colour of man is sitting at the soundboard!" while the True Finns members howled with laughter.
     
A flustered Viking Gabriella cruise hostess, who had been following the show with some anguish - Viking Line's spring theme this year is South Africa, after all - grabbed the microphone and declared that all nationalities are welcome on board the Viking Line vessels.
      Seppo Huhta, who had organised the True Finns' floating seminar, was initially outraged that the show had been canned, even though Virtanen - a former rock artist - had been performing for the nightclub patrons without charge, but Huhta refrained from his initial intention of contacting the ship's captain to complain.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Soini wants background checks on True Finns´ Parliamentary candidates (8.3.2010)
  Soini defends True Finns party against accusations of xenophobia (9.10.2008)

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