So Furubotn's deviation within the NKP was known to the Labour Party, but that was not enough to bring about any co-operation at the highest level. The old disagreements between the two parties went too deep. The war aggravated them, because of the adoption by the NKP of a policy contrary to that of the government in London and the leading Labour officers in exile. On top of that, old Labour Party leaders, Tranmæl among them, were afraid that the Communists would make the most of the war to take votes from Labour; they felt that a co-operation would put a stamp of legitimacy on the Communists which would give them an opportunity to threaten established Labour bastions in the trade union movement. The centre from which these views emanated, and the Labour Party's real wartime centre, was Stockholm, whereas the Communist leadership was in Norway. The hostility to the Communists in Stockholm circles was so strong that non-socialists in the Norwegian home front spoke of ``a practically morbid fear of the Communists''.(16)

It soon became apparent that the negative attitude of the Labour Party in Stockholm was not preventing the Communists from winning adherents on the home front. Their influence at places of work became stronger and stronger as the war dragged on. At the same time, the grass-roots demand for unity between Communists and Labour grew louder. If old enemies like Churchill and Stalin could collaborate, what was there to prevent the two workers' parties from standing shoulder to shoulder in opposition, across all party divisions, to the German occupying forces? The question was asked everywhere at the grass roots of the labour movement.

Ever since Furubotn took over as leader in 1942, the NKP had eagerly advocated co-operation between the two parties in their war effort. For Labour Party people in Norway, the rejection of attempts at co-operation by their leaders in Stockholm tended to settle the matter. Then, in the so-called Stockholm proposal of July 1943(17), Martin Tranmæl appeared to change his mind. He recommended a merger of the two parties into one, without any organised fractions, when the war was over, arguing that unity had become more necessary than ever. Confidence would have to be established to promote unification. These formulations from the Stockholm proposal are familiar; what is less well known is that Tranmæl attached important conditions to them. The Communists were to subordinate themselves to the Government's war policy. Not only that, they must also accept the ``recognised illegal trade union authorities which represent the Federation of Trade Unions, the unions, and the districts''.(18) Those were bodies where Labour had kept the Communists out. In accepting those conditions, the Communists would have had to swallow two bitter pills:

1. relinquish their active wartime policy

2. accept Labour Party leadership of underground trade union activities.

The Federation of Trade Unions sent the Stockholm proposal to the NKP at the end of 1944. Furubotn replied on behalf of the NKP in an open letter dated February 1945. He was in favour of co-operation, but sceptical of the idea of an organisational merger and of the conditions Tranmæl had stipulated. He described Tranmæl's plans for a discussion of organisational matters as secondary to what he felt was the paramount issue in Norway, a united stand against the Germans.(19)