STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Some 45,000 Swedes, some crying, lined city streets Sunday to pay respects to the late Prime Minister Tage Erlander, the father of Sweden's social welfare system.
Erlander's coffin, draped in a red socialist flag and decorated with blue and yellow flowers for the Swedish national colors, was carried on a catafalque through central Stockholm by 10 members of the Social Democratic Youth League.
Erlander died June 21 in a Stockholm hospital. He was 84.
'It is terrible that he is dead,' Gosta Aastrom of Stockholm said, tears running down his face. 'He was such a fine man.'
'Tage Erlander became one of the foremost popular leaders and society builders in Sweden,' Olof Palme, Erlander's successor, told 1,400 mourners earlier in the flag-bedecked People's House, or community center.
Palme delivered his eulogy at a memorial ceremony in the same hall where he succeeded Erlander, who at the 1969 party congress resigned as chairman of the Social Democratic Party and prime minister.
Erlander, considered the father of Sweden's extensive social welfare system, retired after 23 consecutive years as prime minister, the longest serving leader in a Western democracy. He was named prime minister in 1946.
Under his leadership, the Social Democrats transformed Sweden by adopting comprehensive health insurance, improved working benefits and pensions and instituted a variety of government allowances.
'Erlander wanted a strong society, one where citizens do not feel weak,' Palme said. 'Everyone must have the right to enjoy social welfare throughout their lives.'
At the end of the secular, two-hour ceremony, the audience rose to sing 'The Internationale,' the revolutionary socialist hymn.
A motorcade was to travel 236 miles across Sweden to Erlander's home town of Ransater in the western province of Varmland, where the funeral service was scheduled for Monday.
