At the beginning of the 1900s the party presented demands as well as solutions to the tenant farmer question, the managing of employment, improvement of workers' rights, freedom of speech and an 8-hour work day.

])[12] The demands on total separation of church and state, abolition of religious education in all schools and the prohibition of alcohol have all since then been abandoned.

[citation needed] SDP members declared Finland a socialist republic, but they were defeated by the forces of the White Guard.

With the exception of a brief period in 1926, when Tanner formed a minority government, the SDP was excluded from cabinet participation until Kyösti Kallio was elected President in 1937.

[15] During the first few months of the Continuation War (1941–1944), the country, the parliament and the cabinet were divided on the question of whether Finland's army should stop at the old border and thereby demonstratively refrain from any attempt of conquests.

However, the country's dangerous position called for national unity and the SDP's leadership chose to refrain from any visible protests.

During this time, the political field was divided roughly equally between the SDP, the SKP and the Agrarian League, each party commanding some 25% of the vote.

Because of the SDP's anti-communism, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supported the party by means of funds laundered through Nordic sister parties or through organisations that bought luxury goods such as coffee abroad, then imported and sold them for a high profit as post-war rationing served to inflate prices.

In the 1956 Finnish presidential election, the SDP candidate Karl-August Fagerholm lost by only one electoral vote to Urho Kekkonen.

The dispute was over several issues, namely whether the party should function as an interest group and whether it should co-operate with the anti-communists and right-wingers or with president Kekkonen, the Agrarian League and the SKP.

During this time, the party adopted a pro-European stance and contributed actively to the Finnish membership in the European Union in 1995 in concert with the cabinet.

As a result, Lipponen became the Speaker of Parliament and the Centre Party leader Anneli Jäätteenmäki became the new Prime Minister, leading a coalition cabinet that included the SDP which got eight ministerial posts.

After lengthy negotiations, a six-party coalition government, the Katainen Cabinet, was formed with the NCP and the SDP as the two main parties.

The SDP was left in the opposition and provided extensive criticism on the actions of the Sipilä Cabinet on matters such as alcohol policy, cuts to education spending and the so-called active model.

[25][26][27] In its 2020 declaration of principles the party's ideals and priorities are: sustainable development, all-encompassing equality, peace, solidarity, freedom, co-operation, a clean and pristine environment together with democratic socialism.

[31] The SDP is in favour of queer rights, the construction of nuclear power plants, the conservation of Swedish as one of Finland's two official languages and the increasing of funding given by the state to public schools and universities.

In its 2023 parliamentary election programme its self-declared goal was the increasing of work-based immigration coming to Finland as a way of responding to the country's labour shortage and low birth rate.

[36] In 2023, the SDP, along with the NCP, both criticised the Finns Party for their lack of willingness to the easing of work permit requirements to foreigners coming from outside the European Union.

Through his consulting firm's services offered to Gazprom, he was sent an invoice for almost 200,000 euros for assisting in the South Stream gas pipeline project.

[46] Also in February 2022, when Russia had already been pressuring Ukraine for a long time, the social democratic MEP Eero Heinäluoma and Mauri Pekkarinen from the Centre Party both said in a Finnish current affairs television programme that preparing for the Russian threat was part of the problem.

However, in 2023, during the premiership of former Social Democratic Party chair Sanna Marin, Finland officially joined NATO.

In September 2023, when Antti Lindtman got elected chair of the SDP, a scandal broke out due to him in his adolescent years, posing near four other naked young adults, nude, wearing a pointed hat in the style of a christmas elf, covered by a balaclava and with an airsoft gun in hand.

[51][52] The party secretary, Mikkel Näkkäläjärvi's, nomination and subsequent appointment to his role during the SDP's 2023 conference in Jyväskylä was criticised because of his criminal background.

Näkkäläjärvi had also broken into a retired old lady's summer cottage as a 15-year-old teenager with three others around the same age as him and participated in the killing and burning of a grown-up cat in a bonfire.