Convenience Big Store: The bank robber who seduced his victims

27 August, 2023

Quirk of history

A poster for a 2019 film dramatisation of the heist

The bank robber who seduced his victims

Fifty years ago this week, says Roger Domeneghetti in The New European, the idea of "Stockholm Syndrome" was born. On an "overcast and quiet" morning, just after 10am, Jan-Erik Olsson entered one of the city's largest banks wearing "make-up, a ladies' wig and a pair of sunglasses". Inside, he pulled out a submachine gun, fired a round into the ceiling and shouted: "The party starts! Down on the floor!" After a brief shoot-out with police, Olsson took control of the lobby, demanding $4m. By the sixth day of the siege, more than 73% of Sweden's population were watching live coverage on TV. And the most bizarre part of the stand-off was the "unlikely bond" forged between the criminal and the hostages.

"Random acts of kindness" by Olsson "endeared him" to the captives: he wiped away one woman's tears and apologised to another for "inflicting trauma that made her take up smoking again". As they grew increasingly hungry, he shared three hidden pears, dividing them equally between the group. When two hostages were allowed to go to the loo and saw officers offering to help them escape, they refused and instead returned to the lobby. Even as police pumped tear gas into the building, the hostages refused to leave, worried their kidnapper would be gunned down. When Olsson was finally handcuffed, one of the captives followed him out shouting at police not to hurt him. As he was led away, she told him fondly: "We'll see each other again".

Tomorrow's world

Laurent Emmanuel/Getty

No one has set foot on the moon in more than 50 years, says Jon Kelvey in Popular Science. But the world is taking an interest once more. Nasa has "committed to landing astronauts on the Moon again in 2025"; China plans to do it in 2030. In the meantime, this week saw an unsuccessful Russian attempt, and a successful Indian one, to land robotic craft on lunar surface. This is no "second space race", but a gold rush. America, China, Russia, and India are aiming to exploit the moon's resources – including ice and valuable minerals – for economic ends, rather than embarking on a "non-military proxy contest" in space.

Property

THE TOWNHOUSE: This Grade II listed, four-bedroom townhouse lies in the centre of Congleton, Cheshire. Its 3,000 sq ft interior includes a drawing room with dual-aspect views, a large kitchen, and a wealth of original features, including cast-iron radiators, a wood-burning stove and a moulded stone fireplace. Outside, there's a 180ft garden complete with a terrace for al fresco dining. Congleton station is a 15-minute walk, with direct trains to Manchester in 40 minutes. £750,000.

Books

Mughal emperor Shah Alam granting the East India Company tax collecting rights. Benjamin West/British Library

Two companies that changed the world

Britain's East India Company, and its Dutch equivalent, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), were "two of the most powerful corporations the world has ever known", says Caroline Elkins in Foreign Affairs. As Philip Stern describes in Empire, Incorporated, these two firms "possessed powers typically associated with sovereign states", including the right to mint currency and wage war. They "generated incredible wealth", fuelling the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century and the British Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. At its height in 1637, the VOC was worth around $7.9trn in today's dollars – greater than the combined valuations of "Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, Netflix, Samsung, Tencent, Visa, Walmart, and Wells Fargo".

In 1623, Dutch agents tortured and beheaded 10 English merchants on an Indonesian island for attempting to "usurp control of the region's lucrative spice trade". The Amboyna Massacre generated outrage in Britain and became part of the East India Company's "origin story". Warned off competing directly with the Dutch, the British firm "turned to cotton and silk textile trading with the Mughal Empire in South Asia". Eventually it took over the entire Indian subcontinent – in the early 1800s, it had an army twice the size of the UK's – before a "seismic rebellion" in 1857 spurred the British crown to assume direct control of the territory. "What began in the ignominy at Amboyna would end in the creation of a globe-spanning empire and the modern world as we know it."

Empire, Incorporated is available to buy here.

There will be no issue of The Knowledge tomorrow. We will be back on Tuesday.

Comment

Older homeowners: so that's where all the money is. Nick Dolding/Getty

The British conspiracy against the young

"It's a funny thing, inflation," says Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. Our leaders insist young workers should hold off asking for wage increases, in case they make prices rise faster. Yet they see nothing wrong with massively increasing the state pension under the "triple lock", which will apparently have "no impact on inflation at all". We shouldn't be surprised: governments endlessly put the elderly first, at the expense of the young. While the old benefit from huge NHS spending, gold-plated pension increases and winter fuel payments, young people get frozen tax thresholds, vast student loans, "hilariously unaffordable housing" and some of the most expensive childcare in the world.

Older folk may harrumph that they've been paying into the system all their lives. But today's pensioners will receive far more from the welfare state than they have paid in tax, and "far more than the generations after them". Since the 1990s, the proportion of retired households who own their home outright has risen from around half to almost three quarters, and those houses have increased hugely in value. Meanwhile the proportion of under 35s who own their own home, even with a hefty mortgage, has fallen from two thirds to two fifths. The result is less security and smaller, more expensive homes for new parents, which has sent the birth rate plummeting to record lows. It's outrageous that young people's willingness to sacrifice their freedom and prosperity during the pandemic – "to protect their elders" – is not matched by older people willing to permit more housing or accept a fairer arrangement of taxes and care costs. It'll be a brave politician who makes the case, but it must be made. "Justice for the young!"

Long reads shortened

Groundbreaking ceremony of the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania. Xinhua

A Chinese school for African dictators

Thirty miles outside Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is a "vast" school complete with "banquet hall, gyms, tennis courts and more than 300 hotel-style rooms with Chinese-made furniture", says Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian in Axios. Here, at the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, the Chinese Communist Party teaches African leaders "its authoritarian alternative to democracy". Funded by a $40m CCP donation, the institution is a partnership between China's ruling party and those of six African countries: Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe. All six countries are democracies, but their governing parties share a key feature: "each has ruled continuously for decades".

Chinese teachers instruct promising young African officials in "party governance, party discipline, anti-corruption methods, Xi Jinping Thought, and poverty alleviation". A key idea is a system originally developed by Vladimir Lenin: that the ruling party "should sit above the government and the courts", unencumbered by constitutional and legal restrictions. It seems to be a mutually beneficial relationship. African leaders see China's model – strong government leadership over a capitalist economic system – "as a way to break through stagnation, corruption and enduring poverty". China, meanwhile, can benefit from an "authoritarian-friendly political bloc" to help reshape global institutions, support its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and guarantee markets away from Western sanctions. It's "the strongest evidence yet that Beijing is exporting its model of governing" to challenge the US-led world order.

The great escape

Le Touquet-Paris-Plage circa 1920. CAP/Roger Viollet/Getty

A watering hole for maharajas, princes and PG Wodehouse

The "posh seaside town" of Le Touquet in northern France is renaming its airport after Queen Elizabeth II, says Anthony Peregrine in The Daily Telegraph. It's hardly surprising – British royals have long flocked to the resort. Edward VIII frequently flew his own plane across the Channel for a spot of golf and a round at the gaming tables. "There was a rumour, undoubtedly pernicious, that he won Mrs Simpson with one hand of five-card stud". The late queen, then a young princess, "sometimes accompanied him". To disguise himself, Edward would travel to the resort – which became known as "London-by-the-sea" – under the pseudonym Mr Brown. It "fooled no one" but his visits did inspire a cocktail called "the Prince's smile" consisting of Cointreau, kirsch, and orange juice.

The royals weren't the only fans. Gordon Selfridge (founder of the department store) was also a regular. "Unfazed by staking £50,000 a night" at the casino, he often stepped out with the dancing Dolly Sisters, one twin on each arm. "No one was quite sure whether he was having an affair with one, or both. (Further malicious rumours suggested that he wasn't entirely certain himself.)" Unsurprisingly, standards at the resort were high. At the Hotel Picardie "the indoor pool was filled with sparkling water", and Indian maharajas would roll in to take over "entire floors". PG Wodehouse lived nearby from 1934 to 1940, after moving there for the "golf, the casino and the seven-mile beach for walking his dogs". He loved it so much he completely ignored warnings about the threat of Nazis, right up to the moment he was "hauled off by invading Germans".

Quoted

"I intend to live forever or die trying."

Groucho Marx

That's it. You're done.

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