En Afriko la ĝendarmo foriras - The Policeman of Africa Retires

 

French Military Instructors in Chad, photo sourced from the French Ministry of the Army, 25/01/2024

 

Translated from Le Monde Diplomatique

 While Emmanuel Macron's special envoy, former Minister Jean-Marie Bockel gave his report on the reorganisation of the French military disposition at the end of November, Paris was shocked to learn of Senegal and Chad's decision to end their security agreements with the former Colonial power. This new failure marks a turning point for France.

And so there were two less, leaving just three in total. By the 28th of November, in just a few hours France had lost two more positions on the African continent: Senegal, where France has been present for over 200 years, with a current garrison strength of 350 soldiers, and Chad a nation where France established a military presence more than 40 years ago and which stations a thousand soldiers and was until recently the base from which France launched the majority of its international interventions within Africa (six since 1968). Once those, 1350 soldiers withdraw from the region France will have just three bases in Africa - Djibouti, Ivory Coast and Gabon, with a combined force of fewer than 2000 personnel compared to 8500 in 2022.

This is a severe blow for France, whose military and political establishment has already been suffering over the past 3 years. This time the French were not expelled by mass protests, boos and the burning of the blue-white-red flags as happened in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in 2022 and 2023. The retreat was imposed from above. Paris learnt of the new reality in Senegal through newspaper interviews, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye gave to the French media. Although the matter of the withdrawal of the French army was one of the most important demands of his party, the party o African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF), the French optimists hoped he would stall on the question. 

In Chad, the decision announced via an ordinary press statement caused a bombshell, because the French Minister for Foreign Affairs had just left N'Dajemena. At first no one could believe it, because this country was considered as the most important strategic location on the African Continent, a "perfect Aircraft carrier" as one high ranked officer described it, and it was also considered a trusted alliance partner, whose ruling Déby dynasty had many reasons to be grateful to France over the decades due to the support of the French secret services and air force in saving them from being overthrown by military mutinies on multiple occasions. 

For the French Army which has for decades viewed itself as the "Gendarme of Africa" and used the nation since independence in 1960 as a base of operations to launch nearly 40 foreign operations (OPEX) this loss is an historical turning point. It has lost the means and infrastructure to mobilise operations in the region within a few hours notice, as was the case during operation "Serval" in Mali in 2013, launched urgently to prevent an offensive by Jihadist groups.

France Intends to remain "In another form"

In February 2023 President Macron declared his intention not to end the national military presence in Africa but to fundamentally reorganise it. "The logic is that our model is that there should no longer be military bases there as they currently exist" he declared in a speech concerning "Franco-African relations". He announced a major reduction in the number of troops and increased participation with local partners. France had just been driven out of Mali and Burkina Faso by military coups which it had not foreseen. Demonstrations against French influence spread everywhere throughout West Africa. The military and political establishment were (finally!) understanding that a change in relationship was necessary concerning the populations and militaries of the nations concerned, who could no longer tolerate French intrusions. 

After Macron's speech, the military high command and the parliamentary deputies in Macron's camp promised greater "discretion" "a lighter tread" and even a "paradigm shift".... "Now, we have flipped the relationship on its head, now the one who calls the shots is the [African] partner". Said Thierry Buckhard, Army Chief of Staff, speaking to the French parliament in January 2024. Over the following months, the chief of staff worked on new provisions with two necessities; respond to the wishes of the local regimes presented as "partners" and conserve and maintain influence, a difficult balancing act. Under these plans every base except for Djibouti - which has a special status in French strategy and with its 1500 strong garrison is considered indispensable- will drastically reduce its personnel, between 150 and 300 soldiers depending on the base and instead of being given to the host nation will be co-administered by them. "These bases are key to guarding our capability to intervene militarily" explained Deputy Jean-Michael Jacques, Macron supporter and president of the commission for national defence. The remarks come from a report in May 2023. "The strategy presented by the head of state prevents the growing rift that would nullify our military presence in Africa and consequently our influence on the continent"1. 

In a report on French Defence policy by another Deputy, Thomas Gassilloud, repeats the thinking that reigns in Paris "Remain, in another form". According to Gassilloud who is close to the Presidential Palace and served in the army before entering politics, the destiny of France is linked to Africa. That is why it is vital to rebuild "strategic intimacy". "Without a strong reaction, we will face the risk of the degradation of our influence in French-speaking Africa". He underlines 2. When ill winds blow, continued Buckhard, it is necessary to know when to bend, but always with the aim of standing tall again. "We must be capable of quickly shrinking our presence and disappear from the landscape to then restore our presence as needed... [This last] must include the ability to liaise with local militaries and secure strategic access by sea and air".

France can continue to influence the destiny of Africa. It must not "let its hands drop" in the words of General Jerome Pellistrandi in a May 2023 edition of National Defence dedicated to "new relations" between France and Africa. "Quite the opposite" says this senior figure and seasoned debater who regularly appears on television, "more than ever it is necessary to act, but differently... An influence strategy is more necessary now than ever"3. In that same publication another eminent General, Bruno Clement-Bollee, asserted that "it is imperative to react and decide on an ambitious, robust and realistic strategy that will restore to France the status of great nation"4. This is where its international standing lies, above all in its permanent presence on the United Nations Security Council, partly justified by its influence in French-speaking Africa.

The subject of Africa is not solely a question of influence. The French military views the continent as ideal terrain to test its soldiers and equipment, especially in deserts and near desert like environments, offering fringe benefits, career advancement opportunities, shared experiences and adventure. "Our martial culture contains a strong African flavour, affecting our tastes and nostalgia. How will [the new provisions] change the appeal of a military career?" asked right wing Deputy Jean-Louis Thieriot (Republicans) during a discussion by Buckhard inside the National Assembly. It is therefore necessary to reshape the offer of military co-operation, so that what is lost on the one hand is regained through intensive collaboration. That is the indispensable "corollary" according to another of Macron's deputies (and former soldier) Ms. Laetitia Saint-Paul. 

Collaboration was the core of French strategy in the period immediately following independence of the African colonies. It was only from 1970 onwards that direct foreign intervention became the preffered tool of French rulers in resolving political crisis through military means. This period became known as "Jaguar diplomacy" named after the fighter jet that ended service in 1972. This latter period probably ended in 2022 after the disastrous Operation "Barkhane".

Reinvent collaboration or disappear

Now, we arrive at the subject of how to rebuild collaboration and conserving links between the French and local armies; instead of returning sovereignty over the military bases, the idea is to transform them into academies, national schools with a regional objective (ENVR) with the goal of being co-managed by France and the host nation. This project is not new, it dates back to the 1990s. At present nineteen such institutions exist throughout the continent in Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Benin, Gabon and in Cameroon. Combined they are capable of instructing 3000 Non-Commissioned Officers and Cadets annually, and thus foster "intimacy".

Now France plans to rapidly multiply them. That is the task of the Directorate of Security and Defence Co-operation (DCSD), a section under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by an officer and dealing almost exclusively with Africa. Of the 313 collaborators sent abroad most went to Africa, and mainly to the former colonies. On the previous 9th of July the director of the DCSD General Colcombet visited Gabon to inaugarate the opening of School for the administration of Defence Forces in Libreville (EAFDL). This French base also hosts an Academy for environmental protection and natural resources. In his speech Colcombet aluded to "historical evolution" and an "important turning point" in the history of Franco-Gabonese relations. But the goal of these schools is not just to train African militaries; they also must "preserve logistical, human and equipment links to those nations." Jean-Marie Bockel stressed at a meeting with members of the Senate in May 2024. In short, to maintain a foothold abroad in case of need...

A former Minister under Nicholas Sarkozy, who famously declared his willingness "to sign the death warrant of French Africa"5 in 2007, which prompted his dismissal, Mr. Bockel has been interested in these matters for some time. His son, a soldier, was killed in Mali in 2019. In 2024 Macron appointed him "special envoy" tasked with study the reorganisation of the disposition of the French Army in Africa. His task was to liaise with the concerned heads of state and draft a list of proposals which he submitted just three days before the announcements of Senegal and Chad. The choice of appointment of Mr. Bockel followed a certain kind of logic; in 2013 while a Senator he and his colleague Jeanny Lorgeaux wrote a report "on France's presence in coveted Africa" which summarised the current priorities well. "It is our duty to be there" the report says, "because we are betting a part of our future growth in Africa" While they advised "giving an African meaning to the French presence in Africa" both Senators concluded that the remaining 8 military bases "should be maintained"6.

It was a different era then. France had just launched Operation "Serval" in Mali, with military success and the support of the majority of the African states, and was preparing to launch Operation "Sangaris" in Central Africa. France had a certain grand reputation then. Eleven years later and it looks like a relic of the past. By trying to "re-invent military partnerships instead of demilitarising Franco-Africa realtions" researcher Thierry Vircoloun explains, "the government attempted to carry out half measures which pleased no one"7. Its military presence may become an important issue during the Presidential elections in Gabon, where the Bongo family were ousted in a Coup in 2023, and in the Ivory Coast, both elections are schedule for 2025, it is possible that the French Army will be expelled from both countries as well.

Remi Carayol

___________________________________________________________

1: Jean-Michel Jacques, Report made on behalf of the committee on national defense and the armed forces on the draft law relating to the military budget for the years 2024 to 2030, and containing various decisions on national defense, n°1234, National Assembly, May 12, 2023.

 2: Thomas Gassilloud, Information report on the hearings of the committee on French defense policy in Africa, n°2461, National Assembly, April 10, 2024.

3: Jérôme Pellistrandi, «A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest,” Revue Défense nationale, n° 860, Paris, May 2023.

 4: Bruno Clément-Bollée, “France, becoming a true balancing power again”, Revue Défense nationale, n° 860, Parizo, majo 2023.

 5: A term that defines France's neocolonial relations with Africa. (TT)

6: Jeanny Lorgeoux and Jean-marie Bockel, report made on behalf of the committee on foreign affairs, defense and the armed forces on France's presence in coveted Africa, n°104, French Senate, Paris, October 29, 2013.

 7: Thierry Vircoulon, "The dilemma of the Franco-African military relationship: reinvent or turn the page?", French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), November 18, 2024.

War on Christmas, the Agacher strip clash

 

President Sankara in front with beret visits Agacher during conflict in December 1985

 

On Christmas day 1985 the West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso found themselves in a military conflict. The dispute was called by some African leaders as "the war of the poor" due to the economic conditions within both countries and became known commonly as the Agacher strip War. The Agacher strip was a territory bordering both nations, in the furthest north of Burkina Faso and as part of Mali's southern border. The clashes lasted five days before the International Court of Justice arbitrated. Casualties are had to accurately but are estimated as high as 300 including civilians and military. 

The situation was essentially powder keg next to an open flame. Agacher was a porous border, people living their often crossed what was suppsoed to be the recognised border. Cattle farmers would trespass to graze their cattle on the best lands in the area. And the territory was beleived to be rich in natural resources. Both nations had been pursuing their claims to the territory for many  years with sporadic shooting in 1974. But relations between Mali and Burkina Faso were especially poor by 1985. Burkina Faso's leader Thomas Sankara had publicly urged on revolution in Mali during a period of unrest 

“The other peoples who are on our borders also need a revolution […] I want to talk about Mali. […] The revolution of the people of Burkina Faso is available to the people of Mali who need it. Because he alone will allow him to fight against hunger, thirst, ignorance; and to fight above all against the forces of neocolonial and imperialist domination”.

Speech from September 1985, machine translated from French

Meanwhile Sankara suspected Mali's leader Moussa Traore of working with Burkinabe exiles and the Ivory Coast against him. Further aggravating the situation was the Burkina Faso census being conducted at the time which included the communities in Agacher and border settlements claimed by Mali. Burkina Faso also deployed soldiers to the area without notification resulting in confrontation with Mali authorities. Burkina Faso announced it would withdraw its soldiers but had not done so by the time the conflict had started.

On the 25th of December Mali launched its offensive, over five days its forces successfully occupied a large part of the strip with the Burkinabe forces lead by Blaise Compaore forced to disperse and resort to ambush and delaying tactics. On December 30th a truce sponsored by African leaders was struck and held. In January 1986 the two countries began desecalting, prisoners were exchanged and eventually a time table for withdrawing forces was agreed. Both governments accused each other, Burkina Faso stated it was the victim of aggression while Mali maintained that its operation was to protect its territorial integrity. By that December the International Court of Justice had decided to split the territory roughly in half with Mali taking the West and Burkina Faso the east. Both nations accepted this proposal and that was the end of hostilities between the two countries.

The reason I'm outlining this short conflict is the connection to Thomas Sankara. Thomas Sankara was Marxist revolutionary and statesmen who came to power through a coup d'etat in the former French colony of Upper Volta in 1983. In 1984 as part of Sankara's reforms the country was renamed to Burkina Faso. Sankara's charisma, interventionist policies and lack of readily available information about him or his time in government (in English anyway) and his tragic end, deposed and killed in 1987 in another coup d'etat by his close colleague and fellow band member Blaise Compaore, created the perfect conditions for a posthoumous cult of personality. Sankara is extremely popular today amongst certain left-wing circles and while its difficult to find information about in English, its almost possible to find even mild criticism.

So, I think the Agacher Strip, both the long running dispute and the conflict it birthed are an excellent demonstration of reality. It is possible that Thomas Sankara was truly as selfless and brilliant as he is presented by his admirers. But he was also the leader of a government and a nation state and an active participant in the international community. This means that ultimately his personal qualities aren't of much importance because both he and the Burkinabe revolution he promoted had to work within a system that constrained and limited them. 

As seen by the dispute over territory in Agacher. Two nations wanted to augment their security and natural wealth fought over a territory both had claimed. While Sankara had encouraged Malians to oust Muossa Traore in speeches and print there was no serious attempt to link the struggle for control of Agacher to a revolution in Mali. And Mali despite gaining the upper hand against the armed forces of Burkina Faso made no attempt to deliver a serious blow to Burkina Faso, its forces remained within the territory that was disputed. And after the International Court of Justice recommended splitting the territory both sides agreed and scaled back their aggressive measures. Both governments came to an agreement they could live with at the cost of a few hundred of their citizens. 

Furthermore, despite Sankara being an open Marxist with close co-operation with Cuba the Cold War dynamics of East vs West played no role in this conflict. Moussa Traore had taken steps to improve relations with France but his regime and especially its military relied heavily on the Soviet Union. The air force that bombed Burkinabe positions and villages flew Mig-21s and its tanks and equipment were also from the Soviet military. There were at least 50 Soviet military advisers present in the country at the time of the conflict offering support as well.

MiG-21 in the service of the Malian air force

Ultimately it didn't matter that Sankara was in power at all. The tensions between the two nations predated him and they were fought by means that trump ideological postures and by diplomacy and force, the tools available to all states and endorsed by the international authorities so long as they occurr in the proper manner.

Ethiopia’s Red Terror Against Ethiopian Reds

Ethiopia’s Red Terror

In the 1970s the political situation in Ethiopia was very chaotic, a military council called the Dergue replaced the Emperor Haile Selassie, meanwhile student movements, unions and political parties were making their presence felt.

The Dergue soon felt threatened by these movements outside of its control and in response to rising violence declared a Red Terror and began imprisoning, torturing and murdering thousands of Ethiopians. The Dergue made no secret of this, its leader Colonel Mengistu talked openly about it in speeches in the radio and in the press, and Dergue agents often left the bodies of victims on display in the streets of Addis Ababa.

Curiously the main targets for the brutal repression were those who arguably were its fellow travellers. The Dergue publicly supported Communist revolution of the Marxist-Leninist variety and developed close links to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Meanwhile it try to exterminate a rival Marxist-Leninist party and engaged in brutal and indiscriminate conflict with Eritrean speratists in the north  who were also lead by a Marxist-Leninist party.

The video and transcription are an account from one of the victims of the Terror campaign and her testimony includes graphic accounts of torture and murder.

CW: for physical abuse and torture.

Link https://youtu.be/opqIf3dZ3xs

In the 1970s up to half a million people were killed during the brutal campaign of repression launched by Ethiopia's military regime called the Derg. Hear from one survivor who was imprisoned and tortured.

Memorial to victims of the Terror https://thevelvetrocket.com/2010/05/08/the-red-terror-martyrs-memorial/

[Program Producer Max Pierson]

Throughout history though there have been far more brutal and overt forms of government repression. We’ve got an example of that next as we go back to 1977, when Ethiopia’s military regime was involved in a violent campaign against any form of opposition.

It was called Ethiopia’s Red Terror, Alex Last has been speaking to a woman who was imprisoned and tortured by the regime, and you may find parts of her story distressing.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

It could be anybody, our friends were being taken. You were saying when would my turn be? It was devastating, it was mind blowing, it was unbelievable.

Alex Last:

One night in 1977 Ethiopian Security in Addis Ababa came to arrest a young woman with an unusual first name, she is called Original Wolde Giorgis and she was just 24 years old. She would be just one more victim of Ethiopia’s military regime the Dergue.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

I was at home with a very wicked headache when plainclothes people, they came and I just went out with a very very tiny night dress on. And barefoot, my mother was so surprised and frightened she just brought something to put on my shoulders. Nothing else, so I was, I was really half naked when I was taken, and they took me to the office of the Dergue, the old Menelik palace.

So when I went there, there was a commander and he said “go and tear her apart”.

Alex Last:

Original was a mid-ranking member of the EPRP the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. A popular left-wing underground movement which opposed the country’s new military regime called the Dergue.

The Dergue had taken power following the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and though it adopted Communism as its ideology and spoke of revolution for many on the left it was simply a brutal undemocratic, authoritarian regime. Certainly it was ruthless towards its perceived enemies, in 1976 as opposition violence intensified across the country the Dergue launched a campaign of murder, arrest and torture against so called counter0revolutionaries.

The EPRP was a principal target in homage to Soviet history the Dergue called their campaign the Red Terror.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

Their Cadres would just go out on the street, they see a youth they shoot and kill him. And they killed so many young people. It could be anybody, they don’t ask, they don’t inquire they just shoot.

Alex Last:

And the Dergue regime wanted to show its work, the corpses of its victims would be dumped on the streets as the BBC reported at the time.

[Archival BBC report]

In the last few weeks people who have been coming to work in Addis after the dawn curfews been lifted have often had to bypass bodies which are displayed at prominent street corners. The victims have always been shot in the back of the head and they usually bear a notice pinned to their chests saying that they were enemies of the revolution. Nobody knows the exact number of people who’ve died in this so-called Red Terror, but the essence of revolutionary justice apparently is that its quick.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

They used to throw the bodies on the streets, on the streets, that is not only it, they used to ask for the price of the bullet for the people they have killed. That is real, the shocking part is after you paid they never give you the body. No mother whose son or daughter was killed in the Red Terror has a body to bury. They didn’t.

Alex Last:

Anyone could be a suspect, killed, arrested or tortured. And in this climate of fear many were denounced innocent or not. When they came for Original they took her to one of the interrogation centres in the capital Addis Ababa, a place with a brutal reputation and there her ordeal began.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

I could hear a boy groaning, I think he was being tortured, the investigator just pushed me from behind so that I fell flat on my face, and then he beat me with a whip. I kept quiet and they said “oh, this lady needs something else.”

Alex Last:

Original still wearing her nightie, was trussed up and hung upside down from a horizontal pole under her knees. Then the beatings and torture began again. Here she describes the brutality she experienced.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

Imagine, me being half dressed, being swung like that. And they beat me for hours, I can’t imagine how to describe that torture. They beat you and beat you and beat you. The only result was that the inside pf your feet is like, like raw meat.

And unfortunately for me they tore my toes. The marks of the torture are still there. After two hours they let me down and took me to his office. I couldn’t walk, he just pulled me and put me in the office, somebody wearing white came along and said “who have you slapped inside there?” why he said the corridor is full of blood.

He said “please call somebody, have the floor cleaned and do something about this blood.”

The two things I most remember of this torture is that you get very very cold. You shiver I don’t know why, and then you are very very thirsty. For my shivering the guard was kind enough to say there was a man who was killed yesterday, he has some clothes so you better put them on. So, there was blood on the clothes but I was really thankful and I wrapped it around myself.

Alex Last:

That wasn’t the end of the torture, but Original considers herself one of the luckier ones. She was not killed. She was transferred to one of the overcrowded prisons of Addis Ababa. To keep their spirits up the inmates would tell each other stories, and talk of revolution in far off lands.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

Can’t imagine how many stories I told to the kids, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Count of Monte Cristo, otherwise you talk about the July 26^th Revolution and we talk about the Dien Bien Phu, we talk about the Long March. Depends on the audience, sometimes they like it sometimes they don’t and we go around the world through the stories.

Alex Last:

Many did not survive long in the prisons. Names would be called and it was soon clear to all that many were being taken away and executed.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

I never forget their names, I never forget the way they looked when they go out. Even after so many years I can’t talk about it without emotion. And there were others, who were summoned after 5:00pm, when they walked out of the compound they walked as if a price had been put on them. They walked so tall and proud, and so many people passed through my eyes, to be killed.

Alex Last:

After two years Original was suddenly released, but by the end of the 1970s the Red Terror campaign was largely over. The EPRP ceased to be a major threat to the regime. It’s not clear how many were killed during the Red Terror across Ethiopia, estimates range from 100,000 to half a million.

After the fall of the Dergue in 1991 some leaders of the regime were put on trial for crimes against humanity. But for some the full extent of the Terror has yet to be addressed. Original Wolde Giorgis returned to study law at Addis Ababa University and is now a leading lawyer in Ethiopia focusing on women’s rights.

She says she has forgiven those responsible for her treatment, but the scars of the Red Terror are still felt across Ethiopia.

Original Wolde Giorgis:

In my family, in my neighbourhood, in the friends of my sisters and in the friends of my brothers in my classmates in high school, in the University and the people I met in prison, so many were taken away and executed. There is a void, the wounds are still there, there are still families and people suffering and the gap of the generation is enormous.

Max Pierson:

Original Wolde Giorgis was talking to Alex Last, and you can hear an extended version of that interview in the Witness podcast, just search for BBC podcasts and then Witness.

Incidentally the Ethiopian dictator Colonel Mengistu was sentenced in absentia to death for crimes against humanity, but he’s currently living in exile in Zimbabwe.

Coming out of the Shadows - Intersex people in Kenya

LGBTI people in Africa have become a pawn in cultural arguments. Their experiences and struggles are used both as ammunition for homophobic commentaries on the supposed damage that tolerance can lead to wider society. Or to cement racist narratives about savage natives.

So I think its important to see what they themselves have to say on these matters. This a documentary about the struggles of Kenya's Intersex population and how attitudes towards them have changed over time. Its roughly positive and includes a formerly homophobic priest who having attended a sensitivity training course became an advocate for his community and mentor to a local intersex person.

The Downfall of Robert Mugabe

Ok not really,

Several bodyguards of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe have been punished for failing to prevent him falling down the steps from a podium, in an incident that drew widespread mockery online.
The 90-year-old dictator was captured on camera as he stumbled on a red carpet and fell to his knees after addressing supporters who gathered to welcome him back from a trip to Ethiopia at Harare airport last week.
His staff scrambled to cover up the embarrassing incident, with photographers at the scene saying they were forced to delete an image which could have undermined Mugabe's claim that, despite his advanced age, he is "fit as two fiddles".

Clearly it was the fault of his security team for not being able to defy a little gravity. What's the point of being an enforcer for an autocrat if you can break physical  laws along with the nation's legal code.

All kidding aside I'll say this for the man he's maintained a tight -but at times shaky- grip on the nation for 35 years now. Whilst facing some stiff opposition both abroad and internally. But virtually everyone stagnates when they've been on the job for a few years, so we shouldn't at all be surprised that a politician has made some enemies and caused a few scandals. What about his glory days when ZANU-PF was just called plain ZANU, and his Peoples Liberation Army backed by China's original PLA and North Korea.

Well truth is the early days weren't all that great either, here's a contemporary article written by the defunct Big Flame. We're going back in time to the 80's, thankfully its a land that missed the crap fashions.

Lincoln and Emancipation - Howard Zinn

The past couple of years have seen a lot more films about slavery, 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained and Lincoln. Over all I think this is a positive trend, there's quite a bit of squeamishness when it comes to the subject and the desire to either let sleeping dogs lie or to shift the blame a strong. Though as always films have a tendency to gloss over a lot of important events and people to focus on a text book hero figure.

I think the best example of this practice was Lincoln, not just the film but his treatment by history as a whole. Lincoln virtually all credit for ending slavery in the United States, clearly he's role (the Civil War mainly) was very decisive in resolving this issue, but most mainstream histories of the period give the impression that he acted alone, and downplay or completely ignore the importance of the Abolitionist Movement which were years ahead of Lincoln. And of course the role of American Blacks both freemen and slaves. I've seen more then a few versions that portrayed Southern Blacks as docile and patiently waiting for the Union army to come liberate them.

So to help correct this bizarre failing here's an extract from Howard Zinn. Like his work on the American struggle for independence, this account's main focus is on the failings of politicians including Lincoln and the importance of the "little people" in bringing an end to this brutal practice.

Historian Howard Zinn on Abraham Lincoln and the eventual abolition of slavery in the US. Which shows that Spielberg's new film, Lincoln, is far from historically accurate.

John Brown1 was executed by the state of Virginia with the approval of the national government. It was the national government which, while weakly enforcing the law ending the slave trade, sternly enforced the laws providing for the return of fugitives to slavery. It was the national government that, in Andrew Jackson's administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.
Such a national government would never accept an end to slavery by rebellion. It would end slavery only under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North. It was Abraham Lincoln who combined perfectly the needs of business, the political ambition of the new Republican party, and the rhetoric of humanitarianism. He would keep the abolition of slavery not at the top of his list of priorities, but close enough to the top so it could be pushed there temporarily by abolitionist pressures and by practical political advantage.

Lincoln could skillfully blend the interests of the very rich and the interests of the black at a moment in history when these interests met. And he could link these two with a growing section of Americans, the white, up-and-coming, economically ambitious, politically active middle class. As Richard Hofstadter puts it:

Thoroughly middle class in his ideas, he spoke for those millions of Americans who had begun their lives as hired workers-as farm hands, clerks, teachers, mechanics, flatboat men, and rail- splitters-and had passed into the ranks of landed farmers, prosperous grocers, lawyers, merchants, physicians and politicians.

Lincoln could argue with lucidity and passion against slavery on moral grounds, while acting cautiously in practical politics. He believed "that the institution of slavery is founded on injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends to increase rather than abate its evils." (Put against this Frederick Douglass's statement on struggle, or Garrison's "Sir, slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement") Lincoln read the Constitution strictly, to mean that Congress, because of the Tenth Amendment (reserving to the states powers not specifically given to the national government), could not constitutionally bar slavery in the states.

When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which did not have the rights of a state that was directly under the jurisdiction of Congress, Lincoln said this would be Constitutional, but it should not be done unless the people in the District wanted it. Since most there were white, this killed the idea. As Hofstadter said of Lincoln's statement, it "breathes the fire of an uncompromising insistence on moderation."

Lincoln refused to denounce the Fugitive Slave Law publicly. He wrote to a friend: "I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down . .. but I bite my lips and keep quiet." And when he did propose, in 1849, as a Congressman, a resolution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, he accompanied this with a section requiring local authorities to arrest and return fugitive slaves coming into Washington. (This led Wendell Phillips, the Boston abolitionist, to refer to him years later as "that slavehound from Illinois.") He opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa.

Behold Lincoln's idea of moderate compromise.

In his 1858 campaign in Illinois for the Senate against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln spoke differently depending on the views of his listeners (and also perhaps depending on how close it was to the election). Speaking in northern Illinois in July (in Chicago), he said:

Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

Two months later in Charleston, in southern Illinois, Lincoln told his audience:

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races (applause); that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.. . .
And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Behind the secession of the South from the Union, after Lincoln was elected President in the fall of 1860 as candidate of the new Republican party, was a long series of policy clashes between South and North. The clash was not over slavery as a moral institution-most northerners did not care enough about slavery to make sacrifices for it, certainly not the sacrifice of war. It was not a clash of peoples (most northern whites were not economically favored, not politically powerful; most southern whites were poor farmers, not decisionmakers) but of elites. The northern elite wanted economic expansion-free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that; they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as making continuation of their pleasant and prosperous way of life impossible in the future.

So, when Lincoln was elected, seven southern states seceded from the Union. Lincoln initiated hostilities by trying to repossess the federal base at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and four more states seceded. The Confederacy was formed; the Civil War was on.
Lincoln's first Inaugural Address, in March 1861, was conciliatory toward the South and the seceded states: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And with the war four months on, when General John C. Fremont in Missouri declared martial law and said slaves of owners resisting the United States were to be free, Lincoln countermanded this order. He was anxious to hold in the Union the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware.

It was only as the war grew more bitter, the casualties mounted, desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists threatened to unravel the tattered coalition behind Lincoln that he began to act against slavery. Hofstadter puts it this way: "Like a delicate barometer, he recorded the trend of pressures, and as the Radical pressure increased he moved toward the left." Wendell Phillips said that if Lincoln was able to grow "it is because we have watered him."

Racism in the North was as entrenched as slavery in the South, and it would take the war to shake both. New York blacks could not vote unless they owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites). A proposal to abolish this, put on the ballot in 1860, was defeated two to one (although Lincoln carried New York by 50,000 votes). Frederick Douglass commented: "The black baby of Negro suffrage was thought too ugly to exhibit on so grand an occasion. The Negro was stowed away like some people put out of sight their deformed children when company comes."

Wendell Phillips, with all his criticism of Lincoln, recognized the possibilities in his election. Speaking at the Tremont Temple in Boston the day after the election, Phillips said:

If the telegraph speaks truth, for the first time in our history the slave has chosen a President of the United States. . . . Not an Abolitionist, hardly an antislavery man, Mr. Lincoln consents to represent an antislavery idea. A pawn on the political chessboard, his value is in his position; with fair effort, we may soon change him for knight, bishop or queen, and sweep the board. (Applause)

Conservatives in the Boston upper classes wanted reconciliation with the South. At one point they stormed an abolitionist meeting at that same Tremont Temple, shortly after Lincoln's election, and asked that concessions be made to the South "in the interests of commerce, manufactures, agriculture."

The spirit of Congress, even after the war began, was shown in a resolution it passed in the summer of 1861, with only a few dissenting votes: "... this war is not waged . . . for any purpose of... overthrowing or interfering with the rights of established institutions of those states, but... to preserve the Union."

The abolitionists stepped up their campaign. Emancipation petitions poured into Congress in 1861 and 1862. In May of that year, Wendell Phillips said: "Abraham Lincoln may not wish it; he cannot prevent it; the nation may not will it, but the nation cannot prevent it. I do not care what men want or wish; the negro is the pebble in the cog-wheel, and the machine cannot go on until you get him out."
In July Congress passed a Confiscation Act, which enabled the freeing of slaves of those fighting the Union. But this was not enforced by the Union generals, and Lincoln ignored the nonenforcement. Garrison called Lincoln's policy "stumbling, halting, prevaricating, irresolute, weak, besotted," and Phillips said Lincoln was "a first-rate second-rate man."
 

An exchange of letters between Lincoln and Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, in August of 1862, gave Lincoln a chance to express his views. Greeley wrote:

Dear Sir. I do not intrude to tell you-for you must know already-that a great proportion of those who triumphed in your election ... are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels,... We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. ... We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss . .. with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act....
We think you are unduly influenced by the councils ... of certain politicians hailing from the Border Slave States.

Greeley appealed to the practical need of winning the war. "We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the blacks of the South, whether we allow them to fight for us or not.... I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the land."

Lincoln had already shown his attitude by his failure to countermand an order of one of his commanders, General Henry Halleck, who forbade fugitive Negroes to enter his army's lines. Now he replied to Greeley:

Dear Sir: ... I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. .. . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . .. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. Yours. A. Lincoln.

So Lincoln distinguished between his "personal wish" and his "official duty."

When in September 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, it was a military move, giving the South four months to stop rebelling, threatening to emancipate their slaves if they continued to fight, promising to leave slavery untouched in states that came over to the North:

That on the 1st day of January, AD 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and forever free. . . .

Thus, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued January 1, 1863, it declared slaves free in those areas still fighting against the Union (which it listed very carefully), and said nothing about slaves behind Union lines. As Hofstadter put it, the Emancipation Proclamation "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading." The London Spectator wrote concisely: "The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States." 

 

Limited as it was, the Emancipation Proclamation spurred antislavery forces. By the summer of 1864, 400,000 signatures asking legislation to end slavery had been gathered and sent to Congress, something unprecedented in the history of the country. That April, the Senate had adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring an end to slavery, and in January 1865, the House of Representatives followed.

With the Proclamation, the Union army was open to blacks. And the more blacks entered the war, the more it appeared a war for their liberation. The more whites had to sacrifice, the more resentment there was, particularly among poor whites in the North, who were drafted by a law that allowed the rich to buy their way out of the draft for $300. And so the draft riots of 1863 took place, uprisings of angry whites in northern cities, their targets not the rich, far away, but the blacks, near at hand. It was an orgy of death and violence. A black man in Detroit described what he saw: a mob, with kegs of beer on wagons, armed with clubs and bricks, marching through the city, attacking black men, women, children. He heard one man say: "If we are got to be killed up for Negroes then we will kill every one in this town."
 

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in human history up to that time: 600,000 dead on both sides, in a population of 30 million-the equivalent, in the United States of 1978, with a population of 250 million, of 5 million dead. As the battles became more intense, as the bodies piled up, as war fatigue grew, the existence of blacks in the South, 4 million of them, became more and more a hindrance to the South, and more and more an opportunity for the North. Du Bois, in Black Reconstruction, pointed this out:

.. . these slaves had enormous power in their hands. Simply by stopping work, they could threaten the Confederacy with starvation. By walking into the Federal camps, they showed to doubting Northerners the easy possibility of using them thus, but by the same gesture, depriving their enemies of their use in just these fields....
It was this plain alternative that brought Lee's sudden surrender. Either the South must make terms with its slaves, free them, use them to fight the North, and thereafter no longer treat them as bondsmen; or they could surrender to the North with the assumption that the North after the war must help them to defend slavery, as it had before.

George Rawick, a sociologist and anthropologist, describes the development of blacks up to and into the Civil War:

The slaves went from being frightened human beings, thrown among strange men, including fellow slaves who were not their kinsmen and who did not speak their language or understand their customs and habits, to what W. E. B. DuBois once described as the general strike whereby hundreds of thousands of slaves deserted the plantations, destroying the Smith's ability to supply its army.

Black women played an important part in the war, especially toward the end. Sojourner Truth, the legendary ex-slave who had been active in the women's rights movement, became recruiter of black troops for the Union army, as did Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin of Boston. Harriet Tubman raided plantations, leading black and white troops, and in one expedition freed 750 slaves. Women moved with the colored regiments that grew as the Union army marched through the South, helping their husbands, enduring terrible hardships on the long military treks, in which many children died. They suffered the fate of soldiers, as in April 1864, when Confederate troops at Fort Pillow, Kentucky, massacred Union soldiers who had surrendered-black and white, along with women and children in an adjoining camp. 

It has been said that black acceptance of slavery is proved by the fact that during the Civil War, when there were opportunities for escape, most slaves stayed on the plantation. In fact, half a million ran away- about one in five, a high proportion when one considers that there was great difficulty in knowing where to go and how to live.

The owner of a large plantation in South Carolina and Georgia wrote in 1862: "This war has taught us the perfect impossibility of placing the least confidence in the negro. In too numerous instances those we esteemed the most have been the first to desert us." That same year, a lieutenant in the Confederate army and once mayor of Savannah, Georgia, wrote: "I deeply regret to learn that the Negroes still continue to desert to the enemy."

A minister in Mississippi wrote in the fall of 1862: "On my arrival was surprised to hear that our negroes stampeded to the Yankees last night or rather a portion of them.... I think every one, but with one or two exceptions will go to the Yankees. Eliza and her family are certain to go. She does not conceal her thoughts but plainly manifests her opinions by her conduct-insolent and insulting." And a woman's plantation journal of January 1865:

The people are all idle on the plantations, most of them seeking their own pleasure. Many servants have proven faithful, others false and rebellious against all authority and restraint. .. . Their condition is one of perfect anarchy and rebellion. They have placed themselves in perfect antagonism to their owners and to all government and control.. . . Nearly all the house servants have left their homes; and from most of the plantations they have gone in a body.

Also in 1865, a South Carolina planter wrote to the New York Tribune that

the conduct of the Negro in the late crisis of our affairs has convinced me that we were all laboring under a delusion.... I believed that these people were content, happy, and attached to their masters. But events and reflection have caused me to change these positions.. .. If they were content, happy and attached to their masters, why did they desert him in the moment of his need and flock to an enemy, whom they did not know; and thus left their perhaps really good masters whom they did know from infancy?

Genovese notes that the war produced no general rising of slaves, but: "In Lafayette County, Mississippi, slaves responded to the Emancipation Proclamation by driving off their overseers and dividing the land and implements among themselves." Aptheker reports a conspiracy of Negroes in Arkansas in 1861 to kill their enslavers. In Kentucky that year, houses and barns were burned by Negroes, and in the city of New Castle slaves paraded through the city "singing political songs, and shouting for Lincoln," according to newspaper accounts. After the Emancipation Proclamation, a Negro waiter in Richmond, Virginia, was arrested for leading "a servile plot," while in Yazoo City, Mississippi, slaves burned the courthouse and fourteen homes.
There were special moments: Robert Smalls (later a South Carolina Congressman) and other blacks took over a steamship, The Planter, and sailed it past the Confederate guns to deliver it to the Union navy.

Most slaves neither submitted nor rebelled. They continued to work, waiting to see what happened. When opportunity came, they left, often joining the Union army. Two hundred thousand blacks were in the army and navy, and 38,000 were killed. Historian James McPherson says: "Without their help, the North could not have won the war as soon as it did, and perhaps it could not have won at all."
What happened to blacks in the Union army and in the northern cities during the war gave some hint of how limited the emancipation would be, even with full victory over the Confederacy. Off- duty black soldiers were attacked in northern cities, as in Zanesville, Ohio, in February 1864, where cries were heard to "kill the nigger." Black soldiers were used for the heaviest and dirtiest work, digging trenches, hauling logs and camion, loading ammunition, digging wells for white regiments. White privates received $13 a month; Negro privates received $10 a month.



Late in the war, a black sergeant of the Third South Carolina Volunteers, William Walker, marched his company to his captain's tent and ordered them to stack arms and resign from the army as a protest against what he considered a breach of contract, because of unequal pay. He was court-martialed and shot for mutiny. Finally, in June 1864, Congress passed a law granting equal pay to Negro soldiers.

The Confederacy was desperate in the latter part of the war, and some of its leaders suggested the slaves, more and more an obstacle to their cause, be enlisted, used, and freed. After a number of military defeats, the Confederate secretary of war, Judah Benjamin, wrote in late 1864 to a newspaper editor in Charleston: ". . . It is well known that General Lee, who commands so largely the confidence of the people, is strongly in favor of our using the negroes for defense, and emancipating them, if necessary, for that purpose. . . ." One general, indignant, wrote: "If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

By early 1865, the pressure had mounted, and in March President Davis of the Confederacy signed a "Negro Soldier Law" authorizing the enlistment of slaves as soldiers, to be freed by consent of their owners and their state governments. But before it had any significant effect, the war was over.
Former slaves, interviewed by the Federal Writers' Project in the thirties, recalled the war's end. Susie Melton:

I was a young gal, about ten years old, and we done heard that Lincoln gonna turn the niggers free. Ol' missus say there wasn't nothin' to it. Then a Yankee soldier told someone in Williamsburg that Lincoln done signed the 'mancipation. Was wintertime and mighty cold that night, but everybody commenced getting ready to leave. Didn't care nothin' about missus - was going to the Union lines. And all that night the niggers danced and sang right out in the cold. Next morning at day break we all started out with blankets and clothes and pots and pans and chickens piled on our backs, 'cause missus said we couldn't take no horses or carts. And as the sun come up over the trees, the niggers started to singing: Sun, you be here and I'll be gone
Sun, you be here and I'll be gone
Sun, you be here and I'll be gone
Bye, bye, don't grieve after me
Won't give you my place, not for yours
Bye, bye, don't grieve after me
Cause you be here and I'll be gone.
 

Anna Woods:

We wasn't there in Texas long when the soldiers marched in to tell us that we were free. ... I remembers one woman. She jumped on a barrel and she shouted. She jumped off and she shouted. She jumped hack on again and shouted some more. She kept that up for a long time, just jumping on a barrel and back off again.

Annie Mae Weathers said:

I remember hearing my pa say that when somebody came and hollered, "You niggers is free at last," say he just dropped his hoc and said in a queer voice, "Thank God for that."

The Federal Writers' Project recorded an ex-slave named Fannie Berry:

Niggers shoutin' and clappin' hands and singin'! Chillun runnin' all over the place beatin' time and yellin'! Everybody happy. Sho' did some celebratin'. Run to the kitchen and shout in the window:
"Mammy, don't you cook no more.
You's free! You's free!"

Many Negroes understood that their status after the war, whatever their situation legally, would depend on whether they owned the land they worked on or would be forced to be semislaves for others. In 1863, a North Carolina Negro wrote that "if the strict law of right and justice is to be observed, the country around me is the entailed inheritance of the Americans of African descent, purchased by the invaluable labor of our ancestors, through a life of tears and groans, under the lash and yoke of tyranny."

Abandoned plantations, however, were leased to former planters, and to white men of the North. As one colored newspaper said: "The slaves were made serfs and chained to the soil. . . . Such was the boasted freedom acquired by the colored man at the hands of the Yankee."

Under congressional policy approved by Lincoln, the property confiscated during the war under the Confiscation Act of July 1862 would revert to the heirs of the Confederate owners. Dr. John Rock, a black physician in Boston, spoke at a meeting: "Why talk about compensating masters? Compensate them for what? What do you owe them? What does the slave owe them? What does society owe them? Compensate the master? . . . It is the slave who ought to be compensated. The property of the South is by right the property of the slave. . . ."

Some land was expropriated on grounds the taxes were delinquent, and sold at auction. But only a few blacks could afford to buy this. In the South Carolina Sea Islands, out of 16,000 acres up for sale in March of 1863, freedmen who pooled their money were able to buy 2,000 acres, the rest being bought by northern investors and speculators. A freedman on the Islands dictated a letter to a former teacher now in Philadelphia:

My Dear Young Missus: Do, my missus, tell Linkum dat we wants land - dis bery land dat is rich wid de sweat ob de face and de blood ob we back. . . . We could a bin buy all we want, but dey make de lots too big, and cut we out.
De word cum from Mass Linkum's self, dat we take out claims and hold on ter um, an' plant um, and he will see dat we get um, every man ten or twenty acre. We too glad. We stake out an' list, but fore de time for plant, dese commissionaries sells to white folks all de best land. Where Linkum?

In early 1865, General William T. Sherman held a conference in Savannah, Georgia, with twenty Negro ministers and church officials, mostly former slaves, at which one of them expressed their need: "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and till it by our labor. . . ." Four days later Sherman issued "Special Field Order No. 15," designating the entire southern coastline 30 miles inland for exclusive Negro settlement. Freedmen could settle there, taking no more than 40 acres per family. By June 1865, forty thousand freedmen had moved onto new farms in this area. But President Andrew Johnson, in August of 1865, restored this land to the Confederate owners, and the freedmen were forced off, some at bayonet point.
Ex-slave Thomas Hall told the Federal Writers' Project:

Lincoln got the praise for freeing us, but did he do it? He gave us freedom without giving us any chance to live to ourselves and we still had to depend on the southern white man for work, food, and clothing, and he held us out of necessity and want in a state of servitude but little better than slavery.

The American government had set out to fight the slave states in 1861, not to end slavery, but to retain the enormous national territory and market and resources. Yet, victory required a crusade, and the momentum of that crusade brought new forces into national politics: more blacks determined to make their freedom mean something; more whites-whether Freedman's Bureau officials, or teachers in the Sea Islands, or "carpetbaggers" with various mixtures of humanitarianism and personal ambition-concerned with racial equality. There was also the powerful interest of the Republican party in maintaining control over the national government, with the prospect of southern black votes to accomplish this. Northern businessmen, seeing Republican policies as beneficial to them, went along for a while.

The result was that brief period after the Civil War in which southern Negroes voted, elected blacks to state legislatures and to Congress, introduced free and racially mixed public education to the South. A legal framework was constructed. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated the prewar Dred Scott decision by declaring that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" were citizens. It also seemed to make a powerful statement for racial equality, severely limiting "states' rights":
Excerpted from A People's history of the United States

• 1. Libcom note: John Brown was an American abolitionist who attempted to lead a violent uprising against slavery. 

PDF version here.

1917-1921: The Industrial Workers of Africa

The history of four years of the revolutionary multi-racial union in South Africa, the Industrial Workers of Africa, and the labour movement at the time.

"Fight for Africa, which you deserve"

Johannesburg, South Africa. May 1918. A group of African workers, and a handful of white radicals, meet in a small room behind a general store on the corner of Fox and McLaren streets, as they have done on a weekly basis for over a year. Several new faces are present, so Rueben Cetiwe, a key African militant, outlines the purpose of the gathering:

"We are here for Organisation, so that as soon as all of your fellow workers are organised, then we can see what we can do to abolish the Capitalist system. We are here for the salvation of the workers. We are here to organise and to fight for our rights and benefits."

This is a gathering of the Industrial Workers of Africa, a revolutionary syndicalist union that aims to organise the black workers who bear the brunt of capitalist exploitation in South Africa.
Since the country's industrial revolution began in the wake of diamond and gold discoveries in the 1860s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of workers from Australia, America, Europe and southern Africa have been drawn to the mines and surrounding industries that spring up almost overnight.
For the white workers drawn to the mines and cities of the vast new Witwatersrand complex from across the world, it is worth risking endemic silicosis for unmatched wages for skilled men. For poor white Afrikaners, the mines offer employment as share-cropping and family farming disintegrate in the wake of war and landlordism.

For Africans, the mines offer the wages needed to pay the tax collectors in the British and Portuguese colonies. These workers enter the cities as a conquered people, their lands under imperial authority, their chiefs colluding in labour recruitment to the mines. Weighed down with indentures, forbidden to organise unions, locked in all-male compounds on the mines, or segregated in grim ghettos in the interstices of the towns, their movement controlled by the internal passport, or "pass law" system that affects every black working man, their families forced to stay in the countryside: these men are the bed rock of South African capitalism.

By 1913, there are nearly 40,000 white workers, and around 240,000 African workers on the Witwatersrand. And ruling them all: the "Randlords," the millionaire mine owners, and their allies, the rural landlords.

There is resistance, however. In 1907, the white miners strike, but are driven back to work after scabs are brought in. In 1913, a general strike by white miners (joined by sections of the African labour force) succeeds in forcing the Randlords to the negotiating table (but not before imperial dragoons gun down 30 workers in downtown Johannesburg outside the Randlord's "Rand Club"). A second general strike in 1914 is suppressed through martial law.

The African workers also rise. In 1902, as the Anglo-Boer war ends, there is a labour shortage as Africans refuse to come to the mines. There are also a series of strikes, but these are suppressed. In 1913, African workers on the mines strike in the wake of the white miners' strike - but their strike is put down by troops.

Then, in mid-1917, a notice appears in Johannesburg, calling a meeting on the 19 July 1917 to "discuss matters of common interest between white and native workers". It is issued by the International Socialist League, a revolutionary syndicalist organisation influenced by the Industrial Workers of the World union and formed in 1915 in opposition to the First World War, and the racist and conservative policies of the all-white South African Labour Party and the craft unions supporting it.

Initially rooted amongst white labour militants, the International Socialist League is orientated from the start towards black workers. The League argues in its weekly paper, the International, for a "new movement" to found One Big Union that would overcome the "bounds of Craft and race and sex," "recognise no bounds of craft, no exclusions of colour," and destroy capitalism through a "lockout of the capitalist class."

From 1917 onwards, the International Socialist League begins to organise amongst workers of colour. In March 1917, it founds an Indian Workers Industrial Union in the port city of Durban; in 1918, it founds a Clothing Workers Industrial Union (later spreading to Johannesburg) and horse drivers' union in the diamond mining town of Kimberly; in Cape Town, a sister organisation, the Industrial Socialist League, founds the Sweet and Jam Workers Industrial Union that same year.
The meeting of 19 July 1917 is a success, and forms the basis for weekly study group meetings: led by International Socialists (notably Andrew Dunbar, founder of the IWW in South Africa in 1910), these meetings discuss capitalism, class struggle and the need for African workers to unionise in order to win higher wages and remove the pass system.

On the 27 September 1917, the study groups are transformed into a union, the Industrial Workers of Africa, modeled on the IWW and organised by an all-African committee. The new general union's demands are simple, uncompromising, summed up in the its slogan: "Sifuna Zonke!" ("We want everything!").
It is the first trade union for African workers ever formed in South Africa. The influence of the new union is widespread, although it numbers under two hundred people at this point.

After meeting the Industrial Workers, Talbot Williams of the nationalist African Peoples Organisation makes a speech (reissued as a pamphlet complete with the IWW preamble) calling for "the organisation of black labour, upon which the whole commercial and mining industry rests today."
In May 1918, Industrial Workers like T.W. Thibedi speak at an International Socialist League May Day rally, the first May day directed primarily towards workers of colour.

Within the main nationalist body on the Witwatersrand, the petty bourgeois-dominated Transvaal Native Congress, key Industrial Worker militants such as Cetiwe and Hamilton Kraai form part of a left, pro-labour, bloc that helps shift this sleepy organisation to the left in 1918 as an unprecedented wave of strikes by black and white workers begins to engulf the country.

After a Judge McFie - "a bear on the bench," in the words of the International- jails 152 striking African municipal workers in June 1918, the Transvaal Native Congress calls a mass rally of African workers in Johannesburg on the 10 June. Industrial Workers present call for a general strike, and an organising committee of International Socialists, Industrial Workers and Congressmen is established to take the process forward.

A week later the committee reports back: "the capitalists and workers are at war everywhere in every country," so workers should "strike and get what they should." On the 2 July, there will be general strike by African workers: for a 1 shilling a day pay raise and "for Africa which they deserved."
But weak organisation - and perhaps nerves and inexperience - lead the committee to call off the strike (although several thousand miners do not get the message and come out anyway).
Government does not forget, though, and arrests and charges seven activists - three from the International Socialists, three from the Industrial Workers, and two from Congress - for "incitement to public violence." The trial is a forerunner of the Treason Trials of the 1950s: it is the first time white and black activists are jointly charged for political activities in South Africa.
The case falls through for lack of evidence but Kraai and Cetiwe are among those who lose their jobs as a result of the trial. Both are central to a Native Congress-sponsored campaign against the pass laws, launched in March 1919.

When the conservatives in Congress call this struggle off in July, the two comrades move to Cape Town to establish an Industrial Workers branch, leaving Thibedi in charge of the Industrial Workers in Johannesburg. Organising amongst dockworkers, the syndicalist militants helped organise a joint strike by the Industrial Workers of Africa and two local unions, the Industrial and Commercial Union and the (white) National Union of Railways and Harbour Servants.
Supported by the Industrial Socialist League, the strike by more than 2,000 workers demands better wages and opposes food exports, which many workers believe is contributing to the country's high post-war inflation rate.

Although the strike does not win, it helps lay a basis for cooperation on the docks, and some years later, the Industrial Workers of Africa, the Industrial and Commercial Union and several other black unions merge to form the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, or ICU.
Not a syndicalist union - the ICU is influenced more by nationalist and traditionalist ideologies than anti-capitalism, and is run from above by a parasitic layer of petty bourgeois officials - the ICU still retains some syndicalist colouring during its dramatic rise and fall in the 1920s. This colouring includes the goal of One Big Union, and a constitution calling for "workers through their industrial organisations [to] take from the capitalist class the means of production, to be owned and controlled by the workers for the benefit of all, instead of for the profit of a few."
This must be reckoned part of the legacy of the Industrial Workers of Africa, a revolutionary syndicalist union fighting capitalism and racism in the heart of capitalist South Africa, at the height of colonialism in Africa.

In its "glorious period," between the 1880s and 1930s, revolutionary syndicalism was not just an international movement - it was also internationalist and anti-racist.
***
Here is their 1917 manifesto:

LISTEN, WORKERS, LISTEN!
(Manifesto of the Industrial Workers of Africa, issued in Johannesburg, September 1917, in Sesotho and isiZulu)
Workers of the Bantu race:
Why do you live in slavery? Why are you not free as other men are free? Why are you kicked and spat upon by your masters? Why must you carry a pass before you can move anywhere? And if you are found without one, why are you thrown into prison? Why do you toil hard for little money? And again thrown into prison if you refuse to work? Why do they herd you like cattle into compounds?
WHY? Because you are the toilers of the earth. Because the masters want you to labour for their profit. Because they pay the Government and Police to keep you as slaves to toil for them. If it were not for the money they make from your labour, you would not be oppressed.
But mark: you are the mainstay of the country. You do all the work, you are the means of their living. That is why you are robbed of the fruits of your labour and robbed of your liberty as well.
There is only one way of deliverance for you Bantu workers. Unite as workers. Unite: forget the things which divide you. Let there be no longer any talk of Basuto, Zulu, or Shangaan. You are all labourers; let Labour be your common bond.
Wake up! And open your ears. The sun has arisen, the day is breaking, for a long time you were asleep while the mill of the rich man was grinding and breaking the sweat of your work for nothing. You are strongly requested to come to the meeting of the workers to fight for your rights.
Come and listen, to the sweet news, and deliver yourself from the bonds and chains of the capitalist. Unity is strength. The fight is great against the many passes that persecute you and against the low wages and misery of you existence.
Workers of all lands unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

Written by the Bikisha Media Collective 

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A Brief History of the IWW outside the US (1905 - 1999)

An attempt to curb the American centric focus of the IWW by giving a brief chronology of significant events made possible by Wobblies outside of the United States.

By F.N. Brill - January 1999
Special Thanks to: Gary Jewell (Canada), Alexis Buss, Tim Acott, Jon Bekken, Fred Chase, Gwion, Steve Kellerman and Robert Rush (US), Kevin Brandstatter (UK).

F.N. Brill's Introduction:
The International aspects of the IWW is something that has escaped most labor historians. While widely acknowledged as an important labor movement, it in many ways has been relegated to either an infantile expression of the proletariat or the inspiration for the "successful" unions of the 1930s.
For those hostile to it, the liberals and Stalinists, it was more convenient to proclaim it dead in 1919 and sweep the possibilities of the IWW under the carpet. Even though Lenin greatly respected the IWW, the Stalinist labor historians have needed to erase the differences between the IWW and the Communist's organizing practices of the 1920s and 30s. While superficially similar in style and rhetoric, the IWW and Stalinists differ in the IWW's insistence of a rotation of leadership from the rank and file. The communists, with the hopes they would be the leaders, helped build the entrenched labour bureaucracies we see today.
But even IWW historians have ignored the ramifications of the IWW's organizing on an international basis.
Sadly, even Fred Thompson, author of the IWW's wonderful official history, The IWW: Its First 50 Years only glosses over the tremendous impact the IWW had internationally and focuses only on the US. To be fair, the IWW's resources were tremendously limited at the time of the First 50 Years leading to a much more condensed book.
The IWW was a major movement in a number of countries and upon the high seas. It had probably more lasting importantance in Australia and Chile than it was in the US and Canada. At points the IWW's Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union stood poised to control much of the world's shipping, while in Australia the IWW effectively halted the Dominion's World War I military efforts.
While not organized, or only briefly, the IWW also held a significant influence upon the development of the workers movements in Ireland, South Africa, Scandinavia and China.
This (page) is a broad overview of all the information I could gather, thanks to IWWs from around the world. I was unable to get much information on the IWW in Sweden, and the Central European nations. Future editions should fill in those missing histories.
I hope this overview is a start to a new appreciation of what the IWW has accomplished. I also hope it is a provocation to rebuild the IWW internationally and win what our Fellow Workers weren't able to accomplish.
History of the IWW

Argentina
November 1919. The Marine Transport Workers had established a branch in Buenos Aries with its own paper.
Within a month the IWW had ended impressment of seamen at the Port through direct actions.
Australia
"Nobody has exercised a more profound influence on the whole outlook of labor in Australia (than the IWW)"
--Gordon Childe
"It's 1000 times better to be a traitor to your country than a traitor to your class"
Australian IWW "clubs" formed in 1907
July 1907 Coal Miner Strike in NSW and Victoria led by IWW
1908 IWW leads Sydney transport strike
1909 strike at Broken Hill, workers locked out for a year and IWW leaders tried for sedition.
31 January, 1914 Direct Action newspaper first appears.
1915
Brisbane -- Prime Minister Hughes' speech is drowned out by crowd led by IWWs. IWW's decide to 'count him down' and the audience joins in, by the number ten Hughes is speechless.
Victoria region -- Fruit pickers get wage increase when IWWs post signs in orchards "Please don't drive copper nails into fruit trees as it will destroy them."
1916 IWW leads New South Wales Railway workshop slowdown
1916 Broken Hill Miners take Saturday afternoons off, giving themselves a 44 hour week. Then strike for 8 hour day. Miners strike spreads to 11,500 miners demanding "bank-to-bank" 8 hour day, virtually shutting down coal mining nationally for 2 months.
Aug. 13, 1916 IWWs speak to 80-100,000 on Sydney Domain against war effort.
Sept. 30, 1916 Raids on IWW headquarters and arrests of key members.
Dec. 3, 1916 7 IWWs sentenced to 15 years in prison for anti-war efforts. Others sentenced to 5 and 10? years.
"A group of aggressive newsboys informed employers that they had joined the IWW and intended in the future to do as little as possible."
Aug. 27, 1917 IWW made illegal and membership rolls made available to employers.
Despite widespread repression, the IWW helps lead the General Strike of 1917.
1924 Melbourne IWW reformed.
1927 Sydney IWW reformed.
1928 May, Adeldale IWW forms Australian Administration, starts publishing Direct Action newspaper. In August, Direct Action is banned.
IWW agitates during the '30s for "Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay, Fight against 48 hours and Wage cuts".
IWW protests World War II and is made illegal
1946 Australian IWW reformed in Sydney
1964-65 IWW Pat Mackie leads major mining lock-out/strike at Mt. Isa
Two IWW Regional Organizing Committees exist today, in Australia proper and Tasmania.

Canada
Five Branches were formed in BC in 1906, including a Lumber Handlers Job Branch composed of Indigenous Canadians.
By 1911, the IWW claimed 10,000 members in Canada, notably in mining, logging, Alberta agriculture, longshoring and the textile industry.
In 1912 the IWW fought a fierce free speech fight in Vancouver, forcing the city to rescind a ban on public street meetings.
Organizing began in 1911 among construction workers building the Canadian Northern Railway in BC. In September a quick strike of 900 workers halted 100 miles of construction.
February 1912, IWW membership on the CN stood at 8,000.
March 27, unable to further tolerate the unbearable living conditions in the work camps, the 8,000 "dynos and dirthands" walked out. The strike extended over 400 miles of territory, but the IWW established a "1,000-mile picket line" as Wobs picketed employment offices in Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, and Minneapolis to halt recruitment of scabs.
August, 1912 they were joined by 3,000 construction workers on the Grand Trunk Pacific in BC and Alberta.
(According to legend) CN strike also spawned the nickname Wobbly. A Chinese restaurant keeper who fed strikers reputedly mispronounced "IWW" in asking customers "Are you eye wobble wobble?" and the name stuck.
"Scab on the job" tactic created, by sending convert Wobs into scab camps to bring the workers out on strike.
The IWW established an Edmonton Unemployed League, demanding that the city furnish work to everybody regardless of race, colour or nationality, at a rate of 30 cents an hour, and further, that the city distribute three 25-cent meal tickets to each man daily, tickets redeemable at any restaurant in town. On January 28, 1914 The city council agreed to provide a large hall for the homeless, passed out three 25-cent meal tickets to each man daily, and employed 400 people on a public project.
On September 24, 1918, a federal order in council declared that while Canada was engaged in war, 14 organizations were to be considered unlawful, including the IWW. Penalty for membership was set at 5 years in prison.
In 1916, virtually extinct in the rest of the country, the IWW had moved from the Minnesota iron fields in the Mesaba Range northward into Ontario and had gained a large following in the northern woods.
In 1919 the Ontario lumber workers joined the OBU, but Wobbly delegates continued to bootleg union supplies to the minority who wanted to keep their IWW membership books as well, as well as did OBU-IWW delegates in B.C.
April 2, 1919 the ban on the IWW was lifted. Two branches were formed in Toronto and Kitchener.
By 1923 IWW had three branches with job control in Canada: Lumberworkers IU 120 and Marine Transport Workers IU 510 in Vancouver and an LWIU branch in Cranbrook BC for a total of 5,600 members.
1924 marked a peak year for the IWW in Canada. 8,000 in Northern Ontario, the Canadian Lumber Workers vote to join the IWW.
On January 1, 1924, IWW Lumber Workers IU120 struck the British Columbia lumber owners, calling for an 8 hour day with blankets supplied, minimum wage of $4 per day, release of all class war prisoners, no discrimination against IWW members and no censuring of IWW literature.
Fighting a mandatory dues check off to the United Mine Workers, Alberta Coal miners joined the IWW in 1924. The mine company unsuccessfully offered a 10% wage increase if they agreed to accept the UMWA.
Canadian delegates met in Port Arthur September 20, 1931, and voted to form a Canadian administration to coordinate specifically Canadian industrial activity.
IWW unemployment ag -itation generated a number of arrests. Ritchie's Dairy in Toronto was unionized IWW for a time, and a fisher's branch formed in McDiarmid, Ontario.
Organizing was undertaken in the Maritimes but did not sustain itself. In 1935 the IWW had 12 branches in Canada with 4,200 members.
IWW agitation continued strong in Canada until 1939, especially in northern Ontario. Wobbly units in Sudbury and Port Arthur were mixed membership branches of scattered lumbermen, miners and labourers.
During the Spanish Civil War 1936-39, the IWW in Ontario actively recruited for the revolutionary union militias in Spain.
In 1949 membership in Canada stood at 2,100 grouped in six branches; two in Port Arthur and one each in Vancouver, Sault Ste. Marie, Calgary and Toronto.
IN 1968 it was decided to sign up students alongside teachers and campus workers into Education Workers IU620. There followed a wild and erratic campus upsurge, two notables being Waterloo U in Ontario and New Westminster BC.
1974 In Vancouver a construction crew in Gastown was signed IWW -- but certification was denied, the IWW declared not a "trade union under the meaning of the Act."
1988 Student newspaper at Simon Frazier university organizes IWW.
1998 IWW organizes at Harvest Foods in Winnipeg, first legal Canadian IWW union in decades.
1999 IWW organizes series of shops along Whyte Avenue in Edmonton.

Chile
The founding congress of the Chilean IWW took place in Santiago, in 1919. Upholding the principles and tactics of the international IWW, the Chileans were able to regroup radical teachers and longshoremen, along with most of the scattered Chilean anarcho-syndicalist movement.
During the 1920s, the IWW published 10 different newspapers in five cities in Chile. The central newspaper, Accion Directa, appeared from 1920-26. During times of repression, the Chilean papers were printed at the Chicago IWW printing plant and smuggled into Chile by wobbly sailors.
Through the summer of 1920 the Chilean union conducted a three month strike to prevent the export of grains from the country at a time when this export was producing famine and famine prices and profits.
On July 22, 1920 police conducted a raid on the Santiago headquarters. In Valparaiso, the police planted dynamite in the wobble hall and arrested most of the IWW organizers for terrorism. The reasons for these raid was the successful strikes against the exportation of grains during the famine.
1924 4000 Santiago IWW bookbinders win strike for 44 hour week.
The Chilean administration of the IWW remained united until 1925 when the unions representing Port, printing and bakeries split to form the anarcho-syndicalist Federation Obrerra Regionale Chile (FORCh). Objecting to the IWW's industrial unionism, these unions opted for regional/federalist organization according to craft.
The IWW was the only labor group to openly oppose the military coup of 1927. In contrast, the Communist Party 'was at first evasive, but then listed certain demands of the new regime...' Only when the CP's demands weren't met, did they decide to oppose the military dictatorship.
Both unions were silenced in 1927 by the Ibez dictatorship. In 1931, the Ibez government fell and former IWW and FORCh members formed a new anarcho-syndicalist union, the CGT.
After the military coup of 1973, an American IWW, Frank Terrugi, was shot to death by a Chilean death squad. Terrugi, in Chile studying workers movements, had been detained in a soccer stadium during the coup with hundreds of other radicals and unionists. He was found dead soon after he had been 'released" from the soccer stadium/prison. Turrugi is the sidekick to the missing American being sought by his father in the Oscar winning Costa Gavras film, "Missing".

China
During the period 1910-1916 Australian IWW helps get IWW materials translated into Chinese and distributed into China. These were published by Liu Szu-fu ("Shih-fu") and IWW ideals became influential in Canton and Shanghai.

Ecuador
Administration chartered 1922.
Fiji
1916 IWW fishers strike.

Germany
1924 Marine Transport Workers Union Branch formed in Settin, Hamburg and other ports. Over 10,000 members at founding. The IWW continues a open organizing until Hitler and continued underground.

High Seas
1924 IWW calls International Marine Transport Workers Conference in New Orleans. Delegates from Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico and US.
1925 IWW controls all Scandinavian/US shipping through job actions and quick strikes.
November 1925 East coast IWWs strike in support of UK, Scandinavian, New Zealand and Australian sailors in first international maritime strike.
Second International conference help in Montevideo, Uruguay.
April 9, 1930 IWW organizes 1700 member crew on the Leviathan, then the world's largest vessel.

Ireland
1913 IWWs James Connolly and Jim Larkin found the Transport and General Workers Union as the basis of an Irish IWW.
During 1917-23 civil war period Ireland experienced outright insurrection, collectivization of transport in Cork, uprising of landless labourers, the establishment of Soviets and dual power situations in many cities...
Recession and a state clampdown knocked the union off course in 1923. A split movement still carried on a local variant of revolutionary unionism in the Workers Union of Ireland but was numerically weak.
Japan
1924 Marine Transport Workers Branch formed in Yokohama.
Mexico
Ties with Mexican revolutionaries date to ?the founding of the IWW.
Riccardo Flores Magon was an IWW and used the IWW press and organization to build support for revlutionary movement in Mexico.
In 1911 the Mexican Liberal party (PLM), a anarchist formation, invaded Baja California in an effort to set up a workers' republic. The campaign was run out of an IWW hall in Holtville, CA. 100 IWWs, including Joe Hill and Frank Little, were part of the insurrectionary force.
July, 1912 several trade unions unite under IWW preamble.
In 1917, when many of the wells closed down as a protest of the American owners against a tax imposed on oil and the wage demands of the workers, the leadership of the movement was almost entirely in the hands of the IWW."
During the later phase of the Mexican revolutionary process, IWW locals in Arizona endorsed the Zapata movement.
Dec. 1919, Mexican IWW Administration is chartered
On June 2, 1921 the IWW hall at Tampico, Mexico, was raided, and the IWW called a general strike in the area which won them the right to have their hall.
3000 IWW miners strike and win in Santa Eulalia.
Mexican Administration of the IWW continues until early 1960s.

New Zealand
IWW administration organized 1912
IWW organizer Tom Barker arrested for sedition during great Strikes of 1912-13, subsequently escapes to Australia to organize there.
Nicaragua
While in exile in Mexico during early 1920s, Sandino participates in strikes led by the IWW. Inspired by them he returns to foment revolution in Nicaragua. He adopts the IWW's black and red colours.
Peru
In 1923 the IWW led a strike on the Peruvian Central lines when a railwayman with 20 years good service was sacked. Within 24 hours the entire railway system...had struck in accordance with the IWW motto "an injury to one is an injury to all." The workman was reinstated, having first rejected a $50,000 bribe from the company to accept dismissal.
Russia
1919 16,000 Miners in Siberia form a union and adopt the IWW preamble.
Sweden
1971 Branch formed at Malm. shipyards.
Sierra Leone
1996 Diamond and Gold miners organize into IWW.

South Africa
South African Administration founded in 1911.
IWW campaigns to convince white workers "that their real enemy is not the coloured labourer, and that it is only by combining and co-operating irrespective of colour that the standard of life of the whites can be maintained and improved."
1912 IWW leads strike of tram-drivers in Johannesburg, the first multi-racial strike in that country's history.
United Kingdom
The IWW in Britain has been around in one form or another since 1906. It started with small groups of seafarers in particular bringing the message of industrial unionism to these shores from the USA.
In 1908 the union split along the same lines as in the USA. The IWW members who followed Daniel De Leon formed the British Advocates for Industrial Unionism and organized some major strikes, particularly in the industrial belt in Central Scotland. The strike at the Singer Sewing Machine Factory in 1908 was the most famous. The IWWs who stuck with the non-De Leon faction formed the Industrial League.
IWW involvement in a 1909 strike at Ruskin College, Oxford, which led to the creation of the revolutionary education movement "The Plebs League" and the marxist "Central Labour College". IWW members were also involved in the establishment of the "Daily Herald", the first working class controlled newspaper, which carried much labour news.
In 1910 Bill Haywood toured the country and in South Wales he spoke at a very large meeting of striking coal miners in one pit and urged them to spread their strike across the entire industry and occupy the pits. His influence is credited with an explosion of militancy in the area and was one reason why former IWW members in the mines produced and circulated "The Miners Next Step", a pamphlet aimed at turning the South Wales Miners Federation into a single region-wide industrial union. It is regarded as the most important piece of Industrial Unionist literature of the period.
In 1913 the Union granted a charter to a British Administration of the I.W.W. which ran as an essentially independent body. The union had strong branches in major cities, although there is no evidence of an IWW strike as such.
Prominent supporters of the IWW such as Peter Larkin and James Connolly were active in dockers and other transport workers strikes during the period.
The union was involved the years of unrest leading to the first world war through organisations such as the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL), the Industrial Democracy League and the League of Revolutionary Unionists. The ISEL was prominent in efforts to build industrial unions through mergers of existing trade unions and was at the forefront of the creation the National Union of Railwaymen and the Transport and General Workers Union.
The National Conferences of Trades Councils in 1919 and 1920 endorsed the principle of the One Big Union as a means of uniting the working class and establishing Industrial Unions. Shop Steward movement's cards were made interchangeable with IWW cards.
The Union stayed barely alive in the 20s and 30s having retreated to the cities of Liverpool, Birmingham and London with very little influence elsewhere.
In 1946 fortunes turned up and a new British Administration was chartered which played an active part in the dock strike of 1947.
In the mid 1970s a Workers Centre was set up in Oldham and a British Section remained active until the early 1980s. The IWW was particularly involved in efforts to spread the idea of rank and file control of the unions and IWW organsers were at the forefront of the National Rank and File Movement.
A new period for the I.W.W. started in 1993 when a small group met in London to re-establish the union. Membership has grown towards the hundred mark and branches have been established in a dozen or more cities.
In 1995 the union established its first "job branch" at Stevenson College in Edinburgh, which has played a significant role in fighting redundancies and exposing the crass nature of sectional unionism in education.
In 1995 members agreed to establish the first Regional Organising Committee and this came into being in 1997, shortly after the union launched its new quarterly magazine "Bread and Roses".
1998 IWW organizing Grocery and Pharmicutical workers in Devon and Dorset.
This pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Fellow Worker Tom Barker, who organized for the IWW in New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Argentina, the US, the UK, Russia, Germany and upon the High Seas. For the One Big Union!
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