Workers of the World Unite?
Denis MacShane looks at the rise and fall of international solidarity in the trade union movement.
In October 1945, the World Federation of Trade Unions was launched at a congress in Paris. It united trade union confederations from capitalist America, communist Russia, labour Britain, liberated France and eastern Europe, from social democratic Scandinavia, unions from Latin America and from countries that later would be called the Third World.
After the various attempts since Marx's First International in 1864 to bring together the world's trade unions into one international body, it looked forty-five years ago as if the deed had been done. The creation of the WFTU was welcomed publicly by trade unionists of all ideologies. The president was Sir Walter Citrine, Britain's Trade Union Congress general secretary. The WFTU general secretary was Louis Saillant, a young official of France's CGT (General Confederation of Labour), who had risen to prominence – and to a warm fraternalism with French communists – as a resistance organiser for labour during the war.
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