Eighty Years Ago 1922-2022 [Founding Congress of the International Working Men’s Association]

The foundation congress of the IWA was disrupted twice by the German police. The syndicalist international, the IWA (known today as the IWA-AIT) held its foundation congress as 1922 was turning into 1923 against the backdrop of great upheavals. The First World War had ended just a few years before and that war was followed immediately by a rash of revolutionary convulsions in a succession of countries that left a lasting impression on the evolution of the world.

During the war the social democratic international had split and its affiliated parties have thrown their internationalism overboard. Under the leadership of its Belgian president Emile Vandervelde, they actively supported the war on behalf of their respective countries. At around the same time, the reformist trade union international collapsed. 

After the war ended, attempts to rebuild international organisation kicked off. The Communist International was launched at a congress in Moscow in 1919 as a continuation of the so-called Zimmerwald International that had been operating during the war. A trade union international was reestablished that same year at a congress in Vienna at the instigation of the Austrian Friedrich Adler. In 1923 that organisation amalgamated with the social democratic international.

At the instigation of communists, the Moscow congress of 1921 launched the so-called Red International of Labour Unions. That organisation made great efforts to attract trade unionist members but the trade union organisations rejected its overtures, having no desire to get involved with a trade union international run by a political movement, in this instance, the communists.

From 25 December 1922 to 2 January 1923, delegates from ten countries, representing nearly two and a half million organised workers, held a congress in Berlin. It was at this congress that the syndicalist international, the IWA, was launched.

Of course the congress was not able to proceed without upset. Care had to be taken because some of the delegates had had to arrive by unlawful means, without notification to the police. The first day’s proceedings of the congress took place in a building on the outskirts of Berlin. The plan was to continue the congress the next day on different premises, but the police were on its trail, so delegates were issued with a secret message telling them to meet at a third location elsewhere in Berlin, in Nieder-Schönweide. The proceedings carried on into the afternoon at which point a police patrol burst into the premises and tried to check the delegates’ identity papers. 

The German comrades strongly objected to this and asked the police to produce a warrant for this action. The police had no such warrant so the patrol withdrew, leaving two police officers behind to keep an eye on things. The congress delegates then scuttled into the streets, pushing and shoving the police, and vanished.
The congress met the following day, this time near the Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin, not far from the police barracks.

The congress continued on those premises without interruption for several days. But one day, before noon, there was another police raid. The entire building was surrounded by police with rifles and revolvers and with grenades dangling from their belts. They forced their way into the meeting hall where the delegates kicked up a racket and objected forcefully. One delegate who did not have the necessary papers jumped out through a window and was captured by police on the street outside. One Polish delegate who also had no papers resisted arrest but was put out of commission. A French female delegate then leapt forward to punch a police officer in the face. She was arrested and removed with a few other colleagues to Moabit prison. Each and every one of the delegates was carefully searched. Among the delegates present were Emil Manus, representing Denmark and Norway, and Edvind Lindstam and Frans Severin who were representing the SAC.  Also present were another two SAC members attending, not as delegates, but in an individual capacity, as they had happened to be passing through Berlin on their way to Paris.  

Later the well known authors Eyvind Jonson and Victor Vinde showed up: the latter later became the publisher of the Stockholmstidningen newspaper. In the wake of all this, the police left the gathering alone and the congress carried on and launched the International Working Men’s Association (IWA since 1974), the Syndicalist International. The Syndicalist International endured right through the Second World War when other internationals collapsed and it continues its activities today.

John Andersson

[From Solidaritet, August-September 1959]
Source: CNT (Madrid) April 2002

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.