(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In Chicago, June 27, 1905, over two hundred delegates from 34 different left-wing unions and parties met in the United States. The goal was to create a trade union that would allow for different socialist currents and end the devastating rivalry between the various trade unions in the United States.
The organization that was formed; "Industrial Workers of the World" (IWW), was initially a broad alliance of social democrats, communists, syndicalists and anarchists, and had a clear revolutionary program. This is what the declaration of principles that was adopted in 1905 states: “The working class and the working buyer class have nothing in common. There can never be peace as long as millions of working people live in hunger and distress, while those who make up the upper class have all the benefits of life. Between these two classes there must be a struggle until the workers of the world organize themselves as a class, take possession of the land and the system of production and abolish the wage system… ”.
Didn't get big
The IWW never became a numerically large organization, and never had more than five percent of the unions in the United States, at a time when barely ten percent of the workers were organized at all. The reasons for this were twofold. First, the organization never managed to become the large, unifying "One Big Union" envisaged at the founding meeting in 1905. There were constant strife and rivalries between the various political directions.
First, the Social Democrats and the more moderate organization left, and when the Communists in 1917/1918 tried to get the IWW to join the "Red Trade Union International", a bitter struggle broke out between them and a more syndicalist-oriented faction. In the end, the Communists withdrew, while syndicalists and anarchists continued to argue about the form of organization and the distribution of power.
Secondly, the IWW waged a fierce and irreconcilable struggle for the political and trade union rights of the working class, which led employers and the authorities to fight the organization by almost all means. Strikes often developed into armed confrontations, and the IWW's "Free Speech Fights" – actions for the right to free agitation – often resulted in the imprisonment and harassment of IWW members. And the wave of war hysteria and blind patriotism that swept over the United States during World War I also hit the IWW in the form of severe persecution.
The 1917 Raid
In the autumn of 1917, the authorities carried out police raids on the organization's nearly fifty local offices, and all of the IWW's top spokesmen and shop stewards – over one hundred and fifty people – were arrested. A special law against "syndicalist sabotage" was passed, and thus it was in practice a criminal offense to be a member of the IWW.
In 1920, between two and three thousand socialists, anarchists and communists were arrested, and five hundred were deported to the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that the criminalization of the IWW hit hard, in practice it was reduced after the 1920s to an agitation and propaganda organization with increasingly weak academic influence.
IWW was mainly the unskilled and immigrant trade union organization. These were found especially among the land, forest, mining and textile workers, and many were first generation immigrants. To achieve these, IWW published newspapers, pamphlets and other printed matter in a total of 16 languages, including Norwegian. IWW was also an international organization, with branches in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Chile, Peru and Mexico. These were systematically counteracted in the same way as IWW in the US, and more or less dissolved until 1930.
It is also important to see the IWW in the light of how workers who returned to their home countries from the United States brought with them inspiration and experiences from the IWW. One of these was the Irishman James Conolly, a leading figure in the organization of the labor movement in Ireland around 1900. Connolly was executed after the unsuccessful Easter uprising in Dublin in 1916. Another was Martin Tranmæl, who was actually present at the IWW's founding meeting in 1905. Although Tranmæl was never a member of the organization, there is no doubt that his encounter with the "wobblies" in the United States was inspiring: "The new organization is probably the most clear-lined and modern movement we have had so far in the economic field. Therefore, its principles and methods are of international importance ”. It is easy to see the ideological similarities between the IWW and the "Professional Opposition of 1911", where Tranmæl was central.
New solidarity
The IWW still exists, and the organization's centenary will be marked this year with a conference in Chicago June 25-26. Here one should not only reminisce about the greatness of the past, but also discuss current professional challenges. With a workforce in the private sector where less than 10% are unionized, and where the unions AFL-CIO are part of a structure that has proven unable to capture the needs of the working class, the IWW says today that new ways of creating unity and solidarity must be developed. on. These are issues we recognize in Norway as well, so maybe the Norwegian labor movement needs to send a new Martin Tranmæl to Chicago?
