World Labor Unity/Chapter 12

by Scott Nearing

XII. Moscow Continues Negotiations

During the course of the negotiations at the London Unity Conference the British delegation had proposed that the British Trades Union Council should submit to the I.F.T.U. two alternative courses of action: (1) "That the Bureau of the I.F.T.U. call an immediate conference with the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions for the purpose of considering the position arising" from the Amsterdam meeting. This failing, (2) "The British Trades Union Congress General Council will undertake to convene a conference and endeavor to promote International Unity by using its mediatory influence as between the Russian Trade Union Movement and the Amsterdam Bureau." In doing this, the British will be "inspired by a full appreciation of existing difficulties and a desire to create a united industrial International organisation capable of efficiently representing the International interests of the workers."

By way of fulfilling their part in this understanding, as soon as the findings of the London Unity Conference had been endorsed Tomsky, President, and Dogadov, Secretary of the All-Russian Council addressed to the General Council of the Amsterdam International a communication, in part as follows:

"We would once more inform you, comrades, that we are in favor of a single International of Trade Union Federations. Our aim, and, as we believe, the aim of the majority of the class-conscious workers of all countries, is the creation of a single International of the organised workers of the whole world, standing for the point of view of the class struggle and the final emancipation of the working class from the capitalist yoke. Compared with this great aim the constitutional question is of secondary importance. The Trade Unions of the U.S.S.R. are ready to affiliate to a united International Trade Union Federation whose constitution, in its general features, would not differ vitally from that of the I.F.T.U."^[1]

1. Trade Union Unity, July, 1925, pp. 62–3. The details of the negotiations between Moscow and Amsterdam and between the British and the Russian General Councils will be found in International Trade Union Unity; in Labour White Paper No.11, London, Labour Research Department; in two reports issued by the British Trades Union Congress in the summer of 1925, on Russia and International Unity; in the Report of the General Council to the S7th Annual Trades Union Congress, p. 215, ff.; in Trade Union Unity, a monthly magazine published at 162 Buckingham Palace Road, London; and in the files of the Labour Monthly which is published at the same address.