World Trade Union Conference

The World Trade Union Conference was a conference that was held between 6–17 February 1945. The conference was participated by countries from all around the world, at the County Hall, London.[1] Regarded as a significant moment within the international labour movement, it was the first time that workers from around the world came together to influence international politics.[2][dubious – discuss]

Both Clement Attlee and King George VI spoke to the audience at the conference.[1] 204 representatives from 63 Unions around the world attended the conference including those from the Soviet Union, in an attempt to have representation within the United Nations and its Security Council.[3] The conference, which was organised in the vein of the anti-fascist movement, being much inspired by both union and state notions of a new world order and influenced by the interests of the allied nations.[1] Anti-war, post war reconstruction post-war and Trade Union were on the conference agenda.[4]

The conference resulted in the Declarations of the World Trade Union Conference, which were published in San Francisco by the Trade Union Council in 1945[5] and inspired the Fifth Pan-African Congress to be held later that same year in Manchester.[2]

One of the purposes of the conference was to create a draft constitution for the World Federation of Trade Unions, which was established at the first World Trades Union Congress, which was convened in Paris in October 1945.[4][6]

  1. ^ a b c University, London Metropolitan. "The Worker's War: Home Front Recalled". www.unionhistory.info. Retrieved 2023-06-02.
  2. ^ a b Adi, Hakim; Sherwood, Marika (1995). The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited. New Beacon Books. ISBN 978-1-873201-12-1.
  3. ^ "Albert Gates: The World Trade Union Conference (May 1945)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2023-06-02.
  4. ^ a b "Labor Organizations". Monthly Labor Review. 60 (5): 1030–1034. 1945. ISSN 0098-1818. JSTOR 41817831.
  5. ^ Tombs, Isabelle (April 1998). "The British TUC between Germany and Russia: From the Outbreak of War to the World Trade Union Conference of February 1945". European History Quarterly. 28 (2): 219–243. doi:10.1177/026569149802800203. ISSN 0265-6914.
  6. ^ "WFTU » History". Retrieved 2023-06-03.