8

Toward an Independent Role

Ever since the 1949 split in the World Federation of Trade Unions, free trade unionists were in no doubt that there should be no dealings with the WFTU. However, from the ICFTU’s earliest days there had been little agreement on how to respond to persistent overtures from the Yugoslav trade unions that had been expelled from the WFTU yet were still communist-led. Should they be shunned, or was it wiser to maintain a line of contact to Yugoslavia and so avoid driving it back into the Soviet fold? The ICFTU’s policy against contacts with communist organizations proposed by the AFL and adopted in 1955 was meant to clarify the position relating not just to this special case but also to contacts with all communist-controlled organizations. Exchange visits with the Soviet bloc were ruled out, and the ICFTU was to be notified of invitations received so that affiliates could be made fully aware of what the communists aimed to gain through such visits. Yet as a policy, it was never more than a statement of good intentions.

Regardless of whether or not national centres believed in the policy, they were rarely in a position to impose discipline on their own member unions. The ban on contacts also took no account of changes in the international climate. The Cold War had its moments of high tension—the crushing of the Berlin and Hungarian uprisings; the occasional standoff between American and Soviet military personnel at border crossings in Berlin; the Cuban missile crisis. But in between were periods when the post-Stalin “new look,” the “spirit of Geneva,” the “spirit of Camp David,” or the undercurrent of reform permitted by Khrushchev provided the mood music for international relations. East-West dialogue at government level, the encouragement of cultural visits by civil society, and even the prospects for limited trade created an atmosphere in which Western labour centres could also make a case for accepting invitations to exchange visits aimed at developing a better understanding of the other side and contributing to an easing of tension. As this process intensified from the mid-1960s, it opened up major divisions within the ICFTU that eventually led to the AFL-CIO quitting the fold.

East-West Bridge Building

In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, with the establishment of the “hot line” between Moscow and Washington and both sides avoiding confrontational language, there was increasing scope for liberal voices to challenge the nostrums of the Cold War. Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, launched a wide-ranging critique of American foreign policy in spring 1964, arguing that it was based on “cherished myths.” He challenged the belief that every communist state was an “unmitigated evil” and a “relentless enemy of the free world” and that the communist bloc was a monolith composed of governments that were no more than “organized conspiracies.” By 1966, such views would lead to the Johnson administration adopting an official policy of “building bridges” to the Soviet bloc.1

George Meany was in total disagreement with the new thinking; communist states were “unmitigated evils” even if, owing to differences in size and resources, they were not all equally dangerous. If the USSR was currently less aggressive, he insisted that it was merely because of economic weakness and especially its current crisis in agriculture. America therefore needed to continue to build up its defences: “an arms race [did not] necessarily spell war.” Meany criticized Fulbright for having nothing to say on the central problem of a divided Germany. In contrast, Frank Altschul, a prominent member of the business community and secretary of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued in a Free Trade Union News symposium that German reunification could only be achieved within a framework that addressed Soviet differences with the West. America, he insisted, had nothing to fear from a competitive struggle with the USSR when conducted within the framework of peaceful co-existence.2

In July 1964, clothing workers’ president Jake Potofsky admitted in an interview that he saw “no harm in exchanging visits with the USSR,” though he was not prepared to argue this publicly. Potofsky added that Lovestone was “living in the past” and writing speeches for Meany that were full of outdated “verbiage and old communist terms.” Five months later, I. W. Abel, then secretary-treasurer of the steelworkers’ union, who was philosophically close to the Reuthers, added to Lovestone’s chagrin by accepting an invitation to the anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik revolution at the Soviet embassy in Washington. He would soon be targeted by the embassy for an invitation to the USSR.3

While George Meany was profoundly irritated by this tendency for a few American unions to flirt with communists overseas, he was far more troubled by the pattern of European union visits to the Soviet bloc. Dependable allies in the battle against communism were thin on the ground; in practice, Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown could only look to André Bergeron, general secretary of Force ouvrière (FO) and Georg Leber, chairman of the DGB’s building and construction workers’ union, to hold the anti-communist line. Elsewhere in Europe there appeared to be a worrying lack of commitment in this area, and it would affect the way the AFL-CIO regarded the ICFTU in the years ahead.

André Bergeron took over the leadership of FO in 1963 in succession to Robert Bothereau. The change was a matter of some relief to Brown, who had come to regard Bothereau as too cautious an operator, too much his own man and reluctant to take his cue from the AFL-CIO. In contrast, Bergeron, the former printer, was a kindred spirit and one of the young Turks in whom Brown had placed much faith at the foundation of FO in 1948. Brown became his leading booster, informing Meany that with a young, dynamic leadership team around him and a clear, uncompromising position on communism, the feisty Bergeron was determined to invest FO with a new fighting spirit. Within weeks of his election, Bergeron was invited to the AFL-CIO’s executive council, where he and Meany issued a joint statement on the importance of trans-Atlantic unity.

As a beneficiary of AFL-CIO largesse, Force ouvrière enjoyed an international standing out of all proportion to its domestic significance. Bergeron began to play a prominent role on the ICFTU executive board and, as a stern critic of Omer Becu’s leadership, fed Brown insider reports of meetings that the latter, as a staff member, no longer attended. Yet his membership on the executive board was in a sense symbolic, representing, as former ITF general secretary Harold Lewis put it, a hope that France might one day be able to provide an affiliate that actually counted for something within the international.4

Force ouvrière’s organizational weakness was readily apparent; Bergeron spent much of his first year in office grubbing for financial assistance from the AFL-CIO in the hope of receiving a $3 million grant or cheap loan to purchase a new headquarters building that he claimed was a prerequisite for waging the anti-communist fight effectively. It was a sharp reminder of FO’s client status vis-à-vis the Americans. Brown helped Bergeron draft his loan request to Meany and undertook to soften up the AFL-CIO president before presenting him with a translation of Bergeron’s letter. He and Lovestone worked assiduously to persuade Meany to stump up the money, refusing to let the matter drop when the latter signalled that the AFL-CIO was not in the business of funding such real estate transactions. Meany declined to raise the issue in the AFL-CIO executive council and would go no further than to offer to guarantee a loan that FO would have to raise by its own devices. Yet this was of no help to FO since the interest payments on a commercial loan were beyond its means.5 Despite the dire warnings from Brown and Lovestone about the growth of sentiment for a popular front in France, it was a clear sign of George Meany’s general disenchantment with European labour that he kept clear of any injection of finance into FO. Bergeron’s value to the AFL-CIO would be less than Brown had originally hoped for.

A more substantial friend among European trade union leaders was the forty-two-year-old German construction workers’ president and SPD deputy, Georg Leber, who had established himself as the leader of the “modernizing” wing of the DGB. Happy to discard the German labour movement’s socialist, class-oriented ideology, he viewed free enterprise positively and agreed with the American emphasis on collective bargaining rather than political action as the main focus of union activity. He was a leading voice of pragmatic trade unionism within the DGB in the bitter struggle that broke out in 1962 over the government’s proposed “emergency laws,” which allowed constitutional rights to be breached in the event of a national emergency or uprising. The issue divided the labour movement between “modernizers” and those, led by the IG Metall chairman, Otto Brenner, who were wedded to a traditional socialist critique of capitalist society. Lovestone praised Leber’s stand against the latter’s “confusion, pacifism and fellow-traveller course.” Spoken of widely as “the Americans’ man” on the DGB executive board, Leber above all West German union leaders drew the most criticism from communist quarters while enjoying the support of the AFL-CIO.6

Unlike Bergeron, Leber needed no financial assistance from the AFL-CIO, but Meany was happy to extend moral support and agreed to address his union congress in Berlin in June 1963. Indeed, with President Kennedy visiting Berlin at the same time, Meany arranged for the president also to address the congress. In proposing their joint appearance, Lovestone predicted that it would “electrify the whole German labour movement . . . and enhance the image of the Administration in Europe.” Meany later accorded Leber red-carpet treatment when he made a return visit to Washington in 1965, laying on a dinner to which the late President Kennedy’s brother Robert was invited as special guest.7

In their unrelenting hostility to communism, Bergeron and Leber stood out, but elsewhere in Europe, the ICFTU’s formal policy of discouraging contacts with the Soviet bloc was increasingly being ignored. Sensing that CISL general secretary Bruno Storti was one of those beginning to shift his stance, Jay Lovestone wrote in 1964 asking him to clarify his position. It took all of ten months for Storti to respond. He claimed that Lovestone’s letter had gone astray in his office, but now, eyeing the ICFTU presidency in succession to Geijer, he needed the support of the AFL-CIO and so replied cautiously that “dialogue [between East and West] is not superfluous. . . . We believe in a relaxation . . . [but] it will not represent the giving up of . . . values of democracy and freedom.”8

However, the two European centres that caused the AFL-CIO leadership most concern were the British TUC and the German DGB. As far as Jay Lovestone was concerned, their behaviour would largely determine whether or not the principles underpinning the free trade union movement would survive.

Bit by bit between 1960 and 1966, the TUC reversed its position on contacts with communists overseas. Calls at the annual TUC conference for an end to the divide between the ICFTU and the WFTU, abandonment of the “cold-war mentality” in trade unionism, and for an extension of foreign visits to all countries were initially voted down, though over time the majority view shifted. George Woodcock, the TUC’s largely apolitical general secretary, may have shared George Meany’s lack of confidence in the ICFTU, but his assessment of the dynamics of the Cold War was quite different from Meany’s, and he was central to the evolution of the TUC’s thinking. For years he gave the impression of resisting the policy change while quietly but steadily helping to advance it.9

By 1963 the TUC had abandoned any attempt to dissuade affiliates from liaising with unions in the Soviet bloc; it was for them to decide individually. That same year the TUC accepted an invitation from the Yugoslav Confederation of Trade Unions to exchange visits; ten senior union leaders became the first TUC party to visit a communist country since 1949. Privately Woodcock acknowledged that the TUC would ultimately be prepared to conduct exchanges with any trade union organization, be it in Spain or the USSR, provided that their meetings were devoid of “political” content and confined themselves to practical trade union matters. As in other European trade union centres, there was a revival of the mood of “1945”—when the idea of world trade union unity was in the air—though Kalmen Kaplansky, international director of the Canadian Labour Congress, reckoned that as yet it was still “only talk.”10

However, in the immediate aftermath of the fractious Amsterdam congress of the ICFTU in 1965, the TUC accepted an invitation of the AUCCTU to visit the USSR the following summer on condition that the purpose of the visit would be solely to study the functions of Soviet trade unions and not to engage in political discussion. As Woodcock affirmed, the TUC couldn’t conceive of a world where trade unions were indefinitely lined up against each other; a start had to be made somewhere to at least recognize the existence of the other side.11 The delegation that travelled to the Soviet Union in September 1966 was the first such TUC group to visit since the split in the WFTU. Symbolically, it was the most important development in re-establishing formal contacts with communist organizations since the formation of the ICFTU, a major contribution to the tide of détente that was now running high.

Yet, for Jay Lovestone, the visit was “a return to popular front tactics on a grand scale.” The Soviet trade unions, he noted, were still an extended arm of the state and the communist party, and he pointed to the CPSU’s March 1966 congress, where Party Secretary Brezhnev spoke in praise of the unions’ newly enhanced role as “schools of Communism,” and AUCCTU president Victor Grishin acknowledged that it was the responsibility of the party and its central committee to “formulate the tasks of the trade unions.”12 Prompted by Lovestone, labour columnist Victor Riesel recorded that the TUC visitors to Moscow had been gullible and naïve. The KGB had supervised the trip; the British had been given red-carpet treatment and enjoyed some fine food, but their phones and hotel rooms had also been bugged, and he claimed that Meany now had access to US intelligence reports on the KGB’s involvement.13

The DGB was more cautious in embarking on a program of visits to the Soviet bloc. More than most ICFTU affiliates, it had genuinely attempted to uphold the ICFTU’s official policy and through the early 1960s had discouraged exchange visits to the Soviet bloc by its member unions. However, this line became increasingly difficult to maintain as Germans looked for ways of improving relations with their neighbours to the east. Voices calling for dialogue with the Soviet bloc grew louder, and in 1964 Walter Fabian, the editor of the DGB journal Gewerkschaftliche Monatschafte, wrote a personal article in support of such a policy. He was subsequently forced to resign his post, but there was an immediate campaign by the leaders of most DGB affiliates to have him reinstated.14

In spring 1964, as a party of young German trade unionists prepared to travel to Poland for a visit to Auschwitz in a gesture of atonement for Nazi war crimes, Ludwig Rosenberg highlighted the predicament faced by the DGB and called for a thorough review of ICFTU policy. The DGB had been loyal to the ICFTU but, as he explained, the German centre was also the one with the greatest stake in regularizing relations with the Soviet bloc. And unless it was free to engage directly with Eastern European countries, the DGB leadership risked losing control of these unofficial visits.15

Fearing that the DGB might unilaterally be preparing to drop its opposition to exchanges, Lovestone alerted Meany of the need to update ICFTU policy so as to reinforce the line against contacts with the communists. Given Omer Becu’s diminishing authority, such divergent views made the issue too sensitive for the ICFTU to confront directly, and the opportunity to reassess the policy at the Amsterdam congress in July 1965 went begging. In the absence of the policy review it had called for, the DGB would now go its own way and align with the growing European interest in bridge building. In the wake of the Amsterdam congress, Irving Brown summed up the general picture: “The overwhelming opinion on Western Europe is moving . . . in the direction of downgrading the danger of Russian Communism and upgrading not only the danger of Chinese Communism but what Europeans would call the super-giant policies of the U.S.A.”16

By late 1965 the German labour movement had quietly embarked on exploratory exchanges with the Soviet bloc, initially through a visit by Heinz Kluncker, the young chairman of the public transport union, to a labour conference on health and safety in Prague.17 It was the first of several such low-key missions in 1965–66 that Kluncker undertook, acting as a stalking horse for the DGB. Concurrently Trud, the Soviet trade union paper, invited the editors of all West German trade union journals to visit the USSR, and in November 1965, DGB leaders attended a reception at the Soviet Embassy in Bonn celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Lovestone advised Meany that such activities threatened to open the door to “wide penetration and subversion.” There were divisions within the DGB leadership over the policy taking shape, with Rosenberg as chairman torn between the two camps. But Irving Brown’s reading of the situation was that it was deteriorating seriously and unless the trend was soon reversed the consequences would be disastrous. Lovestone informed Meany: “Rosenberg, weakling that he is, is very panicky about the trend for acceptance of Soviet and satellite invitations on the part of his affiliates. He is not opposing it. He only wants to regulate the trend.” In the absence of clear information on where this was leading, Meany now wrote directly to Rosenberg requesting an explanation.18

Rosenberg’s reply—in a confidential letter he typed himself—explained that the policy was tentative and because of its sensitivity the DGB had deliberately kept the details from even the German foreign ministry. Representatives of German churches and political parties were beginning to visit the Soviet bloc with state backing, but the federal government had threatened to end support for this process if the trade unions didn’t participate as well. The DGB resented such pressure but had decided to yield to government wishes. This was how he explained the secret diplomacy undertaken by Kluncker. The DGB would now wait until after its next congress in May 1966 before taking any decision on sending an official delegation to the Soviet bloc. Rosenberg was not personally committed to exchanges with the communists; arguments for and against were not black and white but appeared differently depending on whether viewed from Washington or Dusseldorf, and he protested: “No one is right to insist that their opinion is the only acceptable one.”19

George Meany was intensely irritated by Rosenberg’s special pleading and in a blistering reply rejected any suggestion that “liberalization” was taking place behind the Iron Curtain or that the unions of the Soviet bloc were in any sense “free” (the letter’s angry tone is captured in its eighteen separate references to “so-called trade unions”). In developing countries, the knock-on effect of the example set by the DGB would also be damaging; inexperienced trade union leaders in Africa would find it hard to comprehend why they should refuse to deal with the East German trade unions offering them assistance when the unions of West Germany were themselves warming to contacts with the Soviet bloc. Moreover, the course being pursued by the DGB would give comfort to the WFTU in its present internal crisis by offering proof that its call for East-West rapprochement was sound and effective.20 Meany’s letter hinted at deep resentment over the German unions’ lack of gratitude for past assistance from the Americans and closed on a bitter note that linked together criticism for German anti-Vietnam War protesters with those trade unionists who took their cue from Moscow in wanting to remove the US military shield in Germany: “I can assure you that if Moscow should, tomorrow, decide to revive its claims on West Berlin . . . those who have been denouncing American involvement in Vietnam would demonstrate in support of Moscow’s demand for the withdrawal of all American troops from Berlin.”21 There was concern within the Bonn government at the deteriorating relations between the DGB and AFL-CIO and even talk of Chancellor Erhard inviting Meany to Germany to smooth matters. However, Lovestone advised against such a visit with the Christian Democrat leader, arguing that the “demagogues in the DGB” would use it against Meany just when “maximum AFL-CIO efforts are needed to prevent the pseudo-left from pushing it towards increasing rapport with Communist ‘unions.’”22 Rosenberg was himself alarmed at the rift that was opening up with the AFL-CIO and the possibility that the federation might not be represented at the DGB’s congress in May 1966.

Only weeks before the congress was due to start, DGB international director Otto Kersten passed word through Irving Brown urging the AFL-CIO to send a fraternal delegate and thereby help Rosenberg face down his anti-American critics. Recognizing that it was out of the question for an AFL-CIO executive councillor to attend, Lovestone went himself and delivered a diplomatic statement in the forlorn hope that it would revive cooperation between the German and American labour movements and so offer encouragement to working people suffering under the yoke of Soviet bloc dictatorships.23 However, the congress voted to follow up the Kluncker initiative by supporting “information tours” to Eastern Europe. The stated intention was to obtain first-hand experience of the countries visited and overcome prejudices and misconceptions on both sides. In November 1966 an official DGB delegation left for an eleven-day visit to the USSR. The effect was to strain DGB–AFL-CIO relations for years to come.24

Ill feeling was compounded by what the AFL-CIO regarded as German labour’s partial reporting of the internal American dispute between Meany and Reuther in the SPD’s journal Vorwärts. When Georg Leber proposed to his fellow SPD leaders that the paper desist from unfriendly coverage, his plea was ignored. Lovestone pointed the finger specifically at party leader Willy Brandt and foreign affairs spokesman Herbert Wehner. Lovestone complained to the German labour attaché about similarly biased reporting in the DGB’s paper Welt der Arbeit, and the German metal workers’ journal Metall, deeming them guilty of “scandalous misrepresentations, misinformation and slanders.” When later the German ambassador invited Lovestone to lunch to smooth matters over, he was promptly turned down. “Some people live in a fool’s paradise,” Lovestone fumed: “I am not thrilled by lunches with ambassadors. I have lived too long to be buttered up. We are in a fight and we are keeping an eye on all our opponents and those who serve and save our opponents,” adding menacingly: “We will straighten out the accounts.”25

Hoping to repair the damage to relations with the AFL-CIO, Rosenberg invited George Meany to lead an AFL-CIO delegation to Germany to study “the trade union situation” and for talks about Vietnam. Irving Brown interpreted it as a positive gesture, the outcome of Georg Leber’s pressure for “an exchange with ‘our friends’ rather than with the East.” But Lovestone told Kuno Brandel, editor of the construction workers’ journal and former colleague in the Communist Party (Opposition), that any such visit by the Americans would not be for social reasons—“only for a knock-down drag-out fight,” and he wasn’t sure that the AFL-CIO was ready for that at the moment.26 In fact, Meany responded with a tartly worded letter taking the DGB to task for adopting a factional stance on the internal AFL-CIO dispute with the UAW, complaining that “intervention by one ICFTU affiliate in the internal affairs of another national affiliate is anything but conducive to the unity and progress of the ICFTU” and demanding that this German behaviour cease.27

A further letter from Rosenberg failed to appease Meany, who complained angrily again about personalized attacks in the German labour press. Gewerkschaftliche Monatschafte, whose publisher Rosenberg was, had spoken of the AFL-CIO as “dominated by the seventy-two-year-old George Meany” who was “insensitive and unimaginative” and whose foreign policy “limits itself to a large extent to sterile anti-Communism of the Cold War . . . which is to the right of Johnson-Rusk, of the Catholic Church and of more intelligent employer circles.” A publication of the metalworkers’, Der Gewerkschaftler, had speculated on the possible breakup of the AFL-CIO and suggested it would probably be “a good thing.” Describing the comments as “unfounded, unwarranted and spiteful,” Meany sent Rosenberg the text of a recent AFL-CIO executive council statement on the subject with a request that the DGB publicize it. Only when goodwill had been restored would the AFL-CIO be willing to send a delegation of senior vice presidents to Germany as requested.28

Yet barely a week later Lovestone learned that Rosenberg had circulated within the DGB literature from the UAW relating to its complaints against the AFL-CIO. Concurrently a joint press conference in Dusseldorf given by Rosenberg and V. I. Prokhorov, leader of a visiting delegation from the AUCCTU, announced a deepening of their program of reciprocal visits. But beyond this, the two leaders also spoke about the war in Vietnam, with Prokhorov carefully seizing the opportunity to identify with DGB opposition to “the dirty war.” For them to be sharing a platform with the AUCCTU was bad enough, but to be united in opposition to a cause that the AFL-CIO leadership strongly supported was too much. A couple of weeks later Meany cabled Rosenberg cancelling the planned visit by the AFL-CIO vice presidents.29

Brown in Africa: Launching the African-American Labour Centre, 1965–68

George Meany’s growing dissatisfaction at the way Western European trade union centres failed to stand up for free trade unionism with the same commitment that the Americans showed ruled out the likelihood of the AFL-CIO continuing to maintain an ongoing presence on the continent. It ensured that Irving Brown would devote most of his attention to Africa and the AALC. However, at Omer Becu’s request, Brown continued to occupy the position of director of the ICFTU’s New York office pending the appointment of a replacement. In effect he kept the job until early 1967, a second string to his bow that allowed him freedom to travel and politic more widely.

The AALC began life just as the ICFTU was winding down its African program. Indeed, it was George Meany’s intention that the AALC would largely replace the ICFTU in the region, flying the flag of anti-communism more effectively than the ICFTU’s ill-starred regional body AFRO had managed to do. AFRO was “put on ice” at the Amsterdam congress, with formal control transferring to the Brussels secretariat. Even British diplomats, instinctively wary of the American interest in Africa, felt it appropriate to offer a cautious welcome to the AALC, though the British labour counsellor in Nigeria, a country soon to be the object of intense American efforts, opined that he had “no particular wish to have Irving Brown operating in his maladroit way in my parish.” A quiet word with his counterpart in the US embassy in Lagos, he hoped, would “contribute to curbing Brown’s less desirable activities.”30

There was certainly scope for the Americans to counter Soviet and Chinese influence, and in that sense the notion advanced in the early 1960s of Africa becoming the new front in the Cold War still resonated. However, free trade unionism as understood by Americans was hardly on the agenda, even among Africans who were anti-communist. Union organization independent of government was under pressure in these new one-party states. National centres were increasingly obliged to observe “positive neutrality” and so withdraw from the ICFTU, while the prioritization of development strategies required them to toe the government line in focusing on nation building rather than the interests of workers per se. It was hardly surprising that as he stepped down from the ICFTU presidency in 1965, Arne Geijer wondered whether there still existed anything that could be called a genuine free trade union movement in Africa.31

Avoiding publicity in the early stages of its program, with a small initial staff of six but a starting budget of slightly more than $1 million (90 percent of it contributed by AID), the AALC adapted to the unpromising climate for free trade unionism by concentrating on assistance with training for vocational skills, the establishment of cooperative enterprise, and the provision of welfare schemes. This was to be the bread and butter of AALC activity, and it was soon the best-resourced union operation in Africa.32

By 1968, with total federal funding of $2.4 million, a field staff of sixteen representatives or advisors, and around a hundred African trade unionists engaged as educators, the centre claimed to have programs of one sort or another in thirty-three countries. Of note were training colleges in the Congo/Zaire, Kenya, and Chad devoting much effort to equipping trade unionists with skills for commercial and secretarial work; a college in Ghana focusing on industrial relations with an emphasis on labour-management “peace”; a project for training in printing techniques at the Kenya Polytechnic; training for medical assistants in Tanzania as part of “village development”; mobile health clinics for workers in unionized firms in the Congo and Ghana; and even shower and toilet facilities for dockworkers in Lagos.33

While Irving Brown made favourable noises about cooperating closely with the ICFTU, the latter was largely kept in the dark about American intentions in Africa. The reality was that Brown’s role in all this was essentially that of a roving deal maker, fronting the “sales drive” for assistance schemes but operating essentially at the political level. On a routine basis, he interfaced with presidents, prime ministers, and relevant cabinet ministers in the target countries. Reports home from Africa were peppered with references to high-level political contacts. Thus: “breakfast with [Ugandan] Prime Minister Obote and his Foreign Minister . . . anxious for discussions about AALC . . . most amiable meeting”; “just left Vice President Moi [of Kenya] . . . excellent discussion—we have complete understanding which should lead to great possibilities . . . this establishes a direct relationship with the highest offices in the country”; with Ghana’s new Prime Minister Busia “signed a three-way AALC-GTUC-government of Ghana agreement” even before Busia’s cabinet had been named; “spent some time with [Dahomey] President Maga and left him a memo”; in Tunisia for a meeting with Prime Minister Nouira: “This may lay the groundwork for an AALC office in Tunis”; and “long discussion with President Mobutu . . . very positive.”34

In early 1968, vice president Hubert Humphrey undertook a nine-nation tour of Africa and invited Irving Brown to accompany him. Brown made sure Humphrey met the important trade union leaders while, at the same time, the vice president’s presence helped to raise the profile of the AALC. In Ethiopia, Humphrey was about to introduce the AALC director to Emperor Haile Selassie, Africa’s pre-eminent statesman, but was cut short. Selassie told him he already knew Irving Brown very well. During the tour, the American ambassador to Kenya tried to persuade the vice president that Brown was persona non grata in Kenya and should be excluded from the party to visit the country. Humphrey disregarded the advice and later wrote telling George Meany how well Brown had been received in Nairobi, where the local press had actually given him a warmer welcome than the vice president himself.35

At its best, AALC technical assistance was considered to be of genuine benefit to the recipients. From British diplomats in West Africa there was grudging praise for its achievements. Despite British disdain for “Irving Brown and his methods,” reports by the first secretary (Labour) in the British High Commission in Ghana recorded:

Whether the ICFTU or the British TUC like it or not, the Africans lap up help given by the AALC (most of it well-conceived and meeting real needs) so they must not be surprised if AALC spokesmen exercise influence in African trade union circles. In contrast, the Eastern Bloc achieve little by their aid programmes which consist almost entirely of scholarships to Bloc countries. . . . The AALC has developed a presence in Africa . . . and it has some first class chaps running its ventures.36

Yet, for Irving Brown, the specific focus of these vocational programs was of less interest than the opportunity it gave him to keep a finger on the pulse of African politics and, where possible, influence directly the politics of the labour movement. The hope was always one of shaping a pan-African movement oriented to the West, either created in opposition to AATUF (which hardly amounted to much) or by winning over elements in AATUF who could be encouraged to withdraw from the Soviet embrace.

The AALC planned its biggest effort in Nigeria, strategically important because of its rich natural resources.37 It had a proliferation of mainly small, in-house unions operating beneath organizationally weak but competing national centres, of which the two most important were the pro-Western United Labour Congress (ULC), affiliated to the ICFTU, and the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), which traded on its support for “neutrality” while in reality being an outrider for the WFTU. With a reported membership of 300,000 (a figure that many doubted), the ULC claimed to be Nigeria’s most powerful trade union centre; Brown’s hope was to give substance to that claim.38

An American-led ICFTU organizing campaign was launched with a proposed budget of $150,000, 40 percent of it provided by the Americans. A British diplomatic note from Lagos observed: “The character of the ‘confrontation’ in Nigeria is changing from ICFTU versus Eastern bloc to America versus Eastern bloc.”39 Brown insisted on firm American control of spending decisions, and over time that control was intensified. The Nigerians would have to submit to this approach or face the withdrawal of American backing. Brown emphasized that it meant “direct control of all operations through myself in cooperation with our representatives on the spot.” The AALC would underwrite the cost of a small clerical and technical staff for the ULC headquarters, including “a confidential secretary (someone that we would furnish).”40

However, hopes for rapid progress were blighted when the political situation changed radically following a military coup in January 1966 and a counter-coup six months later. Nigeria would soon be propelled on the road to widespread ethnic violence and civil war over Biafra’s quest for independence. Irving Brown sought to win favour with the new military government through a confidential memorandum sent to senior army officers, making a plea for the ULC to be accorded special status. The memorandum stressed the close link between the ULC and the AFL-CIO and suggested that the best way for the federal government in Nigeria to preserve national unity would be to enlist American support. The situation, he said, called for “extraordinary expenditures” to support “friendly forces” and proposed that the ULC be helped discreetly to strengthen its activities as the “sole, loyal and responsible trade union centre.” The memorandum pointed out that the AFL-CIO and AALC were ready to do anything to help—as consultants, as investors, and as a force attempting to influence official American policy toward Nigeria. Brown concluded:

I should welcome an opportunity to meet with . . . the head of your Government, to discuss discreetly and practically how we can work together towards common goals. I am sure that the leaders of the labour movement of America and especially its President, George Meany, are fully prepared to examine . . . all means within our legitimate power to be of service in the great task to preserve Nigerian and therefore African unity.41

Yet the stumbling block for the AFL-CIO was that the Johnson administration was reluctant to become involved in the bloody Biafran conflict, which ran from 1967 to 1970. The ULC complained as AID appropriations were cut back. All Meany could do was to try to reassure its leaders that he shared Nigeria’s disappointment that Washington had refused to sell it arms.42

Building Pan-African Links: Ghana and Congo

As scope for constructive work diminished in Nigeria, it opened up in the Congo and Ghana. Colonel Mobutu seized power in the Congo with American backing in November 1965 and imposed military rule. Two weeks later, a military coup in Ghana ousted Kwame Nkrumah, AATUF’s main backer, forcing it to close its headquarters in Accra. Irving Brown now redirected AALC effort to forging links among African labour centres considered pro-Western, bidding thereby to challenge AATUF’s claim to be the voice of pan-African labour. In this the Ghanaian and Congolese/Zairian trade unions became pivotal.

The AALC was quickly on the scene in Accra, where Arnold Zack, an AALC contract worker from the CIA, was assigned to meet with Benjamin Bentum, who had been handed charge of the unions by the National Liberation Council. Bentum appealed for technical assistance from Western trade union centres generally but specifically requested £14,000 from Brown to enable him to fight an election that would confirm him as general secretary of the Ghana TUC. Jay Lovestone quickly notified Meany that he had obtained $10,000 “out of the Berlin activities” to help build free trade unions in Ghana.43 In what was intended as a friendly gesture toward the AFL-CIO, Omer Becu—now in his final months in office—agreed that the Americans should take the lead in the new situation in Ghana, and in the following weeks, Brown shuttled between Brussels and Accra helping to coordinate the American-ICFTU effort, assisting with the recruitment of a head office staff for the Ghana TUC, equipped to conduct research, publicity and, to use Brown’s portmanteau term, “cadre training.”44

Working with Bentum, Irving Brown set out to extend AALC influence by encouraging a new pan-African initiative—“a moderate and genuine trade union set-up”—among independent trade union centres. By October 1966 Bentum was sounding out trade union opinion in Nigeria, Dahomey, and Togo, and over the next two months he signed joint communiqués with the centres in Togo and Ivory Coast espousing “true unity of African trade unions” and a commitment to work toward the formation of a provisional committee. Further Ghanaian delegations to the moderate states of west and central Africa were undertaken; the US labour attaché in Ivory Coast liaised with the Ghana TUC and his local AALC representative, and Bentum was invited to the United States as a guest of the AALC.

Claiming that support was spreading to countries such as Senegal and Kenya, Bentum made plans for a preliminary meeting of interested centres at the ILO’s annual international labour conference in Geneva in June 1967. However, it came at a sensitive moment. The cost of convening the meeting and financing travel costs to Geneva for the twenty-one delegates was a substantial amount for the Ghana TUC to find. With Tom Braden’s recent Saturday Evening Post article about CIA financing of American labour’s foreign program resonating internationally, African delegates expressed misgivings about the source of funding for the event. They made a point of insisting on the right of non-intervention in African national affairs, while Bentum was forced to issue a statement denying AATUF claims that the conference being planned later for Accra was really a product of outside interference in African affairs.45

To what extent African sensitivity to possible American machinations worked against Bentum’s project is a matter for guesswork, but his Accra conference, which followed three weeks later, was seen as a flop. The general impression was that the American “affair” with Bentum had led nowhere. Nonetheless, a perception that the Americans were playing a lone hand in these West African countries was a matter of concern in British government circles. When the British High Commission in Accra sought guidance from the Foreign Office in London on how to respond to these developments, it was advised:

It is important that in an area of common concern we should not work at cross purposes with the Americans. . . . [However,] it seems unlikely that the AALC, given its background, resources, present leadership and the increasing tendency of the AFL-CIO to go it alone, would wish to associate British trade unionism regularly with its activities; or that the TUC would be willing to be harnessed to them.46

Indeed, the go-it-alone approach served only to sow mistrust in the wider international labour movement.

Complementing Brown’s activity in Ghana was a parallel effort in the Congo. The country had been in constant turmoil since Belgium suddenly granted it independence in 1960. However, it boasted a substantial trade union movement with upward of three quarters of a million supporters. Of three trade union centres, two—the Confédération des syndicats libres du Congo (CSLC) and the Fédération général du travail du Kongo—identified with the ICFTU, while the largest, the Union des travailleurs congolais affiliated to the Christian international, was reckoned by many to be the strongest democratic trade union organization in Africa.

Newly in power as military strong man, Colonel Mobutu faced armed revolts in 1966 and 1967 but defeated them with air support from the CIA.47 As he gained the upper hand in 1967 he set about political reconstruction under a new constitution that expanded and centralized state power, designating himself head of state, head of government, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and “Father of the Nation.” In May 1967 he dissolved all political organizations and established the Mouvement populaire de la révolution (MPR) as the only legal political party. In so doing, Mobutu brought key labour leaders into government, appointing them to the MPR’s political bureau and granting them representation on a proposed tripartite government advisory body, the National Labour Council. Alphonse Kithima, the politically ambitious general secretary of the CSLC, became the MPR’s director of policy, moving on within a matter of months to become Mobutu’s minister of labour and, within a year, minister of education.48

To ensure the Congo’s continued membership in the western camp, the US government supported Mobutu with assistance in almost every aspect of life, and in this context Irving Brown also threw the full backing of the AALC behind the military-led government. The AALC wagon was hitched to the Mobutu regime, and over the next half-dozen years Brown’s reports presented a positive picture of developments in the Congo. Whereas Belgian trade unionists offering assistance to their Congolese counterparts had been discouraged by the military government, there was no such restriction on the efforts of the Americans. An AALC representative, Paul Barrette, was deployed in the Congo from November 1966 and began a program of training for union branch secretaries, the first step toward the creation of an AALC training institute.49

By 1968, Brown was reporting that the AALC and AFL-CIO were “in great shape with the Congolese”—both the government and unions. The training institute in Kinshasa had become a reality and was “humming along” with over a hundred students taking vocational courses each day.50 With Mobutu seen as the AALC’s most reliable supporter, the following year planning began for a pan-African press service to be established in the country with a bilingual bulletin, Perspectives syndicales/ Labour Perspectives, sourced from American, European, and African union journals and serving all Africa.51

In the coming years, Brown’s reports continued to portray a flourishing relationship with the Mobutu regime. Occasionally he would suggest that the situation left something to be desired: “There must be very soon some improvement . . . for the people or else there may be some new explosions”; Alphonse Kithima “is doing a first class job as Minister of Education but appears to be getting too rich and comfortable”; “Mobutu has gone too far in an authoritarian direction and there may be some trouble for the unions.” But such observations were typically mere asides, offered without elaboration. In general the more important message was that the Congo was “stable and secure.” Toward the end of his tenure as director of the AALC, Brown was arranging for Mobutu to visit the AFL-CIO headquarters in 1973, telling George Meany that he had “had a long discussion with President Mobutu about the expansion of our relationship with them and that Mobutu’s visit to America “would be very helpful for our entire work, not only in Zaire but in a good part of Africa where Mobutu’s influence has been especially good in recent days.”52

However, it was precisely because of his association with President Mobutu that Brown’s parallel appointment as director of the ICFTU’s New York office finally came to an abrupt end in 1967, thus restricting him for the most part to work in Africa for several more years. That same relationship had a decisive impact on the choice of a successor to Omer Becu then under consideration in Brussels. The crucial factor was that, as part of Mobutu’s bid to impose his personal rule through the MPR, the various Congolese union centres were required to unify and subordinate themselves to ultimate direction by this single political party, and Irving Brown acted as a key agent in helping to force through the unification of the centres with the haste demanded by Mobutu.

It was reported to the ICFTU that Brown had warned the Congolese unions that if they balked at unifying, they would be compelled by Mobutu to do so, and he made it clear that the AFL-CIO backed Mobutu. An earnest of the AALC’s intentions was that training courses that Barrette had been offering to the separate union groups were now to be given to combined classes with immediate effect.53 Brown promised to reward the unions for their cooperation, and at the AFL-CIO convention in December 1967 he duly signed with their representative an agreement providing for the establishment in Kinshasa of the National Institute for Occupational Training, which offered vocational training, developmental work on cooperatives, and an American-run program of seminars for trade unionists.

Getting wind of Brown’s activities, the ICFTU was concerned as to how far he was in league with the Mobutu regime and whether he was still trying to bring about a pan-African labour organization based on Ghana and the Congo. As the British labour attaché in Brussels noted: “ICFTU are concerned with Brown’s activities in Kinshasa. They understand that he is active in some way in trying to bring about unity of the three trade union groups. They do not know what exactly he is doing, or what pressure he is applying, but they are mistrustful of him.”54

Repercussions from the Congo: Ave Atque Vale Jef Rens

Omer Becu was in the midst of a third extended period of sick leave in eighteen months in November 1966 when the ICFTU executive board meeting in Barbados decided that a successor needed to be appointed. Of the various names mentioned, two potential candidates stood out: Jeff Rens, until recently the widely respected deputy director-general of the ILO, whose roots were in the Belgian labour movement and was backed by the AFL-CIO; and Harm Buiter, the Dutch general secretary of the European Trade Union Secretariat, the coordinating body for national centres belonging to the European Communities (Economic, Euratom, and Coal and Steel), who was the preferred candidate of ICFTU president Bruno Storti.55 Under pressure to go, six weeks later Becu submitted his resignation on grounds of ill health. A special meeting of the executive board’s inner subcommittee convened in mid-January 1967 judged that Rens had most support and should be appointed subject to confirmation by the full executive board meeting in March.

Rens’s nomination came as a relief to the AFL-CIO leadership, whose faith in the ICFTU was ebbing away. Ahead of the Barbados meeting, Irving Brown had described the situation in the organization as “close to hopeless,” warning that without a positive outcome (meaning the appointment of Rens) the outlook for the ICFTU as an important decision-making body was bleak.56 The Americans regarded Rens as a safe pair of hands who might be counted on to nurse the ICFTU through a difficult period. He was currently the part-time chairman of the Belgian government’s National Council for Science Policy and agreed that prior to his formal appointment he would spend some time in the ICFTU headquarters to familiarize himself with the secretariat.

A parallel appointment that the Americans welcomed was the ICFTU’s decision to hire Morris Paladino, currently deputy executive director of AIFLD, as assistant general secretary. It was the fulfilment of Becu’s promise of 1960 to install in the Brussels secretariat an American who enjoyed George Meany’s confidence.57 If the ICFTU were to have a future, much would depend on the effectiveness of Rens and Paladino working in partnership.

Paladino took up his post in Brussels in February 1967, but before the anticipated Rens-Paladino leadership team had a chance to establish itself, American hopes of a fresh start for the ICFTU were thrown into disarray as a consequence of the news recently received from the Congo. During his visits to the Brussels headquarters, Rens had learned of Brown’s recent activities, and especially his pressuring of the Congolese Christian and secular union centres to amalgamate as part of Colonel Mobutu’s program to incorporate them into his centralized system of government.

Rens protested to Meany about Brown’s intervention, noting that it was not the first time he had heard of such behaviour by the American and that it ran counter to the kind of genuine international trade union policy he intended to favour if he were to become ICFTU general secretary. He requested an urgent meeting to discuss the matter with Meany before the executive board meeting in March, where confirmation of his appointment was expected. As he explained:

I would . . . find it unacceptable if Irving Brown were to continue going around, invoking the power and the influence of the U.S. to impose his views to trade unionists of developing countries. . . . If he is allowed to continue in Africa and elsewhere the kind of operations . . . under the official patronage of the American labour movement . . . no ICFTU Secretary can succeed in his job. This [proposed meeting with Meany] I consider indispensable before entering in the new post.58

Meany failed to respond to this or a second similar letter from Rens. In the absence of the assurances sought, the Belgian withdrew his candidacy one week before the executive board met to confirm his appointment. To spare all-round embarrassment, he withheld his real reason for withdrawing, inventing a fanciful story that the Belgian government had put pressure on him to work full time for the National Council for Science Policy. In a letter to the ICFTU, he described this account as “frank and full”: “Above all do not think it was the difficulties inherent in this duty which disheartened me. I have never been afraid of difficulties.”59 Rens was nothing if not a diplomat.

Figure 15.  Jef Rens (left), with Ludwig Rosenberg, in 1951. At the time of Omer Becu’s resignation, Rens was the Americans’ preferred candidate for the position of ICFTU general secretary, but Brown’s unconstrained activities in Africa persuaded him to turn down the job. Courtesy of AMSAB–Institute of Social History, Ghent. Copyright © AdsD / Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

President Bruno Storti asked the appointing subcommittee whether they wanted Rens to appear before them and elaborate further, but Meany was quick to spot the danger of dwelling on the subject and argued that a post-mortem would be pointless. With his concurrence, the European members of the subcommittee were asked to propose another candidate.60 Two days later, at a meeting between Irving Brown and Alfred Braunthal, the senior assistant general secretary, it was mutually agreed that Brown would vacate the post of ICFTU New York director, held pro tem since October 1965.61 No reason was given, but it was clearly a product of the criticisms made by Rens. What role Meany played in this decision other than to approve it is also unclear. His failure to respond to Rens’s letters suggests that he felt no urgent need to placate the would-be general secretary; the signs were that the ICFTU was now peripheral to Meany’s vision of what needed to be done in the international field. As the biggest contributor to ICFTU finances, the AFL-CIO still had a stake in the organization that needed to be safeguarded. But with Paladino at the heart of the Brussels secretariat, Meany doubtless considered the federation’s interests to be adequately protected. In such circumstances it made sense to Meany for Brown to concentrate on work in Africa.

Evidently unaware of Rens’s letters to Meany, Jay Lovestone viewed his withdrawal as a major setback that was now likely to lead to the appointment of a less qualified European as general secretary, as he wrote to Kuno Brandel:

I don’t entertain any fond hope that the ICFTU can recover from this blow. All I can assure you is that if the Europeans prefer flirtations with Moscow to partnership with us . . . I don’t entertain any profound conviction that we can again rally American labour to save their necks as . . . when we smashed the WFTU.

His big fear was that Harm Buiter, an ambitious Dutchman currently heading up the European Trade Union Secretariat, and with close links to the leadership of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, would inevitably be the leading candidate to fill the vacant post.62

Bruno Storti had already sounded out Buiter as to his availability. Buiter confirmed his willingness to be a candidate but also submitted written “reservations.” He stipulated that his nomination by the executive board would need to be unanimous or nearly unanimous, including the “definite agreement” of the large affiliates outside the six countries of the European Common Market. As general secretary he would insist on remuneration commensurate with the importance of the post. The ICFTU would also need to have a sufficiently large budget to fulfil its mission. Noting that the solidarity fund had just “undergone the American operation,” he remarked tartly that he was not interested in heading up an organization “whose action is limited to sending telegrams of sympathy or of protest.” Lastly, he insisted on “a blank cheque” to reorganize the secretariat, with what he called “the big fellows,” accepting that there could be no special protection for their respective “favourites” among the staff. Buiter was not one to sell himself short; the phrasing of the letter captured well his self-regard and bluff style. And, importantly, his preconditions on finance and freedom to reorganize ICFTU personnel were directed particularly at the AFL-CIO.63 Storti kept the letter confidential, but in the summer months of 1967 Lovestone got wind of it and eventually managed to obtain a copy from a contact in Storti’s office.

The European members of the appointing subcommittee authorized Storti to negotiate the terms on which Buiter might be engaged, with final confirmation of the appointment left to the full executive board meeting in October 1967. Sitting in on the subcommittee meeting as an observer was James Suffridge, attending as Meany’s personal representative. He declined to participate in the discussion beyond telling the members that if they favoured Buiter, the AFL-CIO would go along with it. Earlier, in a private discussion with Storti, he had inquired whether any of the three current assistant general secretaries was qualified for promotion to the general secretaryship, clearly with a view to pressing the case for Morris Paladino. Storti responded that Paladino was “too new,” and merely shrugged and smiled when Suffridge observed that Paladino did have thirty years’ experience in the free trade union movement. The obvious conclusion, Suffridge later reported to Meany, was that no American was likely to be acceptable for the top job.64

Irving Brown made a point of being in Brussels when the proposal to nominate Buiter was being discussed, aiming to take the temperature of the organization. The following week he sent Meany a lengthy appraisal of where the ICFTU was heading, with advice on how to react. The burden of his letter was that the ICFTU was likely to become a more inward-looking, Eurocentric organization, with the British TUC exerting considerable influence. As such it was likely to shy away from tough policies toward totalitarian regimes and their labour organizations. With the ICFTU’s interest in the developing countries likely to wane, Brown recommended that the AFL-CIO reinforce its independent work in Latin America, Africa, and Asia “while still offering to cooperate with and implement ICFTU decisions to coordinate more closely all its international activities with those of the national centres and the ITS.”

To protect American interests within the ICFTU, Brown argued that it was important to reinforce Paladino’s standing as assistant general secretary, ensuring that his “organizational and coordination responsibilities” were officially recognized and that he had sufficient means to function effectively. In other words, whatever cutbacks were imposed in other areas of ICFTU activity, Paladino’s sphere of operations would need to be protected. Paladino also needed to be supported by the appointment of another assistant general secretary who shared the AFL-CIO world view—Brown’s preferred candidate was Pierre Felce, the general secretary of Force ouvrière’s transport workers’ union. This proposed appointment, intended to increase the influence of FO within the ICFTU, was something Brown had already agreed to with André Bergeron.65

Brown signed off on an uncharacteristically diffident note: “I hope you don’t mind these remarks which have been inspired by my recent trip.” In fact, George Meany did mind. As Brown subsequently related to Stefan Nedzynski, at his next meeting with the AFL-CIO president in Washington Meany brandished the letter and asked him: “Irving, what is your job?” Perplexed, Brown replied: “AALC Director.” “Then stick to it!” Meany barked, bringing the conversation to an abrupt close.66

It is possible that Brown had simply caught Meany on a bad day, though the latter’s reaction seems to have been rooted in something deeper. He had received Brown’s missive in the same week that Tom Braden’s disclosures of CIA funding of FTUC activities in Europe were hitting the headlines, and it may be that he was annoyed at being forced to deny in public allegations that he knew were true. But the most plausible explanation is that Meany was no longer interested in receiving Brown’s expert analyses of what was happening within the ICFTU or advice on how AFL-CIO strategy and tactics should be fine-tuned in response to the internal politics of the ICFTU. Meany’s attitude toward the international was now firmly fixed and was not open to challenge. He had recently agreed to Brown’s quitting his ICFTU post, to be replaced by Paul Barton, and in Paladino he had his own nominee in situ as ICFTU assistant general secretary—and presumably he felt that American interests were thereby sufficiently protected.

Whether or not Meany had intended to deflate Brown, that was evidently the effect of his sharp put-down. Nedzynski recalls a disconsolate Brown telling him about his meeting with Meany and the fact that he was now largely confined to fighting the threat of communism in the relative backwaters of Africa. After this experience, it would be a full eighteen months before the AALC director again wrote directly to Meany about ICFTU affairs.

Yet Irving Brown was still the man Lovestone relied on for sensitive missions. From time to time the AALC director would turn up in critical situations at locations far beyond his African bailiwick. One such instance was in early 1968 when he was sent to South Vietnam for two weeks immediately following the Tet Offensive. His mission was to give direction to the newly established Asian-American Free Labor Institute and to put the AFL-CIO’s joint program with the Vietnamese Confederation of Labor (CVT) “on the map.” Led by Tran Quoc Buu, the CVT was facing particular difficulties, with members imprisoned following a recent strike of power workers. Brown was tasked with negotiating their release in talks with the president, General Thieu, and the vice president, Air Marshall Ky.67 On another assignment a few months later, in the aftermath of the general strike that accompanied the “May Events” in France, Brown was sent to Paris to assess the prospects for a renewed program of assistance to the Force ouvrière unions.68 In October of that same year, he was dispatched to Finland in an unsuccessful bid to prevent the imminent reunification of the Finnish trade unions as a result of which the pro-American Suomen Ammattijärjestö (SAJ), launched only eight years earlier, would soon be reabsorbed into the national centre, Suomen Ammattiliittojen Keskusjärjestö (SAK), in which communists still had a strong presence.69

Just as George Meany had brushed aside Irving Brown’s latest advice on dealing with the ICFTU, he also closed his ears to Jay Lovestone’s attempt to persuade him to oppose the appointment of Harm Buiter. Lovestone instinctively mistrusted Buiter because of his long-standing contacts with Otto Brenner, the leftist leader of the German metalworkers with close links to Walter Reuther. He spent the summer of 1967 intriguing in the hope of derailing the Dutchman’s chances of being confirmed as ICFTU general secretary, his stance hardening when he became aware of the terms Buiter had set out for his appointment. Lovestone tried to embarrass Storti into making public the relevant letter with its “vicious anti-American touches,” and he denounced the ICFTU president as a “Buiter ally” when he refused. He wrote to Paladino:

I think the worst mistake would be to assume that Buiter is already elected. I have grave doubts whether the AFL-CIO will support this character. He is anti-American to the core. . . . President Storti can tell you much about it but he has chosen to keep quiet and to hide things in re this matter.70

Hoping to persuade Meany to renege on Suffridge’s commitment to the Europeans that if Buiter was their choice, the Americans would accept it, Lovestone wrote to him emphasizing Buiter’s “lack of qualification” and proposing deferment of any appointment until the next ICFTU congress scheduled for summer 1968 (later put back by twelve months) to allow for a renewed search for an alternative. He repeated the case made earlier by Brown for Pierre Felce to be supported as a candidate for assistant general secretary to prevent Paladino being isolated in the secretariat.71 Lovestone’s support for Felce was reinforced when he learned that Buiter, alert to the danger that the Americans might succeed in foisting the Frenchman onto the ICFTU secretariat, had quizzed Felce critically about his pro-American line, making clear his disapproval and telling him accusingly: “You are the Americans’ man.”72

Lovestone reckoned to be making progress with Meany in his campaign against Buiter, claiming that his latest “categoric” position was to tell the Europeans: “Gentlemen: if you want him, you can have him but he will not have our confidence or support and we will not vote for him.” If so, it was a step back from the commitment given by Suffridge, but Lovestone hoped to push Meany further into accepting the “absolute necessity” of voting against Buiter. He predicted that executive board would not favour a man “who sees the highest post in the labour movement in terms of maximum dollars and cents.” Buiter, he argued, did not reveal “any genuine constructive interest in the international labour movement but discloses only a character on the make who only wants the dough. We don’t buy this.”73

Yet all this was so much wishful thinking by Lovestone. Meany was aware that outside Europe, Buiter lacked strong support. But he was firmly backed by the more powerful European centres, and even André Bergeron was in his corner, loath to be isolated among other European labour leaders.74 As in his earlier dismissal of Irving Brown’s offer of guidance, Meany simply ignored Lovestone’s advice and stuck to his initial position as conveyed to the ICFTU by Suffridge. There was no point in opposing Buiter only to find the AFL-CIO without friends. Meany could—and would—deny the ICFTU the funds for anything more than basic activities. But his general attitude was that the AFL-CIO was now ready to go it alone in the developing world and that it was up to the ICFTU to demonstrate reasons why the Americans should invest much time and effort in a body that had disappointed time and again.

There had been talk within the AFL-CIO of Meany leading a powerful team of federation vice presidents to the crucial executive board meeting in October 1967, but he decided to drop out a couple of weeks before they were due to depart, leaving it to George Harrison and Joe Beirne to represent the AFL-CIO. Their instructions on the choice of general secretary were simply to abstain. It said something about Meany’s changing relationship with Lovestone that the latter was not informed directly about this decision and only learned about it from the grapevine. He admitted that it made the situation “extremely difficult.” Close observers were now beginning to sense a waning of Lovestone’s influence.75

At the last minute, Lovestone was assigned to accompany Harrison and Beirne to the board meeting, and he clung to the hope that the vote might go against Buiter. Rumours that Buiter was mainly interested in a high salary and the right to travel first class had been assiduously spread around, and these weighed against him among some delegates. In the voting, the Americans dutifully abstained. Beirne told the meeting that the AFL-CIO was concerned at the lack of a general secretary over such a long period and wanted the post filled. “If Mr. Buiter could impartially carry out this task, as the AFL-CIO hoped, his organization would be the first to support him.” As the only candidate, Buiter was then narrowly confirmed as general secretary with thirteen votes for, but with an embarrassing ten abstentions.76

Even then Lovestone was reluctant to accept it as the final word. Given the number of abstentions he insisted that Buiter could hardly claim a mandate, and he reported to Meany that the result had been influenced by Bruno Storti’s threat to resign as president if Buiter were not accepted. Even those who voted for him saw him as a “temporary, makeshift candidate” whose re-election at the next congress could not be taken for granted. With much bitterness, his report then laid about the people at the helm in the ICFTU, whom it now served his interests once again to portray as implacable enemies:

Storti . . . is no friend of the AFL-CIO. He opposes our policies and supports Buiter because the latter is even more anti-American. In discussions with Europeans, Buiter speaks sharply against Meany and his “American entourage.” Buiter is a Brenner man . . . guided by Storti and Rosenberg, with the latter taking all his cues and orders from Brenner whose IMF is one of the most dangerous vehicles for eroding the principles and policies of the ICFTU. Buiter has . . . opposed and so far succeeded in delaying the election of Felce as an assistant general secretary. . . . Morris Paladino has been . . . doing well. But without Felce, he is blocked and surrounded. Buiter will no doubt move carefully and not show his hand too crudely in dealings with Paladino. But Tulatz [AGS] and particularly Braunthal [AGS] are blocking him. Braunthal is crudely hostile in his attitude towards the AFL-CIO. . . . Buiter will be much more cautious in his action. . . . He will be careful . . . but his basic position is with Brenner and Rosenberg.77

Almost certainly, Meany shared Lovestone’s assessment of this cast of characters, but he was prepared to be patient and watch how Buiter performed. The new general secretary would have to operate within an ever-shrinking budget. The AFL-CIO had decided to make no further contributions to the solidarity fund until a thorough investigation of ICFTU finances had been conducted. And with Meany in the chair, the first meeting of the ICFTU finance committee since Buiter’s appointment decided to close or cut back spending on regional offices, determined that staffing costs were unsustainable, and took no decision on new spending proposals.78 But the fundamental issue on which Buiter seemed likely to be judged was how he handled the problem of increasing East-West trade union contacts.

The Committee on Contacts with Communists—and the Prague Spring

National trade union centres were now rushing to catch up with a trend that had long been evident among their own affiliates. They no longer hid behind the argument that they couldn’t stop their affiliates having friendly relations with Soviet bloc unions; instead, they were now themselves enthusiasts for exchanges. The trend was fed by the easing of tension between the United States and the USSR, most evident by 1967 in the steady progress being made in negotiating a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. At the same time, increasing political and economic liberalization, especially in Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent in Hungary and Romania, set a pattern for what would blossom in Czechoslovakia as the “Prague Spring” of 1968. Yet the AFL-CIO leadership doubted the substance of such developments. Lovestone declared the non-proliferation pact a “myth,” while Meany voiced skepticism about the real meaning of “liberalization” and argued that, whatever the reality, it had not spread to the “pseudo unions” of the communist world.79

Among the ICFTU’s European affiliates, the British, German, Scandinavian, Belgian, Dutch, and Italian were all conducting fraternal exchanges with the Soviet bloc. Further afield, the trade union centres in Australia and New Zealand were establishing regular contacts with their communist counterparts, as was Dōmei, the Japanese centre that the AFL-CIO had carefully nursed into existence only three years earlier.80 Even Italy’s CISL, a godchild of the AFL and wholly dependent on the Americans for material assistance in its formative years, was working on new guidelines covering contacts with communists to take into account the fact that several of its affiliates simply refused to comply with the strict letter of ICFTU policy. The fact that its general secretary was Bruno Storti, who was also ICFTU president, was a source of particular resentment in the AFL-CIO. As Morris Paladino observed from his new vantage point in the ICFTU secretariat, there was such momentum behind the traffic in fraternal delegations that it was now hard to arrest: “Even those who are truly our friends and have supported our policy are now saying that perhaps we ought to get into the act and protect ourselves from the inside.”81 Such widespread disregard for established ICFTU policy led him to speculate that disaffiliation by the AFL-CIO might not be far down the road.

In 1967, national trade union centres worldwide were invited to Moscow to participate in the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. In Germany the casual manner in which the invitation was extended by the Soviets and initially accepted by the DGB—in the course of a press conference for an AUCCTU delegation visiting Dusseldorf—led Jay Lovestone’s soulmate, Kuno Brandel, to protest to Ludwig Rosenberg about the absence of prior discussion of the implications within the DGB. Brandel deplored the prospect of German trade unionists celebrating in Moscow an event with such negative consequences for democracy in the USSR. In the event, the DGB decided against attending the fiftieth anniversary celebrations since it was a political event, but saw nothing wrong with being present at the AUCCTU congress some months later, since this was a trade union occasion. Brandel wrote again to Rosenberg challenging the distinction.82 As the editor of the construction union’s journal and that union’s officer responsible for East-West issues, Brandel felt entitled to go public with his criticisms, but when he published his correspondence with Rosenberg he was immediately dismissed. That he was being dismissed from Georg Leber’s union added piquancy to the affair. Full of disdain, Lovestone remarked: “this rush to engage in exchanges and dialogue is worse in Germany where the behaviour of Rosenberg and his pals is increasingly obscene in kowtowing to the Kremlin.”83

When the British TUC conference called in 1967 for talks between what it termed bona fide unions of the ICFTU and WFTU, Lovestone observed: “If the ICFTU or its affiliates accept the state company unions behind the Iron Curtain as genuine unions, then there is no basis for the ICFTU’s existence or refusing to merge with . . . the WFTU.” Greece’s GSEE had recently been expelled from the ICFTU following the “colonels’ coup,” but Lovestone noted that some dictatorships seemed more reprehensible than others and queried why this particular organization was not considered “kosher” whereas totalitarian state company unions in the Soviet bloc seemingly were. He warned darkly that the AFL-CIO “would be ready to be alone in its opposition to any policy which leads inevitably to the ICFTU committing suicide.”84 Lovestone was personally opposed to the idea of AFL-CIO withdrawal from the ICFTU, but like Paladino, he was beginning to see the writing on the wall.

The arrival of a new general secretary made it an opportune time to address this growing problem, and the executive board meeting that confirmed Buiter’s appointment also agreed to establish a committee to review the policy on “contacts with communists” and suggest a way forward. Besides the AFL-CIO, the move had the support of Force ouvrière and the Canadian Labour Congress. African and Asian representatives were ambivalent, but Lovestone felt confident they could be won over. Moreover, whereas at the board meeting George Woodcock had spoken against the proposal, he had then voted for it. This contradictory behaviour Lovestone saw as a reflection of Woodcock’s unwillingness to fight the British communists on the domestic front.85

On the initiative of the AFL-CIO representatives, the committee’s terms of reference were strengthened with the added requirement that it consider possible means of enforcing the agreed policy. Lovestone was appointed to the committee, viewing its work as the prelude to an inevitable “showdown.” Reporting to Meany on the executive board discussion, he suggested that the future of the ICFTU depended in great measure on the judgment arrived at by this committee: “Outlook for the ICFTU? The question mark is big . . . unless the AFL-CIO engages just as vigorously in efforts to save the ICFTU [as before the breakup of the WFTU] there will be no ICFTU” He described his attitude as one of “restrained pessimism.”86

Yet, given the polarized views held by the more powerful national centres, it was hard to see the committee as more than a bureaucratic device to buy peace for a few more months. Some hoped it would come up with a formula consistent with “bridge building” that would legitimize their de facto disregard for existing policy. A diminishing number, including the Americans, stood by the policy, first enshrined in 1955 and reaffirmed numerous times since, favouring the suspension of all exchanges while the committee reviewed the matter. The AFL-CIO also urged the creation of an ICFTU department, such as had existed in the 1950s, dedicated to analyzing communist activities within the trade union field.87 Ideally it would help set the agenda for a more vigilant ICFTU. Intelligence reports revealed intermittent signs of labour unrest in the USSR and its satellites, and Lovestone believed that radio broadcasts beamed to the Soviet bloc reporting the achievements of American unions at home would have more a more beneficial effect than carefully chaperoned trade union tours could ever have.

Centres like the TUC and the DGB were hardly likely to shelve programs they were now committed to. Ludwig Rosenberg expressed resentment at attempts to put him “in the dock,” insisting that due account had to be taken of changes in the world situation. The DGB line was that its initiative was essentially political, undertaken in line with German government policy in a bid to ease international tensions, without any risk of compromising the principles of the free trade union movement. With a different emphasis, the British presented their exchanges with the AUCCTU as a pursuit of common trade union interests.

General Secretary Woodcock argued that because TUC contacts with the Soviets did not lead to joint statements or the creation of organic links they posed no threat to free trade unionism. Soviet trade unions were responsible for the day-to-day protection of workers’ interests, and Woodcock could see no harm in visitors studying the way they discharged their duties.88 Ahead of a planned visit by an AUCCTU delegation in 1968, the TUC’s centenary year, he talked effusively of the “end of a difficult period . . . now behind us” signalling “the fresh and positive way in which we regard each other.” Anglo-Soviet trade union relations dealing with “the basic job of trade unions” were “normal.” In words Lovestone found “significant and disturbing,” Woodcock wrote in the British Communist Party newspaper:

You find that what you are engaged in is essentially the same object. For trade unions cannot help being trade unions. At one time there was a political barrier, but there is no political barrier now. . . . I believe that both the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions are beginning to understand the sterility of their original attitudes of sustaining political views against each other.89

Lovestone’s idea was that the “committee on contacts” should proceed by reviewing the various charges made by the ICFTU over the years against “the communist so-called unions”—their subversive intent, their promotion of expansionist interests of Soviet imperialism, the suppression of free trade unions—and to consider whether these claims were valid. Of course, in his mind there was no doubting their validity, and he evidently envisaged the committee serving as a kind of teach-in to explain the Leninist conception of trade unionism for the benefit of its less savvy members.90 National centres would be asked to submit written details of their meetings with communist organizations so that they could be centrally analyzed and then broadcast more generally for wider comment. As a consequence, it wasn’t until June 1968 that the committee convened for the first time with a working document for consideration. By now the “Prague Spring” had blossomed: Czechoslovakia’s liberal reform movement opening up prospects for “socialism with a human face” with a liberalized economy, an end to censorship, and the introduction of press freedom. Here surely was a testing ground for the trade union visits program. With the prospects for success in Prague delicately balanced, the Czech reform movement’s manifesto, 2000 Words, anticipated the moment of truth: “This spring has just ended and will never come back again. In the winter we shall know everything.”91

Among Soviet satellites there was already intense disquiet that political reforms in Czechoslovakia might have a destabilizing effect in the Soviet bloc more generally. East Germany’s communist leadership in particular was increasingly alarmed by the “contamination” effect of the Czech program and resentful of being isolated as West Germany’s bridge building through trade missions and diplomatic ties with other Soviet bloc states specifically bypassed it. Heeding such concerns, the Soviet leadership began to warn the Czechs against any “subversive struggle against the socialist countries,” which they stressed would not be permitted. The threat of military intervention was very much in the air.

Against this background, in June 1968, the two most significant trade union visitors to Moscow were Ludwig Rosenberg and Victor Reuther. As part of the DGB’s expanding program of exchange visits, Rosenberg had been invited for talks with Alexander Shelepin, chairman of the AUCCTU.92 In a private meeting they agreed to intensify trade union contacts over technical issues on which there were no basic differences. But reflecting the elevated tension between the two Germanys, Rosenberg rejected the Soviet proposal that the DGB establish parallel contacts with its East German counterpart, the FDGB. Their talks were described as frank but friendly.

However, two days later, while he was still in the USSR, Rosenberg received word of new restrictions on cross-border travel by West German citizens to East Berlin, introduced in direct retaliation for Bonn’s cold-shouldering of East Germany in its policy toward the Soviet bloc and its support for the Prague Spring. Rosenberg complained formally to Shelepin that there had been no mention of these restrictions in their meeting even though the policy clearly had prior Soviet approval. It revealed, he claimed, Shelepin’s lack of genuine commitment to their dialogue. In a follow-up meeting with the Soviet deputy foreign minister, Rosenberg gave vent to his resentment and returned home early, refusing to attend a Soviet banquet in his honour.93 Was this evidence that such visits were a waste of time or did it, as the DGB would later claim, prove their value as an opportunity for forthright and constructive exchanges?

In Europe to attend the congress of the International Metalworkers’ Federation and pay a subsequent visit to Prague, Victor Reuther also travelled on to Moscow and met Shelepin a matter of days after Rosenberg’s departure. Aware of the sour note on which the DGB chairman’s visit had ended, Reuther told Shelepin that nothing was more likely to destroy Soviet hopes for normal relations with the West than a revival of conflict over Berlin or a “Hungarian-type intervention” in Czechoslovakia. According to Reuther, the AUCCTU chairman assured him that Western press reports of threatened Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia were without foundation. Comparing notes with Rosenberg afterward, Reuther wrote that he was in no position to say whether the USSR would refrain from hostile action over Berlin and Czechoslovakia, but overall he was comforted by the impression that the USSR was more concerned with the threat of Chinese aggression than the areas of tension existing in Europe.94

The ICFTU’s committee on contacts finally convened a week later in June 1968. Among the dozen participants opinions were as divided as ever on matters of both substance and procedure. Existing policy was defended by André Bergeron, who questioned the assumption underlying the exchange programs: the communists had not changed their spots; Soviet trade unions were still instruments of the state, and he asked whether Shelepin was anything more than a police chief appointed by the Soviet government. From the opposite side, the DGB’s international secretary, Otto Kersten, argued for the current prohibition on contacts to be replaced by a positive statement of ICFTU objectives to be pursued by engaging with the communists in “dialogue with confrontation” as practised by Rosenberg with Shelepin.95 Speaking for the TUC, international secretary Alan Hargreaves reflected British impatience with the whole debate. Whatever was decided by the committee, he insisted, many unions would continue to have contacts with the Soviet bloc and the TUC would be among them. He was opposed to any attempt by the ICFTU to generalize as to where or when exchanges were acceptable, insisting that each situation was specific and had to be treated on its merits. It was therefore futile for the ICFTU to try to establish ground rules and to hope to police them.

The committee agreed to press ahead with its plan for the secretariat to feed information to affiliates about developments in the communist world, while leaders of national centres would write discussion pieces for circulation and critical comment by others. The fond hope was that this quasi-academic exercise would produce a consensus in time for the congress twelve months hence. There was still disagreement over whether this debate should be conducted publicly or somehow kept from the outside world. Buiter, Lovestone, and Storti recognized that it would be virtually impossible to keep the debate private and that in any case an open discussion was the hallmark of a democratic organization. Bergeron and Hargreaves countered that there could be nothing worse than to be seen to disagree in public and so provide ammunition for use against them by their enemies. The final decision—that the secretariat lead and moderate the debate and that it be conducted with sensitivity to the concerns of the latter group—had an unconvincing ring to it.

Lovestone’s contribution in the committee was emollient, doubtless reflecting his judgment that the AFL-CIO could not win in the existing climate. He made no reference to the AFL-CIO’s earlier insistence on seeking ways of enforcing a policy on contacts. And although he revived his long-harboured proposal for the ICFTU to establish a department dedicated to monitoring communist activities, he let the matter drop when Buiter responded that such a role was already performed by the secretariat. By arguing the need to be “firm on principles and flexible on tactics,” without specifying precisely what principles he had in mind, Lovestone came across as the epitome of sweet reasonableness; no one could argue with such advice. His concern seemed to be to avoid any provocative gesture and, playing for time, to ensure that the committee remained in being. Given increasing speculation that the AFL-CIO might leave the ICFTU, and his personal preference that it shouldn’t, stringing the committee’s work out seemed his best option.96

Less than two months later, on 21 August, the armies of five Warsaw Pact countries crossed into Czechoslovakia to put an end to the reforms introduced in the Prague Spring. With tanks on the streets of Prague, the case for dialogue with the Soviet bloc suddenly looked quite different. It gave fresh heart to Jay Lovestone, and with a strong sense of vindication, he wrote at once to George Meany:

The price of crow tripled this morning. So many people in line to eat it. I speak, of course, of our doves who now have to swallow the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. . . . I am afraid that the AFL-CIO with all its “dogmatic rigidity” is right again. . . . The bridge-builders will have to discard their blueprints and think of building bridges to the people . . . who really want freedom. . . . I wonder how the Woodcocks and Rosenbergs will feel . . . [and Victor] Reuther, who boasted that he is responsible for Brezhnev not invading Czechoslovakia, will have to shed even this responsibility.

His disdain was not only for these named trade unionists. Also mentioned were American critics of AFL-CIO foreign policy and support for the Vietnam War: J. K. Galbraith, Senator Wayne Morse, and “Senator Halfbright,” whom Lovestone had been watching on television as their faces “lengthened and sorrowed”: “They all were on the defensive. They all admitted that the doves will have to eat some crow.”97

The invasion had stopped the Czech reform movement in its tracks. But within the international trade union movement it was not necessarily clear that the proponents of dialogue with communists had misread the prospects for finding common ground. The fact was that the WFTU had immediately denounced the invasion and offered moral support to the Czech trade unions. In this, the influence of the communist-led French CGT and Italian CGIL had weighed heavily. Two weeks after the invasion, the entire CGIL leadership refused an invitation by Shelepin to attend a meeting with trade union officers from the invading countries in protest at the action of the Warsaw Pact.

Among ICFTU affiliates, current plans for exchange visits were immediately put on hold. The TUC quickly withdrew its invitation to the AUCCTU to visit Britain and voted instead to send a delegation to Czechoslovakia in a show of support. DGB unions informed trade unionists from the USSR, Bulgaria, and Hungary who had been due to visit Germany that they were no longer welcome. However, Lovestone correctly surmised that such bans on contacts would be only temporary and the centres would soon be looking for a chance to reinstate visits. Indeed, Ludwig Rosenberg, who before the invasion had invited Shelepin to visit Germany despite the sour outcome of his recent trip to Moscow, refused to concede that the contacts program had been misconceived and argued that those who held such a view were playing into the hands of warmongers.98

A conference on Czechoslovakia convened jointly by the ICFTU and international trade secretariats promptly issued a statement condemning the invasion and agreed there could be no contacts with the five countries involved. But there was no suggestion of terminating the dialogue with unions in Yugoslavia and Romania, where the invasion had been opposed.99 The conference endorsed Otto Kersten’s argument that liberalization in Czechoslovakia prior to the occupation was proof that trade union contacts were necessary to encourage reforms and even revolts in communist parties. Hardly surprisingly, in light of the way the WFTU had responded to the Czech crisis, a majority also rejected Bergeron’s argument that the WFTU should now be exposed for its hypocrisy and a serious campaign waged against communist-dominated unions in Western Europe.100 Dining with Lovestone a month later, Buiter tried to persuade him that the issue of contacts with communists could be resolved if only the Americans were less rigid and prepared to close their eyes and ears to what the DGB was doing. Lovestone reported to Meany his response:

Told him point blank that the lesson of Czechoslovakia is so important that we cannot possibly play possum with the consequences and with the need for undelayed effective preparations to counteract Soviet aggression and subversion against democratic institutions and values—particularly in re subversion of the free trade union movement.101

The majority view at the conference on Czechoslovakia became the dominant line adopted in the committee on contacts when it reconvened in November 1968. Most members were now in favour of exchanges with the Soviet bloc in the appropriate circumstances. The ban currently in force would be lifted in due course. Along with Bergeron, only the Histadrut and ULC (Nigeria) delegates argued “the AFL-CIO line,” and only Bergeron voted for it. The DGB was in the process of planning an exchange with the Yugoslav unions; Kersten described them as “real unions,” and argued that: “we must find a solution for the Yugoslav trade unions to bring them back into the international labour movement.”102 Within a year the German centre would reinstate visits with all Soviet bloc countries except East Germany.

Figure 16.  Bruno Storti, general secretary of CISL, 1958–76, and ICFTU president, 1965–72. Though CISL was originally established under pressure from the AFL, its increasing openness, during the 1960s, to contacts with communist-led unions at home and abroad doomed Storti’s hope of being able to act as an honest broker in ICFTU efforts to retain the AFL-CIO as an affiliate. Courtesy of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Copyright © Nico Naeff.

ICFTU president Bruno Storti agreed with the need to revise the existing policy and allow contacts with countries that “moved towards improving civil liberties.” He also put in a special word for the CGIL, making the point that its firm opposition to the invasion of Czechoslovakia merited a change in the ICFTU’s attitude regarding this Italian centre. Harm Buiter joined him in conceding that ICFTU policy was no longer valid; in view of the role the CGT and the CGIL were playing within the European Economic Community (EEC), he wondered how long it would remain practical to prevent their reintegration with the unions of Western Europe. Morris Paladino filed a brief report on the proceedings with George Meany. He signed off: “Finita la commedia!” It might have been an epitaph to the AFL-CIO’s nineteen years’ membership in the ICFTU, now coming to a close.103

Passing through Paris, a forlorn Irving Brown, in semi-isolation in Africa, noted the growing sentiment within European labour for a common front: “I think the time has come to realize that we are not only in a similar situation to 1945 but worse in that there is no active participating [AFL-CIO] force here in Europe to unite those groups and individuals ready to resist this new trend.” He urged Lovestone to tackle Meany and see “whether we cannot get a new approach going from our side which in fact would not be new since it would return to what we have done successfully for so many years.”104 But for now, and for as long as Meany regarded European labour as pretty much a lost cause, the active role in Europe that Brown yearned for was closed to him.

The ICFTU committee on contacts finally recommended that the 1955 policy of opposition be dropped, a decision that was undoubtedly more easily reached in the absence of an American representative. Jay Lovestone had been ordered to boycott its meetings, not over this issue, but in protest at the way Harm Buiter had handled an application by the now independent UAW to affiliate separately to the ICFTU. For the time being, it would be this issue rather than the question of exchanges with communist organizations that would take centre stage. Indeed, the latest twist in the Reuther-Meany saga was to provide the immediate cause of the final rupture between the AFL-CIO and the ICFTU.

UAW Bids for Separate Affiliation to the ICFTU

The serious rift that had opened up in 1966 between George Meany and Walter Reuther moved into high gear in 1967 when the UAW began to issue a series of lengthy “administrative letters” to its membership and the wider labour movement expounding the case for root-and-branch reform of the AFL-CIO. However, the federation declined to engage in debate about their content. It was prepared to consider a reasoned complaint but not what it described as “a kaleidoscope of ever-changing allegations and demands, expressed through press releases, public speeches or circular letters.”105

In February 1967, Reuther upped the ante by announcing that the UAW had instructed him to resign from the AFL-CIO executive council and other UAW representatives to withdraw from subordinate bodies of the federation. He declined an offer by David Dubinsky to mediate his differences with Meany, telling him he didn’t have time. The scent of disaffiliation was in the air. Two months later a special UAW convention adopted a list of proposals for reform to be presented to the AFL-CIO convention in December 1967. But no sooner had the UAW submitted the list in November for inclusion in the convention agenda than Reuther notified Meany that, because of collective bargaining commitments, the UAW would not be represented at the convention. He asked for consideration of the proposals to be deferred until a later date. Meany accused Reuther of avoiding—and not for the first time—a debate with fellow union leaders that he had originally demanded.106

Reuther saw himself waging a battle for the soul of the American labour movement, telling fellow UAW officers:

If the labour movement . . . is not a dynamic force that is challenging the status quo, where the status quo is unacceptable, where the status quo denies millions of Americans that measure of justice to which they are entitled, then the labour movement is nothing more than an extension of the business community. . . . That is precisely what the labour movement is becoming—an extension of the business community. . . . I believe this very sincerely, that the AFL-CIO structurally is historically obsolete. It has little to do with America today.107

Many in the labour movement sympathized at a general level but were unconvinced that a civil war was worth the candle. From the outset, Reuther was unable to dispel the impression that his main motivation was personal ambition to replace Meany as president. The head of the public relations firm retained by the UAW advised Victor Reuther that the union was facing a major public relations problem; “out on a limb without even the support of usual friends,” Walter Reuther appeared “restless, ambitious” and prepared to do a “wrecking job,” while Meany came across as “patient, long-suffering” and trying to keep the issues “in family.”108

Failure to be represented at the AFL-CIO convention increased speculation that the UAW would soon quit the federation. Lovestone was telling people that its leaders had already written Reuther off. Harm Buiter now weighed up the implications for the ICFTU. Reuther had informed him that he intended to be present at the next executive board meeting in summer 1968, and Buiter worried over what might happen if Reuther turned up having already withdrawn his union from the AFL-CIO. He held his seat on the board as a nominee of the AFL-CIO, not in a personal capacity, and would automatically lose it if the UAW disaffiliated. Buiter had visions of an ugly scene, with the domestic American conflict injected into the heart of ICFTU deliberations.109

In March, the UAW requested a special AFL-CIO convention to be held in December 1968, following the US presidential election, to consider its reform proposals, indicating its intention to withdraw if this were not granted.110 Meany was now out of patience. The AFL-CIO executive council quickly rejected this ultimatum but offered to convene a special convention as soon as possible—even within the next thirty days—on two provisos: that the UAW commit itself to attend and that it agree to be bound by whatever decisions were reached. The UAW rejected the second of these conditions as a violation of the concept of voluntary association. By the end of March, Victor Reuther was speaking of the union’s withdrawal from the AFL-CIO as “inevitable.” The UAW convention in May decided to pay its AFL-CIO fees into an escrow account until its terms for a special convention had been met.111 The federation treated the decision as tantamount to withdrawal, and when the 15 May deadline for paying the fees passed the UAW was automatically suspended from membership. George Meany spoke regretfully of “a one-sided barrage” from the UAW over the previous two years. Asked by the press what chances there were of reconciliation, he responded with perplexity: “I haven’t any idea. I don’t know what the quarrel is about.” On 1 July, the UAW officers wrote formally to disaffiliate. Meany accused them of a transparent attempt to engineer a withdrawal that had long been planned; they had demonstrated an unwillingness to “live in constructive harmony within an organization.”112

However, by this point, the dispute was no longer confined to the Americans; the question of the UAW’s status within the ICFTU was now at issue. In late May, when the UAW was suspended from the federation but still affiliated, Walter Reuther had what he maintained was a “chance encounter” with Harm Buiter and Bruno Storti in Rome while returning home from an IMF meeting in Turin. There he raised with them his hope of continuing the UAW’s affiliation to the ICFTU as an independent centre. His idea was that the UAW would pay its dues directly and that he would retain his executive board seat. Buiter and Storti advised him that “continuing membership” was not an option and that the UAW would have to reapply for membership. Nonetheless, Reuther subsequently wrote seeking membership on the terms he had outlined, and Buiter accepted a cheque from him for $18,750—the first instalment of UAW dues backdated to February and to be held in escrow until membership was formalized.113

Crucially, Buiter failed to notify the ICFTU executive board of his meeting with Reuther in Rome or of the fact that, in advance of a successful application for reaffiliation, he had accepted from the UAW a backdated payment of dues. Reuther always maintained that the meeting in Rome had been a chance occurrence, but when Meany learned of it he interpreted it as a case of the ICFTU general secretary deliberately “soliciting” an application from a delinquent member of the AFL-CIO. His suspicions aroused, Meany had no difficulty in construing subsequent actions by Buiter as part of a conscious attempt to favour the UAW over the AFL-CIO. The autoworkers’ bid for membership in the ICFTU was a saga that would run for the next eighteen months, during which time Harm Buiter joined Walter Reuther in AFL-CIO demonology and gradually replaced the UAW president as arch-villain as the plot unfolded.

Walter Reuther was duly replaced as an ICFTU executive board member by steelworkers’ president I. W Abel in July 1968. Only at that point did the UAW president accept the need to apply for affiliation anew. However, even before the application was submitted, Buiter wrote privately to Meany urging him not to oppose the autoworkers’ bid for membership. Opposition by the federation, he observed, might “neutralize the good will which in the present conflict is on the side of the AFL-CIO.” And if, on the strength of formal opposition by the federation, the executive board went on to reject the application, Buiter pointed out the likelihood of the UAW appealing to the congress in 1969, something that would damage the image the ICFTU as a unified world trade union body. It was clear that the ICFTU general secretary also assumed that such an appeal would be upheld by the congress. Meany interpreted the letter as a gratuitous insult. He was being told that by exercising its constitutional right to object, the AFL-CIO would bring itself into bad odour internationally: “our image was not too good in Europe and if we objected to the affiliation we might lose this goodwill.”114 Again, the existence of this letter from Buiter was not disclosed to the ICFTU executive board until nine months later when the general secretary came under sharp criticism for sending an unauthorized communication that expressed only his personal views.

Disregarding Buiter’s request, Meany registered the AFL-CIO’s formal objection to the UAW application in September 1968. The ICFTU constitution provided for a single affiliate per country, though the rule had been bent on many occasions, and the United Mineworkers of America had always belonged to the international as an independent affiliate. However, for the AFL-CIO president, it was no longer a case of opposing a simple application from the UAW. The latter was now in the process of forming a new federation—the Alliance for Labor Action—with the teamsters, who had been expelled from the AFL-CIO a decade earlier for corruption. And this unlikely alliance now threatened to become a rival centre to the AFL-CIO.115

Calculating that the ICFTU executive board would be stalemated, and anticipating a possible acrimonious confrontation if asked to decide on the UAW application at its November 1968 meeting and that the final decision would then have to be made by the July 1969 congress, Buiter looked for a way of avoiding a protracted standoff. To this end, he flew to Washington for a meeting with Meany and the AFL-CIO international affairs committee in October. He predicted a deadlock in the executive board—“six for, six against and sixteen on the pot”—and attempted again to convince them that they would be wise to drop their opposition to the application, since support for Reuther would eventually result in the congress approving it.

The Americans reasonably disputed the right of the congress to rule on a matter constitutionally reserved for the executive board, but Buiter angered them with the observation that he was expressing the view of “our European friends” and that Bruno Storti, who would chair the congress, would rule that it was entitled to adjudicate. The members of the international affairs committee were further antagonized when Buiter revealed for the first time his intention to travel on from Washington to Detroit for discussions with Reuther. Having failed to persuade them to reconsider their objection, his hope in Detroit was to obtain Reuther’s agreement that consideration of the application should be deferred until just prior to the 1969 congress. Reuther was accommodating: it was the one positive achievement of Buiter’s trip. As with his earlier dealings with Reuther and Meany, Buiter kept the ICFTU executive board in the dark about his visit to America. With admirable understatement, he later admitted that his meeting with the AFL-CIO in Washington “had not been a complete success.”116

AFL-CIO Heads Toward the Exit

On 8 November 1968, two weeks before the ICFTU executive board was due to meet, Meany wrote to Buiter stating that what was at stake was not only the UAW application but the very integrity of the AFL-CIO and all other national centres that might face a breakaway movement. The ICFTU should be standing firmly behind the American centre in face of attacks by “a secessionist union in alliance with an expelled union.” In these circumstances dual affiliation of the UAW to the ICFTU was “unthinkable and indefensible.” The ICFTU needed to (a) declare its full support for the AFL-CIO and (b) condemn the divisive tactics of the UAW. “We do not believe,” Meany wrote, “that either question before the Board should warrant or require an argument, defence or debate by any AFL-CIO spokesman.” The federation would therefore watch with interest the outcome of the board meeting but would not attend.117 The ball was decidedly in the ICFTU’s court.

Strenuous efforts were made by the ICFTU to find a way out of the dilemma. Hoping to avoid exacerbating the internal American struggle, the executive board eventually settled on a formulation that it would “take no further action on the UAW application.” For the Scandinavians, Arne Geijer opposed this non-decision as unconstitutional; the board had an obligation to deliver a ruling on the application one way or another. But the meaning of “taking no further action” was itself open to conflicting interpretations. Did it leave open the possibility of reopening the discussion at a further meeting? And, if not, did it allow for final appeal to the congress? Firmly in the AFL-CIO’s corner, the British TUC considered that the formulation settled the matter once and for all; the Canadians agreed: “it was tabled, definitely tabled.” But others had voted for it as a delaying mechanism that would allow future consideration of this or a subsequent application. And while Arne Geijer reckoned that Meany was the one with most cause to be satisfied with the form of words adopted, the AFL-CIO leadership was in fact deeply unhappy that the matter had not been conclusively disposed of; the two points made in Meany’s letter of 8 November—explicit support for the AFL-CIO combined with condemnation of the UAW—had still not been addressed.118

Ernie Lee was detailed to lay out the options for and against staying in the ICFTU. Backed by International Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Beirne, Meany favoured withdrawal from the ICFTU, but they lacked majority support in the executive council. Nevertheless, Meany notified Buiter that the AFL-CIO would now “take no part whatsoever in any activities of the ICFTU until this matter is finally disposed of.” Nothing short of an explicit rejection of the UAW and a measure of humble pie from the ICFTU would satisfy. Failing that, the executive council, due to meet again on 17 February 1969, might decide to make the withdrawal permanent.119 To Walter Reuther, it was but a further example of Meany behaving in typical arrogant fashion. As he wrote to Geijer: “He is trying to blackmail the ICFTU with respect to the UAW’s application for affiliation. If the ICFTU yields to this . . . I believe it will do serious damage to its credentials and credibility in the eyes of workers throughout the world.”120

How would the international labour movement react to this development? The AFL-CIO announcement was hardly a surprise; Meany had long been in favour of quitting and was now forcing the issue by making demands that would be difficult for the ICFTU to meet. Some reckoned that if Meany followed through and withdrew permanently, it might be the ICFTU’s salvation. The UAW had substantial support overseas, and there was much wishful thinking that, if it were affiliated, it would be able to make good the shortfall caused by the loss of fee income from the AFL-CIO, especially if joined by the teamsters, its new partner in the Alliance for Labor Action. There was speculation that the AFL-CIO’s departure would make it possible for the ICFTU to be re-energized, perhaps by amalgamating with the former Christian international (now renamed the World Confederation of Labour) and also attracting into membership the labour centres from Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.121

IMF general secretary Adolphe Graedel, however, genuinely feared the possibility that the AFL-CIO might make an effort to “raid” several of the international trade secretariats—including eventually the IMF—and create “puppet structures under total American domination” modelled on the way Jim Suffridge’s retail clerks’ union had exercised influence in the clerical-technical trade secretariat, FIET. Signalling a possible interest in this area, there were already rumours of Meany bringing pressure on the International Transport Workers’ Federation to refuse membership to the teamsters.122

There was certainly much support in Europe for Reuther’s cause. Yet Morris Paladino doubted its firmness under pressure, reporting to Meany his view that the Europeans lacked fight, with many simply wanting to save face. Buiter talked defiantly of a mood for “going it alone,” but Paladino’s assessment was that, with the exception of the Swedes, his judgment was wrong: Europeans would be willing to reject the UAW application if this could be done without appearing to cave in. Referring with disdain to his superior’s activities—“the manoeuvring of the jerk here”—Paladino suggested that, despite bold talk, the general secretary was losing support and becoming rattled. “Buiter is in a corner and is panicky. He is beginning to get the feeling that he will be sacrificed. Europeans don’t want to put him on the chopping board but will if they have to.” In light of this assessment, the looming possibility that the AFL-CIO would decide to pull out as early as 17 February was regrettable. Paladino wrote Lovestone: “it is a shame because the Europeans are ready to support him [Meany].”123

Paladino’s optimism derived mainly from his close association with the TUC’s international secretary, Alan Hargreaves, through whom he gained a clear understanding of the British reaction to the possibility of withdrawal by the Americans. The British instinct was to row back from the dangerous position in which the ICFTU now found itself. The TUC was in no doubt that the UAW application had to be rejected, chiefly on grounds that the AFL-CIO was America’s acknowledged trade union centre and without its membership the ICFTU’s claim to have global support would be hollow. It followed that solidarity had to be extended to the federation as a sister organization facing an external threat.

Serving out the final months of his term as TUC general secretary, George Woodcock made what would be his final contribution on the international scene and flew to Washington in early February 1969 to see Meany. He explained that the TUC fully supported the federation but could not join in a vendetta against the UAW. However, it was during their talks that Woodcock learned for the first time of Buiter’s confidential letter to Meany the previous June urging no opposition to the UAW and of his unreported mission to meet the AFL-CIO international affairs committee in October, followed by his rendezvous with Reuther in Detroit. This put a new light on the ICFTU’s handling of the UAW application. As Hargreaves reported to Ernie Lee, Woodcock came back “all steamed up” over Buiter’s duplicity. A joint meeting of the ICFTU executive board’s most important committees had been called for February to recommend a response to Meany’s latest letter, and Woodcock was determined that the ICFTU must now try to meet the AFL-CIO’s demands.124

Woodcock laid out his position for Victor Reuther when the two met in London the day after his return from Washington. He confirmed his full support for the AFL-CIO in its rejection of the UAW claim for membership, refusing to accept that the UAW had the right to speak for American labour at the highest level. But he had also assured Reuther that the TUC would not seek to prevent the UAW operating internationally as part of the IMF. Woodcock volunteered that he would not be in the least surprised if the AFL-CIO still pulled out, regardless of any change of heart by the ICFTU. Reuther was irked by the TUC leader’s “rather lofty detached and somewhat pontifical mood,” which he attributed to the fact that he was within sight of retirement. For his part, Reuther told him that “we [the UAW] would be around for awhile . . . whatever the ICFTU did.” In fact, Woodcock acknowledged that any decision by the executive board was likely to be challenged at the ICFTU congress in July, and that was where the Reuthers now expected the matter to be decided. Victor Reuther was planning a world tour during which he would hold meetings with heads of national trade union centres to line up the support of congress delegates—and he and his brother were confident of winning.125

For different reasons, the DGB was also now worried by the consequences of UAW persistence in seeking ICFTU membership. Aware of how fraught relations already were with the AFL-CIO as a consequence of German participation in bridge building with the East, Ludwig Rosenberg shrank from the prospect of being identified as the principal cause of the federation’s disaffiliating. He had therefore decided to support Meany’s demands. The DGB was also concerned to safeguard its position as the exclusive representative of German labour within the ICFTU and was wary of establishing a precedent that might open the door to parallel affiliation by the separate clerical workers’ centre, the Deutsche Angestellten-Gewerkschaft. In early January 1969, Ludwig Rosenberg and IG Metall chairman Otto Brenner both wrote to Walter Reuther pointing out the German dilemma and asking whether the UAW would be prepared to withdraw its application so as not to pose problems for them.126 “Withdrawal” in this context appeared to be another term for “deferring” the application until a more opportune time. On that understanding, Buiter also privately supported the idea that the UAW should withdraw its application. For a brief period, Europeans anticipated that the UAW would indeed heed the DGB request, thus resolving, at least temporarily, the ICFTU’s problem with the AFL-CIO.127

However, the Reuthers saw no reason to give up on their application. To stiffen German resolve, Victor Reuther accepted an invitation to attend a session of the DGB executive board held on the eve of the ICFTU’s executive board meeting. As he later reported, the Germans appeared confused over the rules for independent affiliation, and he spent time explaining to the meeting the circumstances under which no fewer than twenty-seven organizations already held independent affiliation to the ICFTU, as the UAW was now seeking. He surmised that the DGB confusion was an affectation to mask their lack of toughness in the face of the AFL-CIO’s hardball tactics. He was certainly conscious that Rosenberg seemed all too inclined to gloss his weak advocacy of the UAW cause by blaming the TUC for being such a vigorous supporter of the AFL-CIO.

Figure 17.  Harm Buiter, general secretary of the ICFTU, 1967–71 (right), at a January 1961 conference of the European Trade Union Secretariat, listening to Paul-Henri Spaak (left). Seated next to Spaak is the FGTB’s Louis Major and, beside him, Willi Richter. The AFL-CIO refused to support Buiter’s candidacy for the position of general secretary, and his backing for the independent affiliation of the UAW to the ICFTU prompted George Meany’s decision to lead the AFL-CIO out of the international body. Courtesy of AMSAB–Institute of Social History, Ghent. Copyright © Keystone (Switzerland).

Although Reuther spoke German, he chose to address the DGB executive board in English, remarking in his report back that the Germans tended to pay particular attention to Meany whenever he spoke in English. It was a form of shock therapy. He reminded them of the way the AFL-CIO had frequently meddled in German labour affairs and of Meany’s secret meetings with Konrad Adenauer when he was chancellor, pointing out as well that only recently Jay Lovestone had met Chancellor Kiesinger without a German labour leader being present. At the conclusion of the meeting, his impression was that a majority supported the UAW case and wanted its application to stand. However, the episode had given Victor Reuther his first inkling that not all the UAW’s traditional allies would remain firm in face of prolonged pressure from the AFL-CIO.128

The crucial joint meeting of the ICFTU subcommittee and finance and general purposes committee met with Ludwig Rosenberg in the chair. Some objected to the peremptory tone of Meany’s latest letter. In particular, Georges Debunne, of the Belgian FGTB, spoke bitterly of the AFL-CIO’s bullying approach in international affairs, citing as an example Irving Brown’s role in aiding Mobutu in the Congo and insisting that the Belgians would not be browbeaten into rejecting the UAW application.

Yet it was Woodcock’s detailed account of his meeting with Meany that proved most compelling. He insisted that the latter’s various complaints against Buiter were “entirely reasonable,” and he criticized the “irresponsible anti-AFL-CIO views” expressed by people who were motivated by a sense of grievance against the Americans. It was not a sensible way to proceed against an organization that was universally recognized as the representative of American labour. When he proposed that the UAW should be formally condemned, Rosenberg blocked the motion, and a fierce row took place over latter’s chairmanship. However, the meeting finally agreed on a response to the AFL-CIO’s latest letter that accepted the federation’s “unchallengeable right” to be recognized as the national trade union centre in the United States, denied the UAW’s claims to speak for any but a minority of trade unionists, and thus rejected its application for independent affiliation. But the narrowness of the vote—five “for,” three “against,” and one abstention—was hardly a ringing endorsement of the AFL-CIO position. And when Rosenberg reported back to the DGB he conceded that he had cast his vote for the motion, very much in the expectation that the AFL-CIO would still withdraw and leave the door open to UAW membership.129

The committees’ recommendation was communicated to the AFL-CIO informally, but before there was time to send an official letter, Meany announced to a press conference that the federation intended to disaffiliate. No new reasons were given, but the narrowness of the vote in favour of the statement and Rosenberg’s cynical reasons for giving his support—Lovestone declared that it amounted to “bad faith”—clearly tipped the balance of opinion within the AFL-CIO executive council when it met. When the roll call vote was taken, the decision was all but unanimous; only Jake Potofsky abstained, while David Dubinsky’s discomfort was evident from his answer—“present”—when his name was called.

Though supported by the overwhelming majority, the decision to quit was essentially Meany’s. Jay Lovestone had argued against this course of action throughout. Indeed, the British labour counsellor saw the AFL-CIO’s decision as a blow to Lovestone’s position and self-esteem. Irving Brown shared Lovestone’s dismay; it was, he wrote, “a wrong decision . . . bad in terms of timing and substance. Our friends—esp. Bergeron—are in disarray.” But Meany had been entirely firm in his purpose and determination. Out of patience with the ICFTU, for two years leading up to the decision he had steered a clear course, avoiding the tactical niceties proposed by Lovestone and Brown, which were mostly designed to keep the pot stirred while maintaining the AFL-CIO’s affiliation. That had been their modus operandi for much of the previous twenty years, but Meany had now called time on it.130

The ICFTU was of steadily diminishing relevance in Meany’s scheme of things, and during the 1960s the AFL-CIO’s international effort was increasingly made through the regional auxiliary bodies, AIFLD, the AALC, and later the Asian-American Free Labor Institute. From mid-decade, the federation’s grievances were compounded by growing differences over the fundamental issue of free trade union relations with the communist bloc and the ICFTU’s ineffective policing of its own policy. In the spirit of the Johnson administration’s “bridge building” with the USSR, important ICFTU affiliates were showing interest in making contacts with Soviet bloc unions. Whether this was, as the TUC maintained, an exercise in sharing practical experiences out of a mutual concern to improve trade union performance or, in the case of the DGB, to support in the trade union field the foreign policy of the government in Bonn, for the AFL-CIO leadership fraternization with government-controlled “trade unions” of the Soviet bloc involved selling out a fundamental principle of free trade unionism.

A more authoritative figure than Omer Becu as general secretary might have managed to paper over these differences. Certainly, Harm Buiter never had much chance of achieving such a feat. From early on in his term of office, Buiter was embroiled in the growing conflict between the UAW and the AFL-CIO, and behaving—as Meany had reason to believe—in partisan fashion. Where Buiter was concerned, Meany kept his own counsel, ignoring Jay Lovestone’s argument that Buiter’s appointment should be flatly opposed and disinclined to listen to Irving Brown’s advice on how to “work around” the new general secretary. However tough their talk about the ICFTU, Lovestone and Brown drew a line at any suggestion of quitting the organization, whereas for Meany it was still very much an option. He was ready to give Harm Buiter enough rope to hang himself.

The ICFTU’s review of its policy on dialogue with Soviet bloc unions took place against the backdrop of Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring,” which provided a litmus test for the question at hand. Was the liberalization of Soviet bloc economies and democratization of their trade unions ever a serious possibility, to be encouraged by exchange visits and constructive dialogue such as that attempted by Ludwig Rosenberg and Victor Reuther with Alexander Shelepin? For the AFL-CIO, the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring made it abundantly clear: trade union dialogue with the communists would always be futile. Yet the ICFTU chose to draw a different lesson: the Czech experience demonstrated that contacts had helped create a climate in which the Prague Spring emerged, and the WFTU’s open opposition to the Warsaw Pact invasion was an indication that it was at least possible to do business with some of that body’s affiliated members. Permanently putting up the shutters against further contacts was not the way forward.

Jay Lovestone wrote of the “contemptuous disregard” for existing ICFTU policy, with the suggestion that the chasm between the two sides was now unbridgeable.131 But the AFL-CIO was no longer present at ICFTU committee meetings to register formal opposition to the new position on contacts. The federation was already engaged in a boycott after the ICFTU executive board failed to stand foursquare behind the AFL-CIO in its dispute with Reuther’s autoworkers. While ICFTU affiliates were at sixes and sevens in attempts to concert a position on this issue, George Meany acted decisively in permanently withdrawing the AFL-CIO from the ICFTU, even before full deliberations could take place within his own executive council. What had been threatened on and off for well over a decade had now come to pass. Henceforth, the AFL-CIO would plough its own international furrow.