2

Building Labour’s Anti-Communist Opposition in Europe

In sending Irving Brown to Europe the AFL had no detailed plan. The first need was to assess the trade union situation and explore the possibilities for combined action with like-minded, anti-communist groups. Brown had to improvise a modus operandi in France and Germany, but whatever the context, he always reckoned that an American presence at the centre of events was essential in order to supply the drive that Europeans were assumed to lack. Only when his posting was made permanent in late 1946 was he able to open an office and work more systematically in France, Germany, and Greece and within the international trade secretariats (ITSs) that rejected the subordinate role offered them by the WFTU. It was principally by combining the AFL’s efforts aimed at the trade secretariats in opposition to the WFTU, and, from 1947, linking this to the campaign for acceptance by European labour of the Marshall Plan, that Brown was able to claim significant success after three years in Europe.

First Steps in France and Germany

Irving Brown left for Europe on 23 October 1945 accompanied by Charles Zimmerman, the forty-eight-year-old director of ILGWU Local 22, which had provided a base for Jay Lovestone since the early thirties. It was a joint mission of the FTUC and Jewish Labor Committee (JLC), the latter another Dubinsky stronghold and a vehicle through which the needle trades helped fellow workers abroad. Their first port of call was Norway, in response to a request for assistance in replacing printing presses for the Labour Party and the central trade union organization, Landsorganisasjonen i Norge (the LO). Zimmerman was then to visit Poland on behalf of the JLC. Brown’s assignment was to stay in Europe for an indeterminate period and assess prospects for supporting the trade unions now re-emerging on the continent. He was on a monthly contract and later anticipated returning to the United States, where a job as director of research and education for the machinists union was on offer. How long he would remain in Europe was unclear. The AFL was inching toward leadership of a future anti-WFTU crusade, but its approach was hesitant.

In his first report home, Brown recommended that the Norwegians be granted $15,000 toward the cost of printing presses plus another $10,000 to cement good relations. Sold on the notion of international unity, the Scandinavian unions had joined up with the WFTU. Brown found that he couldn’t reason with them on this, but he still conceded that they were “our best friends in Europe.”1

Moving on to Paris in mid-November, he checked in to the fashionable Hotel California just off the Champs-Elysée, which was to be his base for the next year. France was suffering from shortages of foodstuffs and a consequent escalation in prices. This one item took up 60 percent of the average wage, and eating meat was typically a once-a-week affair. Brown wrote wistfully about missing his bacon, eggs, and orange juice, but at least he was spared the privations of most of the populace.

Shortages fed a growing popular resentment made worse by the fact that government-controlled wages lagged behind ever-increasing prices. France was entering the final phase of the all-party postwar coalition led by General de Gaulle, and as the largest component, the Parti communiste français (PCF) was beginning to flex its muscles. Communists were the leading proponents of the “battle for production,” which prioritized output over wage improvements, but despite their backing for moderate trade union policies, the dynamism and clear sense of purpose they showed greatly appealed to the organized working class. Within a fractious coalition government, the PCF benefited from the respectability of holding office while retaining freedom to manoeuvre in populist fashion, with a keen eye on the electoral calendar. In the medium term it appeared to have a good chance of coming to power through the ballot box.2

With minimal ability to read French and unable to speak the language, Irving Brown nevertheless quickly found his feet. He was no mere American tourist in Paris; he had valuable contacts among American embassy officials. Richard Eldridge, the US labour attaché, helped him navigate the trade union scene and acted as a safe posting box for Brown’s sensitive incoming and outgoing mail sent via the diplomatic pouch. Norris Chipman, a political officer with an intelligence remit to keep a watchful eye on the communist party, was especially close to Brown and, by the latter’s reckoning, “one of the AFL’s best friends in Europe.” An OSS office still functioned in Paris, and Brown immediately teamed up with Bert Jolis of the labour division, a jeweller by profession who, both then and in later years when he was with the CIA, was able to provide the AFL with courier services to New York. Within a year Brown would also develop a strong relationship with Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, politically reactionary with little time for trade unionism but a man who recognized that, in the French context, the non-communist unions had to be supported.3

Back in the United States, through his relations with key figures in the State Department, Lovestone also had access to confidential information that he routinely fed to Brown. His contacts were typically people who shared a belief that the State Department was riddled with communists and fellow travellers. Lovestone kept a list of some thirty people working in the department whom he considered “pro-Soviet.” Some of the names listed were cross-referenced “see FBI record for communist connections.” The list was almost certainly supplied to him by Ben Mandel, who was employed by the State Department as a “security officer” but had once been the business manager of the Daily Worker. Among the department’s veteran specialists on Soviet communism, Lovestone had ready access to Loy Henderson, who was then director of the Division for Near Eastern and African Affairs. Another invaluable ally and soulmate was Raymond Murphy in the shadowy EUR-X branch, which worked closely with the intelligence services in monitoring European communism. In the late thirties, Murphy had debriefed newly arrived communist defectors from Europe and was currently working to expose the communist sympathies of Alger Hiss. Lovestone and Murphy regularly shared intelligence, the latter providing the FTUC with confidential reports from the most reliably anti-communist foreign service officers such as Norris Chipman in France and Elbridge Durbrow in Italy. When the AFL lobbied Dean Acheson to appoint a person to the office of the secretary of state with particular responsibility for liaising with the AFL, Murphy was the person they specifically requested for the post.4

From the outset, Brown also benefited from having ready access to the top leadership of the French labour movement. Within days of arriving in Paris, he was able to arrange meetings with the socialist leader and former prime minister, Léon Blum, at his home, and also Léon Jouhaux, general secretary of the CGT and grand old man of French trade unionism. After only four days in the city, Brown’s initial report from Paris clearly reflected a perspective gleaned from talks with Blum and Jouhaux.5

He saw a glimmer of hope in the limited but already growing opposition within the CGT to the pattern of meetings being dominated by communists and focusing on their sectarian political agenda. It would be these anti-communists that he set out to woo. Yet the scale of the challenge was daunting. The communists had recently secured a majority on the CGT executive committee, which included Louis Saillant, the WFTU general secretary (who continued to hold office in the CGT and, though not a PCF member, regularly followed the party line), and Benoît Frachon, now joint-general secretary alongside Jouhaux. In Brown’s reading of the situation, Frachon was the key communist trade unionist in Western Europe, with a role extending beyond French borders. “The communist capture of the CGT was the prerequisite for communist control of Europe,” he wrote, a process aided by the formation of the WFTU, which, with headquarters in Paris, now became the communist base of operations in Europe.

Lacking faith in the aging Jouhaux’s readiness to stand up to the communists, Brown focused on a younger group of union leaders associated with the paper Résistance ouvrière (later renamed Force ouvrière), including Jouhaux’s long-serving deputy, Robert Bothereau, who, together with Albert Gazier and Roger Deniau, was already talking about “the coming split” in the CGT. He met them toward the end of November and offered them financial assistance. They expressed interest but balked over practical difficulties: almost all the CGT industrial unions were either led by communists or had a sufficiently large number of communists in key positions that it was pointless to make a formal offer of American aid. The only realistic course was to give covert assistance to individuals and friendly factions, hoping to create a nucleus of one or two hundred “reformists” from among the ranks of anarcho-syndicalists, Trotskyists, and miscellaneous anti-communist trade union intellectuals. The channels that might exist for this were discussed at a second meeting on 29 November with Jouhaux present. Brown reported agreement in principle but no resolution of the practical difficulties. There the matter remained, and in the months ahead, with Jouhaux determined to avoid divisive, sectarian battles and Bothereau sympathetic but lacking in decisiveness, no progress was possible.6

Brown did find a promising ally in August Largentier, since 1914 secretary of the Paris region of the CGT printers’ union. He had organized the underground press during the war, maintained a network of contacts in other CGT unions for whom he had arranged clandestine printing services, and advised Brown on where to begin his work. Brown loaned him $400 of his own money as an initial float and wrote to Matt Woll requesting $5,000 to cover him for the next three months. Woll quickly arranged to send this via the Jewish Labor Committee.

Otherwise, Brown’s requests for funding went begging. In a separate report to Abe Bluestein, executive director of the Labor League for Human Rights, he vaguely requested between $20,000 and $80,000 for a trade union group in Lyon to help them maintain a socialist-oriented trade union paper. The lack of precision in the request suggests a man fishing to see how generous might be their commitment to funding. To Woll he wrote describing structural changes proposed by the communists for the 1946 CGT congress that would cement their power base. He requested a budget of $100,000 for organizing work in the coming six months, accepting that it was a huge sum but insisting that “it would pay to aid in the entire job or not at all.” As he added, “it is a very desperate situation but the stakes are high and are worth the fight for free trade unionism.” Brown asked for a response before the end of 1945, but none was forthcoming.7 The AFL leaders were not yet clear in their minds about how and to what extent they should involve themselves in European trade union affairs. The FTUC had been launched amid talk of raising $1 million for the Free Trade Union Fund, but so far it had collected only $124,000, with another $74,000 pledged.

Irving Brown spent Christmas 1945 in London and was encouraged by his meetings with TUC leaders, Jaap Oldenbroek of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and a group of German trade union émigrés from the Landesgruppe Deutscher Gewerkschafter who were preparing a manifesto for the new German trade union movement and who included future socialist party leader Eric Ollenhauer and ICFTU assistant general secretary Hans Gottfurcht. Restless and bursting with energy, Brown returned to his Paris base at the beginning of 1946 and reported enthusiastically on these latest contacts. But he was fretful at having no response to his budgetary requests and the lack of guidance as to what his AFL bosses expected of him. The German émigrés in London needed a mere $200 to print 20,000 copies of their manifesto, yet he had no authorization to help them. He would later recall bitterly the days “when I bounced around Europe stewing in my own juice for months on end without ever hearing from New York [i.e., Bluestein] except after I would take the bit between my teeth and issue press statements as to AFL policy.”8

Charles Zimmerman, who had now returned to the United States from Poland, intervened with Matt Woll in urging more material support for Brown, and believed he had succeeded in winning a commitment that a permanent AFL international affairs department be set up to service activities abroad.9 Yet he reckoned without the glacial pace of AFL policy making. In fact, Brown was left to occupy himself as he thought best for most of 1946 while awaiting any sign that the AFL might commit itself wholeheartedly to a long-term presence in Europe. His few specific tasks involved standing in for AFL president Bill Green in a ceremonial capacity as fraternal delegate at congresses of national trade union centres in Europe.

Frustrated at the limited scope for activity in France, Brown turned his attention to Germany, where he spent three weeks in January and February 1946. The issue of the moment was how to approach the rebuilding the German trade union movement. Brown had resigned from the FEA over the implications of the Morgenthau Plan for trade unionism, and he now arrived in the midst of a bitter row within the Manpower Division of the Office of Military Government that flowed from this very policy. In dispute was whether the organization of trade unions in the US zone should be led by, or even involve at all, former German social democratic union leaders from the Weimar period, or whether they should be excluded and the task left to new leaders from the rank and file.

The American policy debate was cast in simplistic terms of a “bottom-up” versus a “top-down” organizing strategy, with the former reflecting current official policy. It was possible to see the options in less Manichean terms, but those centrally involved—Brown now among them—were inclined to polarize their differences. For the architects of this approach, the charge against the pre-war social democratic union leadership was that their failings were the proximate cause of Hitler’s rise. To allow a role for them now in the US zone in a situation that demanded the closest cooperation with the trade unions of the Soviet zone would be to betray the essential anti-Nazi cause over which the Great Power alliance had been forged. Yet to those who questioned the policy and championed a role for the social democratic organizers, the attempt to sideline the latter while cultivating a new generation of rank-and-file leaders was tantamount to promoting a communist agenda in the interests of the USSR.10

The main protagonists were seasoned American trade unionists or NLRB staffers, veterans of pre-war labour movement battles between left and right. Here they served under career soldiers who had little grasp of the issues involved and were easily manipulated: Brown dismissed the head of the Manpower Division, General McSherry, as a mere “politically naïve, overgrown boy.”11 By the time he arrived in Germany in early 1946, pressure from the AFL leadership in Washington to change the policy and weed out its adherents was beginning to have an effect. The leading proponent of the “bottom-up” approach, Mortimer Wolf, whom Brown dubbed a “skilled fellow traveller,” had resigned. Concerned that the housecleaning was taking too long, Brown also called for the removal of Wolf’s principal ally, George Wheeler, the director of the Labor Allocations Branch, whose efforts, he believed, were aimed at slowing down the organization of unionism in the American zone and thereby handing an advantage to the longer-established Soviet zone unions when eventually the trade unions of the various zones were united in a national body. They had benefited from an early start and plentiful help and encouragement from the Soviet military authorities.12

A foretaste of what Brown feared might happen on a national scale was on view in Berlin, where the unions of the four sectors were in the process of combining in a unified Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB). Brown was present at the founding congress, where there was a preponderance of communists among both delegates and leadership. He reported that the Berlin unions were about as free as the Soviet unions—essentially “instruments for the communists to push through their political programme” and a template for what might be expected in the Western zones if preventative action were not taken.

The simultaneous presence in Germany of a high-level WFTU delegation comprising Walter Citrine, Léon Jouhaux, and Sidney Hillman presented him with an opportunity for a public attack on the CIO leader. In a report intended for publication, Brown wrote that Hillman “more than anyone else is responsible for assuming to speak in the name of American labour in defence of the original [Military Government] attitude of suspicion and hostility towards the German trade unionists and their efforts to recreate a labour movement.” He gave an interview to the AP news agency that appeared in the Sunday Herald Tribune and other papers, blasting Hillman’s role in Germany. Making much of the fact that the WFTU delegation included a number of communists, he wrote of them touring “in the grand style of visiting potentates,” spending four-fifths of their time wining and dining with the military high command while allowing little time and showing little courtesy to their German union counterparts.13

Brown recommended to Woll that the AFL allocate a budget of $10,000 to assist the German unions over the next year. It would enable the appointment of an AFL representative in Germany, help with office supplies for trade union headquarters, and facilitate the production of a German-language AFL newspaper. He told Woll that he had been impressed by Kurt Schumacher, leader of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), with his opposition to the forced merger of the socialists and communists in the Soviet zone. Contrasting the poverty-stricken circumstances of the social democratic groups in the western zones with the well-endowed apparatus of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands—generously supplied from the Soviet zone, even though they enjoyed but a fraction of the electoral support—he therefore advocated aid for the social democrats. In particular, he forwarded to New York an appeal from Willi Richter, leader of the emerging trade unions in Hesse, to help buy printing presses that would enable the social democrats to produce an extra edition of their paper, the Frankfurter Runschau, for distribution by embattled social democrats in the Eastern zone. Their needs were but a drop in a bucket, and Brown hinted that $1,000 sent to the Jewish Labor Committee account in Paris would enable him to help them.14

Brown returned to France and the work of encouraging the anti-communists in Résistance ouvrière, but when he came back to Germany in April he found that conditions had eased only marginally: union properties confiscated by the Nazis had not been returned, and the unions continued to suffer from lack of licensed publications and the shortage of newsprint. Communist propaganda in labour publications was flooding in from the Soviet zone but went mostly unanswered in the Western press. What concerned Brown most were the economic conditions, which, as a consequence of the Morgenthau Plan to restrict industry, showed no real sign of improvement. “All other German problems fade into insignificance alongside the economic problems,” he wrote. “It will be sheer suicide for America to continue to underwrite the insane application of the Potsdam decisions, maintain an industrial vacuum . . . and at the same time try to encourage the development of democratic forces.”15

On a third visit to Germany in the summer of 1946, Brown first became acquainted with military governor General Lucius Clay and spent several hours with him one Sunday seeking his impressions of the trade union situation. Years later, after Clay had achieved iconic status as the hero of the Berlin airlift, the two men became firm friends, but at this stage Brown considered the general an intransigent “brass hat bureaucrat.” Both Clay and his economics chief, General William Draper, were ideologically opposed to trade unions and against their developing industrial and political power. Under them, the Office of Military Government claimed to be politically “neutral,” but from Irving Brown’s perspective it amounted to an anti-labour policy, and a “bankrupt” one at that, given its results to date.16

That same summer, Ambassador Jefferson Caffery introduced Brown to Secretary of State James Byrnes, who was in Paris for the 1946 Peace Conference. With the help of Norris Chipman and Sam Berger, the US labour attaché to Britain, a meeting with Byrnes was arranged, at which Brown described current AFL activities in Europe and urged especially that the Office of Military Government provide greater assistance to the German trade unions. They also discussed Brown’s assessment of the trade union and political situation in France and his belief that the key to reducing communist influence was to break the French communist party’s hold on organized labour. “You talk a language I understand,” Byrnes told him, indicating that he would welcome further concrete proposals from him. Brown proceeded to draft a memorandum for the State Department’s Soviet expert, Charles Bohlen, for use in discussions with the secretary of state. However, Byrnes would shortly be leaving the department, and the promise here of an inside track to influence soon disappeared.17

Contact with high officials such as Byrnes and Clay led Brown to believe—or at least to have others believe—that he had their ear. In later years he could undoubtedly open doors to top decision makers. But at this stage in his career he was still essentially hustling and trying to become known—still a curious blend of brashness and insecurity.

Throughout much of spring 1946, Brown was on the road in France, attending union conferences from the Pas de Calais in the north to Bordeaux in the southwest and then across to the steel-fabricating towns of the east, gauging the trade union mood in advance of the April congress of the CGT. Much of what he saw was discouraging, but he was getting into the fray. At the solidly communist metalworkers’ congress, Louis Saillant was present and Brown was drawn into a sharp exchange with him when the Frenchman demanded to know why the AFL still refused to join the WFTU. At a regional conference of the CGT in Lille, Brown was invited to explain through an interpreter the AFL philosophy of non-political trade unionism. He wasn’t satisfied that his meaning was getting through and so took the plunge and for the first time attempted to speak in what was still a “lousy, halting French.” Nobody laughed and, he noted ruefully, they gave him a round of applause. But he also doubted that anyone had understood him.

Still, he was making himself known. At the Café Lamand in the coal mining town of Lens, he first met Henri Mailly, the veteran anti-communist miners’ leader who would become one of his most important union contacts. Similarly, during his tour of the Belfort region in eastern France he got to know André Bergeron, a printer who would later become general secretary of Force ouvrière (FO) and who was to be his most lasting ally in the French trade union movement. Soon after their meeting Brown began to send Bergeron small sums of money to help with the costs of a local union publication.

He seized eagerly on any sign of dissent in union ranks. The “battle for production”—under which the communists prioritized increased output over improved wages and terms of employment—was taking a toll on the morale of workers. So Brown tried to identify people who were prepared to “do a trade union job,” concentrating on bread-and-butter issues. Yet such people invariably lacked leadership and resources. “We ought not to let them down now in their fight against the CP,” he wrote to Abe Bluestein. But getting money from the FTUC was like pulling teeth. He complained to Charles Zimmerman of having received only $1,000 since the beginning of the year, merely enough to cover his own personal expenses: “It is the most heart-breaking experience of my life to see what can be done and then be paralyzed for lack of resources,” he wrote.18 Zimmerman was indignant and told David Dubinsky that “we should be ready to assume the responsibilities of our decision.” He went on to point out that “to send a representative to Europe to carry it through and then to deny him the resources with which to do so effectively” was “unfair” to Brown and also “bound to discourage large numbers of European trade unionists.”19

The summer of 1946 saw the first breakaways from the CGT, including groups of railway and Paris Métro workers. More significantly, a strike over wages led by disaffected Trotskyists and socialists in the postal service became the biggest postwar dispute to date and resulted in the formation of an autonomous union.20 It was a sign of things to come, but Irving Brown played no part in these events: at the time of the strike, he was away in Amsterdam representing the AFL at another national union congress, followed by further foreign travel in Europe.21 The events in France had passed him by. He would later be identified as the man who “split” the French trade unions, but even without his intervention unity was fragmenting almost from the time he arrived in the country.

During his summer travels, Brown returned to Norway as AFL fraternal delegate at the congress of the Norwegian LO, where he delivered a sharp attack on the WFTU. Once again Louis Saillant shared the platform with him and was forced to rebut the AFL’s criticisms. Some months later, Brown would be back in Scandinavia at the congress of the Swedish LO (Landsorganisationen i Sverige), where a speech by the WFTU’s Russian assistant secretary, Mikhail Faline, attacking the foreign policies of the American and British governments was answered in kind by a forthright anti-Soviet contribution by Brown.22

Brown relished the publicity that such events gave him, and it was in these months that his image as a belligerent anti-communist was fixed throughout Europe. These well-publicized exchanges also helped alert a wider trade union public to the ideological tension at the heart of the international labour movement. Writing to Matthew Woll, Brown sought to convey his growing enthusiasm for the assignment, though only if the job prospects were made clearer: “I should like to stay in Europe . . . to be of any service that the AFL thinks necessary and is willing to support in international affairs . . . to see this thing thru to the end (even in terms of years)—dependent on being able to eventually bring my family over.”23 Woll now asked him to draft a budget for activities in France.

This time Brown’s modest proposal was for a six-month program costing $15,000. Of this, $3,700 would cover the cost of an office in Paris to act as a headquarters from which to distribute literature and to dispatch temporary organizers to key locations. The balance was to be divvied up into sums of from $125 to $300 for activities in twenty-one listed towns and three industries of strategic importance. The Paris office would function as a shadow Bureau confédéral for the non-communists in the CGT who were currently issuing propaganda and organizing activities independently of one another. Brown’s aim was to bring them together around a program of militant economic demands in opposition to current wage restraint policies that were a product of communist political control of the CGT. He wrote Woll: “As you know, I want to stay in the field . . . but I must know soon in order to make a decision about returning to my own union. It is now a question of just how far we intend to go.” He added that the future “appears to have possibilities that we didn’t dare dream of eight months ago.”24

Still, AFL deliberations continued at their sedate pace throughout the summer of 1946. Woll asked Raphael Abramovitch of ALCIA to produce another think piece. In it Abramovitch agreed the time was right for intervention by the AFL to build on the “psychological and moral rift” that was emerging between communism and democratic socialism in the wake of the USSR’s heavy-handed behaviour in the occupied countries of Eastern Europe. He proposed opening a permanent European office headed by Brown and assisted by two Europeans to coordinate the industrial and political activities of labour groups dissatisfied with the WFTU. More ambitious than Brown, he suggested an annual budget of $85,000, of which $35,000 would cover the cost of the central office, with research services and a monthly bulletin produced by ALCIA.25

However, in AFL leadership circles the idea that political groups of the left might have a role to play in the program was never likely to be accepted. And Brown had also made known his personal opposition to the suggestion that Europeans be given staff positions in an AFL operation. His own emphasis was on the need for it to be led by people who knew America and the American labour movement. Naturally they needed to understand Europe, but the first requirement was an ability to explain American labour—its history, organization, methods, and goals. Much more so than Abramovitch, Brown saw the whole operation in terms of missionary work—by Americans.

The AFL Commits to Remaining in Europe

After a year away from home, Irving Brown returned to the United States in October 1946 for the AFL’s Chicago convention, where, following months of indecision, the federation leadership committed itself to extending his assignment in Europe. He was now authorized to open a permanent office and even given discretion over where to locate. Seemingly indicating a firmer AFL commitment to a European program, the convention voted to establish an international affairs department. The Labor League for Human Rights was closed down in December 1946 and Abe Bluestein, Brown’s nominal boss to date, dropped out of the picture. The Free Trade Union Committee, hitherto a subsidiary body, came fully into its own under Jay Lovestone’s direction, and Brown now reported directly to him. In November, the FTUC founded a monthly paper, the Free Trade Union News, published internationally, and very much under Lovestone’s editorial control. From this point on, the FTUC had an unmistakable public voice: no one could doubt that it articulated the world view of Jay Lovestone.

News that Brown was to be permanently based on the continent aroused protests from those Europeans who saw him as a disruptive influence. Over the preceding months he had deliberately sought publicity for his presence, relishing his image as a tough-talking American with powerful contacts. For opponents he had a sinister quality. The WFTU executive board meeting in December spent time discussing the AFL’s activities in Europe, and there was an element of braggadocio in Brown’s account written for Matt Woll:

There was a spectre haunting every [WFTU] meeting—namely, the AFL. The fear of future AFL moves seemed to dominate their every action. We are accused of planning all sorts of splitting tactics such as keeping the German trade unions out of the WFTU. The greatest fear was aroused over the question of our affiliating the various [US] international unions to the [international trade] secretariats which would prevent their affiliation to the WFTU.26

The CGT journal La Vie ouvrière now railed against the possibility of the AFL’s opening an office in Paris as an invasion of French national sovereignty. General Secretary Benoît Frachon wrote of “insolence on the part of United States reactionaries” and of Brown’s attacks on European and Soviet trade unions being such as “would not have been disavowed by the late Goebbels.” Lovestone hit back in the Free Trade Union News, deriding him in an article titled “The Frantic Mr. Frachon.”27

In fact, no decision had yet been taken on where to locate the European office. Paris was Brown’s preferred city, from where he would be able to continue to cultivate the non-communists in the CGT while also being the physical embodiment of opposition to the WFTU, which had its head office there. Jaap Oldenbroek, however, was keen for him to base his operations in London so as to be able to link up more readily with the activities of the ITF. But Brown never felt entirely comfortable in Britain, and he also noted that his presence in London might “embarrass our friends in the TUC.”28

However, the vehemence of the CGT attack caused Brown to have second thoughts about locating in France: his personal safety could not be assured, and he attempted to make political capital out of this. Having briefed the press that he intended to make an important statement just after the New Year holiday, he secured wide publicity for his announcement that he had decided against having his office in Paris. Though the French capital was noted for its openness and hospitality to people of different beliefs, he explained that he had abandoned his plans because of political warfare being waged by the French communists. He was thus justifying his change of mind in terms of the growing cold-war atmosphere—and, of course, reinforcing that very atmosphere with his announcement. Irving Brown’s decision was that the sedate and slightly out-of-the-way Belgian capital, Brussels, would be the place from which the AFL would fight its corner in labour’s Cold War.29

The passion generated over the opening of an AFL office in Europe was itself just a reflection of larger forces in world politics. The previous twelve months had seen the evaporation of hopes for a continuation of the big-power wartime alliance, now replaced by the dawning reality of the Cold War. It had been a gradual process. Joseph Stalin’s election speech before the Supreme Soviet in February 1946 seemingly reasserting Bolshevik orthodoxy, George Kennan’s subsequent “Long Telegram” warning of the threat of Soviet expansionism, and Winston Churchill’s ominous “iron curtain” speech in March might not in themselves have been total proof that the promises of the Yalta conference were dead. But with the passing of the months, the difficult relationship between America and the USSR was increasingly obvious, and suspicion of the Soviet Union became almost universal in Washington as advocates of military preparedness and the security state set the tone of public debate. By the end of the year a consensus existed in the United States that Soviet aims were, as one historian puts it, “aggressive, expansionist, devious and unlimited.”30 The imminent merger of the British and American zones in Germany into the Bizone was evidence that the division of the country was becoming a reality, while tensions within the coalitions of Communists, Socialists, and Christian Democrats that governed in France and Italy raised doubts over their long-term viability. The slide toward a polarized world was unmistakable.

The changes introduced at the AFL’s October convention in Chicago marked the real start of the FTUC’s engagement on the continent. By the spring of 1947, Brown had set up shop in the Brussels suburb of Stockel in a house that afforded office space alongside the living accommodation. His wife Lillie, Jay Lovestone’s former secretary, now joined him with their four-year-old son. Multilingual, Lillie would serve as his unpaid secretary and translator, and he would be in a position to live a more orderly life than he had in the months camped out in the Hotel California. A more determined phase of work would now begin.

The decision to make Brown’s appointment permanent highlighted an anomaly in the AFL structure. International issues were already the responsibility of an “international representative” who spoke for US labour at the ILO in Geneva while also handling the routine and mostly decorous relations with other national trade union centres. For the past decade Robert Watt, soon to be succeeded by Frank Fenton, had held the post, both working without support staff or bureaucratic structure. The establishment of the FTUC was clearly intended to add substance to AFL work overseas, but it remained semi-detached, without any clear linkage to the work done by Watt or Fenton, and the limited coordination between them developed only in ad hoc fashion.

Indeed, Lovestone would have been very reluctant to be imprisoned within a bureaucratic framework that involved central direction from Washington. Formally, he was on the staff of the ILGWU, where he combined the role of FTUC executive secretary with the directorship of the ILGWU’s international affairs department. With his office in the ILGWU’s New York headquarters and his salary paid by the union, for all practical purposes he worked for Dubinsky and ran the FTUC with the logistical support of the ILGWU. Operating “ultramontane,” he enjoyed a measure of freedom and tended to view any international initiative originating from the AFL headquarters with suspicion.31

Irving Brown experienced the dysfunctional relationship between the FTUC and AFL in another way. At his recommendation, the AFL had appointed Henry Rutz, former director of education of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor, as its representative in Germany. Until recently, as a major serving in the army in Germany, Rutz had played a useful role in opposing the Wolf-Wheeler policy on union organization. However, he soon began signing his correspondence “European Representative, AFL,” implicitly elevating his status above that of Brown, the FTUC representative. It was trivial, but rank was at issue, and Brown clearly regarded himself as the senior man in Europe. He could be very sensitive over perceived slights, and he wrote to Lovestone threatening to have no truck with Rutz if he persisted with his “pompous, bureaucratic use of that title”: “Unless there is a clear mandate as to who is who . . . I don’t intend to jeopardise my own position by staying away from America for several years to get this second-hand kind of deal. If this continues . . . I will just get out and return.”32 Brown’s anomalous position was not rectified until 1950, when he was appointed to the AFL staff and Meany, then asserting himself more in the international field, became his nominal boss.

Within the AFL, Lovestone was still an “outsider” with whom few would have had any truck a decade earlier. His relationship with Dubinsky had begun as a marriage of convenience and took some time to deepen. With the other leading lights in the AFL, circumspection on Lovestone’s part was required initially. He needed to show deference to the men who ran the federation and headed the FTUC. With some familiarity he might address Dubinsky as “DD,” but the others were “Mr. Green,” “Mr. Woll,” and “Mr. Meany.” All shared a deep anti-communism, but they had arrived at their positions through different routes: Woll, for example, as a Republican and fervent disciple of free enterprise capitalism, Dubinsky a social democrat. They spoke for different constituencies, but it was because of this that Lovestone came to value the FTUC as a sensitive barometer of the cross-currents in the AFL.33

AFL president Bill Green had little involvement in international affairs, but for the other officers of the FTUC this was an area of considerable interest. It was a particular hobby of Woll, who was the long-serving chairman of the AFL international affairs committee. In George Meany’s case, operating uncomfortably as Green’s number two in the undemanding post of secretary-treasurer, he had identified the international field as one he could stake out as his own, something that would lend meaning to his job. But Meany had not led a large union and, like Woll, didn’t command any big labour battalions. His strength lay in his bureaucratic acumen, sharp mind, command of detail, and bluff, no-nonsense style in committee. Within the FTUC, it was Dubinsky alone who brought to international work the authority derived from being a leader of a large, dynamic union with a healthy treasury. And his interest in international labour politics was an expression of his largely immigrant memberships’ consciousness of their ideological roots in Europe.

Lovestone and Brown were closest to Dubinsky, the man they were likely to approach first with any problem. Meany was someone they warmed to and grew to respect later as he began to play a more forceful role and emerged after 1947 as the likely eventual successor to Bill Green. Matt Woll, a generation older than Brown and a man full of his own importance, was someone to respect rather than befriend. What all this meant in practice was that if David Dubinsky gave backing to Lovestone and Brown on an issue, and if Matt Woll could be brought on board, then the committee’s support could usually be assured.

By now the partnership between Lovestone and Brown dated back fifteen years. They were close, sharing a sense of being two alone, having fickle and often unreliable colleagues, yet waging the good fight against great odds. Lovestone was clearly the senior partner and, as their exchanges sometimes showed, still the “teacher.” When Brown complained that his letters to Matt Woll had gone unanswered, he was reminded sharply of the hierarchical structure: “He doesn’t write to you,” Lovestone explained, “I do . . . I’m handling all their stuff with you.”34 In a report of a visit to Britain in late 1946, Brown recorded his approval of the Labour government’s domestic policy and his belief, following a meeting with Harold Laski, that the Labour Party chairman was not the fellow traveller that some Americans thought. Lovestone then read him a lecture on the facts of life: “You know the AFL . . . is not in favour of British or any other kind of socialism. They might be frightened by your committing them so closely to . . . the British Labour Party . . . Remember . . . who you are dealing with and whom you are representing.”35 On another occasion Brown complained that FTUC pronouncements were often crudely negative and appeared to support “extreme forms of free enterprise.” He also criticized the indiscriminate use of the terms “totalitarian” and “slave state” to describe not just Soviet communism but by inference other versions of socialism as well. Again Lovestone refused to yield an inch, insisting:

I am in complete disagreement with you on your attitude towards our use of the term Russian Slave State. That is the issue of the day . . . The slave labour issue is the biggest issue confronting world labour today. Mark my words: on this issue the WFTU will be wrecked. Not by the AFL but from within.36

Safely ensconced in his Manhattan redoubt, Lovestone could indulge in sweeping pronouncements and deliver anathemas, whereas Irving Brown, in regular contact with the European labour movement, understood that proponents of nationalization and state intervention in the economy were by no means necessarily “Stalinists” and that to suggest otherwise was a big mistake.

Interventions in Greece, France, and Germany

Brown’s first assignment under the new structure in late winter 1947 was in Greece to ensure that efforts to unify the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) did not reopen the door to communist influence. WFTU-supervised elections for the GSEE executive committee the previous year had produced a clear majority for the communists and socialists belonging to the leftist Workers’ Anti-Fascist League (ERGAS), only for the results to be set aside by the Greek government. A new executive committee led by Fotis Makris of the National Reformist Workers’ Group—an energetic but essentially opportunistic man with political roots in the right-wing Populist Party—was then appointed by the government. With Greece falling within its sphere of influence, the British government, supported by the TUC and WFTU, attempted to reunify the GSEE through a formula that reinstated the dismissed executive committee members sitting alongside the government’s appointees. Yet these efforts coincided with Britain’s announcement that it was pulling out of Greece. The US decision to step in and assume responsibility for keeping the country safe from communism within the terms of the Truman Doctrine now propelled the AFL into the GSEE’s affairs.

At the request of the GSEE leadership, Lovestone dispatched Brown to Greece in February 1947, the same month that Britain made known its decision to withdraw. Brown set about ensuring that the latest British-backed attempt to reinstate the duly elected executive committee would not be implemented. He reported to Lovestone that, as Makris had the backing of the Greek government, he was best placed to form the nucleus of an effective non-communist front. It was, however, important to bring in other groups from the political centre, especially the followers of the more moderate John Patsantzis, who, he reckoned, included “sincere, intelligent and militant elements.”37 Lovestone quickly requisitioned $20,000 for assistance to Greece from the War Relief Fund to be spent on food parcels for activists in the Patsantzis group. These parcels would be a vital resource, supplementing the meagre diet of recipients, but also with an inflated resale value should they be needed as a hidden cash subsidy.38

Brown insisted that Greece was the last Balkan country where a free trade union movement was possible, and that the threat of communism in the country had to be viewed in the context of Soviet strategic designs on the Middle East and the warm-water ports of the Mediterranean. Brown’s support for a firmer anti-communist line, the appointment of a permanent labour attaché to Athens to guide the unions, and a delay in efforts to reconstitute the GSEE until the United States had a firmer grip on the situation was well received in the State Department.39 British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin was alarmed by the Americans’ new, harder line, and at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference then taking place in Moscow argued vigorously with Secretary of State Marshall on this very issue, insisting that the American approach toward Greek trade unions risked damaging Anglo-American relations.40

In part at Bevin’s suggestion, the American labour attaché in London, Sam Berger, was dispatched to Athens pro tem to negotiate with his British counterpart in search of a formula for the reunification of the GSEE. Berger invited Brown to participate in the reunification talks with the unions, and while at a formal level a formula purporting to offer equal representation to all factions was on the table, Brown’s efforts behind the scenes were devoted to unifying the representatives of the political centre and right and resisting any compromise of benefit to ERGAS. The anti-communist front held long enough for the talks to collapse after the two labour attachés gave up the task, and ERGAS’s call for the WFTU to be allowed to supervise future GSEE elections was rejected.41 This was the last attempt at establishing trade union unity; the civil war in Greece intensified, with more than a hundred communist trade unionists arrested and executed over the next three years while three recent GSEE executive committee members belonging to ERGAS were imprisoned.

However, the coalition of centre-right-wing leaders that Brown had helped bring together failed to forge a cohesive free trade union movement and within a matter of months were fighting among themselves for the spoils of leadership. At the GSEE’s 1948 congress, Brown blamed the lack of progress on the new labour attaché appointed following his intervention the previous year. The appointment was made without Woll or Lovestone being consulted, and over this they protested loudly. “We have the purse strings in Greece,” Brown complained, “and we could have accomplished much in forcing Makris and his crowd to play ball with the united front set up.” At the congress Brown imposed himself, taking responsibility for organizing the balloting for elections to office and acting as arbiter of points of contention between delegates. The outcome of the congress was still in the balance when he departed for business elsewhere, ostentatiously refusing to hand over money that he was authorized to give. Keeping the Greeks on a short leash, he told Lovestone, “I have not given a penny . . . and do not intend to do so” until satisfied with the news coming from the GSEE.42

The problem with the Greek centre was that those who had demonstrated leadership qualities in the past and enjoyed the support of trade union members were excluded from the organization now led by people approved by Brown who were mainly attracted by the trappings of office. Deriving their regular finances from compulsory dues levied by the government, they inevitably became clients of the state. “Many of the so-called leaders who live on the contributions of the workers would disappear overnight if there weren’t forced trade union contributions,” commented the British labour attaché. Less than six months after Brown had helped sabotage any chance of leftist participation in a unified GSEE leadership, the same official noted that the “irresponsibility and calculated intrigue of prominent leaders and their complete disregard of genuine trade union interests has again become painfully obvious.” The situation was still unsatisfactory in 1949 when the GSEE requested $25,000 from the AFL to pay for its annual congress. Lovestone instructed Brown to tell Makris that the federation was in no position to help; the GSEE were too much of a headache.43

In his detailed study of this phase of Greek trade unionism, Peter Weiler observed that as a result of the failed unification attempt in 1947, the Greek trade union movement was now in the hands of unscrupulous and unrepresentative men running it on behalf of industrialists and conservative politicians. The country would fade as a focus of urgent interest for the FTUC once communist influence in the GSEE had been averted and the WFTU eliminated from the picture, though Brown visited periodically and provided a “financial shot in the arm” to one or another of the GSEE factions if there were signs of a new communist challenge. His involvement in 1947 had been a classic spoiling operation targeted at communist trade unionists that succeeded in the short run but hardly benefited the cause of Greek trade unionism. It was a pattern to be repeated in other locations.44 Meanwhile, Makris, who had begun his trade union career under the pre-war Metaxas dictatorship, would continue in office through the years of the military dictatorship of 1967–74.

Figure 1.  Irving Brown (second from the left), with Greek trade union leader Fotis Makris (left), during a visit to Athens in January 1950. Intent on keeping the GSEE free of communist influence, Brown periodically appeared in Greece to give the organization a “financial shot in the arm.” Courtesy of the Special Collections Department, University of Maryland.

In Germany, from the autumn of 1946 through 1947 the main concern of the FTUC was with a series of conferences intended to unite the zonal unions in a national structure. The AFL was initially excluded from the process, which began under WFTU auspices, until, following vigorous protests, it was granted observer status. At the first of the conferences in Mainz, the WFTU’s new American assistant secretary, Adolph Germer—a veteran CIO colleague of Sidney Hillman during the battle with Homer Martin for control of the UAW—noted in his diary how “Irving Brown, one of Homer Martin’s ‘stooges’” tried to “gate crash” the conference, “distributing [food] parcels to anyone who would say he is against Communists” and announcing that the AFL would “put up $500,000 at the disposal of the German labour movement.” In practice, the aid was far more modest, though still important: by early 1947 the AFL was supplying food parcels to five hundred American zone union officials each month. It would also soon be distributing 8,000 copies each month of its German-language edition of the Free Trade Union News.45

As steps toward German union unification gathered pace, Brown was again in Germany in August 1947 to meet the union leadership of the US zone and secure agreement on a policy that would delay plans for a unification congress the following spring until more progress had been made in uniting the unions of the British and American zones as part of the process of bizonal economic integration.46 But what finally derailed the plans for an all-German trade union congress was an announcement by General Clay that unification of the labour movement would not be permitted until the four zones were integrated economically, a prospect that was by now distant and receding. Clay had been the AFL’s bête noir in resisting demands for the return of trade union property and the lifting of restrictions on newsprint supplies to unions, but this recent decision alone made him a hero. In 1948, at the height of the Berlin blockade and airlift, Brown helped make permanent a trade union breakaway in Berlin by non-communists from the unified citywide FDGB over alleged communist electoral manipulation. A timely $1,000 FTUC appropriation for the newly created Unabhängige Gewerkschaft-Organisation (UGO) ensured its continued viability as a pro-Western body.47

A particular achievement of Brown was his nurturing relations with the chairman of the SPD, Kurt Schumacher, in 1946–47. Schumacher had impressed him with his magnetic personality, impeccable anti-Nazi credentials, and uncompromising opposition to Stalinist communism. On being confirmed as permanent FTUC representative in autumn 1946, Brown had secured a promise from Dubinsky that the ILGWU would provide $10,000 for use in support of the German Social Democrats. He met Schumacher for the first time in December 1946 in London, where they struck up a rapport and discussed possible uses of this money. Brown proposed to Lovestone that $8,000 be used to purchase for the SPD typewriters and other office equipment from the US army’s surplus property unit. The balance of $2,000 would be available to publicize the SPD’s position abroad through a travel grant for Hans Gottfurcht, who handled external relations for the unions in the British zone. Brown wrote Lovestone: “It is not enough for us merely to oppose the WFTU in Germany. There is a great yearning for international recognition on the part of the Germans . . . [who] once played a great role in international trade union organization.”48

Brown also suggested that Schumacher be invited to the AFL’s 1947 convention, giving him an overseas forum from which to make the case against German communism. He had to overcome the skepticism of General Clay and reservations among the AFL leadership before funding for the trip was agreed to and an invitation to Schumacher extended in the early autumn. Brown chaperoned the German leader at the San Francisco convention, where, in his rasping voice, Schumacher spoke powerfully warning of the threat of communist totalitarianism. Very much in tune with Lovestone, he argued that the great question of the day was whether freedom or slave labour would prevail. He welcomed the role of US labour in Germany, called for American help, and backed the recently announced Marshall Plan. It was the first time since the war that any German political leader had participated in such a gathering abroad, and his presence in San Francisco did much to boost his personal standing in Germany and that of his party.49

Brown and Lovestone remained confidants of Schumacher until his death in 1952 and were arguably his most important friends outside Germany. In their opposition to communist-leaning trade unions in various parts of the world, they in turn would often quote Schumacher on the essential choice between freedom and slave labour. The link between the SPD leader and the AFL—the latter often criticized in international labour circles for its conservative business unionism—was a remarkable feature of this period. It was undoubtedly Schumacher’s implacable anti-communism that most appealed to the Americans. He was the best-known opponent of communism in Germany and, from the AFL’s point of view, their most effective foil. But their support for him also helped indirectly to publicize and popularize German social democratic policies of socialization and democratic planning, and in this they were operating far outside official US policy in Germany.50

The FTUC’s biggest challenge in spring 1947 was in France, where strains within the communist-led CGT were coming to a head, principally over its moderate wages policy. A strike by Renault workers at the communist stronghold of Boulogne-Billancourt in April, which forced the CGT to abandon its wage moderation and resulted indirectly in the expulsion of communist ministers from the coalition government led by Paul Ramadier, began to open up space for opposition by the Force ouvrière faction. Of the group’s leadership, Brown had no faith in Léon Jouhaux’s capacity to lead the anti-communist struggle but rather placed his hopes in a younger cohort “who will some day break through this fuzzy myth of unity.” He had recently been allocated $6,000 for activity in France, and he now arranged to mail out copies of a French edition of the Free Trade Union News to a list of 24,000 potential activists.51

The role of the AFL—and especially Irving Brown—in helping to split the CGT has gone down in mythology. The essential facts bear restating. In the summer of 1947 the communist leadership of the CGT set out to restore its battered credibility by leading a succession of strikes that were increasingly “political” in that they were influenced by communist opposition to the recently announced Marshall Plan. These strikes among rail workers, miners, and metalworkers caused splits in the ranks and were accompanied by attempts at organizing an opposition, but all such efforts suffered from lack of resources and the relative isolation of one group from another. To overcome these handicaps, Brown urgently requested a further allocation of $5,000 from the FTUC and was given clearance to spend an extra $500 per month over the next four months in assisting the dissident groups. By the end of July, sensing that the tide was running his way, he was pleading for a further $2,500. In August he submitted still another request for $4,000 for use in France, and suggested also a “supplementary aid programme” financed by the American rail unions, telling Lovestone, “In spite of what may happen in other parts of Europe, for the moment the best of American plans will go for naught if this French situation is not broken. . . . It is still France that must be cracked or else every move we make will be paralyzed in advance. I urge you to meet my latest request.”52

The decisive phase came in November and December 1947 with a wave of insurrectionary strikes launched by the CGT that were more violent than any since the war. The buildup had been coming for months: “Power is already on the streets,” reported the British labour attaché at the end of September.53 Tapping into genuine economic grievances, the CGT embarked on action by dockers and rail and metalworkers for higher wages: it became de facto a general strike and lasted for three weeks. The political purpose was clear. At a meeting of the Franco-Soviet Trade Union Committee ahead of the strikes, Benoît Frachon had denounced the “anti-democratic and anti-Soviet propaganda” of the AFL and its support for “a small group of French splitters,” against whom the Soviet delegates called for “resolute action.” The CGT’s subsequent national council meeting declared opposition to Marshall aid as “a plan of subjugation of the world by the capitalist American trusts and preparation for a new world war.” That same meeting decided to consult all workers (not just union members) on whether to strike.

The non-communist minority among the CGT leadership opposed the insurrectionary nature of the action, the unconstitutional way that it had been called, and the fact that it was directed not by the CGT executive committee but by an ad hoc strike committee dominated by communists. CGT members who rejected the strike call were subjected to threats and beatings. The government introduced controversial legislation to protect property and non-striking workers and called up army reservists in a show of force. As the strike began to crumble with people drifting back to work, the CGT leadership called the action off in order “to regroup for further combat.”54

Although Léon Jouhaux still tried to resist the inevitable, this action led to the permanent split in the French labour movement and the formation of Force ouvrière (FO) as a separate centre. Even then, Jouhaux was still determined that the new body would remain within the WFTU fold if possible. The AFL had been working diligently to foster the split, and Irving Brown drew great personal satisfaction from the development, telling Lovestone, “Our work and our propaganda of the last two years in spite of all inadequacies have had their effect.”55 Yet during this latest phase, he had been a mere spectator. His budget depleted, he could only act as a messenger for Léon Blum in requesting financial assistance from Dubinsky for the socialist paper, Le Populaire. The schism within the CGT was the work of the non-communist rank and file. Brown’s efforts had certainly helped: without the material aid from the FTUC, they would have struggled to create an organization. But the basis of the split had been present since 1945 when supporters of Résistance ouvrière began to balk at the systematic efforts of the communists to take control of the CGT as a vehicle for their political program. Brown was a catalyst in the formation of Force ouvrière, not the cause. However, he was happy enough to be seen in that capacity, writing to Lovestone: “The big drive is on and I am right in the middle of it and the communists never cease letting me know about it.”56

Relations between Jouhaux and Brown were now deeply strained. Brown was unsure of being invited to Force ouvrière’s founding congress in April 1948, as Jouhaux complained that the Free Trade Union News was publishing copy by the labour historian Georges Lefranc, a man with pro-Vichy connections. Even so, it was to the AFL that FO leaders turned for material assistance. Brown arranged to procure $10,000 worth of typewriters from US government surplus stores in Europe, equipment that was then distributed to various FO offices. He had acted without waiting for formal approval, paying for the equipment out of his existing budget and then asking Lovestone to seek a refund from the AFL. In cavalier fashion he suggested: “You don’t have to tell anyone about the fact that we have already bought the machines.” Five months later, as Lovestone haggled over whether this was properly an FTUC or an AFL debt, and with Brown impatient to be reimbursed, Raymond Murphy, director of the State Department’s EUR-X branch, stepped in to clear the outstanding sum.57

Force ouvrière’s resources were still meagre. Preferring not to deal with the AFL if possible, Jouhaux was hoping for financial assistance from the CIO—there had been wild talk of sums ranging from $10,000 to $100,000—but if anything was seriously promised the CIO failed to deliver. FO then turned again to the AFL and requested a “loan” of $30,000. It fell to Dubinsky, while on a high-profile visit to Europe in the summer of 1948, to agree to initiate a series of instalments paid by the ILGWU. Yet when FO general secretary Robert Bothereau failed to acknowledge in sufficiently fulsome terms the first payment of $5,000, further instalments were suspended. Sensibilities were offended, and Lovestone railed:

We are not used to such transactions. Our money is honest, earned by workers themselves. When our organization makes a contribution to another . . . we expect clear-cut precise acknowledgements and not vague generalities. . . . We are careful as to whom we call friends, but once we call friends friends we are proud of them and we expect the same morality from our friends.58

With FO still awaiting a further instalment three months later, Brown protested to Lovestone that the loss of time was “disastrous.” “We just cannot go back on our word at this time and it is suicide to delay on such a vital question.”59 With a war chest estimated at between $55,000 and $140,000 amassed from contributions from communist sources abroad, the CGT was on the point of launching another strike by miners in autumn 1948, and FO risked being without resources to support its members who would be involved. As a stopgap, Brown borrowed $9,000 on behalf of FO from Rothschild’s Bank in the expectation of receiving a refund from the ILGWU.60

Closely linked to the newly formed Force ouvrière was a Paris-based international organization of Soviet bloc trade union refugees that began to take shape under AFL aegis as the International Centre of Free Trade Unionists in Exile (ICFTUE). Brown had been cultivating this group for several months as part of a project through which the FTUC hoped to lend support to anti-communists behind the Iron Curtain.61 His key contact among the Paris exiles was Sacha Volman, a twenty-four-year-old Romanian and one of the more colourful characters in Brown’s circle. Something of a chancer, he had fled to the West in a great hurry in 1947, hidden in a crate on an RAF transporter plane, after the communist authorities discovered that he was working for British and American intelligence. In Paris, he became secretary of the planned exile centre. Dubinsky handed him a start-up grant of $1,000 during his visit to Paris in July 1948, with the promise of more toward the cost of a founding congress. Volman would soon be fully absorbed into the CIA’s operational network.62

In total, the FTUC planned a $5,000 annual grant to the ICFTUE, paid in quarterly instalments. Delegates from ten national émigré groups met on 4 October at the Force ouvrière HQ in Avenue du Maine to launch the centre, which would subsequently be housed in FO premises. Three weeks later Lovestone authorized Brown to secure a second tranche of $1,000 for the ICFTUE from the Jewish Labor Committee. Brown went on to help the centre to establish links with Marshall Plan labour staff in Paris and acted as liaison with Voice of America, for whom the émigrés would be a valuable resource in broadcasting propaganda to Eastern Europe.63

CGT efforts to disrupt the Marshall Plan resumed in early October 1948 with industrial action by miners and attempts to spread the strike to the ports and railways. Once again, troops and police were deployed, and in the ensuing violence three strikers were killed and hundreds wounded. By the beginning of December the action had ended in failure, with mining communities close to starvation. Several weeks into the dispute, Brown had been authorized to make payments of $5,000 to Force ouvrière every three weeks over the coming three months—some $20,000 in all.64 Given the new centre’s meagre resources, the AFL money constituted a vital lifeline. But it was merely temporary cushioning: financing sufficient for the organization’s long-term survival still needed to be found. The solution would not always involve—as in Lovestone’s recent boast—funds that were “honest and earned by workers.”

The Uncertainties of FTUC Finance

Irving Brown’s repeated requests for finance for anti-communist activities might suggest the existence of plentiful reserves on which to draw. However, many of his appeals were turned down. FTUC funding was uncertain; Jay Lovestone operated on a shoestring, with contributing unions having to be cajoled into voting donations. Other than for small sums of $100 to $200, Lovestone had little discretion, and each tranche voted for Brown’s use had to be agreed to at a meeting of the full FTUC. Even in a recognized emergency several weeks might pass before the next scheduled meeting was able to deal with a request. Just how tight the budgeting was is evident from the internal discussion of where Brown should locate his office and what rent might be afforded. Lovestone told him: “All I can advise you is that the financial situation here is so tight, that the treasury is so low, that it is important that we operate on the most economical basis.” Brown asked permission to hire as an assistant Francis Henson, an old Lovestoneite from Homer Martin days in Detroit. But Lovestone turned him down flat: “Just continue as best you can . . . not stretching out too far. You know the AFL tempo. I am handling six people’s work myself and I don’t dare waste any time . . . requesting assistance.”65 The minutes of FTUC meetings for March, May, July, and November 1947 all indicated that funds were very low. Lovestone told the Committee in April, “We are sort of beginning to scratch the bottom.” Brown complained regularly that they were operating on a five-and-dime basis; Lovestone concurred, bemoaning having to spend so much time passing the hat around.

No consolidated set of accounts was ever included in the minutes, but based on the details of financial transactions reported to the FTUC and referred to in Brown–Lovestone correspondence, the evidence suggests that in 1947 the funds delivered to Brown for his various activities—mostly in France but also in Germany and Greece—totalled somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000. FTUC financial aid was clearly invaluable, but it was far from the vast sums that mythology has credited it with spending.

For Irving Brown, uncertain funding was a fact of life. It was exacerbated by frequent delays in processing allocations already agreed on, often a consequence of the circuitous way in which funds were transferred from America to Europe. Various methods were in use. Sometimes travellers’ cheques were wired directly to him. The Jewish Labor Committee in New York, of which David Dubinsky was treasurer, was also an important conduit, and funds credited to it in New York by the FTUC would be transferred to JLC accounts in Europe. For his operational needs, the JLC would credit sums to accounts held in banks in Geneva or Paris, where Feivel Shrager, a Russian-born socialist acting as volunteer agent for the JLC, would pass on the money to him. Brown maintained a “revolving fund” of Swiss francs held in Geneva worth some $5,000, through which he would purchase local currencies at the cheapest possible rates. This way he was often able to exchange at 50 percent or more above the official rate.

On occasion, when he had urgent need of funds, Brown would borrow from former OSS agent Bert Jolis, whose frequent business trips from New York to Paris enabled him to undertake courier services. But this was not always possible. While awaiting a decision on the $5,000 he had requested for use in France in May following the Renault strike, Brown was advised by Lovestone to borrow half the amount from Jolis, who would then be refunded by the FTUC. However, Jolis was not able to meet this particular request, and though the FTUC finally approved the transfer, Brown had to wait two months to receive it.66 Flying by the seat of his pants, Brown sometimes borrowed money on his own account, from other people he knew as well as banks, without authorization but in expectation that sufficient money to allow repayment would eventually be approved in New York.

These financial transactions were often complex and opaque, but Brown liked to have a free hand in how to use the money and vigorously resisted attempts to pin him down to close accounting. Verbal understandings were as common as written agreements. He considered it an affront to be asked to supply a receipt. When Lovestone requested details of transactions Brown’s response would often be along the lines that a full explanation would be given when next they met. Explaining a request for a credit in Swiss francs, he wrote, not altogether helpfully: “The biggest part of the Swiss franc deal will end by being a book keeping operation and dollars will be paid in New York. I cannot give you the details now but please rely on my judgement.”67 With Brown seeking reimbursement after negotiating one unauthorized loan, Lovestone insisted it was no use his saying that he could get a receipt: did he actually have one?—if not, he told him, “you are out of luck, brother.”68

Brown was ever the hustler, and on another occasion seemed to be trying to get the FTUC to pay twice for one project they had approved. He claimed not to have received a tranche of funds that had actually reached him and so resubmitted the original request. Letters crossing in the post may have contributed to the confusion, but Lovestone struggled to pin him down, pointing out that Brown had actually signed a receipt for the travellers’ cheques in question: “Are you asking for funds in addition to the above? Answer yes or no. Did the JLC turn over the proper equivalent for the $6,500 to you?”69 Yet Brown and Lovestone were two of a kind, streetwise operators seeing themselves as the advance scouts of an under-resourced army and having to do battle at times with their AFL paymasters almost as much as their communist enemy, and such sharp “misunderstandings” were soon smoothed over and “normal” operations resumed.

In April 1947, Brown lunched with Bill Bullitt, former US ambassador to Moscow, who was passing through Paris and whom Brown sensed was in Europe to assess the possibilities of underground activities in the East-West struggle. In a report to Lovestone, Brown claimed that Bullitt had been impressed with what the FTUC was doing. Whether or not there was any significance in this meeting, beginning two months later there was evidence of small sums of money of mysterious provenance beginning to show up in FTUC accounts. Brown tipped off Lovestone that he should expect shortly to receive an amount of $905 that was to be added to their account for France. He promised an explanation when he was next in the United States. Lovestone responded cautiously that it wasn’t clear how he would be able to handle the bookkeeping in relation to this. Six months later, Lovestone notified him that in addition to “the book of poems of 905 pages,” he had recently received “from the same book collector another form of lyric poems—446 pages” and asked whether he should put it in “the committee reading room collection” or give it to “the JLC circulating library.” Brown suggested that they be kept in the “general reading room” and advised Lovestone that he should expect to receive soon “an anthology just collected of about 2000 pages.”70 The unusual sums of $905 and $446 sound rather like small change accruing from freelance work, possibly for the intelligence services. Trifling though the amounts were initially, over time they would become larger and more regular.

As 1947 drew to a close, Lovestone announced that the FTUC budget was “sub-zero” and would remain so until the annual fundraising dinner held for AFL union presidents before Christmas. A pitch was made by the leadership for more funding for the FTUC, but the result was disappointing. “It may be the Christmas season,” noted Lovestone gloomily, “but so far there haven’t been many bells ringing and not enough has been raised even to pay the musicians.” Begging letters to some of the larger unions went unanswered, whereupon Dubinsky proposed that the FTUC seek a commercial bank loan to tide them over. He and Woll agreed to stand surety for a $25,000 four-month loan from the Sterling National Bank.71

At this point, Lovestone seems to have concluded that there was no way funding sufficient for the FTUC’s purpose would be forthcoming from the labour movement. He now turned to what he coyly referred to as “private individuals.”72 The transformation in FTUC finances was not dramatic, but over the coming months new income streams were clearly beginning to be tapped. In April 1948, the FTUC’s accounts were credited with a deposit of $10,000 from one Randolph Aborn without further explanation. Coincidentally that month, CBS broadcaster David Schoenbrun announced that Irving Brown had access to a fund of $2 million.73 This claim helped to feed the perception, encouraged by the AFL’s own publicity since 1944, that their international work was backed by the full resources of US labour. Others began to quote similarly inflated figures. The sums cited were greatly exaggerated, but the source of financing was certainly no longer exclusively organized labour. The following month, Lovestone told Brown that he was arranging some money from “a mutual friend.” It turned out to be the Rockefeller Foundation, which made a grant of $5,500 to help with the travel expenses of a five-man team of German-Austrian union leaders brought over later in 1948 to the AFL’s Cincinnati convention. The funding for this venture was kept strictly confidential.74 In October 1948, just ahead of his annual return to the United States for the AFL convention, Brown was advised by Lovestone: “Before you leave for New York, a friend of mine will make a loan to you of at least 15. Besides that, George Meany has wired directly to your French friends 5. That should relieve the pressure until you get here when more money will be sent.”75 The source of this loan is obscure, but the evidence that the FTUC was becoming more dependent on secret outside funding was now unmistakable.

For some years Lovestone had been close to General William Donovan, former head of the OSS, whom he had met through EUR-X’s Raymond Murphy. In autumn 1948, Donovan acted as intermediary between Lovestone and Winthrop Aldrich, former president of the Chase National, America’s largest bank, and brother-in-law of John D. Rockefeller. At Aldrich’s request, Donovan had shown him samples of the literature produced by the FTUC. In December, Donovan and Aldrich met at the latter’s Manhattan apartment to discuss possible financing for the FTUC, following which the banker wrote encouragingly (with copies to Lovestone, Brown, and Ray Murphy) of his willingness to “talk to several people about the situation.” A donation of $1,190.24 was received from the Rockefeller Foundation that same month, but substantially larger sums soon began to flow Lovestone’s way.76

Donovan had put in a word for Lovestone with Secretary of Defence James Forrestal, to whom Lovestone had first been introduced the previous year at a meeting of the National Security Council.77 In turn, Forrestal introduced him to Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, who would become a lasting friend. Reinforcing his social-business ties within the intelligence community, in 1948 Lovestone struck up a romantic relationship with a Boston socialite, Mrs. Louise “Pagie” Morris, who had worked for the OSS during the war and had had an affair with General Donovan. A year after meeting Lovestone, she went to work for the CIA’s head of counter-intelligence, James Angleton, on a personal basis. She continued in that role throughout the dozen or so years during which she was one of Lovestone’s “girl friends,” operating at times under the cover of the FTUC and having use of its letterhead, although her activities were not directly focused on the labour movement.78

The year 1949 constitutes a dividing line in terms of source and size of FTUC funding. For most of the two preceding years the organization had struggled financially in pursuit of what was still a comparatively modest program. But by 1949 Frank Wisner, head of the State Department’s agency for covert operations, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC)—later to be merged into the CIA—had drawn Lovestone into the covert network. Recognizing organized labour’s potential utility for his work, Wisner made overtures to Matt Woll, who duly referred him to Lovestone: “This will introduce Mr. Lovestone . . . He is duly authorised to cooperate with you on behalf of our organization and to arrange for close contact and reciprocal assistance in all matters.” A formal relationship between the OPC and the FTUC was discussed in December 1948 and agreed upon in early 1949.79 In January 1949, FTUC accounts show two donations of $35,000 and $12,000 received from Robert Pager and John E. Anderson, both—like Randolph Aborn, the mystery donor of April 1948—fictitious names. In the course of the year, eleven further donations for a total of $18,000 were received and credited to a variety of innocent-sounding fictitious characters.

Future payments tended to be for sums ranging between $2,000 and $5,000, always in convenient multiples of $1,000 and recorded in the accounts as though gifts from generous individuals. Whereas in the past the FTUC had had to manage on the annual grant of $35,000 from the AFL plus whatever smaller sums it could raise from individual unions, by 1950 income from intelligence sources was running at an annual rate of $170,000, far exceeding the donations from sponsoring unions.80 But this is to run ahead of the story.

Combining Opposition to the WFTU and Support for the Marshall Plan

Irving Brown’s activities in France, Germany, and Greece were all aimed ultimately at undermining the WFTU and replacing it with a “free” trade union international. There was no shortage of tension within the WFTU and plenty of people who doubted its capacity to remain united.81 As the strains of the early Cold War began to increase pressures within the organization, Brown’s role was to keep stirring the pot and cultivating those who were increasingly disaffected. The British TUC had made it a condition of continued support for the WFTU that the latter reach an accord with the international trade secretariats (ITSs) on their mutual relationship. Such agreement was increasingly unlikely; Brown was therefore pleased with the rapport he had established with J. H. (Jaap) Oldenbroek, the Dutch general secretary of the largest trade secretariat, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and a man whose knowledge of secret intelligence in the international labour field was at least as great as his own. Steeped in experience of the world of international labour, urbane, multilingual, and supremely self-assured, Oldenbroek had already emerged as de facto spokesman for the trade secretariats generally and, crucially, was strongly opposed to the WFTU plan to incorporate them as subsidiary bodies. As Oldenbroek set out to be obstructive in dealings with the WFTU, Brown was only too happy to position himself at his elbow, telling Lovestone: “Oldenbroek is really fighting a valiant battle. He’s reached the point where, with our support we can lick the WFTU.”82

Brown urged AFL unions to take out membership in their respective trade secretariat and suggested that he personally be allowed act as their representative in Europe. In the United States, he was a member of the machinists’ union (IAM), and when the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) began to solicit the affiliation of American metalworkers’ unions it was Brown who acted as the key intermediary. A soulmate of Oldenbroek in the campaign to resist WFTU control, IMF’s general secretary Konrad Ilg calculated that if he had the machinists’ 800,000 members on board by the time of the IMF congress of July 1947, he would have the votes that would ensure the IMF’s independence of the WFTU. Thus prompted, Brown set out to persuade IAM president Harvey Brown: “The [Machinists] should seek affiliation and remain within the IMF as long as it remains outside the WFTU—without stipulating it in so many words. Then, within the IMF, we can do the real job.” Within a month the machinists were signed up to the IMF; Irving Brown represented them at the July congress and was immediately elected to the executive committee.83 From that vantage point he would later play a major role in representing the IMF among US unions and in shepherding the fledgling German IG Metall into membership in 1948, thereby blocking off further scope for the WFTU to influence this key union. He was also a delegate at the IMF’s central committee meeting in March 1948 in Lugano, where the IMF finally decided on a complete break with the WFTU.

Just a few weeks after the IAM agreed to join the IMF, Brown’s efforts were rewarded in another field when the American unions belonging to the Railway Labor Executives’ Association, representing almost all the major railroad unions, took their 750,000 members into the ITF. It was made clear from the outset that opposition to the WFTU was the principal focus. As Lovestone insisted: “The American unions will not stay for one minute in any trade secretariat if . . . [it] affiliates to the WFTU . . . the moment [the ITSs] seek an American affiliation . . . they are themselves through with the WFTU.”84 Mirroring the role he was playing in the IMF, in April 1948 Brown represented the American railway unions at the ITF conference in Luxembourg, where the organization came out formally in favour of the Marshall Plan. Later in the year he acted as a courier for the ITF in carrying to Europe $4,000 in currency (bills of $50 and $100 had been requested) on behalf of the Railway Labor Executives’ Association, funds destined eventually for the Force ouvrière transport unions.85 Brown and Lovestone were also instrumental in helping Martin Bolle, general secretary of the public services trade secretariat, the International Federation of Unions of Employees in Public and Civil Services (later Public Services International), to secure the affiliation of the American state, county, and municipal employees’ union led by Arnold Zander.86

It was the response to the American offer of Marshall aid in June 1947 that finally confirmed the division of Europe into two blocs. The Marshall Plan also caused a permanent rift in the WFTU, ideological differences and big power entanglement ending whatever capacity it previously had to pursue basic trade union interests. The final split was slow in coming: neither side wanted to appear responsible for the schism that seemed inevitable. Irving Brown worked tirelessly to draw together those supportive of Marshall aid in an embryonic free trade union centre, though his efforts to force the pace and assert AFL leadership of the process were much resented by potential allies. His aim was to secure agreement among European union leaders to convene an international trade union conference that would endorse the Marshall Plan in principle. He first floated the idea in a letter to Woll in July 1947. The Benelux unions were interested: Brown had already discussed the idea with Louis Major, the general secretary of the Fédération générale du travail belgique (FGTB). Lovestone arranged for the proposed conference to be discussed at the AFL convention in October, but in typical belligerent style he insisted that the AFL would need to take the initiative in convening it, rather than the Americans being invited “by some British lord or some Dutch baron.” He regarded the TUC in particular as the reincarnation of “Perfidious Albion” and told Brown: “They are still to pay for some time the price of joint parenthood of the WFTU.”87

The debate over the Marshall Plan injected a new urgency into the AFL’s approach to international affairs, and it was decided to expand the distribution of FTUC literature overseas. A report by Brown to the AFL’s international committee conjured up a dramatic picture of a beleaguered Europe, with the AFL—and himself in particular—in the vanguard of what was becoming a titanic struggle against the forces of darkness:

Our trade union programme and relationships have penetrated every country of Europe. We have become . . . an army which is about 1,000 miles from its supply bases. Our challenge to the WFTU, to the Soviet Union, and to world Communism means that the AFL has become a world force in conflict with a world organization in every field affecting international . . . labour.

He stressed that the AFL had become the focal point in the struggle for freedom: friends and enemies had elevated it to the top rung in this international struggle, as target for both attack and support.88 It was heady stuff, and press briefings conveyed the impression that the new free trade union organization the AFL aimed for was well on the way to becoming a reality. “History is on the side of the AFL,” recorded the Times of London. To overcome British TUC reluctance to rush a split within the WFTU, Brown won AFL backing for an attempt by him to enlist support for the proposed Marshall Plan conference from Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, British trade unionism’s elder statesman. Ahead of his visit to London to meet Bevin, he had tipped off friends in the British press, and the day before his arrival the Times carried an editorial commenting on the fact that the TUC might soon have to choose between the Marshall Plan and the WFTU.89

There was considerable chutzpah surrounding this mission to see the British foreign secretary, who was currently hosting the latest conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom, France, and China, established at the Potsdam Conference to address the major problems of the postwar world. As with Brown’s encounter with Secretary of State Byrnes twelve months earlier, it was an attempt at wheeler-dealing at the highest level, on this occasion hoping to sow a difference between the foreign secretary and the TUC of which Bevin had once been the most powerful figure. Wiser heads in the labour movement who were otherwise in sympathy with the AFL considered it ill judged. As Norwegian Labour Party leader Haakon Lie observed to an American friend: “Neither Dubinsky, Woll, Lovestone—nor Irv—know Europe well enough to act entirely correctly in this very serious manoeuvring. The time is not yet ripe for a split . . . a hothead like Irv can be dangerous just now.”90

With the help of Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett and representations by the US embassy in London, the meeting with Bevin was arranged. An obvious question arises as to why the British foreign secretary would find time to meet a field representative of the FTUC. No doubt Bevin was showing courtesy to AFL leaders such as David Dubinsky, whom he knew well and respected. But he had also become aware of Brown’s capacity to make life difficult given his influential contacts in Washington, as his recent involvement in Greece had demonstrated.91

Early on in their London talks, Brown persuaded himself that the foreign secretary was in favour of the proposed Marshall Plan trade union conference, delighting at hearing “the Big Boy,” as he called him, badmouthing the WFTU and those principally responsible for its creation. But before they parted, Bevin made it quite clear that he was not going to be played off against the TUC and that he fully agreed with its position of biding its time on the issue of splitting from the WFTU. Indeed, during this latest session of the Foreign Ministers’ Conference, Bevin actually suggested to Secretary of State Marshall that the AFL be urged to slow down on the matter of the proposed Marshall Plan trade union conference.92

That Brown’s effort to create discord between Bevin and the TUC leadership failed is hardly surprising. But his report to Lovestone concluded on an upbeat note: “In spite of the delaying tactics of the British, I came away from England with the definite conviction that the die is cast and that because of Russian attacks the British labour movement will be forced into an aggressive anti-Communist fight.”93 He had also succeeded in drawing the British foreign secretary into the trade union discussion about the appropriate reaction to the Marshall Plan. As the British labour leader with the most credibility in the United States, it fell to Bevin to put the AFL leadership straight about TUC thinking. Following his meeting with Brown, the Foreign Office instructed the British labour counsellor in Washington to tell the AFL that the TUC would remain loyal to the WFTU until there was a break, after which it would be able to take part in the proposed conference. The difference with the AFL, he assured them, was simply over tactics.94 The encounter with Bevin certainly served to increase Brown’s sense of his own importance. Meantime many Europeans concluded that the FTUC representative had shown brashness and lacked judgment.

For all Jay Lovestone’s talk about the AFL taking the lead in convening the Marshall Plan trade union conference, and despite his personal opposition to it being held in London—”too foggy, literally and metaphorically”—there was no way the event would take place without the central involvement of the TUC. Indeed, when the Soviet trade unions persisted in dragging their feet on a discussion of Marshall aid within the WFTU, the TUC decided that it was now justified in acting independently outside the framework of the world federation. At this point, the TUC seized the initiative and, without consulting other centres, convened a European Recovery Plan Trade Union Conference in London for 9 March 1948. It also decided unilaterally that the conference must not be anti-WFTU, anti-communist, or anti-Soviet in tone but rather a constructive gathering to promote Marshall aid.

The TUC had “taken the play” away from the AFL over the calling of the conference, and the latter was understandably angered at being presented with a fait accompli it first learned about through the press. Matt Woll telephoned Brown and instructed him to seek a postponement of the conference, failing which the AFL would not participate. Brown was distraught at this turn of events, which threatened to undo much of what he had worked hard for. He cabled Dubinsky and requested that he be brought home for consultation; otherwise he planned to ask for his permanent recall. In emotional language, he wrote to Lovestone about the “bitterness and anger welling up” inside him and his “European world caving in.”

Setting aside bruised American feelings, the main difference now between the AFL and the TUC was over the timing of the conference—whether it should be in early March as determined by the TUC or a few weeks later. Once again it was left to Ernest Bevin on behalf of the TUC to calm ruffled feathers, letting the AFL know that he accepted responsibility for having suggested to the TUC the date for the conference and cabling that the delay now sought by the AFL would play into the Russians’ hands and allow them to pin the blame for the WFTU’s internal difficulties on the TUC: “The Russians have already been making propaganda capital out of the allegations that the AFL is calling the tune. . . . Any delay would be seized on and used as proof that European unions were completely under AFL domination.”95

It was Lovestone who came up with a face-saving compromise. He understood that the Americans had been “bounced,” but he convinced the AFL leadership to accept the TUC invitation provided it was announced as a preparatory meeting to be followed by a full conference at a later date.96

The crisis averted, Brown was rhapsodic in his expression of gratitude to his boss, the uncharacteristically gushing tone suggesting that he really had been near emotional breaking point: “It was with such joy that I read your last two letters . . . I must tell you of my deepest appreciation and gratitude for your ability and wisdom . . . your vision and statesmanship . . . please take care of yourself . . . I thank my lucky stars for having you around.”97 These months of frustrating indecision and shortage of financial resources in the FTUC had evidently unsettled Brown, and there are clear signs that he was tempted by other opportunities. In late 1947 the aging Konrad Ilg was contemplating retirement as IMF general secretary and was lining up Brown as a possible successor. Brown was keen for Lovestone to know this, if only as a sign of his marketability.98 Whether Brown knew it or not (and the likelihood is that word would have reached him), he was also number three on a shortlist of possible candidates proposed by George Kennan, the director of Policy Planning in the State Department, for the post of director of the Office of Special Projects, in the State Department’s Office of Policy Coordination, which was later incorporated into the CIA with responsibility for handling covert operations.99

More seriously, in April 1948 AFL President Green nominated Brown for one of the two top positions of labour advisor within the Marshall Plan administration. Brown was sorely tempted and even urged the AFL to press for the job to carry the diplomatic title of “Minister” to ensure recognition in US embassies throughout Europe. Savouring the possible benefits, he suggested to Lovestone: “A real, conscientious, intelligent trade unionist if given a top post and a high degree of freedom can make all the difference in the world . . . [and become] a political weapon.”100 But Woll, Dubinsky, and Lovestone were reluctant to see him caught up in the apparatus of government. Whether Brown then had second thoughts or Lovestone decided unilaterally to spike his ambitions is unclear, a week later Lovestone wrote to Dubinsky telling him that he had received a letter from Brown expressing appreciation that his name had been put forward for the Marshall Plan post but preferring not to give up his present work.101 Interestingly, no such letter from Brown exists in the files.

The fleeting prospect of a high-ranking post in a government agency highlights an interesting side to Brown’s makeup. He enjoyed working as a field “rep”—a fixer, an operator—often in a shadowy role. Contrasting himself with Henry Rutz, he once told Lovestone: “I don’t like titles and never mention them.” He was being truthful, but it was a little more complex than that, since he could be very hurt if he failed to receive the recognition he felt was his due. His brashness aside, Brown was an easy-to-meet, affable character who rubbed along well with people of all ranks. Throughout his career he was mostly content to be working behind the scenes. Yet it pleased him when others suggested that he was cut out for high office with an impressive title to match. He liked to be “in” with high-level contacts, was flattered when prominent figures took him into their confidence, and was always adept at name dropping.

The ERP Trade Union Conference: Hopes for a New International

The European Recovery Program (ERP) Trade Union Conference, called by the TUC and held in London in March 1948, would later be vested with mythic importance in the history of AFL international activity—allegedly the first tangible step in the creation of a free trade union international. At the time, Brown was more inclined to see it as a wasted opportunity. “English crowd is beginning to give me a pain in the neck . . . jealous of maintaining all control of international operations in their own hands.” Lovestone was in full agreement, resentful of recent TUC tactics so reminiscent of “Citrine’s filthy manoeuvring” in the past.102

The London conference did serve to end the international isolation of the German trade unions and for the first time admitted to an international gathering Force ouvrière and the Italian Christian trade unionists, then about to bolt from the unified CGIL. However, with the TUC in firm control, the conference was careful to damp down any suggestion that it was the basis of a new “international.” The declaration adopted refuted any policy of aligning West against East. The TUC was working to a different diplomatic agenda. Vincent Tewson, its general secretary since 1946, proved to be every bit as adept at bureaucratic manoeuvring as his predecessor, Citrine. His first close encounter with Irving Brown had been in Greece a year earlier when he first attempted to dissuade the American from becoming involved and then saw the TUC’s plans for uniting the GSEE thwarted by the FTUC representative. The TUC was determined that any future replacement for the WFTU would not be forced through and dominated by the AFL.103

A follow-up conference—in AFL eyes the real conference—was held in July in London, allowing an opportunity for the AFL delegation to state how “flabbergasted” and “disappointed” they were at the lack of urgency in building a new international. An ERP Trade Union Advisory Committee (ERP-TUAC) had been established as the “continuing body,” but it remained effectively under TUC control and was not amenable to American influence. “Our British friends,” Lovestone wrote, “must in the future be careful that they do not continue the lousy traditions and practices of Sir Walter [Citrine]. The AFL will never again accept or allow the domination of the world trade union movement by any one group.”104 Brown argued the need to strengthen the TUAC and broaden its role, but Tewson reacted sharply and told him that this was a European matter and that Americans needed to be more self-effacing. It was a clear sign of Tewson’s growing irritation with Brown, increasingly seen now as overly assertive and meddlesome.105

Manoeuvring by the TUC, CIO, and the Soviet Union’s AUCCTU continued throughout 1948 for command of the moral high ground ahead of the anticipated split in the increasingly lame-duck WFTU. With the end of the organization as a unified entity still some distance away, Brown was forced to curb his impatience. Then, at a press conference in Paris at the end of 1948, just weeks before the TUC, CIO, and Dutch Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (NVV) finally induced the split by walking out of the WFTU, Brown talked up the prospect of a new international being created “soon”: it had, he said, been discussed by President Truman and the AFL leaders. He also boasted privately that the AFL could push ahead with plans for this regardless of the TUC.

However, his claim that he had the continental unions “in the palm of his hand” and would be able to “dictate policy in the new international” was dismissed by Walter Schevenels, then still hanging on as WFTU assistant general secretary while concurrently eying up his prospects for heading up a new free trade union international. Union leaders from Holland and Belgium—his home base—had assured Schevenels that Brown would never manage to split them from the TUC. The former IFTU general secretary was also convinced that leaders such as Jouhaux and Bothereau of Force ouvrière were too old and wise to be taken in by Brown. At bottom, he insisted, the AFL had nothing to offer Europe except money. And though it would elicit gratitude for its financial support, it would never buy these unions.106

Schevenels had a point; the assessment was prescient. There would be exceptions in the short run and situations where “money talked”—especially in France and Italy. But even there the beneficiaries often brought a cynical, calculating approach to their financial dealings with the Americans. In the short run, the process of extricating most Western trade union centres from the WFTU and securing agreement on the formation of a new international would be fraught—largely because of the AFL’s determination to force the pace. And within four or five years Brown was to bemoan the fact that in Europe the AFL was running out of friends.

In just over three years Irving Brown had established a firm AFL presence in Europe. He was personally well known in labour circles, warmly welcomed by some, reviled as a “splitter” by others. In Germany he had successfully thrown the AFL’s weight behind those opposed to the affiliation of the trade unions of the Western zones to the WFTU. His efforts in Greece had served to isolate the communist-led unions, while leaving the mainstream labour movement in the hands of a corrupt and largely ineffective leadership. France had been his major theatre of activity, where material assistance channelled to labour’s non-communist wing ensured that when the CGT split in 1947 the breakaway Force ouvrière managed to survive, albeit that from the very outset a pattern of financial dependence on the AFL was established and would endure.

More generally, by binding the campaign for trade union acceptance of Marshall aid to the efforts of the international trade secretariats to retain their independence of the WFTU, Brown helped to exacerbate the tensions within the WFTU that had, from the earliest days, threatened its long-term survival. By the end of 1948, most national trade union centres in Europe backed the Marshall Plan to some degree and were becoming resigned to the fact that the WFTU’s future was in grave doubt.

AFL finance had been invaluable in these various campaigns, though the sums involved were far more modest than sensational reports often maintained—the Free Trade Union Committee was never as well endowed as AFL leaders sometimes led the world to believe. It was on account of its dwindling resources that by 1948, the federation began to rely heavily on funding from outside the labour movement, and especially from the newly created CIA. Such dependence would have an important bearing on the AFL’s pattern of activities, and especially its relations with the CIO, in the years immediately ahead.