Wobblies of the World: a global history of the IWW

• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12171
• Published date: 01 July 2020

© 2020 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Book review 257

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:2

ISSN 0268-1072

Book Review

Wobblies of the World: a global history of the IWW

Cole, P., Struthers, D. and Zimmer, K. (eds) (2017), Pluto Press, 2017, 312 pp, ISBN

978-07453-9959-1 Paperback £10, ISBN 978-07453-9960-7 £75

Grassroots unions have seen a resurgence in recent years in the UK, partly as a

response to the gig economy, with notable cases including large groups of tra-

ditionally non-unionised workers, particularly cleaners and couriers (Woodcock,

2014; Rogers, 2018; Pero, 2019). The two unions at the forefront are the Industrial

Workers of the World (IWW) and a group who split from the IWW in 2012, the

IWGB (Independent Workers of Great Britain).

The IWW was formed in 1905 in Chicago as a syndicalist union and held most

sway in the period from 1905 through to the mid-1920s (Dubofsky, 2005). This

book presents a global history of the IWW, which is in three parts: part 1 covers

the internationalist ideas that inuenced the formation of the IWW and its de-

velopment in the United States; part 2 focusses on international organising under

the banner of the IWW; and part 3 relates to the inuence the IWW has had on

trade union organising.

Syndicalists believe that revolution can be brought about by taking control of

the means of production, rather than through armed struggle. The 1908 conference

preamble urged all ‘wage workers to organise … [and that] … the employing

class and the working class have nothing in common..’. The IWW also stood

apart to mainstream labour unions of the time as it declared equality for all

based on gender and race, and the IWW constitution stated in Article 1 that ‘No

workingman or woman shall be excluded from membership in local unions be-

cause of creed or colour’ (IWW, 1905). This declaration came right in the middle

of the Jim Crow era when segregation was commonplace, even within trade

unions.

At its inception in 1905, the involvement of recent immigrants to the United

States gave the IWW its strong international focus. The rst part of the book

highlights the inuences of global industrial union movements on the IWW by

workers from all over the world from its formation. Zimmer (chapter 1) summa-

rises this internationalisation based on migration listing migrant workers from

Europe, Russia, Latin America and Asia. This internationalisation of workers brought

modes of organisation from their countries of birth, one example being French

workers’ acts of ‘sabotage’ during the 1911 railway strike (Pinsoll chapter 2). By

the 1912 ‘Bread and Roses’ strike, big names in the IWW Big Bill Haywood and

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn included sabotage amongst their four tactics for victory

in strikes (the others being solidarity, passive resistance and direct action).

Migration was two-way, and knowledge and inuence of the IWW and syn-

dicalist forms of anarchism spread outwards from the US-based IWW to move-

ments like the Ghadar movement which fought ideas of British Empire in India

(Khan chapter 3), and through Spanish-speaking maritime workers around the

Atlantic (Alsonso chapter 5).

The second part of the book details how many members of the IWW (known

as ‘Wobblies’1.) took the organising style of the IWW out of the United States

and more broadly internationalised it. Thorpe (chapter 6) gives an overview of

the internationalist labour movement at the time and outlines the reasons why