Although many years have passed and I sense that relations are very changed, there are other questions regarding the WSA and the IWW which were not touched in the thread on the topic. I am starting a new thread on something I find interesting. This is that at some point the IWW, or at least a certain part of it, also wanted to affiliate to the IWA. However there was already the WSA and apparently, at that time, enough differences between the two.
What were these differences? I remember these times and remember a few, although maybe those directly involved would rather say.
The following are interesting. They come from the Libertarian Labor Review, whose members were active in the IWW. They allude to, but don't describe, some differences / conflict with the WSA and the IWW. The following letter was sent to the IWA at its 1992 Congress:
Fellow Workers,
The Libertarian Labor Review sends greetings to the IWA
Congress. The tasks facing the international anarcho-syndicalist
movement are immense. In virtually every country of the world,
transnational capitalist employers pit the workers of each country
against workers of other countries. National governments and the
official labor unions assist the employers by telling workers that
they must compete with foreign labor if they wish to keep their
jobs. The IWA is one of the few labor federations which seeks to
turn international working-class solidarity from a slogan into
practical reality. As an anarcho-syndicalist journal we are
committed to the same goals as the IWA, and hope that you continue
to make progress.
The Libertarian Labor Review is committed to building
solidarity between anarcho-syndicalists worldwide by providing
information about revolutionary unions. Every issue of the LLR
carries news of the IWA and its sections. This information might
otherwise be unavailable in North America. For example, we know of
no other U.S. publication (aside from the Industrial Worker, which
reprinted our report) that reported on the general strikes against
the Gulf War called by the USI and sections of the Cobas. We also
review IWA literature and reprint articles from your press. And
each issue of LLR includes the IWA's Principles of Revolutionary
Syndicalism, which we endorse.
The members of our collective have also shown solidarity with
the IWA in our practical work. When the CNT 'renevados' split from
the CNT-AIT, our members defended the CNT-AIT and helped influence
the Industrial Workers of the World to adopt its policy of
recognizing only the CNT-AIT. Our members pass along IWA news and
communiques to the IWW press as we receive them. For many years we
have encouraged the IWW to affiliate with the IWA, and we hope that
this will be accomplished soon.
Unfortunately, on March 20 we received an official notice from
Ginger Hutton, National Secretary of the Workers Solidarity
Alliance, objecting to an article in issue #12 of our journal.
(Hutton says she is objecting to #11, which mentions WSA only in an
index to our first 10 issues--her confusion may have been caused by
a production error which resulted in pages of #12 being
misnumbered.) That article criticized a leaflet attacking us that
was circulated by WSA leaers at the IWW's 1991 General Assembly.
Although the main point of our article was self-defense, Hutton
accuses LLR of attacking WSA and issues an ultimatum: "we must...
cease [our] attacks on the Workers Solidarity Alliance and all
individual members of the WSA" or WSA will ask the IWA to
"institute a formal ban on relations with your group" since "an
attack on [WSA] is an attack on the IWA."
We believe that the role of the anarcho-syndicalist press is
not just to give blanket praise to any group or individual claiming
to be anarcho-syndicalist, but to also criticize them for their
mistakes. A free and critical press plays a vital role in
maintaining liberty for rank-and-file workers and in holding our
officials accountable. The point of our article in LLR #12, which
so offended WSA, was that WSA does not want to see the IWW
affiliate with the IWA and has tried to make LLR into a scapegoat
to conceal this fact. In the most recent issue of WSA's journal,
Ideas and Action (#16, p. 36), Ginger Hutton admits that WSA is
opposed to the IWW joining the international: "The best thing that
could happen is that the IWW decides this is not something they
want to do and just drop it... I really don't think it's something
that's going to happen."
This simply reflects long-standing WSA policy. When
representatives of the Libertarian Workers Group (the WSA's earlier
name) attended the 1984 IWA Congress, they urged the IWA to drop
its efforts to get the IWW to affiliate. WSA also made several
derogatory remarks about the IWW, which amounted to a false charge
that the IWW was class collaborationist. When our group of anarcho-
syndicalists, active in the IWW, found out about this, we wrote an
open letter to the IWA to protest these attacks. Thus, our
'quarrel' with WSA dates back to what we saw as a divisive and
sectarian report they made against the IWW.
While the Libertarian Labor Review has serious differences
with the WSA over how to build an anarcho-syndicalist movement in
North America, we wholly support the IWA's priciples. We believe
that revolutionary unionism and international working-class
solidarity are essential to the construction of a free, self-
managed society. Familiarity with the activities, tactics, goals
and aspirations of our fellow workers around the world is essential
to building such solidarity.
At present, we exchange publications with several IWA
sections, and would gladly add other IWA sections to our exchange
list. On occasion, the IWA Secretariat has sent us copies of
communiques, which we have published in our journal and sent to
other labor papers and sympathetic organizations. We would very
much appreciate it if we could receive such information on a
regular basis, and if we could be provided with copies of the
resolutions and other materials acted on by the Congress.
For international working-class solidarity,
Libertarian Labor Review Collective
The WSA complained about attacks on them and the IWA Secretariat wrote to LLR about this. Later, the LLR published an editorial related to the IWA.
(I will not reprint it in full, because the first part is terribly, terribly mistaken. It related to the situation in Russia at that time, when the KAS went under, its leaders taking over the former communist trade unions. It is completely uninformed what LLR writes. I know because I was there. Due to complete ignorance, the SAC popped up there as well, giving a large sum of money to the already dead organization, which was quickly stolen.)
This part related to the WSA, IWW and IWA:
This is not the first time the IWA has permitted sectarian
syndicalist groups to draw the international into internal feuding.
In 1984 we warned the IWA about a similar situation with a group of
anti-IWW syndicalists, the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA), who
were seeking recognition as the IWA's U.S. affiliate. The IWA
ignored these warnings, and the WSA was given a blank check to
carry on sectarian warfare against the IWW and pro-IWW anarcho-
syndicalists, all in the name of the international. Perhaps it is
not surprising that when the IWW passed a referendum in 1989(?) to
affiliate with the IWA, this received no follow-up from the IWA.
The IWA decided it must rely on the judgement of WSA, who told them
to ignore the IWW's prospective affiliation.
Libertarian Labor Review #15
Summer 1993, page 2
I visited Spain in 1984, some months before the Congress and although the main question at that time was that of the renovados (later CGT), there were plenty of questions and talk about issues in the US. But maybe first somebody else would say from their point of view what that was about.
It is interesting (and true) that at its inception, WSA was thought of as a "sectarian" venture.
On IWW affliation with the IWA, I think that's come up 2-3 times since the 1930s and there have been votes. At least one of those votes, the pro-IWA came out on top, and then there was some maneuvering by possibly the GST that negated the vote. But this is off memory, and off the memory of WSA listserv discussions 2-3 years ago and libcom threads.
syndicalist sent me a bunch of copies of some of the documents that went back and forth back then. WSA to IWA, a group of Wobs to the IWA, etc.
I'm not going to get into too much specifics because sometimes the past isn't worth bringing back up, in my opinion, but despite disagreeing with some of what WSA wrote (the viability for revolutionary unionism in the U.S., the IWW being a 'political organization'), the group of Wobs were completely out of line with what they were doing and saying. To me, they were relying on fighting with another organization (based on unrelated beef from a common group they had all been in) and bombastic, sectarian accusations to get what they wanted (affiliation with the IWA).
I think WSA's perspective on revolutionary unionism in the U.S. and the group of IWWers way of conducting themselves made any IWW affiliation with the IWA something that was just not going to happen then.
The way I look it at is that WSA's issue were ideological, which is something that be changed,negotiated with, altered, etc. But with the group of Wobs, their perspective was more personal, which is harder to deal with.
There's also, quite a few threads on here that go over all this many times.