ABSTRACT
During the First World War, the international trade union movement had clustered into camps that reflected the positions and alliances of the different nations. The International Federation of Trade Unions leaders finally presented the resulting 'Project for a World Federation of Trade Unions' to the Emergency International Trade Union Council at a meeting on 23 September 1943. In view of the attitude of the American Federation of Labor, the new core group, the Anglo-Soviet Committee, was not an adequate basis for a new initiative. A world conference was clearly not the same thing as a new World Federation of Trade Unions, and the Trade Union Council (tuc) had not been very clear on that point yet. The tuc also realised that the International Labour Organisation conference would stop the World Conference from going ahead. The British tuc would soon discover that the World Federation of Trade Unions was unable to survive the discord between the 'free' and the communist world.
