Industrial Unionist

The Industrial Unionist was the newspaper of the New Zealand branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the ‘Wobblies’. The IWW was established in America in 1905 by a group of unionists unhappy with the American Federation of Labour (AFL). The group who established the IWW were a mix of socialists, anarchists and radical unionists. One of those present at the establishment of the IWW was New Zealand-born William Trautmann, who became the founding General-Secretary.

In contrast to the AFL, the IWW welcomed all workers, no matter what gender or race. Rather than working for a better deal within the capitalist system, the IWW aimed to overthrow capitalism. As the preamble to the IWW constitution stated, ‘The working class and the employing class have nothing in common…Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.’ (1 March 1913:1) The IWW favoured direct action over political negotiation and promoted the idea of a worldwide ‘One Big Union’.

During the same period, some New Zealand unions were beginning to push against the collective arbitration system, established by the government in 1894, and industrial unionism as promoted by the IWW influenced their thinking. The first New Zealand branch of the IWW was established in Wellington in December 1907 and followed by one in Christchurch in 1910. In 1911 the Auckland branch was established, encouraged by a recently arrived Canadian IWW member, John Benjamin King. It was this branch, known as the Local Recruiting Union 1, that began publishing the Industrial Unionist on 1 February 1913.

The first issue of the Industrial Unionist stated that it was collectively run by five volunteers. Frank Hanlon and Alex Holdsworth were the editors; Bill Murdoch was the business manager, and the other volunteers were Percy Short and T. Woodward.

Regular contributors to the paper included Tom Barker, who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Spanwire’, and the fishmonger Charles T. (Charlie) Reeve. A notable feature of the Industrial Unionist were the articles written in te reo Māori by painter and licensed interpreter Percy Short. His articles encouraged Māori to join the IWW and also, after the Waihi Strike of 1912, urged Māori to not act as strike breakers. The Industrial Unionist also contained reports from the Australian branches of the IWW, and reprinted extracts from well-known anarchist or socialist writers. As part of their anti-capitalist policies, they did not look for paid advertising and only printed advertisements for their own or other socialist publications.

By August 1913, the makeup of the committee had changed, with Englishman Charlie Blackburn and W. Patterson replacing Woodward and Murdoch. Holdsworth left New Zealand during 1913, as his mother was ill back in England. Around this time the editor’s name, as printed in the paper, was changed to “A. Block”, a pseudonym that was also used in the Australian IWW journal Direct Action to protect the editor from being arrested.

The Industrial Unionist came out monthly until the Great Strike began in October 1913. It then published an issue every two to three days, until the final issue of 29 November 1913. During this period the paper printed an average of 5,000 copies per issue. At the height of the strike, around 16,000 workers were out, and special constables were brought in to break it up, often using violence against the strikers.

By December 1913, the strike petered out, after the government arrested the main strike leaders in mid-November. A number of well-known IWW members left the country, including Reeve and Barker. It’s not known what happened to editor Frank Hanlon, although he appears to have been living in Sydney in 1916. Despite the positive predictions published in the paper on 29 November, which confidently stated that the ‘backbone of [the] strike [is] firmer than ever’ (29 November 1913:20, p.1) in the end that was the last issue and the Industrial Unionist quietly folded.

The National Library would like to thank Jared Davidson for his assistance with this essay.