{CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING MEN’S ASSOCIATION AND_ | ENGLISH WORKING MEN’S ORGANISATIONS]*

The unusual seriousness with which the English and particularly the London press treats the International Working Men’s Association and its Brussels Congress (The Times alone devoted four leading articles to it*) has stirred up a real devil’s sabbath in the German bourgeois press. It, the German press, takes the English press to task for its error in believing that such importance is attached to the International Working Men’s Association in England! It has discovered that the English Trapes Unions, which, through the International Working Men’s Association, have given considerable financial support to the Paris, Geneva and Belgian workers in their fight against capital,” have absolutely no connection with that very same _ International Working Men’s Association!

“Apparently all this is based,” we have in writing from London, “on the assertion of a certain M. Hirsch* whom Schulze-Delitzsch sent specially to London to kick up such a fuss. M. Hirsch says so, and M. Hirsch is an honourable man! The honourable Hirsch aroused the suspicions of London trade unionists because [he] bore no letters of recommendation from the International Working Men’s Association. They simply made a fool of him. No wonder then that Hirsch got it all wrong. If he had been taken seriously, he could have been told, without being entrusted with

* Reference is to Dr. Max Hirsch, the “famous” economist of the Duncker Volks-Zeitung. Until his voyage of discovery into the English unknown, apparently no one in London had any idea of the existence of this new saviour of society.

a The Times, Nos. 26225, 26228, 26230 and 26234, September 9, 12, 15 and 19, 1868.— Ed.

anything really confidential, what the whole of London knows—that the General Council of Trapes Unionsin London”* consists of six or seven people, of whom three, Odger (Secretary of the General Trades Council and shoemakers’ delegate), R. Applegarth (delegate of the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners) and Howell (delegate of the bricklayers and Secretary of the Reform League”), are at the same time members of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association. He would have discovered further that the rest of the affiliated Trapes Unions (there are about 50 in London alone, not counting the provincial Trapes Unions) are represented on the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association by another five members, namely, R. Shaw, Buckley, Cohn, Hales and Maurice; furthermore every union has the right and makes a practice of sending delegates to the General Council for special purposes. Further, the following English organisations are represented on the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association:

“co-operative societies, which sent three delegates* to the Brussels Congress, by Wim. Weston” and Williams;

“the Reform League, by Deil, Cowell Stepney and Lucraft, all three are also on the Executive Committee of the Reform League;

“the National Reform Association, set up by the late agitator Bronterre O’Brien, by its President A. A. Walton and Milner;

“lastly, the atheist popular movement by its famous orator Mrs. Harriet Law and Mr. Copeland.

“It is clear that not one significant organisation of the British proletariat exists which is not directly, by its own leaders, represented on the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association. Finally, there is The Bee-Hive, under George Potter’s management, the official organ of the English rapes Unions, which is at the same time the official organ of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, on whose meetings it reports weekly.

“The discoveries of the honourable Hirsch sad the subsequent jubilation in the German bourgeois press have provided just the right fodder for the London correspondent of the Weser-Zeitung and the London correspondent of the Augsburgerin, who signs himself A . This person—for one and the same person writes for

4 Frederick Dean (a smith), John Foster Sr (a carpenter) and John Foster Jr (a mechanic)—all three members of co-operative societies in Hull.— Ed.

b John Weston is more likely the man meant here.— Ed.

¢ The Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung.— Ed.

Connections Between the IWMA and English Working Men’s Organisations 27

the two papers—lives, for reasons best known to himself, in a remote corner a few hours away from London. There he coyly culls his extracts from The Times, The Morning Star and The Saturday Review, and serves them up with an aesthetic fish sauce to suit the taste of his public. From time to time, as is the case here, he also digs up the gossip of German papers and has it reprinted under a false date in the Weser-Zeitung and the Augsburgerin. The said correspondent of the Weser-Zeitung and the Augsburgerin is none other than the notorious literary lumpenproletarian Elard Biscamp. Long rejected by any decent society, this unfortunate seeks consolation in the bottle for the broken heart caused him by Prussia annexing his native Hesse-Cassel as well as his friend Edgar Bauer.*’”