The History of the IWW in New Zealand: Part 6: Disunity and Unity

Part 5 looked at further differences between the IWW and the NZFL over the uses of parliamentary action and direct action. The IWW took direct action very seriously; they had ideas and theories relating to its use. Their calls for sabotage gave ammunition to a hostile press, and the IWW gained a reputation as a threat to respectable society.

Part six marks out the final breaks with the NZFL and the Unity conferences. It looks at how the IWW went on to build or attempted to build, links with other groups of workers, including women and Māori, and how they developed a remarkable series of articles written in the Māori language, the first for any labour organisation.

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The New Zealand Federation of Labor (NZFL) and the IWW moved much further away from each other after the Waihi strike. An announcement printed in the Maoriland Worker foreshadowed the growing determination of the NZFL executive to distance itself from the revolutionary politics of the IWW. At the same time, it gave insight into the control they were trying to exert over the organisation:

The executive of the New Zealand Federation of Labour intimates that it has no connection with certain alleged advocates of revolutionary tactics (professedly I.W.W.)…for which the Federation does not stand; nor is it any way responsible for the utterances and doctrines of such alleged advocates and other irresponsibles. No person is entitled to speak for the Federation unless officially authorised by the executive.

The Waihi defeat prompted an examination of the NZFL’s structure and purpose. The result would not include the IWW.

 The Unity Conferences

In response to the Waihi defeat, the NZFL’s leaders called a conference of all unions, both affiliated and not, to figure out the best way to proceed in the face of the new government’s obvious hostility to organised labour. Initially, the IWW were not invited. Organisers claimed that their address had been lost, but after some pressure from delegates, the IWW did receive an invite. In response, the IWW claimed that they did not receive the invite until the conference was nearly over and, as a result, did not attend.

Some 80 organisations with a total membership of 27,000 did attend the Unity conference in January 1913, although, only about one-third of these unions were actually affiliated to the NZFL. The conference approved proposals to create two new organisations: the United Federation of Labour (UFL) representing the unions, and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), to work in the political arena. A second conference in July 1913 was called to offer the chance of those not present at the first to give their views. This second conference exceeded all expectations: 391 delegates from nearly 250 different organisations, representing over 60,000 workers attended. Again, the IWW did not attend. They were highly critical of the unity plans, believing that they represented a compromise with moderate elements in the labour movement. An invitation to representatives of the employers’ federation was extended that seemed to confirm the IWW view of the conference. They expressed disbelief that the same NZFL leaders who had swiftly condemned a similar plan proposed by the Trades and Labour Council in the eighteen months prior to the conference then joined up to such a scheme.

There was a call for criticisms of the proposals to be made, but the IWW argued that it was pointless to make them when the same people who argued in support of the proposals had just previously argued against them. They pointed out the irony that those who had been strongly against compromise with moderates, politicians, and employers were suddenly painting such compromises as the only way forward. In the IWW’s own inimitable language, and borrowing a phrase from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, they wrote of the unity scheme: “Verily it hath an ancient and fish like smell.”

American W.T. Mills, who had been the instigator of a similar unity scheme in 1911, was later accused by Auckland Wobbly Tom Barker of serving the ruling class of New Zealand through his campaign against the Waihi miners. Such was the enmity that had once been displayed towards the man that a motion had been passed at the 1912 NZFL Conference instructing the executive to “communicate with all…Labour Organisations throughout the world…the alleged Labour advocate W.T.Mills…[has] spread dissension and disunity in the rank of organised Labour.”

The conference formally created the UFL with the spelling of “labor” now reverting back to the anglicised “labour.” By a narrow margin, the IWW preamble was rejected. This reflected the NZFL leadership’s desire to tone down their rhetoric for fear of creating disunity with their new, more moderate, partners and the wish to present a new image to the media. The IWW did not view the rejection of the preamble by the NZFL with regret; rather, they considered that an organisation that was willing to invite employers to their conference could no longer truly “endorse a preamble which proclaims the class struggle in the first sentence.”

Pat Hickey, who supported the unity proposals at the time, belatedly questioned this move to moderation years later:

I have frequently asked myself whether a grave mistake was made when the two Unity conferences were called, that caused the Federation to open wider its doors to permit the enrolment of elements into the organisation that possessed neither the knowledge nor the spirit of those organisations that had been associated together for so long.  It is an interesting speculation as to what would have been the end of the Federation if the Labour Movement had remained divided industrially.

As far as the IWW was concerned, it was the final nail in the coffin of the federation as a revolutionary movement. It pronounced that despite being “a promising organisation” just two years ago, it had failed to bring the working class closer to emancipation. They predicted that the future of the new UFL would be one of compromise with the SDP and that such compromise would mean the death of a revolutionary movement. They warned that the movement would merely focus on reforms such as amending the arbitration act and getting rid of the Massey government. The time had come, they declared, for workers to make a choice between industrial unionism with the goal of abolishing the wage system, or a unity scheme that could only lead to piecemeal reforms.

As a result of the NZFL’s proposals, those in the Auckland IWW intensified their efforts to create a separate organisation. The IWW ideology was unique in the New Zealand labour movement of the day because it was the sole revolutionary labour organisation. Although the NZFL leadership had used revolutionary rhetoric in the past and continued to do so if it suited the audience, their lack of desire to challenge the existing structures that dealt with labour matters and their tendency for compromise were evident.  Although the NZFL was admittedly hostile to the arbitration system, they were happy to get involved in the political system in other ways. They stood for elections and often worked with politicians in trying to settle labour disputes. They flatly denied any desire to bring an end to capitalism when challenged directly by the media. Ultimately, the IWW was left with no option but to turn their backs on the federation and strike out on their own with their uncompromising, revolutionary approach firmly intact.

For their part, the newly formed UFL was desperate to cut any ties with the IWW. An editorial in the Maoriland Worker, responding to an accusation in the Dominion, stressed in capitals that, “THE U.F.L. HAS NO PREAMBLE,” adding that, “far from the two bodies being identical, the IWW opposed the old Federation of Labour, and has consistently opposed both the United Federation of Labour and the Social Democratic Party.”Such statements cemented the mutual animosity.

Although they had turned their backs on the NZFL, the IWW maintained and developed links with other organisations in New Zealand. They were interested in more than simply campaigning for better terms and conditions. They created an especially strong bond with the anti-conscription movement.

Against capitalism, against war

Writing under his pseudonym “Spanwire,” Tom Barker outlined the IWW position on war using the Boer War as an example. He said that while lieutenant general Robert Baden-Powell had been declared the hero of the battle of Mafeking, the men who had actually done the fighting were:

selling matches in the streets looking for work denied them by the patriotic British boss, and ultimately dying the death of working class patriotism in the workhouse hospital. The glory of it all!  Men maimed and scarred, legless and armless, dragging out a living death in their own inhospitable country.

The introduction of conscription in the 1909 Defence Act, which had made registration with a military board compulsory as well as introducing compulsory military training (CMT) for males between the age of 14 and 30, gave anti-militarists a cause. The IWW consistently argued that the only way to end militarism was to overthrow capitalism; they viewed agitation against war as part of the wider struggle against capitalism. It was the capitalist class that owned New Zealand and was “taking the youth to train to fight their wars and shoot the sons of other workers in other countries.”

At Waihi, the NZSP and the IWW took a strong stand against militarism. Both organisations had worked with the Waihi miners’ union in supporting the local anti-militarist league. The strength of the league reflected the radical attitude of many in Waihi at the time. When four “brave sons of the working-class” returned to Waihi after seven days in prison for refusing to serve in the conscript army, they were given “the finest welcome ever extended to any person or persons in Waihi.” The four, Carl Rogers, Edward Dwyer, Jack Brooks and H. Marks, were met at the train on their release from Thames jail by representatives of the miners’ union, the Australian Socialist Party, the Waihi branch of the NZSP, and the IWW. They were escorted by several hundred people to a meeting in the main street, accompanied by a band playing “The Red Flag,” “Onward Friends of Freedom” and choruses of:

            Hurrah! Hurrah! No conscript oath for me

            Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ll stand up with the free

            We’ll pay no fine, we’ll bide our time to jail we’ll go with glee

            And bear the brunt in the glorious fight for Freedom

IWW members often spoke at anti-militarist demonstrations in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. The Industrial Unionist regularly featured news items on the Passive Resisters’ Union (PRU), which had been formed in 1912 to “resist coercion, conscription and compulsory military training.”They affectionately nicknamed the PRU the “Plucky Rebels Union,” held joint meetings with them, and promoted their monthly paper Repeal. Although they admitted the PRU monthly was “attractive,” they criticised it for carrying an ad for the “militant capitalist paper, La Squeak du Travail” (a reference to the moderate Labour paper the Voice of Labour). Overlapping membership further linked the PRU and the IWW. E. Kear, who was listed as secretary-treasurer of the Christchurch IWW local in 1914, had been one of the PRU delegates to the Unity conference in 1913. The PRU, perhaps influenced by the IWW, were no strangers to taking controversial direct action of their own. On one infamous occasion, they removed a Boer War gun from Victoria Square in Christchurch and dumped it into the Avon River.

Practising solidarity

The IWW were also happy to hold out a hand of solidarity to those they called the “proletarian” NZSP members who were active in propaganda work. They maintained good relationships with these activists and others whose primary concern was the emancipation of the working class. They were uncompromising in their revolutionary aims, but they were always ready to offer their support to any branch of the working class involved in a struggle with capitalism. Paraphrasing the Communist Manifesto they said, “we have no interests apart from the working class,” and will always support that class because, “we are of, and still in, the working class.”

Application form for membership of the IWW as printed in the Industrial Unionist

Their approach extended out not just to workers of all occupations but reached out irrespective of race and gender. To the IWW, race and gender were not critical points of difference; only class divided and united people. At the IWW founding conference in Chicago, Bill Haywood had declared that the organisation “recognises neither race, creed, colour, sex, nor previous condition of servitude.” The New Zealand IWW endorsed this position; the only division they recognised was the class division that splits society into the exploiter and the exploited.

“Chinamen in Auckland”. The IWW reached out to all members of the working class without distinction of race

employers and wage workers. Membership was restricted to wage-earning members of the working class only. In reality, it was rare that a university graduate or professional person was associated with socialism in New Zealand in the early twentieth century.

Think of the “White Man”: An Ad from the pages of the Maoriland Worker, which, unlike the Industrial Unionist, was not always inclusive of all ethnicities

Ki nga kaimahi Maori: the IWW & tangata whenua

The IWW made a distinct approach to working-class Māori. Until the Industrial Unionist appeared in 1913 little effort had been made to build links with Māori in New Zealand. The NZFL had virtually ignored Māori, and they likely paid the price for this neglect as some Māori volunteered as strike-breakers. The Bay of Plenty Times reported how the “natives” viewed the strike as affecting them adversely and were “anxious and willing to assist in the suppression of the strike” by signing up as specials.

 In the NZFL publication, The Tragic Story of Waihi, Māori working as strike-breakers and involved in the violence are described as having their “primal savage instinct predominating.” Such racist attitudes towards Māori were extremely widespread among white working-class men of the time. Despite this, Māori workers were keenly interested in organising and industrial unionism. For example, during the Waihi dispute, a delegation from the Huntly miners’ union paid a visit to Hora-Hora where a hydro-electrical plant was being built, with a view to organising the workers there. Nearly all the workers were Māori. After listening to the delegates, they expressed great interest and asked for a Māori speaker to be sent to discuss the matter further. However, it seems that the matter went no further. The Maoriland Worker noted the “complicated and isolated” position of the works, but it may also have been a lack of priority accorded to organising Māori.

Unlike the NZFL the IWW were keen to demonstrate their egalitarian ideas and recognised the importance of building links with all workers irrespective of race. The Industrial Unionist, uniquely for a workers’ newspaper, published a series of articles in the Māori language. In July 1913, IWW member Percy Short wrote the first appeal to Māori in their own language. It linked the workplace struggles on the waterfront and in the mines with the confiscation of Māori land. It talked about how ‘in the old days’ before colonisation, everything belonged to everyone (na te iwi katoa nga mea katoa). Translating the Industrial Workers of the World as “iuniana o nga kaimahi o te ao”, it was entitled Ki nga Kaimahi Maori:

Ki nga Kaimahi Maori

E hoa ma, –

E tuhituhi ana tenei reta ki nga mate, ara nga tangata e kiia ana nei he kaimahi.

Whakarongi mai! Tenei te huarahi tika mo tatau, mo te iwi rawakore, e whakakotahi ai tatou kia rite ai o tatou kaha ki o te hunga e pehi iho nei ia tatou.

E mohio ana tatou, ko nga mea papai katoa i te ao, he mea mahi na tatou ko nga kaimahi. Na reira e kii nei te I.W.W. (Iuniana o nga Kaimahi o te Ao), e tika ana kia riro i nga kaimahi aua mea papai. Engari, kei raro i te ahuatanga o naianei e riro ana te nuinga o nga hua o te werawera i te hunga, e kiia nei he rangatira; Aa, he wahi itiiti noa iho e riro ana i nga mokai nana nei i mahi. He penei tonu te ahuatanga i nga whenua katoa i tenei ra.

Kati, i mua, ki te mahi tetahi tangata, ka puta te painga ki te iwi nui tonu: ko te whakaaro o tetahi, te whakaaro o te katoa. Ko nga tangata o mua, ka mahi tahi, ka kai tahi, ka ora tahi, ka mate tahi. Kua rereke taua tikanga inaianei. I mua, na te iwi katoa nga mea katoa. Inaianei, kei nga rangatira anahe te oranga, ara te whenua, nga maina, nga tima, nga mihini nunui, nga tereina me era atu mea. Heoi ano te mea kei a tatou, he haere ki te pinono mahi ki nga tangata nana nei aua mea. Ko te kaupapa o to tatou oranga kua tahaetia e te hunga whaimoni. Kati, ma tatou ano e whakahoki mai ano te kaupapa o te oranga.

Me pehea tatou e rite ai to tatou turanga ki to te hunga e pehi iho nei i a tatou. Koia tenei. Me huihui tatou ko te iwi rawakore e haere nei ki nga rangatira ki te patai mahi atu, me te mea nei kei te mau mai te tiini a tana rangatira ki o tatou kaki. Kei o tatou puku ke taua tiini e mau ana – te tiini o te hemokaitanga. Ka kore he mahi, ka kore hoki he kai. Hei aha ma te rangatira to hemokaitanga. No nga mokai ano tena mate.

Heoi, me uru koutou ki tenei Iuniana whawhai, ara, te I.W.W., e ki nei: “Me aha to kara me to karakia. Kia piri! Kia kotahi te whakaaro! Kia manawanui! Kia maia!”

“E nga kaimahi o te Ao katoa, Whakakotahitia; kaore he mea e ngaro, ko te Ao katoa e riro mai.”

Na te Komiti o te pepa nei.

To Maori workers

Friends,

This letter is written to the ones who are suffering, the people we call the workers.

Listen! This is the correct path for us, the poor who have no possessions. We unite to gather our strength against the people who are suppressing us. We know that all the precious things in the world were made by us workers. Therefore the I.W.W. (the union of the workers of the world) says it is correct that the workers want to obtain all that is precious. However, under the current mechanisms, most goods produced with the sweat of the people are owned by what we call the bosses. Only a small portion is given to the slaves who do all the work. This is how it is in all countries of the world.

In the old days, the work of one person went towards the well-being of everyone, of the whole tribe. The thoughts of one were the thoughts of everyone. The old people worked and ate together. They struggled together. They lived and died together. However, the tikanga – the custom – has changed completely. In the old days, everything belonged to everyone. Now all the wealth belongs to the bosses: the land, the mines, the ships, the big machines, the trains and a lot more. All we can do is go to the people who control our belongings and beg for work. Our wealth is being stolen by the money-chasers – the capitalists. It is through us that our wealth will come back to us.

How can we prepare our stand against those who oppress us? This is how. We, the poor, who have to go to the bosses and ask for work, should meet and say we are chained around our necks by the bosses. A chain is tightened around our tummies – the chain of starvation. If there is no work, there is also no food. The bosses don’t care that you are starving. This struggle only affects their slaves.

Come join this fighting union called the I.W.W. We say: “What does it read on your banner and what is your chant? Let’s stick together! Let’s unite our thoughts! Be resolute! Be brave!”

“Workers of the whole world, unite; you have nothing to lose, you have the world to win.”

By the committee of this paper.

Ki nga Kaimahi Maori (to Maori working men).  The heading for the first article addressed to Maori as members of the working class

In total, there were seven articles all in the Māori language written by Percy Short, who was a member of the Industrial Unionist Committee, and a licensed Māori translator. He had worked giving lessons in Māori in Feilding. One of Short’s articles during the strikes of November 1913 appealed to the Māori not to join up as special constables or strike-breakers. Gathered together, the articles provide a remarkable attempt to give Māori access to IWW beliefs within the framework of Māori philosophical and cultural values. The response of Māori to these articles is unknown.

IWW & gender

The fact that the IWW mentioned race and gender was unusual. Their professed attitude to race was straightforward, if simplistic: all members of the working class were welcome. The IWW’s position on women was similarly straightforward. In the US, women had been at the forefront of the IWW since its inception. While the number of female representatives at their inaugural Chicago convention (around 12 in total) was quite small, the issue of gender equality was always at the front of the organisation’s agenda. Quite a few of the early pioneers of industrial unionism were women. Those who spoke at the inaugural conference included Mother Jones, a powerful advocate of miners’ rights and campaigner against child labour, and Lucy Parsons, an anarchist, labour organizer, and the widow of Albert Parsons.[*] Luella Twining, who later managed Bill Haywood’s speaking tours, was a voting member of the union.

In their first few years, the IWW in the US attracted female revolutionaries, most notably Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (to whom American wobbly Joe Hill dedicated his IWW song ‘Rebel Girl’) and Matilda Rabinowitz. The IWW in the US organised chambermaids and prostitutes who, in 1907, went on strike in New Orleans. In a study of the place of women in the IWW and their literature, historian Ann Schofield concludes that the IWW “vigorously and effectively organised women” and sincerely included them into the organisation.

The masculine character of the IWW in New Zealand, however, has been the subject of some debate. Historian Erik Olssen talks of the “vision of manhood” which flowed through the ideology, and how there was a “constant talk of manhood,” although he acknowledges that industrial unionism gave men and women a “sense of their power and dignity.”Historian Francis Shor expands on this idea of a masculine socialism and talks of a “virile syndicalism” running through the IWW. As evidence of the appeal to manhood that disregarded women workers, he points to a passage in the New Zealand pamphlet, A Chunk of IWWism, where the author A.H. (probably A.H. Holdsworth, a member of the Auckland IWW) writes that “A man who won’t stand by his mates is no man at all”. However, historian Melanie Nolan argues that the New Zealand IWW was not particularly virile, and in general, this wave of radicalism led to an increase in women’s groups. She does accept, however, that both sides of the Waihi dispute deployed masculinity in support of their side. The Press described the strike-breakers as “clean, healthy young fellows,” and Prime Minister Massey painted the special constables as heroic examples of men describing them as “lean, sinewy, brown men from the country.” Conversely, the supporters of labour denigrated the manliness of the strike-breakers and dignified the strikers as “true men.”

Women have always been a part of industrial action in New Zealand, organising their own unions, settling disputes, and supplying support to striking men, but there is scant evidence of the role women played in the IWW in New Zealand. The only available evidence shows that the IWW had at least one active female member. A certain Mrs Chapman was the newspaper commission agent in 1913. A meeting solely for women was advertised in November 1913 but the subject of the meeting’s discussion remains a mystery.

Meeting for women advertised in the Industrial Unionist

The reach of the IWW to women may have been limited due to the nature of their employment, although this was not the case in the US. Women formed a relatively small part of the paid workforce in New Zealand; they were also overrepresented in occupations that had remained non-unionised, such as clerical workers and domestic servants. A study of the inner city community in Freeman’s Bay, Auckland at the end of the 18th and beginning of 19th centuries revealed that three-quarters of women in paid work were employed in domestic work.

The IWW’s view of the role of women workers was firmly and solely based on class position. In the US, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a work entitled ‘The IWW Call To Women’ wrote

To us society moves in grooves of class not sex. Sex distinctions affect us insignificantly. It is to those women who are wage earners or wives of workers that the IWW appeals. We see no basis in fact for feminist mutual interest…nor of any possibility or present desirability of solidarity between women alone. The success of our program will benefit workers regardless of sex.

To the IWW, the struggle of the working class and women was seen as one and the same thing. The Industrial Unionist wrote about the suffragettes in Britain and congratulated them on their use of direct action tactics, but then appealed for them to do the same to benefit the whole of the working class.

While the IWW did hold a progressive position, there is no evidence that the IWW addressed the more fundamental hierarchies associated with traditional gender roles, such as questioning what constituted “women’s work”. Similarly, there is no evidence that the IWW in New Zealand made attempts to organise women or speak directly to their experience in the pages of the Industrial Unionist.

The IWW and the farmers

Being aware of the importance of reaching out to all workers in New Zealand, the IWW made appeals to not only farm labourers but also to small farmers. Because of their indebtedness to mortgage companies, many small farmers essentially worked for the banks, not themselves. The IWW demanded that they acknowledge that they were on the same side as ordinary working people in the cities and towns. In the eyes of the IWW, country residents’ lack of consciousness about capitalism was explained by the fact they were isolated from strike areas and relied on facts supplied by the “journalistic prostitutes of the capitalist press” to gain an understanding of the situation. The IWW expressed sympathy for their plight as “overworked and much exploited.”They warned farmers that hard times were coming and that capitalism would eventually ruin the majority of them. They pointed out that large companies like the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Company were buying up land in large quantities; the cost of freight was rising because of the increased monopolisation of transport by a few large companies, and, most importantly, they pointed to increased competition from countries such as China, Argentina, and Russia, that were beginning to farm vast acres of previously untouched land. All of this, they predicted, would seriously affect New Zealand’s share of the world markets and force many farmers into unemployment. At that point, the IWW declared, they would appreciate why the workers were battling capitalism in the cities.

IWW and internationalism

As well as building connections between disparate groups at home, creating international links was also important to the IWW because they saw themselves as part of the international working class. They wrote in the first issue of the Industrial Unionist that they were not “merely a medium for the expression of the opinions of any small group existing in a particular locality,” but rather that they were a “local and national mouthpiece of an international movement.”New Zealand Wobbly Frank Hanlon explained:

The extent to which capitalism stretches its tentacles around the globe is illustrated by the fact that steel rails have been imported from China to America, the land of steel rails.  No one country is independent of this…all are bound together economically.

He reasoned that since capital was international, and the employing class was international, then the interests of the working class were also international. An article in the local IWW paper described that, after setting up the International Steel Trust, one of the “steel kings” remarked that they had “an organisation more powerful than any government in the world.”The IWW said that this demonstrated the importance of global organising. An international industrial union could also be more powerful than any government. As far as the IWW was concerned, the correct, and only possible, response to an organisation such as the Steel Trust, which pitted worker against worker, beyond national boundaries, was to organise, as one big union, in every single steel mill in the world.

As a corollary, close links were built and maintained with Australian workers, American workers, and with those further afield. An appeal from Swedish workers to help free imprisoned comrades was printed in the Industrial Unionist. An appeal for a boycott and blacklisting of Swedish ships and goods was issued with a reminder that the yellow and blue of the Swedish flag represented only the capitalists of that country, not the workers. They reminded their readers that there are “…only two nations-the capitalist class and the working class.”International solidarity was of central importance to the IWW, and they looked for ways to give practical effect to it.

In the period following the defeat of organised labour at Waihi, the NZFL adopted a more moderate approach that included a political as well as an industrial response. The IWW rejected this approach. They maintained an unrelenting dedication to direct action at the point of production and unity based solely on class position. As a result, the majority of the labour movement moved further away from the ideals of the IWW and deliberately disassociated themselves from previously held radical beliefs. Meanwhile, the IWW cemented relationships with other movements and people. Their impact on the anti-militarist movement was considerable. Their written approaches to Māori were ground-breaking. The inclusion of women was unusual for the time, despite their approach being somewhat simplistic and reductionist. While inflexible in their determination to acknowledge no oppressions other than class exploitation, they did seek to give effect to their egalitarian economic ideas and include those on the margins of the mainstream white, male workforce. In addition, their embrace of internationalism, while concentrated on those places with a high level of cultural similarity (US, UK, Australia, Canada), did seek to embrace and unify workers thereby reducing the power of nationalism. 

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Part seven will discuss how the IWW used different channels to communicate their message. Their “mental sticks of dynamite” included their own newspaper, street meetings, pamphlets, stickers, and posters. They also used music to embed revolutionary ideas. They used their communications to encourage the workers to educate themselves and challenge the existing bourgeois values of the day.


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  1. […] Part six marked out the final breaks with the NZFL and the Unity conferences. It looks at how the IWW went on to build or attempted to build, links with other groups of workers, including women and Māori, and how they developed a remarkable series of articles written in the Māori language, the first for any labour organisation. […]

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