395 In 1824, under public pressure, the British Parliament lifted the ball on the trade unions. In 1825, however, it passed a Bill on workers’ combinations, which, while confirming the raising of the bait on trade unions, greatly restricted their activity. lit particular any agitation for workers to join unions and take part in strikes was regarded as compulsion and violence and punished as a crime.
396 The Statutes submitted by Luigi Wolff to the Sub-Committee on October 8, 1864 were an English translation entitled Fraternal Bond Between the Italian Workmen’s Associations, which had been published in Il Giornale delle Associazioni Operaie on July 31, 1864 and adopted by a congress of Italian pro-Mazzini working men’s associations, field in Naples at the end of October. By submitting these Statutes, written from bourgeois-democratic positions, to the International Working Men’s Association, Mazzini and his followers sought to spread their influence on it.
397 At the beginning of April 1864 Garibaldi made a fund-raising journey to England to finance an expedition against Austrian rule in Venice. Garibaldi hoped to get support from English ruling circles. The people gave the Italian national hero an enthusiastic welcome. At first the British Government treated Garibaldi as an honoured guest. However, the discontent of the English ruling circles was aroused by his meeting with Mazzini, who was living in London as a political emigrant, and his speeches in defence of the Polish insurgents.
Garibaldi left England at the end of April.
398 Eichhoff’s pamphlet included the programme documents of the International – Inaugural Address and Rules. They were given in a new and highly accurate translation made by Eichhoff and edited by Marx. This helped to familiarise more people in Germany with these documents. Eichhoff translated the Address from the pamphlet Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men’s International Association published in London in 1864. Eichhoff’s translation was later reprinted in a number of German works about the International.
Here, the text of the Address is reproduced from the 1864 English edition, with an account of the changes in Eichhoff’s German translation. The most significant discrepancies are indicated in footnotes.
399 Apparently a reference to the articles “The Trade and Navigation Returns” and “Pauperism. – July 1850 and 1849” published in The Economist, Vol. VIII, August 10, 1850.
400 Garotters – highway robbers who strangled their victims. In the early 1860s the practice was so widespread in London that it was the subject of a special debate in Parliament.
401 This refers to reports of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the situation in the various branches of English industry published in the Blue Books, collected documents of the British Parliament and Foreign Office published since the seventeenth century.
402 The passage quoted by Marx from Gladstone’s speech of April 16, 1863 appeared in nearly all the London newspaper reports of this parliamentary session (The Times, The Morning Star, The Daily Telegraph, April 17, 1863), but was omitted in Hansard’s semi-official report of parliamentary debates in which the text was corrected by the speakers themselves. The German bourgeois economist Brentano used this as a pretext for accusing Marx of unscrupulous misquotation. Marx replied to this libel in his letters to the Volksstaat editors written on May 23 and July 28, 1872.
After Marx’s death the same accusation was made in November 1883 by the British bourgeois economist Sadley Taylor.
This accusation was refuted by Eleanor Marx in two letters to the magazine To-Day in February and March 1884 and then by Engels in the preface to the fourth German edition of Capital in June 1890 and in the pamphlet Brentano contra Marx in 1891.
403 The Ten Hours’ Bill, the battle for which had been fought for many years, was passed by Parliament in 1847 against a background of the sharply intensified contradictions, generated by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, between the landed aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie. To revenge themselves on the industrial bourgeoisie, a section of Tory M.P.s supported the Bill. Its provisions applied only to women and children. Nevertheless, many manufacturers evaded it in practice.
In 1850 Engels wrote two articles on the Ten Hours’ Bill. True, they were written when Marx’s economic teaching was not yet sufficiently developed, and this can be seen in a certain underestimation of the struggle for a shorter working day.
404 At the 1863 parliamentary session, the Irish deputies led by Thomas Maguire demanded legislative measures limiting the irregularities of the landlords and, in particular, they demanded that tenants should have the right to receive compensation for all their expenditures on a rented plot when the lease expired or was terminated. In his speech on June 23 Palmerston called these demands “communistic doctrines” and described them as “subversive of all the fundamental principles of social order” (The Times, June 24, 1864).
405 During the US Civil War the English workers opposed the government’s attempts to interfere in the war on the side of the Southern slave-holding states. Their massive campaign, which reached its peak at the end of 1861 and the beginning of 1862, prevented the reactionaries front drawing Europe into the war on the side of the slave-holders and helped considerably to strengthen the international solidarity of the workers.
406 The Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association were approved by the Geneva Congress on September 5 and 8, 1866. These Rules were based on the text of the Provisional Rules, written by Marx in October 1864, with certain changes and additions. The Administrative Regulations were drawn up by a Congress commission of which Eccarius was a member. The German text of the two documents was published by Johann Philipp Becker in Der Vorbote, September 1866.
In the autumn of 1867 Eccarius, instructed and assisted by Marx, prepared a new official edition of the Rules and Administrative Regulations which was sanctioned by the General Council on November 5. The pamphlet Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association came off the press in London in 1867.
Eichhoff translated the Rules into German according to this pamphlet, omitting the section “Administrative Regulations”.
407 This and the preceding paragraphs of a declarative character were included by Marx in the Preamble to the Provisional Rules on the insistence of other members of the Sub-Committee who discussed the document on October 27, 1864.
408 The London Conference of the International Working Men’s Association was held from September 25 to 29, 1865. It was convened on the insistence of Marx who believed that the International’s sections were riot strong enough to hold a general congress as envisaged by the Provisional Rules. The conference was attended by nine delegates from France, Switzerland and Belgium, and the Central (General) Council members. On September 28 a meeting (soirée) was held in St. Martin’s Hall to celebrate the first anniversary of the founding of the Association.
The conference heard the Central Council’s reports and reports of local sections. The main question discussed was the agenda of the forthcoming congress and the order of its convocation. It was decided to hold it in Geneva in May 1866 (later it was postponed by the Central Council until the beginning of September 1866). Despite the Proudhonists, who demanded that the Polish question should be excluded from the agenda of the congress and that airs member of the Association may have the right to take part in it, the conference retained the item on the restoration of Poland’s independence and recognised as competent only elected delegates. The conference also adopted the Council’s other proposals on the work of the congress. Prepared and conducted under Marx’s leadership, the London Conference of 1865 played a big role in the establishment of the International and in shaping it as an organisation.
409 The Aliens Law adopted in Belgium on September 22, 1835 and prolonged every three wars. Despite the widespread protest campaign in the press and at meetings it was renewed at the end of June 1865. In May 1868, the Belgian Government, for fear of fresh mass action, prolonged it without discussion in the Chamber of Deputies.
410 The Geneva Congress of the International met from September 3 to 8, 1866. It was attended by 60 delegates from the Central (General) Council, the different sections of the Association and the workers’ societies of England, France, Germany and Switzerland. The Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional Central Council were drawn up by Marx in August 1866, when the final preparations were being made for the Geneva Congress. They were written in English and then translated into French by Paul Lafargue.
The Instructions were read at the congress as the General Council’s official report. The congress became the scene of a heated debate between Marx’s followers and the Proudhonists, who countered the Instructions with their own programme. Jung, Eccarius and other members of the General Council managed to have most points of the Instructions adopted as congress resolutions. The Proudhonists were only able to have their resolutions passed on matters of Secondary importance.
The Geneva Congress approved the Rules (based on the Provisional Rules drawn up by Marx) and the Regulations of the International Working Men’s Association, and marked the end of the International’s organisational period.
Compared with the original English text, Eichhoff’s German translation of the Instructions contains some differences in reading and abridgements.
411 The general scheme of statistical inquiry into the condition of the working class as proposed by Marx was unanimously accepted by the Geneva Congress. In practice, however, the collection of data and their publication in the form of the Central Council’s reports were hampered by lack of money and negligence on the part of local sections. The Lausanne (1867), Brussels (1868) and Basle (1869) congresses of the International confirmed the need to carry the Geneva Congress resolution on workers’ statistics, while the London Conference of 1871 included point “c” of Section 2 of the Instructions in the Administrative Regulations of the Association.
412 After the Civil War, the movement for the legislative introduction of an eight-hour working day intensified in the USA. Leagues of struggle for an eight-hour working day were formed all over the country. At its inaugural congress in Baltimore in August 1866, the National Labour Union declared the demand for an eight-hour working day to be an indispensable condition for the emancipation of labour.
The National Labour Union was founded in the USA at a congress in Baltimore in August 1866, with the active participation of William Sylvis, a prominent leader in the American labour movement. lit a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on October 9, 1866, Marx wrote with satisfaction about the Baltimore congress: “... Most of the demands I had put up for a w ere put up there too, by the correct instinct of the workers”. The Labour Union established contacts with the International Working Men’s Association in October 1866, but its delegate to the next congress of the International, Richard Trevellick, elected by the Union’s congress in Chicago in August 1867, was unable to conic to Lausanne. At the last sessions, of the Basle Congress of the International (September 1869) Cameron was the National Labour Union delegate. At the Union’s congress in Cincinnati in August 1870, Cameron reported on his participation in the International’s Congress, and the Union adopted a resolution on its adherence to the principles of the International Association and its intention to join it. The resolution was not implemented, however. Its leaders soon became involved in utopian projects of money reform. In 1870 and 1871, many trade unions withdrew, and in 1872 the Union virtually ceased to exist.
413 The Lausanne Congress of the International was held from September 2 to 8, 1867. Marx took part in preparing the congress but did not attend it because he was busy reading the proofs of Volume I of Capital. He withdrew his candidature at the General Council meeting of August 13, 1867.
Sixty-four delegates from six countries (England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy) were present at the congress. Apart from the General Council’s report, the congress beard local reports. The latter showed that the influence of the International on the proletarian masses had increased and that its organisations in different countries had become stronger. The Proudhonist-minded delegates at the congress tried to change the International’s line and programme principles. Despite the General Council’s efforts, they managed to impose their own agenda on the congress and sought to revise the Geneva Congress decisions in a Proudhonist spirit. They carried out a number of their resolutions, in particular on the question of co-operation and credit.
The Proudhonists, however, failed to achieve their main aim. The congress confirmed the Geneva resolutions on economic struggle and strikes. In contrast to the Proudhonists’ demand for abstention from political struggle, the Lausanne Congress resolution on political freedom emphasised that the social emancipation of workers was inseparably bound up with their political emancipation. Nor did the Proudhonists manage to take over the leadership of the International. The congress re-elected the General Council in its previous composition and retained London as its seat.
414 The Lausanne Congress ignored the General Council’s resolution on the attitude of the International Working Men’s Association towards the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, and resolved to take part officially in the League’s congress. The League’s congress itself (several members of the General Council and of the International attended) revealed a big difference between the proletarian and the abstract-pacifist approach to the struggle for peace. Marx’s tactics as regards the League of Peace and Freedom was fully acknowledged by the Brussels Congress of the International in 1868 which opposed the official affiliation to the League.
415 The Manchester School – a trend in economic thought reflecting the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. It advocated Free Trade and non-interference by the state in economic affairs. in the 1840s and 1850s the Free Traders were all independent political group; later they constituted the Left wing of the Liberal Party.
416 The conference of trades delegates in Sheffield was held from July 17 to 21, 1866 and was attended by 138 delegates representing 200,000 organised workers. A resolution calling on trade unions to join the International Working Men’s Association was published in a book, Report of the Conference of Trades’ Delegates of the United Kingdom, held in Sheffield, on July 17th, 1866, and Four Following Days, Sheffield, 1866.
417 The London Trades Council was elected at a conference of trade union delegates held in London in May 1860. The Council headed the London trade unions numbering many thousand members,. and was fairly influential among the British workers.
In the first half of the 1860s it headed the British workers’ campaign against intervention in the USA, in defence of Poland and Italy, and later for the legalisation of the trade unions. The leaders of the following large trade unions played a major role in the Council: the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and joiners (Robert Applegarth), the Shoemakers’ Society (George Odger), the Operative Bricklayers’ Society, (Edwin Coulson and George Howell) and the Amalgamated Engineers (William Allan). All of them, except Affair, were members of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association.
The General Council did its best to draw into the International the broad mass of British workers and endeavoured, on the one hand, to get the local trade union organisations affiliated to it and, on the other, to induce the London Trades Council to join the International as a British section. “The London Council of the English Trade Unions (its secretary is our president, Odger) is deliberating at the present moment as to whether it should declare itself to be the British Section of the International Association. If it does so, government of the working-class here will in a certain sense pass into out. hands, and we shall be able to give the movement a good ‘push on’,” wrote Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann on October 13, 1866.
On the initiative of the English members of the General Council, the London Trades Council discussed the question of joining the International at its meetings in the autumn of 1866.
After the repeated deferment of the question, Which “as due to the struggle between the reformist leaders of the London Council who opposed affiliation and local trade unionists, it was finally, decided at the Council meetings of January 9 and 14, 1867, to co-operate with the International Association “for the furtherance of all questions affecting the interests of labour; at the same time continuing the London Trades Council as a distinct and independent body as before” (The Times, January 15, 1867). This decision was discussed by, the General Council of the International on January 15, 1867, after which the London Trades Council continued to maintain its contact with the International through those of its members Who were also members of the General Council.
418 In the spring of 1865 the Central (General) Council of the International initiated, and participated in, the setting up of a Reform League in London as a political centre of the mass movement for the second election reform. The League’s leading bodies – the Council and Executive Committee – included the General Council members, mainly trade union leaders. The League’s programme was drafted under Marx’s influence. Unlike the bourgeois parties, which confined their demands to household suffrage, the League advanced the demand for manhood suffrage. This revived Chartist slogan won it the support of the trade unions, hitherto indifferent to politics. The League had branches in all big industrial cities. The vacillations of the radicals in its leadership, however, and the conciliation of the trade union leaders prevented the League from following the line charted by. the General Council of the International. The British bourgeoisie succeeded in splitting the movement, and a moderate reform was carried out in 1867 which granted franchise only. to the petty bourgeoisie and the upper layers of the working class.
419 This refers to the reform finally adopted by the British Parliament on August 15, 1867. The law extended suffrage to people resident in town for a period of not less than 12 months and renting houses or flats. in counties the right to vote was granted to tenants with an annual income of £12. The extension of suffrage increased the number of voters from one to two million. Apart from the middle-class strata of town and country,, the law also applied to a better-off section of the working class. However, the bulk of the toiling people of England, as before, had no right to vote.
420 The economic crisis of 1866 involved mainly Britain, France and the USA. It was preceded by the US Civil War which caused the notorious “cotton famine”. The latter proved extremely advantageous for big manufacturers and ruinous for hundreds of small factory owners.
The 1866 crisis chiefly affected finances. At the same time the mining and iron and steel industries reduced production, railway construction was curtailed and so on.
421 This refers to the abrogation of the 1791 Le Chapelier law prohibiting workers’ coalitions and strikes (France, 1864) and to the lifting of the ban on workers’ coalitions (Belgium, 1867).
422 The strike of weavers and spinners in Roubaix in March 1867 was caused by the dismissal of a great number of workers following the introduction of machinery.
A strike of dyers in Amiens in July 1867 was supported by the workers, in other trades.
In February 1867 the bronze-workers of Paris refused to dissolve their credit society on their employers’ demand and went on strike. Thanks to the General Council (it discussed the matter at its meetings of March 5, 12, 19 and 26, and April 2 and 9, 1867), the Paris workers received financial aid from the British trade unions. The strike ended in the victory for the they managed to save their organisation.
In March and April 1868, 3,000 building workers went on strike in Geneva. They demanded the reduction of the working (lay to 10 hours, higher wages and pay by the flour for pay by the day. They were joined by workers in other trades. ‘File aid front the workers of Switzerland, Britain, France and Germany helped the Geneva builders to win the strike.
423 This appraisal of the Geneva strike was given by Marx – see “The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association” and the “Report of the General Council to the Fourth Annual Congress of the International Working Men’s Association.
424 This description of the situation in Belgium was written by Marx – see “The Belgian Massacres”.
425 This appeal was drawn up by Eccarius on the instructions of the General Council (meeting of February 26, 1867) and published in The International Courier, No. 8, March 13, 1867.
426 Eyre, the Governor of the British colony of Jamaica, organised the brutal suppression of a Negro uprising in October 1865. This massacre caused a public outrage in Britain, and the British Government was compelled to dismiss Eyre from his post.
427 In the spring of 1868, the workers of the Charleroi coalfield declared a strike, in reply to the mine-owners’ reduction of production to four days a week and lowering of wages by ten per cent. In the bloody clashes between the miners and police troops, twenty-two people were arrested and put on trial.
The Brussels Central Section launched a broad campaign in support of the strikers both in Belgium and abroad. It organised meetings of protest and gave wide coverage of the events in the columns of La Tribune du Peuple, La Liberté and other newspapers. On April 12, 1868 it issued a manifesto to the workers of Belgium and other countries (see La Tribune du Peuple, April 19 1868). The section maintained regular ties with the General Council of the International. The Council discussed the Charleroi events at its meetings of April 21, May 12 and June 2, 1868 and organised aid to the strikers. The Brussels Section set up a special committee to brief lawyers for the defence of the detainees. The managed to swing public opinion in favour of the accused, and on August 15 they were acquitted by the jury. This led to a rise in membership of the International in Belgium.
428 The Secessionists advocated the withdrawal of the Southern States from the USA before and during the Civil War of 1861-65. In 1861 the slave-holders staged a rebellion and proclaimed the establishment of the Confederate States of America.
429 This refers to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 which wound up the long rivalry between Austria and Prussia and predetermined the unification of Germany under the supremacy of Prussia. Several German states – including Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg and Bade-fought on Austria’s side Prussia formed an alliance with Italy. After a serious defeat at Sadowa ou July, 3 Austria began peace negotiations and signed a treaty in Prague ou August 23. Austria conceded Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia, paid small indemnities to her and gave the province of Venetia to Italy. The German Confederation, which was founded in 1815 by decision of the Vienna Congress and embraced over 30 German states, ceased to exist. and North German Confederation was founded in its place under Prussia’s supremacy. Austria, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt remained outside the Confederation. As a result of the war, Prussia annexed tile Kingdom of Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, the Grand Duchy of Nassau and the free city of Frankfurt am Main. On the events of the Austro-Prussian war see Engels’ “Notes on the War in Germany”.
430 The Court of the King’s (Queen’s) Bench – one of the oldest courts in England. In the nineteenth century, up to 1873, it was an independent supreme court for criminal and civil cases.
431 In France according to Article 291 of the Criminal Code and the Law of April 10, 1834 any society with a membership exceeding 20 had to be sanctioned by the respective authorities.
432 Jules Gottraux, a Swiss-born subject of Great Britain and a member of the international, was detained by the French police on the French-Swiss frontier on September 30, 1866 when he was returning to London from his trip to Switzerland. The police confiscated letters, printed matter and other material entrusted to him by the International’s leaders in Geneva to be handed over to the General Council. The documents seized included the preliminary report on the work of the Geneva Congress which had been drawn Lip by Council member Frederick Card and published in Geneva as a pamphlet in French.
(Later, this gave rise to a rumour that the French authorities had confiscated the Congress minutes, which in reality had by that time been brought to London by Hermann Jung.) The General Council lodged a complaint with the French Minister of Home Affairs about this irregularity and demanded the return of the seized documents. When he refused to reply to the complaint, written by Fox on the Council’s instructions, the General Council decided to use the fact publicly to expose the regime of the Second Empire (See also the record of Marx’s speech at the General Council meeting of November 27, 1866). At the beginning of December the Council approached the British Foreign Secretary asking him to make a corresponding demarche to the French Government, which forced the French authorities to return, on December 21, the materials taken from Gottraux. Fox wrote a special article on the actions of the Bonapartist authorities. It was published in The Commonwealth on January 12, 1867 and in The Working Man on February 1, 1867.
433 Eichhoff’s description of the incident on the French frontier, and the events associated with the seizure of the Memorial of the French delegation draws on Marx’s material, contained in “The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association,”.
434 In December 1867 the homes of the Executive Committee members of the Paris Section of the International were searched. This was followed by an investigation and then the first trial against the International in France. The case was heard on March 6 and 20, 1868. Among the documents seized by the police during the searches was a letter of November 23, 1867 from Dupont, the Corresponding Secretary for France, to a member of the Paris Section, André Murat, in which the French members of the International were informed of the campaign in organised in defence of the imprisoned Fenians. The French authorities tried to use this letter to incriminate the International in the organisation of the Fenian conspiracy.
The court declared the Paris Section dissolved and fined the Committee.
In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by, Marx was an integral part of this campaign.
The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the “Féne” – a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals.
On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed.
The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26, but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary, asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial.
Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and trained the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, November 24.
In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964.
This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy, made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as ail article, this copy was apparently, to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.
435 The text to the end of this section is based on the book Procès de l'Association Internationale de Travailleurs. Bureau de Paris (Paris, 1868) and consists either of an abridged rendering of the text or direct quotations. On interrogation of Tolain see also pp. 12-15 of this book.
436 A reference to the conflict between the ruling circles of Prussia and France over their claims to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg early in 1867. It was accompanied by military preparations and brash militarist propaganda in both states and marked a stage in the preparations for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
On October 17, 1867 Liebknecht criticised, in a speech to the North-German Reichstag, Bismarck’s policy on the Luxembourg question. At the General Council meeting of October 22, Marx read some extracts from it. The speech was included in the report of this Council meeting published in The Bee-Hive, October 26, 1867. Marx attached great importance to it and instructed Lafargue to translate it into French and send it to France for publication in Le Courrier français.
437 The first trial of the International’s Paris Executive Committee took place in March 1868, the second from May 22 to June 19, 1868.
438 On December 2, 1852 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of France under the name of Napoleon III, and this led to the fall of the Second Republic. The coup d'état which resulted in the establishment of Louis Napoleon’s dictatorship, had taken place a year earlier, on December 2, 1851.
439 The Aliens Law adopted in Belgium on September 22, 1835 and prolonged every three wars. Despite the widespread protest campaign in the press and at meetings it was renewed at the end of June 1865. In May 1868, the Belgian Government, for fear of fresh mass action, prolonged it without discussion in the Chamber of Deputies
440 The Lausanne Congress of the International in 1867 designated Brussels as the venue of the next general congress. On February 24, 1868, the General Council called on all sections to begin preparing the Congress agenda. However, the Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, declared in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 that he would not permit the convocation of the Congress in Brussels and urged the deputies to renew the Aliens Law of 1835, under which any foreigner could be expelled from the country as politically unreliable. in view of this, at the General Council meeting of May 26, 1868, Marx raised the question of not meeting in Brussels (see The Bee-Hive Newspaper, May 30, 1868). The resolution drawn up by Marx to this effect was read by Jung at the General Council meeting of June 2, since Marx had left for Manchester.
Bara’s statement and the prolongation of the Aliens Law caused great discontent in Belgium. The Brussels Section of the International sent the Minister a protest letter which was published in La Tribune du Peuple, May 24, 1868.
In their letters to the General Council, De Paepe and Vandenhouten, the leaders of the Brussels Section, urged the Council not to yield to the government because this threatened the further existence of the International in Belgium. Consequently, on Marx’s proposal, the General Council meeting of June 16 cancelled the resolution of June 2 and Brussels remained the venue for the next animal congress.
The text of the June 2 resolution was included in the Minutes of the General Council meeting of June 2, 1868, and was also published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, June 6, 1868.
441 The National Labour Union was founded in the USA at a congress in Baltimore in August 1866, with the active participation of William Sylvis, a prominent leader in the American labour movement. lit a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on October 9, 1866, Marx wrote with satisfaction about the Baltimore congress: “... Most of the demands I had put up for a w ere put up there too, by the correct instinct of the workers”. The Labour Union established contacts with the International Working Men’s Association in October 1866, but its delegate to the next congress of the International, Richard Trevellick, elected by the Union’s congress in Chicago in August 1867, was unable to conic to Lausanne. At the last sessions, of the Basle Congress of the International (September 1869) Cameron was the National Labour Union delegate. At the Union’s congress in Cincinnati in August 1870, Cameron reported on his participation in the International’s Congress, and the Union adopted a resolution on its adherence to the principles of the International Association and its intention to join it. The resolution was not implemented, however. Its leaders soon became involved in utopian projects of money reform. In 1870 and 1871, many trade unions withdrew, and in 1872 the Union virtually ceased to exist.
442 Grütli Union (Grütli-Verein) – a Swiss reformist organisation founded in 1838 as an educational association of artisans and workers. Its name emphasised its Swiss national character: according to a legend, representatives of three Swiss cantons met in 1307 in the Grütli (Rutli) meadow and concluded an alliance on a joint struggle against Austrian rule.
443 This refers to the reactionary Prussian law on associations adopted on March 11, 1850.
444 The movement for the eight-hour working day began in the USA in the 1840s and 1850s. In the 1860s the movement acquired a mass character, with leagues of struggle for an eight-hour working day and trade unions taking part. The National Labour Union was also active in it.
Under pressure from the mass movement, the American Congress passed a law introducing the eight-hour day on June 25, 1868, applying to all government enterprises and federal institutions. However, in practice it was either not carried out or was violated by the employers. The National Labour Union called on the trade unions to resist the employers.
The National Labour Union was founded in the USA at a congress in Baltimore in August 1866, with the active participation of William Sylvis, a prominent leader in the American labour movement. lit a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann on October 9, 1866, Marx wrote with satisfaction about the Baltimore congress: “... Most of the demands I had put up for a w ere put up there too, by the correct instinct of the workers”. The Labour Union established contacts with the International Working Men’s Association in October 1866, but its delegate to the next congress of the International, Richard Trevellick, elected by the Union’s congress in Chicago in August 1867, was unable to conic to Lausanne. At the last sessions, of the Basle Congress of the International (September 1869) Cameron was the National Labour Union delegate. At the Union’s congress in Cincinnati in August 1870, Cameron reported on his participation in the International’s Congress, and the Union adopted a resolution on its adherence to the principles of the International Association and its intention to join it. The resolution was not implemented, however. Its leaders soon became involved in utopian projects of money reform. In 1870 and 1871, many trade unions withdrew, and in 1872 the Union virtually ceased to exist.