This book outlines and analyses the ambitions and plans to radicalise and organise the militant maritime transport workers during the interwar period. The focus is to trace the operations and structural setup of the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers during the 1920s as well as those of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers during the 1930s. Both organisations operated on various scales, ranging from local actors and groups, national sections and unions to transregional bureaus and secretariats as well as international headquarters. Both organisations were at the same time part of the hierarchical organisational setup of the Red International of Labour Unions or rilu and the Third (Communist) International or Comintern. Some local actors were party members, the regional bureaus cooperated with other rilu regional bureaus, the headquarters of the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers operated in tandem with the rilu headquarters in Moscow. Local actors and groups as well as national sections, especially the revolutionary trade union oppositions, were usually part of the national trade unions and tried to influence politics and tactics of the unions, (most of) the national maritime transport workers’ unions, in turn, were affiliated to the International Transport Workers’ Federation or itf. Operationally, the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers tried to link up with local and national units all over the world and sought to embrace radical mariners who sailed on the Seven Seas disregarding colour or nationality.
The vision of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers or ish was global: “The ish must become the militant organisation of seamen and dockers of all countries, races, and continents.”1 Its ambition was to create a radical global space or globality parallel to and in contrast/confrontation to those of the itf, the bourgeois or labour/social democratic governments in power, and the capitalist/colonial world-order. The declaration was not a novel one but rather a continuation of earlier attempts by the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the rilu to engage with and radicalise non-white organised and unorganised so-called semi-colonial, colonial and ‘coloured’ maritime transport workers – Arab, black, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and Japanese. Referred as “work among colonial seamen”
A collage on the cover of the April 1932-issue of the journal The Negro Worker visualises the call for radical global action by maritime transport workers.2 Three persons, one Asian, one black and one Caucasian, point towards the catchword “Strike!” and a red flag carrying a logo containing the globe and an anchor and the letters ‘I – S – H’ written in them. On the background is a photograph of the Hamburg waterfront, identified by the silhouette of the tower of St. Michael’s church. A series of slogans catch the eye below the collage: “not a gun for the imperialist war mongers! hands off china! defend the soviet union!”3 The message was directed to seamen and harbour workers throughout the world; its sender was the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers, calling the maritime transport workers to fight for better working conditions and against the lowering of tariffs and salaries (“strike”) and for unified actions against Japanese imperialism in China (“Hands off China”). International proletarian solidarity portrayed as global and ‘colour-blind’: white and non-white workers were to join hands and form a unified front against capitalist, colonial and imperial exploitation.
The establishment of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers in October 1930 was the fulfilment of a process that started in the early 1920s. It started initially as syndicalist project to launch a global organisation for militant and radical seamen but the Bolsheviks in Moscow torpedoed the plan in 1921. Instead, the outcome of the initial project was the section for agitation
The main difference between the International Propaganda and Action Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers was their target group. While the former addressed both land and maritime transport workers, opposition groups and unions, the latter one concentrated on revolutionary trade union opposition groups within maritime transport workers unions, including those of the seamen or crew members above deck, those of the stokers or crew members below deck, and those of the dockers or harbour workers. In line with the ‘Class-Against-Class’-doctrine adopted by the Comintern and rilu in 1928, the International Propaganda and Action Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers propagated for the establishment of ‘red’ seamen’s unions although this was realised in only a few cases. Also, in line with the ‘Class-Against-Class’-doctrine, both organisations applied the so-called ‘confrontation’-tactics, meaning launching vigorous attacks on the itf and the socialist/social democratic leaders and functionaries of national maritime trade unions. By 1934, it was evident that the ‘confrontation’-tactics had ended in a cul-de-sac; in retrospect, it widened the gap between the ultra-left minority and the left/politically non-aligned majority within the trade unions and presented the communists as those who split rather than unified the interwar working class and trade union movement.
The International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers were international, global and world organisations. The Interclubs were projected to co-operate internationally, to represent different national maritime unions (this was mainly the case during the 1920s, rather seldom during the 1930s), and to disseminate bulletins and journals of the various opposition groups (at least in Chinese, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Latvian, Spanish, and Scandinavian languages). Boycotts in support of national strikes were
Research on the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers is very rudimentary. The former unit and its ambition to radicalise the global waterfront has not been studied in any greater detail apart from Josephine Fowler’s seminal work on the push of the rilu into the East Asia and the Pacific ocean during the 1920s.4 In contrast, there exists a few studies outlining the national, regional and even meta/trans-regional aspects of the International of Harbour and Seamen. Ludwig Eiber’s, Constance Margain’s and Dieter Nelles’ works address the activities of the ish in Germany and the activities of the German exile sections after 1933. J. Manley and Kevin Morgan provide a critical assessment of George Hardy, the leader of the Seamen Minority Movement in the United Kingdom, and his futile attempt to establish a red seafarer’s union in the United Kingdom.5 The Seamen’s Minority Movement’s engagement with and
My own research has, among others, focussed on the northern outreach of the ish. The structure and actions of the national sections in Northern Europe (the Scandinavian countries, Finland, Estonia and Latvia) have been relatively unknown except for their involvement in various maritime strikes. Tracing the activities of the ish and its national sections is challenging as neither of them have an existing archive, either being destroyed during the 1930s or, as in the case of the illegal Finnish and Estonian sections, never existing. To some extent, I have been able to reconstruct the missing archives by making use of material filed in the Comintern archives in Moscow. The archives of the British, Finnish, German, and Swedish security authorities also contain copies of letter correspondence to and from the ish Secretariat. In addition, the national sections produced journals and magazines that reprinted calls and resolutions of the ish and its national sections. Occasionally, the national communist press even published resolutions and calls of the ish and its national sections. The existing source material therefore provided the source material in my previous reconstruction of the networks, operations and outreach of the ish and its national sections in northern Europe.14 The present investigation on the global outreach of the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and its successor, the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers, contains additional archival material from the Comintern Archives.
A ‘total’ presentation and analysis of the global history the two organisations would require mastering of multiple languages and tracing empirical sources in local, regional and national archives on five continents. As the capacities of the author were limited, I decided to unearth the superstructure well knowing that the result can only be rudimentary. Empirical data has been analysed for the intermediate scale of operations, namely that of the
The main challenge to outline and analyse the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers and its forerunner concerns the availability of documentary sources. Although the files of the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers can be consulted in the Comintern Archives in Moscow, the latter ones do not constitute the archive of the ish Secretariat but rather its unit in Moscow, the ish Sovbureau. The documentary material available in Moscow consists of reports and letters authored by members of the ish Secretariat and either sent to the rilu bureau in Berlin (before February 1933) which in turn forwarded the documents to the rilu headquarters in Moscow or were sent directly or via Paris (since March 1933) to Moscow. The correspondence of the ish Secretariat with the national sections is mostly missing; some of it is filed in original or as copies in the archives of national intelligence and security authorities, others in the archives of national communist parties. On the other hand, dispatches from headquarters in Moscow as well as instructions and policy papers (usually as draft versions, often in several languages) are filed in the Comintern Archives.
The archives of the national sections of the ish, the Interclubs and the revolutionary trade union opposition are in most cases missing or have been destroyed. This is at least the case with the British, German, Scandinavian and US American sections, although some material is localised in the party archives and in the archives of the national security authorities, which enables further investigations.
Most of the filed material in Moscow can be defined as “invisible” documents as they were not to be disseminated in public. However, as outlined in Appendix ii, a critical evaluation of the material, especially the letters and reports, opens up for the identification of actors and networks. Such “invisible” documents are the reports and correspondence produced by the various units of the rilu, especially those of its bureau in Berlin. Other key documents are those produced by the central units of the Comintern, the Executive Committee (ecci) and its Political Commission (PolCom), as these units made the final decisions concerning work among maritime transport workers.
Important sources are also the “visible” material, namely the various flyers, leaflets, bulletins, magazines, journals, pamphlets and booklets published (sometimes cyclostyled and mimeographed) by local trade union opposition groups, Interclubs, and national sections. Consulting and evaluating the “visible” material is important as it enables a discussion about local, national and international activities and campaigns. However, none of the printed material has been systematically collected and archived. Some national archives and libraries carry copies of the publications of the national sections of the ish but this usually an exception. For example, the Danish Labour Movement Archives has a collection of leaflets and documents on the Swedish seamen’s strike of 1933, while the Finnish National Library, the archives of the Finnish state police and the People’s Archives each holds copies of a different issue of Majakka, the magazine of the Finnish ish section.
The source material on International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers provides a clue to their structural outline and operational frameworks. The rilu envisioned both organisations to operate on a global, national and local level, the difference being that the former organisation focussed on the dissemination of propaganda while the rilu projected the latter organisation as a ‘mass-organisation’ with affiliated national sections. The national sections constituted the branches of the global network of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers in the same way that the various national communist parties were ‘satellites’ in the Comintern’s ‘solar system’. In tandem with the hierarchical structure of the Comintern and the rilu, the core unit of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers was its Secretariat (ish Secretariat) and its parallel, secret or illegal secretariat (ish Illegal Secretariat), see Appendix i. A key issue was the extent to which the ish Secretariat sought to influence, govern and control individual national sections. Contemporary security reports from the 1930s as well as investigations from the 1950s constructed the image of a hierarchical and top-down organisation. Recent critical studies on the Comintern, the rilu and various communist international mass and sympathising organisations have re-evaluated this image and instead
1 Identifying Individuals and the Use of Aliases and Pseudonyms
Working with material of the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers (ipc-tw/ipac-tw) and the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ish) filed in the Comintern Archives is connected with several challenges. One is the fact that the files of the Red International of Labour
However, the biggest challenge is that several documents lack senders and receivers, usually even dating. In some cases, these are typed reports or letters containing the author’s or authors’ signatures or initials – usually an alias or a pseudonym – and which have been addressed to “Werter Genosse” (Best comrade) or “Liebe Freunde” (Dear friends). Some of the letters also contain an (sometimes handwritten) add “Für Alexander” (to Alexander), most likely to be identified as rilu General Secretary Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky (1878–1952) as he used the pseudonym Alexander. However, a critical analysis of such documents points to the fact that the document itself was not usually addressed directly to Lozovsky but that the receiving unit of the document, either the rilu Berlin Bureau or the rilu Secretariat in Moscow, made the add and passed the document to the notice of Lozovsky.
The identification of aliases and pseudonyms is crucial if an investigation focuses on the activities and perspectives of a particular actor. If, on the other hand, a study concentrates solely on reconstructing the structures and forms of the operations of an organisation, emphasis is on the collective actions and the ideological goals that the organisation in corpore says it stands for or wants to achieve. In this case, the ish and its national sections would constitute the object of study and the individual persons remain in the background. Mariners go on strike, establish strike committees, the revolutionary opposition and/or the national sections plan activities, the ish Secretariat issues orders and publishes guidelines and pamphlets. However, the source material for this study provides an opportunity to penetrate the facade of the collective and trace the actions of key actors. The ish Secretariat counted a limited number of individuals who received instructions from liaison officers in Berlin or directly from the rilu Secretariat in Moscow. The ish Secretariat decides to send an instructor to a country to intervene in the activities of a national section or to organise the management during a strike. Actors write letters and reports, and if one can identify the sender and the recipient, one can start the
The use of aliases and pseudonyms was a precaution taken by the Comintern to hinder the identification of a person by the authorities, especially if the person was involved in illegal activities or travelled with a forged passport. If a person was enrolled in Moscow at one of the Comintern’s higher education institutions, such as Lenin School, he or she was given a pseudonym. Others used the names of persons whose passport they were using. For example, the Surinamese communist Otto Huiswoud used the cover name Charles Woodson when he was secretary of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers or itucnw. At the same time, he carried a passport issued to Edward Mason. In his correspondence with the rilu Secretariat, he used the pseudonym Edward. The Dutch former ish activist Joseph Schaap used the pseudonyms Fritz and Friman when he was engaged with the Wollweber League during the latter half of the 1930s. Ernst Wollweber used the aliases Schmidt while working at ish Secretary in Copenhagen in 1934, and Ernst Behrend when stationed at the Interclub in Leningrad in 1934/35. Government security authorities, in turn, were well aware of the use of aliases and pseudonyms by the communists. The German security authorities, for example, circulated lists of known and suspected aliases and pseudonyms that they had managed to identify during the 1930s.
A systematic review of the ish material archived in Moscow shows that it contains a limited group of senders. Some of them are easy to identify. Albert Walter used the initials Y and aw when signing his reports, while Adolf Shelley signed his letters and reports with either Adolf or the initial Ad. Max Ziese at the Berlin rilu Bureau used the alias Paul; the alias George/Georges was used by Adolf Shelley after the ish Illegal Secretariat had moved to Paris, see further Appendix ii.
A major challenge is the identification of the pseudonyms Henri/Henry, Leo, and André. According to Constance Margain, Henry or Maurice Henry was the pseudonym used by French communist Octave Rabaté (1899–1964) who Margain claims to have belonged to ish leadership. Rabaté was a mechanic in his profession and was active in the metalworkers’ union in France. From 1928 to 1932, he worked at the rilu headquarters, was its instructor in Spain (1928) and South America (1932) and was responsible, using the aliases Augustine and Centurion, for contacts to the Spanish-speaking world. The fact that a person
The problem with identifying the pseudonym Henri/Henry is that it is unclear whether it is one or two person(s) although I consider the pseudonym to refer to the same person as demonstrated in Appendix ii. According to a report written in 1934, ish leaders Adolf Shelley and Adolf Deter (André) noted that Comrade Henry Maurice had been elected to the secretariat “of our company” (i.e., the ish) at the 1932 World Congress and the same Henry Maurice was then a member of the ish Executive Committee.17 According to British contemporary intelligence reports, the pseudonym Henry was used by Italian communist Luigi Polano.18 According to Polano’s personal file in Moscow, he had been an instructor for the Interclubs in Odessa, Novorossiysk and Batumi in the 1920s before moving to the rilu headquarters in Moscow. From 1932 he began to work for ish as instructor under the pseudonym Henri Maurice in various European countries, including Spain and Portugal in the spring of 1932,19 and from 1933 at the ish Sovbureau in Moscow.20 In Margain’s dissertation, however, Polano plays a minor role and is not associated with the activities of the ish in Southern Europe.
Nevertheless, the difficulty in the identification the pseudonym of Henri and Henry as Luigi Polano is that the contemporary sources give a contradictory picture. Most of the letters or reports are signed by Henri,21 i.e., probably by Luigi Polano. Some specific documents refer to the pseudonym Henry, in
I my opinion, it is doubtful if Octave Rabaté really can be identified as the “other” Henry. One possible candidate could be Etkar André who used the pseudonym when working as a functionary at the Hamburg Interclub. According to information provided by André when the police interrogated him, he was responsible for the Interclub’s international work from 1929 until he was arrested on March 5, 1933. In this capacity, he frequently travelled to Belgium and France; in the latter country, he claimed to have been responsible for organising the seamen in Le Havre and Marseille. His last assignment in France, however, came to an abrupt end when he was expelled by the French authorities in December 1932.26 Whether and what pseudonym André used was not disclosed in the interrogation report. On the other hand, his stays in Belgium and France correlate with the assignments that Henry, according to Walter and Shelley, performed (or was blamed for not performing).27 If André was Henry, it could also explain why Henry, i.e., Etkar André, commented on the Interclub’s activities at the second plenum of the ish Executive Committee in September 1931. Besides, Octave Rabaté had never worked for the Hamburg Interclub. On the other hand, Henri – and not Henry – was arrested by the French authorities in September 1932 and expelled a few months later,28 charged with possession of a forged passport. Moreover, Henry figures in Hamburg in December 1932. However, it is quite possible that both Polano and André were arrested and expelled by the French authorities. Nevertheless, as noted above, the problem
Margain, who only uses Russian and German source material and relies on Krebs’ statements, identifies Leo with certain a Léon Purman, who died in 1933.29 However, this seems unlikely since the alias Leo signs letters and reports as late as 1934. Leo was a leading player in the rilu Berlin Bureau until 1933, and was Albert Walter’s contact person and the person responsible for monitoring the operations of the ipac-tw and the ish. After moving to Copenhagen in 1933, he became a member of the ish’s (illegal) secretariat. In 1934, Leo was a member of the rilu Paris Bureau though still linked to the ish. Contemporary British and German intelligence reports claim that Leo was the alias of Leo Smolianski alias Leo Pechmann.30 Also, “Purmann” and “Smoljanski”, i.e., Purman and Smolianski, were both members of the rilu Berlin Bureau, the latter one being nominated to the bureau by the ecci in September 1930.31 Margain, for her part, thinks that Pechmann was the pseudonym of a certain Hermann Schubert (1886–1938).32 I think this is unlikely, as I have not found any such person in documents relating to the rilu Berlin Bureau.
I am equally critical of Margain’s conclusion that the German communist Etkar André (1894–1936) used the alias André.33 As noted above, Etkar André had worked for the ish before the German police arrested him in March 1933. He the spent two years in concentration camp before and was executed after a show trial in 1936. What speaks against her identification is that the personal files of the Comintern demonstrate that the German communist Gustav Adolf Deter used the pseudonym André when he worked within ish from 1933 to 1937.34 Margain, on the other hand, rightly claims that Deter used the alias
2 The Negative Image: A Subversive Organisation for the World Revolution
At least the Finnish and Swedish security authorities received in September 1937 a report on the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers. Compiled by the German security authorities, the report presented the organisation as an international sabotage organisation based in Copenhagen, which engaged in subversive agitation and spread communist propaganda among seafarers and harbour workers. According to the report, the organisation had about 300,000 members in the Soviet Union and about 100,000 in the rest of the world in 1934, “the numbers today are expected to be higher.” In sixteen countries, ish had affiliated red or communist-controlled maritime unions. In another twelve countries, its sections were said to be so-called Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (rtuo) units within the maritime unions.37
The German security police defined the ish to be an international communist sabotage organisation and accused it for being the mastermind behind series of terrorist acts against German, Italian and Japanese vessels. Its members placed dynamite charges with clock-set triggers on board a ship. The
The German security authorities called on the Belgian, Dutch and Nordic police authorities to work together to trace the alleged communist terror network. However, the German security authorities’ report on the ish overlooked that the organisation no longer existed in September 1937. Instead, it turned out that the attacks had been carried out by a regular sabotage organisation set up in 1935 and headed by the German Ernst Wollweber. Nevertheless, the connection between the so-called Wollweber League or Wollweber Group, officially called the ‘Organisation against Fascism and in Support of the ussr’ but usually referred to as the Organisation Bernhard, and the ish was not far-fetched. Wollweber held a leading position within the ish until 1934 and all members of his organisation had previously been members of a national section of the ish and a national communist party.39 According to him, the objective of his
The German security authorities regarded the ish to be a subversive organisation and a threat to the prevailing political and societal order. The negative image gained momentum after the Nazis seized power and the ban on the communists in Germany in 1933. An internal memorandum of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) in 1936 labelled the organisation as particularly dangerous as it tried to convert mariners and port workers to communism and to organise them according to communist, meaning subversive, principles. The memorandum claimed that the organisation maintained a network of secret trustees aboard ships for the global dissemination of illegal literature. Furthermore, the memorandum outlined the organisation as hierarchically structured with an international central and a number of regional bureaus. Before 1933, the memorandum noted, the centre had been in Hamburg, then in Copenhagen from where it moved to Antwerp, and finally to Paris; its regional bureaus were located in Copenhagen, Odessa, Rotterdam, San Francisco and Vladivostok. Below the regional bureaus, there was a dense network of local nodes of operation, the International Seamen’s Clubs or Interclubs, claimed to exist in all major ports around the globe, see Figure 1.40
The organisation of the ish according to the Gestapo in 1937. The figure is a modified version of a chart attached to the Gestapo report on the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ish), Die Internationale der Seeleute und Hafenarbeiter – ish, sent to the Nordic police authorities in September 1937. A copy of the report is filed in the archives of the Swedish state police, säpo viii 3 Interklub och Röd Marin Pärm 5, sna; another copy of the chart is filed in the German confiscated archival material, 458/9/130, 9, rgaspi. The German outline of the global outreach of the ish in 1937 is pure fiction and at best resembles the situation in ca 1933/34 when the ish Secretariat was located in Copenhagen, the ish Secretariat was moved to Antwerp during spring 1934. Apart from its bureau in Moscow, the ish Sovbureau, the other regional bureaus and units listed in the chart never existed as units attached to the ish. The ‘International Negro Committee’ was a separate unit attached to the Red International of Labour Unions or rilu, known as the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (itucnw); its headquarters was moved from Hamburg to Paris in 1933 and relocated to Antwerp in 1934, to Amsterdam in 1935, and back to Paris in 1936. The ‘Pan-Pacific Bureau’ is identical with the Pan-Pacific Secretariat of the rilu, a ‘Pan-American Bureau’ and ‘Continental and English Bureau’ never existed.
The German security police based its analysis on data compiled from published material of the ish and its national sections. The police would not have had access to internal documents as raids conducted in 1931 and 1932 on the ish headquarters in Hamburg rarely resulted in the confiscation of classified material. When the German police authorities closed the operations in Hamburg in early March 1933, the ish Secretariat had already moved its documents to a safe place and the police was never able to get hold on them. Consequently, the German security authorities were keen to update and clarify their information on the operations of the ish. For this purpose, they used finks and informants, which the security authorities tried – and sometimes succeeded – to infiltrate into the organisation whose leadership was in exile in Copenhagen.
Krebs continued to paint the phantom image of ish as a subversive organisation in his autobiography and in later interrogations with the US Army security service, the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps. The autobiography Out of the Night was published in 1941 and immediately became a bestseller, and was judged by historians during the Cold War to give an authentic picture of the organisation.43 Thus, in the Cold War standard work on the Comintern, Günther Nollau relied entirely on Krebs’/Valtin’s descriptions of the ish as did Michael Rohrwasser in his standard work on the revelations of the renegades on the inner essence of the Comintern and Stalinism.44 The tenor in Out of the Night was negative, highlighting the poisoned atmosphere in and illegality of the organisation. Most notably, Krebs/Valtin portrayed Ernst Wollweber as an unscrupulous tactician who protected no means and sacrificed human life to achieve his goals.
One of the early attempts to correct the phantom image of Krebs/Valtin was the Danish communist Richard Jensen. He was one of the leaders of the Danish Stokers’ Union and belonged to inner circle of the ish during the 1930s. In his publication Frem i lyset, Jensen claimed that Krebs had been a Gestapo agent and that his revelations about ish were pure fiction. Yet few historians have made use of Jensen’s pamphlet as well as his own autobiography, En omtumlet tilværelse, in their assessment of communist engagement with the radical waterfront during the interwar period.45 One of the few who did so
A critical re-evaluation of Krebs’ autobiography only started after the end of the Cold War. Based on German archival material, Dieter Nelles provided a critical assessment of Krebs’ activities after 1933, especially his relationship with the Gestapo, and argued that Krebs had been a Gestapo agent in 1937 and 1938. In addition, he questioned the reliability and validity of Kreb’s autobiography in toto and dismissed it as fiction.48 Nelles’ negative account was subsequently challenged by Ernst von Waldenfels who was the first to use German, Russian, British and American archival material in his discussion of Kreb’s engagement with the ish and his activities after 1933.49 Waldenfels’ attempt to neutralise Krebs’ activities after he was jailed by the Gestapo in 1933 has been criticised by Dieter Nelles as being an uncritical interpretation of the German and Russian sources.50 Nelles’ critical contention is supported by Lars Borgersrud and Guillaume Bourgeois, who claim that Krebs’ autobiography is heavily biased, subjective and unreliable, if not sometimes even fictitious.51 Interestingly, however, Vernon L. Pedersen claims the opposite: “it has proven accurate where it can be compared with Party records.”52 Constance Margain,
The main problem with Krebs’ account is that his autobiography is fictitious. Already in his reply when interrogated by the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps in 1950, Krebs stressed that his book had been written as an adventure story and contained several deliberate distortions and inaccuracies,54 especially about the role of the key ish leaders Albert Walter, Adolf Shelley and Ernst Wollweber. I therefore decided not to make use the autobiography as some of his claims, such as his account of James W. Ford’s and George Padmore’s interaction with the ish and the Hamburg Interclub are distorted and extremely unreliable. Instead, the evaluation of existing documentary sources and published contemporary texts gives enough empirical data to address the complex history of the ish and its forerunner, the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers.
The insights of Nørgaard and above all those of Nelles and Borgersrud open for a re-evaluation of ish. All three authors stress the difference between ish and the Wollweber League. While the former was a radical organisation for revolutionary trade union opposition groups within maritime transport workers’ unions as well as red unions, the latter was explicitly and solely a militant anti-fascist sabotage organisation. The former organisation originated from the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Worker and the Comintern leadership liquidated it in 1937. The latter was set up in the autumn of 1935 as a secret organisation officially detached from the Comintern and the Communist parties and remained active until 1939/1940 when the German, Danish and Swedish police authorities managed to arrest most of its activists including Ernst Wollweber. What connected the two organisations were individual actors – all leading members of Wollweber League were mariners and had a background in the national sections of the ish.
The legacy of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers was not its claimed subversive outreach but its role in the radicalisation of the global waterfront and militant engagement during the Spanish Civil War. The constant calls for international proletarian solidarity during the 1920s and 1930s had radicalised a generation of mariners and resulted in them enlisting as volunteers in the International Brigades. Most of them either were communists or had been (non-communist) members of the revolutionary trade union opposition; most of them had been radicalised during the 1930s as an outcome of the agitation
Organisational chart of the ish, ca 1932. The diagram shows the position of the ish Secretariat within the hierarchy of the Red International of Labour Unions (rilu), the rilu Berlin Bureau and the ish Sovbureau. The ish Secretariat in Hamburg had direct contacts, marked [–––], with its major sub-divisions, initially referred to as regional secretariats, in London (headquarters of the smm), New York (headquarters of the mwiu), Paris (headquarters of the ish Latin Secretariat), Oslo (headquarters of the ish Scandinavian Secretariat until April 1930, and headquarters of the revolutionary trade union opposition of the Norwegian Seamen’s and Stokers’ Union), and Vienna (headquarters of the ish Danube Committee). Connections to other regional hubs were indirect, marked [⋯], and the ish Secretariat had few means of intervening or monitoring activities there, including Montevideo (headquarters of the cmpla as well as site of an Interclub), San Francisco (headquarters of the American Bureau of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat as well as site of an Interclub), Sydney (site of an Interclub), and Vladivostok (headquarters of the tost as well as site of an Interclub). The ish Secretariat instructed the national sections and, ideally, also the International Seamen’s Clubs or Interclubs. A national section incorporated the revolutionary trade union opposition (rtuo) as well as the ship cells, i.e., a rtuo unit on board a vessel. The waterfront units of a national communist party, in turn, comprised the communist members of the rtuo and the sea cell, i.e., party members who were also members in a union. The Interclubs, in turn, consisted of sections for different language or national groups, such as a Baltic, colonial, English, French, German, Italian or Scandinavian one. Ideally, an Interclub was controlled by the ish Secretariat but operated by a local group of a national section.
3 The Limitations of the Sources – The Absence of Women and Individual Voices
The history of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers and its forerunner consists of multiple flows and networks, actors and spaces. Members at headquarters and the regional bureaus drafted directives and guidelines, discussed them behind closed doors in smaller circles and disseminated them to the national sections and local groups, who in turn reported to the regional bureau and headquarters about successful and failed actions and campaigns. Local liaison officers received instructions from headquarters to carry out, but in practice perhaps never did. Some actors are visible; many remain invisible in the written sources.
The documents and texts on which this study is based were written by men and concerned men. Yet it is not a conscious choice or a determined attempt to neglect gender or the perspective of women – women worked aboard ships, they resided in the ports, many of the mariners and harbour workers were married, women frequented, visited and occasionally operated the Interclubs. Nevertheless, they do not appear in the documentary sources albeit sometimes on photos and in texts published in contemporary journals and magazines.
International as well as national maritime transport workers’ organisations, communist as well as non-communist ones, were predominantly male domains during the interwar period. Most, if not all published material of the ish and its sections is gendered – written by men, addressed to men, always
The voices of rank-and-file maritime transport workers is as difficult to detect in the documentary sources. Maritime transport workers worked on board ships and in the ports. A range of associations and trade unions safeguarded the interests of these two separate occupational groups. This poses a challenge for a study of the politicisation of maritime transport workers during the interwar period. Mariners and harbour workers may briefly meet one another when a the vessel calls at a port. Nevertheless, their situation differs markedly when they reside in the same place as mariners then disembark the ship and are not working while harbour workers are at work. The reverse situation applies when the ship leaves the port. The meetings of mariners and harbour workers on land are therefore asymmetrical. A foreign mariner, i.e., one who is not a resident of the locality, is staying ashore either because he is spending his leisure time and then returns to the same vessel or because he has disembarked and is waiting to board a new ship. If the disembarked mariner is lucky, the waiting time on land is a short one; if he has bad luck, it will be a long one
4 Radicalising Maritime Transport Workers during the Age of Steamships
The ‘transport revolution’ that steam power made possible during the 19th century meant a significant increase in high sea shipping. World tonnage increased exponentially, the frequency of travel also, the transportation times shrunk and the connections became regular and followed schedules. The maritime transport system was undergoing a major change following the introduction of steamers, adding a completely new category of occupations below deck. Among others, as trimmers who shovelled coal to the stokers who, in turn, shovelled the coal into the boiler, as well as machine personnel such as oilers, donkey men and engineers. The crews above and below deck on the vessels of the major interwar merchant fleets, including the British, French, German, Norwegian and US American, were multinational and at the same time strictly hierarchical and segregated. At the top where the white seamen followed by the white stokers who were members of a national union. At the bottom was the non-white un-organised and low-paid auxiliary staff who worked below deck. The recruitment of mariners re-enforced the hierarchical segregation on board the vessels, as is reflected in the social composition on board Scandinavian steamers. Seamen and sailors were recruited mainly from the coastal population while the crew below deck was recruited from the lower strata of cities and industrial communities. Maritime law regulated life on board the merchant fleet. In practice, the captain ruled his ship and the crew were his subordinates. The captain was responsible to the shipowners; his task was to ensure that the ship and its cargo were transported from point A to point B. A member of the crew could easily be replaced, he was not allowed to leave the ship without the permission of the captain and refusal to obey was interpreted and punished as mutiny.56
The steam and transport revolution also affected the waterfront of the port cities. The harbour areas diversified due to the expansion of freight and passenger traffic across the seas, resulting in separate areas for free trade, passengers, general cargo, mass cargo, coal, oil, industrial products and warehousing. In addition, there were private loading places. The diversification in the various ports was equalled by the emergence of various stowage, freight and handling companies that employed stevedores that loaded and unloaded the vessels. Other parts of the port areas were occupied by the shipyards and the docks with their various occupational groups; some of the shipyards built new vessels, others repaired or broke up old ones. The stevedores and others who were engaged in the loading and unloading of the ships were picked from the ever-expanding reserve made up of unskilled labourers who had arrived in the port city in the hope of a better life. They were hired on chords, gathered in the morning at the exclamation offices and competed among themselves to get a job. There were no common interests that would have unified the waterfront; the dock, harbour and yard workers each formed unions to defend their own interests.58
The history of trade unionism among mariners or harbour workers during the first half of the twentieth century is usually framed in a local and national context. Local struggles resulted in the emergence of the various national unions, the struggles of the national unions resulted in improved working
The national framework was challenged by the emergence of international trade unions such as the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres (founded 1901) and its successors, the International Federation of Trade Unions or the Amsterdam International (iftu; founded 1919). Equally important were the various supra-national industrial organisations or International Trade Secretariats, among others the International Transport Workers’ Federation or itf, founded in 1896 as an association for trade unions in the transport industry. However, the hallmark of engagements of itf during the interwar period was that it did not seek to confront the national framework for trade union activities; instead, the itf acted primarily as a trans- and international forum for national trade union leaders.60
The capacities of the itf to intervene in local and national conflicts were limited during the interwar period. This was a consequence of the scope of action of its affiliated member associations and unions as they were bound to national territory and legislation. Attempts by the itf to coordinate trans- and international boycotts and support campaigns were often blocked due conflicting interests of the various national unions. Most notable, however, was the attitude of the itf to whether the struggle for better living and wage conditions on board and ashore was merely a union issue or whether it was also a political one. This question had already divided national unions. At one end were the syndicalists who claimed that the union was the only means of
Trade union work among and union organisation of mariners, especially, was a challenge. The mariner’s profession was (and is) by definition transboundary; they were and are translocal and transnational globetrotters with multiple identities. They spend a large part of the year away from their place of residence. The ship constituted, on the one hand, a closed ‘national’ territory: National maritime law was applied according to the flag of the vessel. On the other hand, the crew on merchant vessels was a multinational group of individuals, some with rights and being members of unions, others defined as foreigners who were excluded from membership in the national unions of the vessel’s flag. Mariners encountered new cultures, ideas, people and practices during their travels: On board the ship and ashore in foreign ports. Union functionaries and officials, on the other hand, operated in specific locations and national contexts. This posed structural barriers for union work among mariners. They seldom resided for longer periods at home or were unemployed and could not pay the membership fee to the union. Trade union work, on the other hand, was more or less impossible on board; instead, it would take place on land. The crux of the matter was how to politicise mariners and get them to join the local section of a national union if they were home for only a short period. The politicisation and radicalisation among maritime transport workers started during the age of the steamship. In the wake of the division of the working class during the First World War, some of them came to uphold the communist credo of an uncompromising class struggle to liberate the proletariat from the exploitation of capitalists and capitalism.61
rilu, Resolution on the ish, February 1931, 534/5/220, 75, rgaspi.
The Negro Worker was the mouthpiece of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers or itucnw. Similar to the ish, the itucnw had been established by and was linked to the rilu. The two organisations cooperated closely, their headquarters being located at 8, Rothesoodstrasse in Hamburg. The April 1932-issue of The Negro Worker included an appeal to black seamen and harbour workers to join the national sections of the ish (see further Chapter 7.2.1), it is not farfetched to assume that someone in Hamburg or Berlin had produced the cover collage.
Cover of The Negro Worker 4, no. 2 (April 1932).
Josephine Fowler, Japanese & Chinese Immigrant Activists. Organizing in American & International Communist Movements, 1919–1933 (New Brunswick, NJ & London: Rutgers University Press 2007).
J. Manley, “Moscow Rules? ‘Red’ Unionism and ‘Class Against Class’ in Britain, Canada and the United States, 1928–1935,” Labour/Le Travail 56 (2005): 4–49; Kevin Morgan, “The Trouble with Revisionism: or Communist History with the History Left In,” Labour/Le Travail 63 (2009): 131–155.
For example, Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2013); David Featherstone, “Maritime Labour and Subaltern Geographies of Internationalism: Black Internationalist Seafarers’ Organising in the Interwar Period,” Political Geography 49 (2015): 7–16; David Featherstone, “Harry O’Connell, maritime labour and the racialised politics of place,” Race & Class 57, no. 3 (2016): 71–87, Christian Høgsbjerg, Chris Braithwaite: Mariner, Renegade & Castaway. Seamen’s Organiser, Socialist and Militant Pan-Africanist (London: Socialist History Society/Redwoods, 2014); Marika Sherwood, “The Comintern, the CPGB, Colonies and Black Britons,” Science & Society 60, no. 2 (1996): 137–163.
Vernon L. Pedersen, “George Mink, the Marine Workers’ Industrial Union, and the Comintern in America,” Labor History 41, (2000): 307–320; Vernon L. Pedersen, The Communist Party on the American Waterfront: Revolution, Reform, and the Quest for Power (Lanham: Lexington Boos, 2020).
Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
Marie-Paule Dhaille-Hervieu, Communists au Havre: Histoire sociale, culturelle et politique (1930–1983) (Rouen : Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2009).
Constance Micalef Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer (1930–1937). Activités, parcours militants et résistance au nazisme d’un syndicat communisme de marins et dockers, PhD thesis, University of Le Havre, 2015, pdf available at
See also Constance Margain, “The International Union of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ish) 1930–1937: Interclubs and transnational aspects,” Twentieth Century Communism 8 (February 2015): 133–144; Constance Margain, “The German section of the International of Sailors and Harbour Workers,” in Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, eds. Ralf Hoffrogge and Norman LaPorte (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2017), 170–186.
Fowler, Japanese & Chinese Immigrant Activists.
Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, Verdensrevolutionens generalstad. Komintern og det hemmelige apparat (Copenhagen: Gads forlag, 2011); Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, “Komintern og det hemmelige apparat”, in Jesper Jørgensen, Alexander Chubaryan, Andrei Sorokin & Thomas Wegener Friis (eds), Komintern og de dansk-sovjetiske relationer (Copenhagen: Arbejdermuseet og aba, 2012), 81–128.
Holger Weiss, För kampen internationellt! Transportarbetarnas globala kampinternational och dess verksamhet i Nordeuropa under 1930-talet (Helsinki: Työväen historian ja perinteen tutkimuksen seura, 2019).
See, among others, Bernhard H. Bayerlein, “Das neue Babylon. Strukturen und Netzwerke der Kommunistischen Internationale und ihre Klassifizierung,” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung (2004): 181–270; Morgan, “The Trouble with Revisionism”; Geoff Andrews, Nina Fisherman and Kevin Morgan (eds.), Opening the Books: Essays on the social and cultural history of British communism (London: Pluto Press, 1995); Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew (eds.), The Comintern: A history of international communism from Lenin to Stalin (Houndmills: MacMillan Press, 1996); Tauno Saarela & Kimmo Rentola (eds.), Communism: National & international (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1998); Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998); Matthew Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain between the wars (London: Tauris, 2002); Norman LaPorte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917–53 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, “Revising Revisionism: A New Look at American Communism,” Academic Questions 22, no. 4 (2009): 457–461; Jacob Zumoff, Communist International and US Communism, 1919–1929 (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Brigitte Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians (Basinstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); Norman LaPorte and Ralf Hoffrogge (eds.), Weimar Communism as Mass Movement, 1918–1933 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2017); Bernhard H. Bayerlein, “The ‘Cultural International’ as the Comintern’s Intermediate Empire: International Mass and Sympathizing Organisations beyond Parties,” in International Communism and Transnational Solidarity: Radical Networks, Mass Movements and Global Politics, 1919–1939, ed. Holger Weiss (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 28–88.
Constance Micalef Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer (1930–1937). Activités, parcours militants et résistance au nazisme d’un syndicat communisme de marins et dockers. Thèse pour obtenir le grade de docteur de l’ université du Havre, discipline: Histoire, 2015 (hal id: tel-01676981; submitted 7.1.2018), 56, 79, 194, 313.
Adolf and André to “Komfrakton des Vollzugsbüro der rgi,” 26.10.1934, 534/5/241, 253–266, rgaspi.
Schedule of the Principal Revolutionary Organisations Controlled by Moscow (end 1935), 20.4.1936, International Organisations of Communist Parties, kv 3/128, tna.
Information in [Garan] Kouyaté’s report to the politbureau of the pcf, Paris 18.5.1932, 517/1/1306, 56, rgaspi.
Biographica Luigi Polano, 26.7.1939, Luigi Polano personal file, 495/221/425, rgaspi. See further the entry on Luigi Polano (“H. Maurice”) in Michael Buckmiller and Klaus Meschkat (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale. Ein deutsch-russisches Forschungsprojekt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007).
Report from Albert Walter, 16.6.1931, 534/5/220, 176–190, rgaspi.
Report on the second plenum of the ish Executive Committee, September 1931, 534/5/224, rgaspi; Henri to George Padmore, 3.8.1932, 534/5/231, 4, rgaspi.
Letter from Adolf [Shelley] to Alexander [Lozovsky], 5.10.1935, 534/5/243, 115, rgaspi. Shelley report in the letter that Henry arrived in Paris. This must have been Polano as subsequent letters were signed by both Adolf [Shelley] and Henri [Polano], see Appendix ii.
See André [Deter] to Henri [Polano], 24.5.1937, and André to “Bruder Henry,” 21.6.1937, both in 534/5/247, rgaspi.
Report from Adolf Shelley, 24.11.1931, 534/5/223, 84–98, rgaspi.
Anklageschrift gegen Etkar André wegen Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat (9.2.1936–11.2.1936), 621-1/90_7, Staatsarchiv Hamburg.
Report by Albert Walter, 16.6.1931, 534/5/220, 176–190, rgaspi.
Leo [Pechmann] to “Werte Genossen,” 5.9.1932, 534/4/405, 44–45, rgaspi.
Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer, 101.
Minutes 20.6.1934, Richard Jensen personal file, kv 2/2158, tna; Schedule of the Principal Revolutionary Organisations Controlled by Moscow (end 1935), 20.4.1936, International Organisations of Communist Parties, kv 3/128, tna. See also the notes on persons working for the rilu Berlin Bureau: Leow Smolianski, alias Pechmann, using the pseudonym ‘Leow’, [Handling iva.] Komintern. Schematisk uppställning av organisationen och dess underavdelningar, odaterad rapport [filed 20.12.1941], 12, säpo Äldre Aktsystemet, iv A 2 – iv A 4, volym 169, sna. It is likely that this is a translation of a German document.
Protokoll Nr 82 der Sitzung der Politischen Kommission des ekki vom 20.9.1930, 495/5/52, § 3, rgaspi.
Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer, 79, 266.
Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer, 79.
See the personal files of Adolf Deter, 495/205/188 and 495/205/5434, rgaspi, as well as the note on Adolf Deter alias André in [Handling iva.] Komintern. Schematisk uppställning av organisationen och dess underavdelningar, odaterad rapport [filed 20.12.1941], 12, säpo Äldre Aktsystemet, iv A 2 – iv A 4, volym 169, sna. Also the entry on Gustav Adolf Deter in Buckmiller and Meschkat (eds.), Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale.
Adolf and André to “Komfraktion des Vollzugsbüro der rgi,” 26.10.1934, 534/5/241, 253–266, rgaspi.
Leo and Rudolf to “Liebe Freunde,” 6.12.1933, 534/4/460, 237–241, rgaspi.
Die Internationale der Seeleute und Hafenarbeiter. ish, überreicht im September 1937, ek-Valpo amp i l 1 (2404), fna. The German compilation of the organisation was also received by the Swedish security authorities, which shows that the German security authorities were keen to warn their Nordic counterparts of the communists’ agitation among the seafarers and to call for coordinated activities against the alleged terrorist network, see Die Internationale der Seeleute und Hafenarbeiter. ish, überreicht im September 1937, and the translated version of the report, Översättning från tyska. Sjömännens och hamnarbetarnas international. ish. Överlämnat i september 1937, svensk översättning 1947, Interklubb och Röd Marin, Pärm 4, 476–500, säpo Äldre Aktsystemet Volym 295 viii C 3, sna.
Rajmund Szubanski, Sabotage Operations of the Prewar Anti-fascist League, translation of the article “Ships are Sinking” in the Polish periodical Morze No. 3, March 1960, Warsaw, page 7, U.S. Joint Publications Research Service, New York, no date.
The first critical analysis on the operations of the Wollweber-organisation in Scandinavia as well as its non-linkage to the ish is established in Lars Borgersrud, Wollweber-organisasjonen i Norge, PhD thesis, Oslo University, 1994. Originally, the Norwegian state police classified part of the original thesis. Twenty years later, Borgersrud received permission to publish the whole thesis, now available at
Behrends, Betrifft Internationale der Seeleute und Hafenarbeiter, Berlin 20.8.1936, 458/9/135, 56–57, rgaspi.
“Valtin, Jan (Krebs, Richard),” in Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 bis 1945, eds. Hermann Weber and Andreas Herbst (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 2008), 963.
Dieter Nelles, “Die Rehabilitation eines Gestapo-Agenten: Richard Krebs/Jan Valtin,” Sozial.Geschichte 18, no. 3 (2003): 148–158.
Jan Valtin, Out of the Night (New York: Alliance Book Corporation, 1941).
Günther Nollau, International Communism and World Revolution: History & Methods (New York: Praeger, 1961); Michael Rohrwasser, Der Stalinismus und die Renegaten. Die Literatur der Exkommunisten (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991). See further John V. Fleming, The Anti-Communist Manifestos. Four books that shaped the Cold War (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).
Richard Jensen, Frem i lyset. Jan Valtin Gestapo Agent Nr. 51 (Copenhagen: Prior, 1946); Richard Jensen, En omtumlet tilværelse (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1957), 107. Similar claims were also presented in Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia (New York: Boni and Gaer, 1946), 126–127.
Erik Nørgaard, Revolutionen der udeblev. Kominterns virksomhed med Ernst Wollweber og Richard Jensen i forgrunden (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1975); Erik Nørgaard, Drømmen om verdensrevolutionen: Komintern og de revolutionære søfolk (Lynge: Bogan, 1985); Erik Nørgaard, Truslen om krig. Komintern, Folkefront og 5. Kolonne (Lynge: Bogan, 1985); Erik Nørgaard, Krigen før krigen. Wollweber-organisationen og skibssabotagerne (Lynge: Bogan, 1986); and Erik Nørgaard, Krig og slutspil. Gestapo og dansk politi mod Kominterns »bombefolk« (Lynge: Bogan, 1986).
Per Madsen, “Nøytralitet og ettergivenhet,” Tidsskrift for arbeiderbevegelsens historie 2 (1982): 121–136.
Dieter Nelles, “Jan Valtins >>Tagebuch der Hölle<< – Legende und Wirklichkeit eines Schlüsselromans der Totalitarismustheorie,” 1999 Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 9, no. 1 (1994): 11–45.
Ernst von Waldenfels, Der Spion der aus Deutschland kam. Das geheime Leben des Seemanns Richard Krebs (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 2002).
Nelles, “Die Rehabilitation eines Gestapo-Agenten.”
Borgersrud, Wollweber-organisasjonen; Guillaume Bourgeois, ’Sans patrie ni frontières de Jan Valtin: l’affaire de presse et le secret bien gardé des services spéciaux’, Le temps des médias 16, no. 1 (2011): 19–51.
Pedersen, The Communist Party on the American Waterfront, xiii.
Margain, L’Internationale des gens de la mer.
cic (Army Counter Intelligence Corps) fo 10501 Report R-G44-50, 2, rg 319 irr, Personal File; Box 124 bb, National Archive (USA).
[Handling iva.] Komintern. Schematisk uppställning av organisationen och dess underavdelningar, odaterad rapport [registrerad 20.12.1941], 16, säpo Äldre Aktsystemet, iv A 2 – iv A 4, volym 169, sna.
See further, among others, Diane Frost (ed.), Ethnic Labour and British Imperial Trade: A History of Ethnic Seafarers in the UK (London: Routledge, 1995); Gopalan Balachandran, Globalising Labour? Indian Seafarers and World Shipping, 1870–1945 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).
See further the general observations in Marcel van der Linden, Transnational Labour History: Explorations (Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Ashgate, 2003); Jan van Lucassen (ed.), Global Labour History: A State of the Art (Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2006); Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Andreas Bieler and Ingemar Lindberg (eds.), Global Restructuring, Labour and the Challenges for Transnational Solidarity (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
See further Alice Mah, Port Cities and Global Legacies: Urban Identity, Waterfront Work, and Radicalism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).
See further Sam Davies, Colin J. Davies, David de Vries, Lex Heerma van Voss, Lidewij Hesselink and Klaus Weinhauer (eds.), Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790 – 1970, 2 vols. (Aldershot: Ashgate 2000). Also Heather Goodall, “Port Politics: Indian Seamen, Australian Unions and Indonesian Independence, 1945–47,” Labour History 94 (2008): 43–68; Lynn Schler, “Transnationalism and nationalism in the Nigerian Seamen’s Union,” African Identities 7, no. 3 (2009): 387–398.
For a general outline, see Marcel van der Linden, “Trade Unions,” in Handbook Global History of Work, eds. Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), 551–570.
David Featherstone, “The spatial politics of the past unbound: transnational networks and the making of political identities,” Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 7, no. 4 (2007): 430–452; Jonathan Hyslop, “The Politics of Disembarkation: Empire, Shipping and Labor in the Port of Durban, 1897–1947,” International Labor and Working-Class History 93 (2018): 176–200.