Chapter Eleven

 

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA, 1864–1876), was also known as the First International. It served to unite a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade unions that grew out of the struggles of the working class. In Europe there had been a backlash from the ruling class to the widespread Revolutions of 1848. The next major revolutionary activity began nearly twenty years later, when the International Working Men’s Association was founded in 1864 at a meeting that took place in Saint Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.

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