Syndicalism was one of the great working class movements, which swept the world in the first two decades of the 1900s. Syndicalists rejected the narrow, conservative, craft-based unions which was commonplace at this time, as well as the polite reformist parties which were propping up capitalism in country after country as the system lurched towards the slaughter of World War One.

Syndicalists led or inspired a string of extraordinary mass strikes in the new mass production industries, ranging from Cairo mass transit to the Liverpool docks to the epic 1917 general strike centred in New South Wales.

But though the Syndicalists’ general rejection of “politics” was inspired by revulsion at the reformists who propped up the system, this left them ill-prepared for key political issues which challenged the insurgent working class movement – especially the questions of war and of revolution. This session will draw the lessons from the many strengths, and also fatal weaknesses, of this mighty working class movement.