Decolonizing Labour Internationalism: Shripad Amrit Dange and the World Federation of Trade Unions, 1945–1957

Abstract This article examines how the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) functioned as a contested arena where divergent projects of labour internationalism and decolonization intersected in the mid-twentieth century, with a focus on the Indian communist trade union leader Shripad Amrit Dange (1899–1991). Drawing on the concept of subaltern internationalism, it analyses how Dange, as WFTU vice-president and executive committee member, sought to appropriate the federation as a vehicle for anti-colonial projects, and how his scope for action was shaped by colonial and post-colonial repression, structural inequalities, and Cold War ideological conflicts. Using materials from the WFTU and All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) collections, along with contemporary journals, the article reconstructs three key phases: the 1945 founding conferences; the contested development of a WFTU Colonial Department and a Pan-Asian initiative; and the post-1949 period, when the federation reoriented itself towards a more explicit anti-colonial programme after the split. Methodologically, the article employs a biographical lens to trace how Dange’s reflections on colonial capitalism and the social composition of the Indian working class fed into debates on decolonization within the WFTU, challenged dominant Western notions, and articulated a vision of post-colonial labour internationalism that linked workplace struggles “from below” to institutional measures “from above”, culminating in his interventions at the fourth world congress in Leipzig in 1957.