Workers Federation of Sports

[3][5] The decision to found AIF was taken (with 51 votes against 4) at the third national conference of the Workers' Sports Opposition in Folkets Hus in Oslo on June 8 and 9, 1924.

Harald Liljedahl was elected as chairman of AIF, with 29 votes against 9 for Olaf Thorsen (a communist and executive member of the Red Sport International).

[2] At the AIF national conference of 1926, the communist and trade unionist Oskar Hansen was elected as new chairman with 56 votes against 31 for Rolf Hofmo.

The Winter Spartakiad was however held in Oslo, in a grand fashion, co-organized by AIF and the Red Sport International.

However, the attempts by the Labour Party-wing of AIF to tone down the propagandistic character of the event was severely disliked by the Red Sport International, and the Winter Spartakiad marked a deterioration of the relations between the two bodies.

[2] In the spring of 1929, Ola Brandstorp wrote an article in Den Røde Ungdom where he suggested that AIF would withdraw from the Red Sport International.

[2] The communist sector of AIF began to organize itself an oppositional tendency, and had direct links with the Red Sport International.

[2] During the 1930s, there were several fruitless negotiations with Rød Sport (initiated on behalf of the communist side) regarding unity between the two organizations.

In the end, the issue was settled after direct talks between AIF and the Soviet High Council of Physical Culture in Moscow in 1934.

[2][6] In 1935 the Norwegian government instituted a sports commission, trying to achieve unity between AIF and the bourgeois federation NLI.

[7] During the German occupation of Norway in 1940-1945, erstwhile rivals AIF and NLI joined forces in a sports boycott.