Founded in 1905, the IWW attempted to gather together some of the most radical currents in the American labour movement, ranging from the militant Western Federation of Miners under the leadership of "Big Bill" Haywood, to anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, to Eugene V. Debs and his Socialist Party of America.

The MTWIU created a point of contact between the continentally-based IWW and radical sailors and dockworkers in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

[1] Returning to England from Australia, the famous English trade unionist Tom Mann helped to found a general union for industrial workers in South Africa in 1910.

[2] Though he made concessions to the rights of native South African peoples, the resulting organization was aimed primarily at white workers, something for which Mann would be heavily criticized.

Some accounts characterize this as a purge perpetrated by a faction led by Archie Crawford, the editor of Johannesburg's left-wing Voice of Labour newspaper.

The South African government targeted IWW leadership by deporting Crawford and many other socialists and prominent figures in the workers' movement in 1914, as well as blacklisting many others.

By 1922, the IWW had completely disappeared from South Africa as an organization, but its ideas and methods would be adopted by a number of different groups with varying agendas and political positions.

DeLeonist factions also tried to start a new organization along the lines of the Workers' International Industrial Union (WIIU, itself a splinter from the original IWW), but were crushed by the South African government despite having the vocal support from Zulu nationalists and anti-apartheid groups.

The ISL gained prominence as the First World War came to a close, and deepened ties between the coastal, largely white syndicalist movement, and native South Africans.

In response, the South African government would accuse three prominent IWA leaders of "incitement to public violence", resulting in two of them, Rueben Cetiwe and Hamilton Kraai, losing their jobs.

[4] Quickly spreading to modern-day Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Zambia, the ICU adopted a preamble similar to the IWW's and presented the One Big Union concept as its model for the reorganization of southern African society.

Despite this moderate turn, the ICU would be severely repressed by the South African government and its loose organizational structure led to an unaccountable, corrupt leadership.