After the American AFL dropped out in 1925 the IFTU became a mainly European body with social democratic orientation.

An international meeting of trade unions was held in Bern, Switzerland, February 5-February 9, 1919, after the First World War.

Union representatives from 14 countries took part (United States, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Great Britain, Holland, Luxemburg, Norway, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Czechoslovakia), representing a combined membership of 17.7 million.

However, the AFL delegate Samuel Gompers participated with a mandate from the Pan-American Federation of Labor.

The only major industrial country absent was Italy, whose delegates encountered passport problems.

From Germany and the Netherlands both Social Democratic (GGWD and NVV) and Syndicalist (VDGW and NAS) trade unions participated.

In the election for the first vice-president the German Carl Legien was defeated by the Frenchman Léon Jouhaux.

Following Legien's defeat, the German and Austrian delegations abstained from nominating candidates for the second vice-president.

Jan Oudegeest and fellow Dutchman Edo Fimmen were elected general secretaries.

The socialist profile was important, as in most countries in Europe the IFTU faced communist opposition at the time.

[10] The socialist orientation of IFTU was complicated by the fact that the president, Appleton, came from the non-political camp and had been an ally of Gompers.

At the Rome conference several new members were affiliated to the IFTU, from Greece, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Latvia.

The initiative to hold the conference had come from Edo Fimmen, who represented a radical and anti-militarist position.

In his inaugural speech, Fimmen, stated that any new world war would be confronted by a global general strike.

[12] However, when French troops occupied the Ruhr a month later, the promised general strike did not occur.

The French CGT lost 750 000 members as the communists split and formed a parallel Confédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU).

TUC demanded that the headquarters be shifted away from Amsterdam, that Purcell's mandate be renewed, and that fellow Briton Brown should be elected as the sole general secretary.

However, the IFTU had attracted some new affiliates; in Lithuania, Memel Territory, Argentina (CORA) and South Africa (Industrial and Commercial Workers Union).

[16] In 1928 the Danish vice-president Madsen resigned, and was replaced by fellow Dane Hans Jacobsen.

[21] In 1928, IFTU organized a meeting in Buenos Aires, which formed the short-lived Confederación Obrera Ibero Americana.

Participants at the conference were the Confederación Obrera Argentina and pro-government trade unionists from Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Spain.

[21] In 1934 the Argentine CGT and the National Trades Union Federation from India became a member of IFTU.

[23] As of 1930, the executive board of IFTU consisted of Léon Jouhaux (France), Johannes Sassenbach (Germany) general secretary, Walter Citrine (Britain) president, Walter Schevenels (Belgium), Theodor Leipart (Germany), Rudolf Tayerlé (Czechoslovakia), Corneel Mertens (Belgium) and Hans Jacobsen (Denmark).

[2] Ahead of the 1930 Stockholm congress of IFTU the TUC and ADGB agreed to share the two main positions (presidency and secretariat) between themselves.

Fear of the consequences of the rise of National Socialism in Germany was one of the reasons cited in their argumentation against the move.

[25][26] As a result of the financial crisis and rise of fascism, the bonds between IFTU and the Labour and Socialist International were strengthened.

Paris was selected as the new venue of the IFTU secretariat, which was set up in the CGT office at Avenue d'Orsay.

The congress resolved to turn the existing initiatives of boycotts of German goods into a general blockade.