[2] However, due to World War II, no progress was made until 1946, when the British Printing and Kindred Trades Federation established a committee which drafted a constitution for a merged organisation.

It agreed to operate on a non-political basis, instead focusing on responses to technical developments in the industry, and sharing information on industrial disputes, employment and health and safety standards in each country.

[3] The federation had three boards, covering typography, lithography and bookbinding, and each agreed policies which were put to the body's congress.

An executive committee with fifteen members co-ordinated the federation's activities, while a bureau of the general secretary, president, and four representatives of the country in which the headquarters were located, ran the organisation between executive committee meetings.

[3] The IGF affiliated to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), but its membership was suspended in 1967, as it had permitted the French Federation of Book Workers, a communist union from France, to affiliate.