ANTI-FASCIST WIVES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 161, 10 July 1945, Page 3

ANTI-FASCIST WIVES

TRADE UNION LEAGUE

FORMATION (N ITALY

In Life and Labour Bulletin from America comes the message .that recently a Women's Trade Union League was formed in Rome. It reminded the officials of Washington of the First International Congress of Working Women, held in Washington, D.C. in 1919—because "cooperation with trade union women of other countries" has always been a working part of the platform of the National Women's Trade Union League in America through the years.

At the 1919 convention of the League in Philadelphia the British Labour leader, Mary Mac Arthur, said: "I am not quite sure whether the Women's Trade Union League of England is your grandmother or your granddaughter, because the idea of the league first came from America. It was founded by a printing woman because of her visit to America, and later your league was the outcome of our league."

And now, in war-torn Italy, women have proved again their capacity for leadership, and their realisation that all women must support one another, that trade union women need the help of other women in finding their place as citizens of the country, while other women will, in turn, benefit by the special contribution the trade union women can make as citizens. The membership of the Rome Women's Trade Union League consists of wives and widows of men who were anti-Fascists and were prominent in the resistance movement.

The spade-work of this new league arose out of the interest aroused.-in Italy by the joint delegation representing the American Federation of Labour and the British Trade Union Congress which was sent to Italy last year to aid the rebuilding and maintenance of a democratic trade union movement in that country. Talks to the women by. two leaders (men) in the delegation resulted in the formation of this league. "