International Working People's Association

The International Working People's Association (IWPA), sometimes known as the "Black International," was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England. In America the group is best remembered as the political organization uniting Albert Parsons, August Spies, and other anarchist leaders prosecuted in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago.

The slow pace of progress and limited results managed by the Socialist Labor Party of America (organized as the "Workingmen's Party" in 1876) during its first years proved frustrating and demoralizing for many Sections of the organization. Absent of significant electoral success, many Sections of the SLP began to debate the question of armed struggle and to organize paramilitary Lehr-und-Wehr Vereine (Education and Defense Societies). This movement was particularly strong in the tough industrial center of Chicago, populated by a large number of German-speaking immigrants cognizant of the European revolutionary movement and its German-based propaganda literature.

Anarchists and revolutionary socialists (who in the vernacular of the day called themselves "Social Revolutionists") were united by their disdain with electoral politics and piecemeal ameliorative reform. Such tepid changes such as currency reform, civil service reform, state ownership of public works, and reduction of the tariff were dismissed as inconsequential. Only through the application of armed force would revolutionary transformation of American society and economy be possible, some believed. Various independent revolutionary clubs were formed.

In 1881, a congress of anarchist and social revolutionary clubs was held in London, England aiming to establish a new international organization to succeed the International Workingmen's Association, the so-called "First International" dominated by supporters of socialism and from which anarchists headed by Mikhail Bakunin had been expelled. This new organization, the International Working People's Association (later known as the "Black International") was intended to provide rallying point around which various national groups could organize themselves.

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