From Unity to Crisis: The International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU) and the Decline of Pan-Arabism, 1963-1979

Established in 1956 by trade union organisations in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU) constituted the first pan-Arab labour organisation. The ICATU aimed to develop a transnational network of labour cooperation among Arab states while supporting Nasserist pan-Arab ambitions in North Africa and the Middle East. Drawing on archival sources and trade union periodicals, this article provides an analysis of the activities of the ICATU from the early 1960s and discusses the development of pan-Arab trade unionism in the light of the evolution of Nasser’s regional leadership. The article argues that the expansion of its membership to Maghreb trade unions — in particular, in Morocco and Algeria — laid the foundations for a change in the organisation’s internal balance. This trend, fuelled by the 1967 war and Nasser’s death, led to the complete decline of Egyptian predominance in the organisation by the end of the 1970s.