The song was written by Paddy Ryan (Dr. R. E. W. Fisher) in 1938 and recorded by him, with The Topic Singers on Topic Records TRC1 in 1939. Fisher appears to have been a member of the Unity Theatre at the time and it's quite possible that he wrote the song for a performance by them. The cong is copyright (c) the Workers' Music Association.

Mustrad has a Topic discography here, which shows details of the recording.

Topic Records
1939/40?
TRC1
The Man Who Put The Water In The Workers' Beer (Paddy Ryan; arr Alfred Roberts). Paddy Ryan (of the Unity Theatre) with guitar accomp. CP 889. 1CS0020192.
The Internationale (Degeyter; arr. A. Bush). The Topic Singers & Band cond. Will Sahnow. CP 892.

Internationale 1b / Soviet Fatherland Song (Land of Freedom) TRC 1a

Internationale / Salute to Life (English text by Nancy Head; music by Shostakovitch). Topic Singers & Unity String Orch. Arr. and cond. by Will Sahnow. CP 983. TRC 1c

There appear to have been three versions. On the 2nd record the Internationale was accorded the number 1b whilst on the other 2 records it just gets TRC 1. We think that must be all of the variants. We can guess that they were released in this order from the obvious clues. The Internationale was obviously the most important song in the WMA's repertoire and this was a way of selling the 'hit song' with varying different songs. Thus on TRC 23 'The Internationale' was issued again, this time with 'The Red Flag'.

:-)