As opposed to the electoral bourgeois farce on 7th May, the 1st of May and any ensuing weekend has for nearly a century and a half been a time for working class celebration. This encompassing organising, actions, catch ups with friends and comrades, community events and remembering the past with a determined optimistic look to the future. This is particularly the case for us as anarchists.
For those who don’t know, the modern incarnation of May Day began as a day of remembrance in the 1880s. This is the case from the start for fallen anarchist comrades and then over the years, more generally, for workers facing the wrath of the capitalist system.
For in 1887, in reaction to an explosion at an event in Chicago’s Haymarket Square the year before, attended by an enormous number of (40,000) striking workers during an increasingly mass bitter struggle for an eight-hour day, the state used the event as the pretext to sentence comrades of ours to death in cold blood. This was despite no evidence whatsoever having proven a link to the bomb’s manufacture or consequent explosion. The consequent killings which shook the world, took 5 of our comrades’ lives, including 4 who had the death penalty enacted upon them and 1 who committed suicide before they could be hanged. 3 more were convicted before being later pardoned. The funeral procession of the slain was followed by thousands upon thousands of workers. They became known as the “Haymarket Martyrs”.
“There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” (August Spies – often cited as his final and bravely defiant words on the scaffold.)
There have been attempts by some political party and trade union officials in the West to muddy the reasons for celebrating May Day as International Workers’ Day. There have been entire May Day cancellations by governments, including in Spain (particularly Barcelona) in 1937 in order to crush anarchist inspired workers resisting an onslaught upon them in street battles. There have been hideous parades of military might in state capitalist Soviet Eastern Europe on May Day until the 1990s, which continue on to this day in Stalinist states.
In the face of all this, we continue to remember the real origins of this day and look to a time of serious potential challenges to and then emancipation from state and capital. This, a time of resistance and joy. A time when we can really begin to live in harmony with the planet and the incredible other species that inhabit it. A time to end conflicts over resources. A time for internationalism and real solidarity. A time to gain control over our own lives. A time when this system can finally be flushed down the toilet. A time for history to finally begin.
Class struggle anarchists have often taken to the streets and attended events on this important day and weekend for us over the years – at both official labour movement events, where we have ducked and dived the dull stultified atmosphere and ludicrous Mao and Stalin banners, to bring our revolutionary message of emancipation for all. And at unofficial events, where we have danced, celebrated, shared literature, marched and directly challenged those who defend the current, yet in reality, obsolete system of capital and state.
This year as a group, though small in number, following a stall at the Hull Radical Bookfair on 25th April, we will be at events in South Yorkshire (Barnsley, 2nd May) and the Northeast (Gateshead, 4th May) as well as Manchester and Salford. We may yet be at further events too over the May Day weekend?! We will be chatting, celebrating and trying to learn lessons from the past, whilst talking to others about our potential futures.
It is the centenary of the General Strike of 1926 in the UK. Many leftists will be showing degrees of simplistic nostalgia over this. For us, whilst noting some impressive local examples of determined working class unity and direct action at that time; we will point out that this event revealed the hopeless nature of official, capital friendly, trade union perspectives and of those claiming to represent us (the Labour Party and so-called Communist Party at that time but not restricted to them). For in reality, any early enthusiasm or claims of workers potentially having any real power through this event quickly abated as its limited nature became apparent and as it failed to shake the base of the society and profit system in each we live. We need to be honest about this but not despondent.
For our class can still challenge and potentially overcome the present system. Be it through, for example, autonomous networked direct action, strike and community committees, popular assemblies and workers’ councils, or / and novel new bodies that display a development of genuine revolutionary content.
Emancipation and liberation are not guaranteed or in any way inevitable. There is also much despondency currently, many recent defeats, a horrendous international conflict situation and a quietism too often displayed by our class in the social war. However, despite all this, with the mass of resources available to humankind now and for us to thrive (moreover, as well as survive?), they need now be closer than ever.
As such, we wish to convey with hope and a determination based upon real potentials, revolutionary May Day greetings to all friends, comrades and workers throughout the world.
“I am an anarchist: I have no apology to make to a single man, woman or child, because I am an anarchist, because anarchism carries the very germ of liberty in its womb” (Lucy Parsons, anarchist organiser – on both anarchism and on our fallen comrades, murdered in 1887 by the state).
“Does this rising generation know that those who inaugurated the eight-hour day were put to death at the command of capital?”
AnarCom Network 