May Day demonstrations used to be held on the 1st of May: how they came to be changed to the first Sunday in May is one of life’s little ironies, or should we say one of working class life’s little ironies?
It happened during the first World War when the British and German sections of the working class were killing each other. Then the British Government suggested that in the interests of winning the war it would be greatly obliged if the Labour Party, who were also "winning the war” as well as organising May Day, would hold it on the first Sunday in May. To hold it on a week day would mean thousands of workers might be absent from munition factories and that would mean a drop in war production and what was more vital it would mean a drop in the rate at which the British uniformed workers were killing their German comrades.
It always rains on Sunday
After the first World War the Labour Party, presumably on the grounds that a week day demonstration would affect “peace production,” continued to hold May Day demonstrations on the first Sunday in May. There were also “influential people” who thought that if workers wanted to demonstrate they should demonstrate in their own time and not on a day normally devoted to the bosses. And further, as it could be shown statistically that the first May Sabbath was a case—”That it always rains on Sunday" — or nearly always, and so was likely to dampen the demonstrators’ ardour, everybody that is everybody apart from the workers seems to have reached a happy May Day solution.
The First of the May Days
There are, of course, four May Days historically considered. Two in the past, one in the present, and a hypothetical one in the future. May Days go back a long way, even the Greeks had a word for it, or more accurately a day for it. So did the Romans, Mais was a month of celebration, games and feasting a time when even austere Romans like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony took their hair down.
In Feudal England it was a day of celebration for the return of spring. On that day our forbears consumed quantities of cake and ale and made whoopee. It was sort of “Knees up Mother Brown” of the Middle Ages, and when the warmth of the day had subsided the young men full of cake and ale picked up the young women, also full of cake and ale, and bore them off into the woods, and a new warmth entered into the proceedings. It is even said, and I hope that I do our forbears no injustice that the girls entered the woods as immature maidens and came out of the woods experienced women. It seems that our working forefathers had more definite ideas about May Day than their modern counterparts.
Exit file First May Day
But Feudalism went and those sorts of May Days went with it—as a result of economic development a new class was emerging who were displacing the old Feudal order, a class of merchants and merchant adventurers who burst asunder the dosed Feudal economy and opened up the world. And what with piracy and plunder and the slave trade and colonisation they were so busy amassing vast wealth that they had little time for anything else, least of all for such things as May Days.
But the peasants and draftsmen of England not only lost their May Days, but their immemorial rights. The Land Enclosure increased in severity—as the 17th and 18th centuries went by a vast mass of peasants became landless and in some cases homeless. At the same time economic development led to a bitter, competitive struggle between the old craft guilds and the new merchant class and in the end the guilds went down in ruins before the impact of a new and superior method of wealth production and organisation.
Thus at the end of the 18th century and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a landless, unprivileged and unorganised mass were hungry to enter the new factories built by the new factory owners, i.e. the new ruling class which had emerged from this process of economic development. And these new factory owners equally hungry from the standpoint of profits to receive them into their factories. It was this uncouth, unorganised mass who were the nucleus and origin of the modern working class, yet an unorganised mass who were to become organised by the very process of production. And as the weight of misery and oppression bore more heavily upon their shoulders they were involved in the riots and machine breaking and other acts of violence. From this class struggle between owners and non-owners, the workers began to throw up their own class organs of defence, which later emerged as the modern Trade Union Movement.
The Second May Day
It was out of this class struggle that the idea of a second May Day emerged. Not a May Day merely symbolical of a resurgence of nature, but of labour carrying a promise of a new life. The idea was mooted in France, Germany and England during the 19th century for by this time capitalism had become international and the working class had become international also, and it was felt by groups of workers in different lands that as they had common interests they should also have common aims.
Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May to be a day symbolical of international working class solidarity, with an advocacy of the eight-hour day. The first May Day Demonstration was in 1890. On that and subsequent May Days, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen, Germans, Frenchmen, marched in the name of the International working class in different parts of the world, transcending their national boundaries.
In England on May Day, workers marched in various towns and cities and often many of their women marched with them. They marched to the open spaces and parks and those who lived by the sweat of their brow gathered round coal carts and platforms to listen to those who lived or were later to live by the sweat of their tongues.
Workers of the World unite
It was the high tide of working class international feeling. A time when Marx's slogan, “workers of the world unite” seemed to have more significance than ever before—or since. These workers were not Socialists; perhaps the nearest they got to Socialism was a passionate conviction to remould things nearer to the heart's desire, but they felt a common purpose in face of a common enemy. But this promised spring-time of the working class movement never flowered. The early blush on its cheek, faded before the long, hard winter of growing national sentiment and reformism.
By the turn of the 20th century a change had come o'er the spirit of the dream. The workers still marched, they still gathered round the same coal carts and still listened to the same old speakers. But the old speakers were now saying new things. No longer did they cry, down with the powers that be, for they were trying to start a political movement with the help of the trade unions which hoped to become part of the powers that be and in fact did become part of them—eventually what is more, some of the old agitators and speakers who boasted of their lowly origins successfully took part in that process. So successfully that in their ripe, or rotten ripe old age they recorded their success by writing books like “From Doss House to Debrett" or “From Pigstyle to Parliament," a perhaps not unnatural evolution.
Excelsior!
And so the Labour movement began to carry banners bearing strange signs. There were some in it demanding votes for women. Demands for the nationalisation of the Railways and Mines. Munidpalisation of gas, water and later electricity. The fact that these things came about has little to do with the early demands of the Labour Movement, but for other reasons. There was even a demand for the building of Labour Exchanges.
These things were now represented as being steps towards what was then termed the Millenium. The only trouble was that the more steps they took towards the Millenium the further it got away. In fact, they took so many steps towards it that it finally disappeared altogether and has never been seen since.
Freedom for Everybody
At the beginning of the 20th century there appeared the first of the Freedoms. Big banners proclaimed: "Freedom for the Boers." In due course the Boers got their freedom, but like so many such freedoms it turned out to be the freedom of the few to deny any sort of freedom to anybody else. Then there were demands for freedom for the Poles, freedom for the Slavs, etc., in fact, the only thing the workers never demanded was freedom for themselves, freedom from the servility of class domination.
Then the Labour Movement got mixed up with international politics, but international capitalist politics not international working class politics. They began by declaiming against "secret diplomacy." Then the Entente Cordiale. They demanded "No trafficking with Russia” against "The Big Navy Bill,” "Abolition of the Territorial Army,” etc.
So the Labour Movement, and with it May Days, instead of being the sounding board of international working class sentiment, became a big drum for national rivalries and conflicting foreign politics. A sort of Empire Day in reverse, but much more effective in compounding, confounding, complicating and obfuscating the pattern of working class politics.
After the war, with the advent of the communists in May Day demonstrations and other activities, British Foreign Policy got mixed up with Soviet Foreign Policy and things got in a glorious muddle. Then the communists started the "Hands off Movement" " Hands off China," "Hands off Spain," "Hands off Czechoslovakia," etc., although this did not prevent violent hands from being laid on all of these countries. Then there was the great down and up phase: "Down with Bonar Law," "Down with Baldwin,” "Up with Ramsay Mac and Snowden. “Down with Ramsay Mac and Snowden,” "Up with Cook and Maxton," "Down with Cook and Maxton,” "Down with Churchill," " Up with Churchill," then "Down with Churchill ”—ad infinitum.
Down with Fascism
Then in the years prior to the second world war there was “Down with Fascism" and a demand for a democratic military alliance against Hitler—Russia was then part of the " democratic alliance.” To show how May Days were only consistent in their inconsistency there were at the same time demands for drastic disarmament by the Tory government and devoting the savings to road making and increased doles. There were even demands that future wars should be conducted minus bombers and tanks. Although in demonstrations during the second world war unlimited quantities of both for the Second Front were the subject of slogans.
Now there are no longer cries, such as “ Down with capitalism—" Down with war." Nor even that tanks and aeroplanes should not be used in war. Only the Hydrogen Bomb should be taken off the war list so that war might once again become humane, decent and friendly. Such then has been the rise and fall of the second May Day.
May Day in Russia
One cannot, of course, omit May Day in Russia. No doubt the communists' dialectic skill has more than anywhere else turned May Day into its opposite. The communist boast that Soviet May Days are bigger and better than anywhere else. Unlike any other government they have made them state subsidised ceremonies, replete with the panoply and pomp of circumstance. As a show they probably make even a coronation look like a seaside carnival. All the great ones in Russia occupy the seats of the mighty on this day—symbolical of international working class solidarity. In Czarist times the police and military marched with the workers, but they were only with them, not of them. Now under the formulae of the unity of opposites they are included.
Tanks and jet bombers are also thrown in to show that communist war weapons can kill quicker and faster than bourgeois ones, thus demonstrating the superiority of "Socialism" over capitalism. And perhaps if Engels could have seen these Soviet May Days he might have thought that his aphorism—"the irony of history turns everything upside down," was an historic understatement.
To draw an historic parallel, one might think of the British Government in the 19th century organising the workers' May Day. Of thousands of workers with banners headed by old Queen Victoria in the gilded state coach and as they wheeled into the park massed bands of the guard playing with a row tow row tow to the British Grenadiers. And Gladstone, Disraeli and choice spirits from the House of Lords standing on coal carts with faces grimed for the occasion, proclaiming "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your brains." Only the communists could turn such a May Day fantasy, into a Russian May Day nightmare.
No doubt in turning back the pages of May Day demonstrations we might laugh at our Victorian working class grandfathers. We tend to laugh at many things in the past especially the Victorian past if only perhaps to prevent us from laughing at ourselves, because that might not be so funny. Whether if they could' see across the years to the present May Day demonstrations they would "look forward in anger” one cannot say. But one feels whatever they did they wouldn’t laugh at us but blush for us instead.
May Days of To-morrow
It might be that when the clock of history has gone forward by establishing a rational society we might so far as May Day is concerned put the clock back and make it once more a day of celebration and merry making. Then there will be no need to demonstrate. No need to cry “Down with secret diplomacy,” because there will be neither secrets nor diplomacy. Nor to call for disarmament, because there will be no need to arm or disarm Neither shall we organise for the abolition of the Hydrogen Bomb because it, or a miniature specimen of it, will have been relegated to the museum of pre-human history. Men will at last have become truly human, and in the light of that development I will conclude by saying—MAY DAY IS DEAD—LONG LIVE MAY DAY.
Ted Wilmott.
Blogger's Notes:
"Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May . . . " This might be a typo. The 2nd International wasn't formally launched until 1889.
The May 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard carries a notice for a May Day meeting, entitled "The Class Struggle and May Day", to be held at Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. The speakers listed were Lisa Bryan and Ted Wilmott. There's a strong chance that this article by Wilmott is the text of his speech at that meeting.
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