From
the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard
‘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 faras 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
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/06/may-day-and-class-struggle-1958.html
