May Day is a symbol of working class solidarity and unity. It is a celebration of the power of a working class united. The First of May is the day when the workers affirms the unity of their class across all boundaries. We stand in solidarity with all workers who of late are suffering from the draconian changes in labour laws which legitimise their violation and empower the employers to hire and fire at will; where employment conditions have become victim of out-sourcing and casualisation; while pension, state and occupational, are reduced and become more restrictive.
May Day is the international day of the working class. Workers have no country; neither motherland or fatherland to defend or die for. Workers around the world, wherever we live and work have the same interests. We have but one enemy - the capitalist class. All over the world workers are becoming aware of the need to confront capitalism. As the international struggle against capitalism grows and intensifies, it is our hope that the socialist spirit of these struggles develops and deepens. The workers' movement can only defend its interests for as long as the members control it from the bottom-up, democratically. In order to spread strong roots the workers' movement cannot be instituted from the top-down, and cannot have leaders.
May Day originally started out as a global general strike to commemorate labour organisers executed in the United States in 1887. For revolutionaries and workers everywhere, Haymarket became a symbol of the struggle for a new world. In Paris in 1889 the founding congress of the Second International declared May 1st an international working class holiday in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference called on all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May 1st for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. The congress made it mandatory upon the proletarian organisations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.
As he mounted the scaffold, August Spies declared: "if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement – the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery –the wage slaves – expect salvation – if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out."
In the spirit of the Haymarket Martyrs let us not be fooled by the empty promises of the bosses and bureaucrats, let us instead depend upon the solidarity of a united working-class, awakened to class consciousness, and dedicated to creating a socialist future. May Day cannot be about just paying homage to the past days. May Day in recent years has been but a faint memory of times long since gone by. The ideals of those times were nearly dead and forgotten by the movement. But now the Arab Spring and its struggles for democracy, the international resurgence of mass workers' protest against capitalist austerity cuts and the global rise of the Occupy Movement's rsistance bring re-newed hope. The working class will be observing May Day this year with more confidence and commitment to carry on the struggle against capitalist exploitation.
Let's make every day May Day!
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