May Day: from workers’ protest to bank holiday
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May 1st used to be a protest day for the workers. The giant May Day marches of workers in capital cities of communist countries or nations like France or Italy, where communist parties were strong, was a feature of 20th century TV news. Its origins go back to pagan times, with the arrival of summer and fields soon full of fruit and vegetables. Ironically May Day made its way into the global socialist calendar from capitalist America.
In Chicago on May 4th 1886, in the midst of a general strike, there was a rally for the 8-hour day. (Today that is a distant dream for delivery workers on zero hours contracts, or their better paid management consultant and corporate lawyer comrades, toiling past midnight on behalf of the masters of the global economy.) In Chicago Pinkerton security guards had been busy breaking a strike at a farm machinery factory. Anger rose, there was a march and someone threw a bomb which killed four demonstrators. The police reacted violently and seven officers were also killed. Eight “Chicago martyrs” were sentenced to death on dubious grounds: four were hanged, one committed suicide and the remaining three had their sentences commuted. This Haymarket affair was a key moment in US labour history and annual marches took place on May Day thereafter.
Following the US example, in 1904 the Socialist International declared May 1st to be the workers’ holiday. After the Russian revolution in 1917 it was adopted in the Soviet Union and by communist trade unions everywhere. Hitler smartly followed suit. Like the far-Right today, he pretended to be on the side of the workers – the term “workers’ party” was after all in the title of the Nazi movement. And so in 1933 Germany was the first major European state to make May Day a public holiday.
After 1945, and the rise of social democracy and social partnership, most European countries declared May 1st a holiday. I took part in a May Day rally in the centre of Geneva on May 1st 1988 with my one-year old daughter on my shoulders.
A woman about my age today came up and said that in 1920 her socialist papa had carried her on his shoulders in the first May Day demonstration in Switzerland after World War 1. May Day, however, is still not a public holiday in Switzerland. Even in the communist USSR it was not a holiday: the last thing Stalin wanted was to alert Soviet citizens to the idea of workers’ rights and independent trade unions as a good thing.
Similarly in communist China there is a week long national holiday around May 1st, but as in other communist states such as Vietnam and North Korea, no-one is permitted to commemorate workers’ movements that oppose cruel regimes and tyrannical bosses all appointed by the ruling one-party state.
British trade unionists only got their May Day holiday in 1978 as a gift by the Labour government. By then the Prime Minister was Jim Callaghan, but it was Harold Wilson who pushed through the idea of a May Day Bank Holiday. It had long been a demand of the TUC and its affiliated unions, but no-one took much notice. Most trade unions had called for a No vote in the 1975 referendum which voted to stay in Europe. After the two elections of 1974, Wilson was asking unions to accept unpopular pay control and accept a European future for Britain which they had opposed. To sweeten the pill he offered them a workers’ holiday on May 1st.
As the then youngest ever president of the National Union of Journalists I sat on the TUC’s regional committee for London and the South East, which was asked for its view on when Wilson’s May Day holiday should be celebrated.
As a 1968 generation leftie I liked the idea of British trade unionists joining with their continental brothers and sisters. I envisaged them filling the town squares of Britain with rallies of workers, waving red flags and shouting abuse at the bosses and the Tories. Alas for my juvenile leftism, my fellow delegates on the TUC regional council — leaders of car-workers, dockers, transport workers, miners from Kent and shipyard workers along the Thames — weren’t interested.
They were happy to have a day off but wanted it on the first Monday after May Day to guarantee a long weekend off for their members. In vain I protested that it was a moment for British workers to show solidarity with workers’ struggles worldwide. They looked kindly on my youthful socialist enthusiasm and just ignored me. They knew what the workers wanted – an extra day off which would be permanent, not lost whenever May 1st fell on a Saturday or Sunday.
So that’s why we will have a day off on Monday, not today. The following year, 1979, a large proportion of the British working class voted for Margaret Thatcher. Tomorrow we will find out if this May Day workers are supporting the latest iteration of the Labour Party at the ballot box.
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