A DAY TO REMEMBER.

      November 11 a day for remembering those who gave so much, a day to recall November 11 1887 the day the American state murdered five comrades now known world wide as the Haymarket Martyrs. Let's keep their names alive and the ideas that brought the state to kill them.

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MAY DAY, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

         Glasgow's “Official” May Day march was a well attended and colourful affair, if a rather short journey from George Square to the Concert Hall at the top of Buchanan Street. As the party faithful filed into the hall to listen to their “leaders” spout their usual party line, the Anarchists and Wobblies reformed and set off on a colourful parade through the city centre to the pedestrian precinct in Argyle Street. The parade was lead by a wonderful contraption made from two bikes joined side-by-side with a sound system in the middle and festooned with lots of red and black balloons. Lots of literature was handed out on route and at the stall set up in Argyle Street where there was free vegan cakes on offer.

         It is sad that so few celebrate this marking of all that is wonderful in working class hopes and dreams. I suppose even fewer know where it all started.

This from UFCW Voice for Working America:

       The fight for the eight-hour workday began in earnest in the United States, over a century ago, when the American Federation of Labor adopted an historic resolution asserting that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1st, 1886." Up until that time, working people were routinely required to work 10 to 16 hours a day, 6 days a week! In the months prior to May 1st, 1886, American workers in the hundreds of thousands were drawn into the struggle for the shorter day. Skilled and unskilled, black and white, men and women, native-born and immigrant - all became involved.

       In Chicago alone 400,000 were out on strike for the shorter workday. A newspaper of that city reported that "…no smoke curled up from the tall chimneys of the factories and mills, and things had assumed a Sabbath-like appearance." On May 3, 1886, peaceful public demonstrations by the strikers precipitated violent police retaliation, resulting in the death of at least one striker, and serious injury to many more.

The next day in Haymarket Square a public meeting was held to protest the brutal assaults on the demonstrating strikers. The crowd was orderly, and Chicago mayor Carter Harrison advised the police captain to send home the large contingent of police reservists who were waiting at the stationhouse in case they were needed for crowd control.

         By ten o'clock that rainy evening the meeting was winding down and only about 200 of the demonstrators remained in the Square. Suddenly, a police column of 180 men, led by the police captain, moved in and ordered the people to disperse immediately. At that moment, the peaceful assembly became violent - a bomb was thrown into the police ranks, killing one policeman outright, fatally wounding six more, and seriously injuring about seventy. The police opened fire into the crowd; the number of wounded and killed has never been ascertained.

         A reign of terror swept over Chicago. The press and the pulpit called for revenge, insisting the bomb was the work of socialists and anarchists. Meeting halls, union offices, printing works, and private homes were raided, and known socialists and anarchists were rounded up. Even many individuals who had no connections at all to the socialists or anarchists were arrested and tortured. "Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards," was the public statement of Julius Grinnell, the state's attorney.

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A REMINDER.

Just a wee reminder that tomorrow ios MAY DAY, family fun day, workers day, our day.See HERE.

This from The Freedom Socialists.

May Day 2011:

A tribute to modern-day Haymarket heroes and heroines.

    On this day, amid spiraling resistance around the world, we pay respects to struggles that gave birth to May Day as an international workingclass holiday 125 years ago in Chicago, Illinois. The fight for the eight-hour day, led by anarchists and socialists, was gaining steam. In an attempt to destroy the movement, police provocateurs threw a bomb at a peaceful labor rally in Haymarket Square. Eight radical leaders were charged with murder, and four were hung. A defiant August Spies exclaimed before his execution:

    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 in want and misery expect salvation--if that is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there and there, behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.

The Freedom Socialist Party offers its gratitude to the Haymarket Martyrs and those who tried to save them, such as Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, the widow of Albert Parsons. She spent the rest of her life building
international recognition for her fallen comrades, while also speaking out as an ardent Chicana feminist and antiracist agitator. These early radicals were principled internationalists. Albert Parsons dismissed bigots who derided his Haymarket brothers for being "foreigners":

     My patriotism covers more than the boundary lines of a single state; the world is my country, all mankind my countrymen. That is what the emblem of the red flag signifies; it is the symbol of the free, of emancipated labor.

       Today, the Haymarket rebels' vision of international class solidarity is alive and growing. This was dramatically clear when democracy protesters in Egypt and labor activists in Wisconsin carried signs supporting each other's struggles. Both movements have wakened ever-widening revolts. Rebels across North Africa and the Mideast, from Tunisia to Yemen, are exchanging strategies and tactics to foment change. Many workers and students are realizing they need to move beyond replacing corrupt officials at the top. Protests globally are opposing imperialist intervention in Libya. Solidarity with Palestine is rising. Iraqis are demanding that the U.S. get out of their country. The U.S. and its allies are doing everything possible to contain these insurgencies and prevent them from concluding that socialism is the solution. But is this possible in a world where rebellion is reaching the boiling point?

      In the Ukraine this March, female electronics workers who had not been paid for 14 months stormed the bosses' offices and overwhelmed top officials and the police who tried to save them. Throughout March, teachers in Honduras held massive demonstrations against privatization of schools that sparked a general strike against austerity measures. For several weeks in April, thousands of Bolivian workers, farmers and students protested neoliberal economic policies. Miners expressed their discontent by throwing dynamite and battling police in the capitol of La Paz.

In the U.S., outrage is mounting over the criminal slashing of needed social services and jobs by both Democrats and Republicans. Radical voices are calling for a new political party, one that will represent workers' interests and make the bosses pay for their crisis.

The Freedom Socialist Party offers solidarity to modern-day Haymarket heroes and heroines across the globe. This is a crucial time for those on the left to work together in united front efforts to challenge capitalist rulers and create revolutionary change. Together, we will prevail!      May 1, 2011

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MAY DAY -- WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Glasgow's Glorious May Day celebrations, this Sunday.

Now more than ever we have to show solidarity, we have to come together to defend our standard of living. May Day this year is an ideal opportunity to show your solidarity with  all the ordinary people of this country and across the world, to lay down a marker, as the pampered parasite class make a savage grasp to capitalise everything in sight to save their spiv friends, the bond merchants, from carrying their own gambling debts. We are expected to pay the gamblers for their greed and stand by while they privatise everything they can lay their sweaty palms on that can make them money. It is their world -- or it is our world, you can decide.

        MAY DAY, WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

       May Day, Labour Day, Workers Day, our day, a day when we the ordinary people of the world can celebrate the heroes from our ranks. Paying homage to the men and women who dedicated their lives to the cause of working class emancipation. People who sought nothing for themselves, many dying for their beliefs, individuals that sometimes stood like a colossus astride the political scene, others that worked tirelessly in the shadows, all for the greater good of all peoples, not more for themselves. Their statues, their plaques are no where to be seen, the establishment has them airbrushed out of history. Instead, the powers that be litter our public squares and parks with grandiose statues of arrogant warmongers, empire builders, kings of industry, rich merchants, all who made a fortune on the back of slave and/or cheap labour or the bloodshed of ordinary people. The establishment wants us to forget our heroes, no statues, no plaques, we mustn’t be allowed to think that fighting for the betterment of ordinary people is a worth while cause, much better to try to convince us that it is more honourable to be a self-centred arrogant pursuer of power and wealth at the expense of others. We mustn’t let this happen, we have to keep alive the names and deeds of that legion of men and women who dedicated their lives to our future well being and that of our kids.

The Haymarket Martyrs

        MAY 1st. Must always be a festive day, a day of celebration and pride, a day when we can all come together and wave our banners, party, and remember those names and deeds. A day to revive that spirit of co-operation in struggle and hopefully push our cause to a higher plain. Always on May 1st. not some conveniently arranged employer/union date, the nearest Monday, so as not to upset their production. It is our day, always claim it as a day of family fun, festivities and remembrance, a day of hope for the future of all the ordinary peoples of the world. Glasgow, like most cities, is fortunate in having its own legion of working class fighters, a legion that stretches back through the industrial age and beyond. To pick a few at random, names like George Barrett, Tom Anderson, John MacLean, Helen Crawfurd, Guy Aldred, Ethel MacDonald, Jenny Patrick, William McDougal --- and the names go on and on and on, events such as, The Cotton Spinners strike, the rent strikes, the first world war peace movement, the 1919, 40 hour week strike, etc, etc, etc. All names and events to be justly proud of but difficult to find recorded, all the more need to celebrate MAY DAY and keep alive that part of our history, our culture.

          Take to the streets this MAY DAY, bring the family, bring colour, bring music, bring what you expect to find, bring the spirit of the working class, have fun, remember why we are there, be proud and strengthen your resolve to do more to push the cause of co-operation in struggle with all our people. Keep alive the names and deeds of our past, not those of a corrupt, brutal, exploitative system. Keep alive the dream of a society of free association, voluntary co-operation, and mutual aid, a system of seeing to needs and not to the greed of the few bloated pampered parasites.

 

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