{"id":13319,"date":"2022-05-01T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-01T08:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=13319"},"modified":"2022-04-28T11:04:35","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T10:04:35","slug":"may-day-international-workers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=13319","title":{"rendered":"May Day – International Workers Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

May Day – International Workers Day<\/strong> – May 1st was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day in 1889 by the Second International<\/a> socialists and communists, and adopted by anarchists, labor activists, and leftists in general around the world, to commemorate the 1886 Chicago Haymarket affair and the struggle for an eight-hour working day. It continues to be celebrated in many countries around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Space Hijackers Anarchist Cricket<\/a>, Parliament Square, London, May 1, 2005<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although I tested negative for Covid on Wednesday I’m still short of breath and short of energy, with still a little of a cough and have been strongly advised to take things easy for the next week or two. So I’m not sure if I’ll be out celebrating May Day today, much as I yearn to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Justice for Cleaners<\/a>, Westminster Cathedral, London, May 1, 2006<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before 2000 I was usually unable to celebrate May Day properly as May 1st was usually a normal working day and I went out around 8am and arrived home from work around 5.30pm, usually with more to do at home after an evening meal. Not much time to celebrate International Workers Day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Space Hijackers Police Victory Party<\/a> – Bank, May 1, 2006<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Of course, May Day sometimes fell at the weekend, so I would have been free to take part in events that were taking place, but even in 1999 when it was a Saturday I think I had other things on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Space Hijackers Mayfair Mayfayre<\/a> – May 1st 2008<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were of course May Day related events that I went to most years, but usually these were on the Saturday or Sunday before the early May bank holiday Monday which was introduced by a Labour government in 1978, when they lacked the nerve to make May Day itself a public holiday. We still have that bank holiday despite plans made by Conservative governments under both John Major and David Cameron to replace it by a Trafalgar Day holiday in late October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Rave Against The Machine<\/a> – Leake St, Waterloo, London. Saturday 1 May 2010<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By 2003 I was getting rather blas\u00e9 about the London May Day march, writing “May Day Has perhaps settled into a rather predictable event now. The socialist left – and what is left seems to be a few unions and a number of ethnic communist party groups – march from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar square, while anti-capitalist protesters do not a lot around town<\/em>“, but that didn’t stop me going again to photograph it that year or in 2004, 2005, 2006, and every year until 2019. Covid put an end to the sequence in 2020, but I came out of seclusion for May Day 2021, though perhaps I’ll miss it again today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Anti-Capitalists block Tower Bridge<\/a> – Tower Bridge, London. Fri 1 May 2015<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And I will miss it. Miss the sense of solidarity on the streets. And most of my life I’ve been feeling a loss of what might have been had we ever had a socialist government since my first few years growing up in a welfare state. Tory governments largely did what was expected of them but the various Labour administrations largely failed the people. Perhaps the final straw came in 2017, when people inside Labour actively worked against a Labour election victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
Anti-Capitalist May Day Street Party Starts<\/a> – One Commercial St, Aldgate, London. Sun 1 May 2016<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pictures here come from some of the other May Day events I’ve photographed in the last 20 years or so. You can find other May Day pictures on My London Diary<\/a> simply by choosing a year at the top of the page and then the month of May at the left of the year page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May
May Day F**k Parade<\/a> – London. Mon 1 May 2017<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May Day – International Workers Day – May 1st was chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day in 1889 by the Second International socialists and communists, and adopted by anarchists, labor activists, and leftists in general around the world, to commemorate the 1886 Chicago Haymarket affair and the struggle for an eight-hour working day. … Continue reading May Day – International Workers Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[7957,1895,1965,7955,7952,6300,7956,7954,17,244,716,7953,407,2739,83,1896,1966,16,1923,861,1897,1258],"class_list":["post-13319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-8-hour-day","tag-anarchist-cricket","tag-anti-capitalists","tag-fuck-parade","tag-international-workers-day","tag-justice-for-cleaners","tag-labour-solidarity","tag-leake-st","tag-london","tag-march","tag-may-day","tag-may-fayre","tag-mayfair","tag-one-commercial-st","tag-peter-marshall","tag-police-victory-party","tag-poor-doors","tag-protest","tag-rave-against-the-machine","tag-solidarity","tag-space-hijackers","tag-tower-bridge"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13322,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13319\/revisions\/13322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}