{"id":9606,"date":"2019-05-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=9606"},"modified":"2019-05-01T08:45:01","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T08:45:01","slug":"long-live-may-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=9606","title":{"rendered":"Long Live May Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n1st May 2009<\/small><\/p>\n

Today I’ll be out photographing May Day in London. There is a march every year to celebrate International Workers’ Day, organised by the\u00a0London May Day Organising Committee,\u00a0<\/em> and there has apparently been some kind of socialist celebration on May Day in London since the 1880s, although it was apparently only in 1904 that\u00a0the\u00a0Sixth Conference of the Second International in Amsterdam\u00a0called for “all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the\u00a08-hour day, for the class demands of the\u00a0proletariat, and for\u00a0universal peace.” (thanks to Wikpedia for the quotation.)<\/p>\n

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\n1st May 2013<\/small><\/p>\n

And while we may generally have the 8-hour day (or something even shorter) there is certainly a long way to go on the demands of the working class and universal peace.\u00a0 The socialists of course took over May Day from its general celebration as a Spring festival, which had earlier in the 19th century become promoted as a traditional festival with the coronation of May Queens, something else I’ve also photographed.But until I gave up teaching, I was seldom able to celebrate May Day unless it happened to fall at a weekend. May Day this Wednesday is for most workers a normal working day, and we have instead a rather silly Bank Holiday on the first Monday in May.<\/p>\n

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\n1st May 2000<\/small><\/p>\n

Possibly the first May Day celebrations I photographed (or at least the earliest I’ve shared online) were on May 1st 2000<\/a>,\u00a0which was a Monday, and the events in Parliament Square and elsewhere were an anti-capitalist event rather than the rather more staid trade union and socialist march.<\/p>\n

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\n1st May 2000<\/small><\/p>\n

Later in the day things turned rather nasty and police charged the protesters, a small number of whom had broken the windows of a McDonalds on Whitehall.<\/p>\n

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\n1st May 2003<\/small><\/p>\n

It was not until 2003 that I first posted pictures from the official May Day March<\/a> in London,\u00a0though it wasn’t the first time I had been there, rather the first time I’d photographed it digitally. As usual I was very struck by the various socialist groups from London’s ethnic communities that were taking part.\u00a0 There is a long list of supporting groups on the May Day Committee<\/a>‘s site which as well as other trade union and community groups includes ”\u00a0organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla Deshi, Kashmiri, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, South African, Nigerian migrant workers & communities”.<\/p>\n

But even then, once I’d photographed that march, I went on to photograph anti-capitalists also celebrating May Day in their own way, and this May Day I’ll also be with friends celebrating it rather than listening to the speeches in Trafalgar Square, though I may manage to cover some other protests later in the day.<\/p>\n

My London Diary has pictures from May Day for every year since 2003 and I’ll have more to add after today’s events. Long Live May Day<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

______________________________________________________<\/p>\n

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation<\/a> – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated. <\/small><\/p>\n

My London Diary<\/a> : London Photos<\/a> : Hull<\/a> : River Lea\/Lee Valley<\/a> : London’s Industrial Heritage<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.<\/small><\/p>\n

To order prints or reproduce images<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

________________________________________________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1st May 2009 Today I’ll be out photographing May Day in London. There is a march every year to celebrate International Workers’ Day, organised by the\u00a0London May Day Organising Committee,\u00a0 and there has apparently been some kind of socialist celebration on May Day in London since the 1880s, although it was apparently only in 1904 … Continue reading Long Live May Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9606","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=9606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9610,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9606\/revisions\/9610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}