{"id":9980,"date":"2019-08-30T09:21:11","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T09:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=9980"},"modified":"2019-08-27T15:25:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T15:25:02","slug":"shrinking-may-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=9980","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking May Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There has been a march in London on May Day, May 1st, for many years now, and since I went freelance I think I’ve attended it most or all years. Before when I was working as a full-time teacher, I was usually working on the actual May Day and unable to celebrate it, though back in the 70s I would turn up to work with a sprig of Lily of the Valley in my lapel, provided by a left-wing colleague, with French connections – there they have a public holiday to celebrate La F\u00eate du Travail which is also know as La F\u00eate du Muguet .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 1978, the then Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan lost his nerve in creating a May bank holiday, and instead of declaring May Day as a holiday we got the rather ridiculous first Monday in May. Despite it not being May Day it remains contentious, with the Tory right Little Englanders wanting to replace it with a nationalistic UK Day ‘Best of Britain’ celebration in Ocotober. Next year it is to be moved to Friday May 8th to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VE Day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Without London’s ethnic communities, I think the London march would have died years ago, with Kurds and Turkish communist groups really keeping the event alive and many other nationalities taking part. There is a small hard-core of left wing trade unionists and British communists, as well as various issue groups also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This year Clerkenwell Green seemed very empty when I arrived at the time marchers were supposed to gather from noon, though more came later, knowing it would only start around 1pm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But there were a few speeches in front of the Marx Library, notably from an man from the Indian Workers Association about the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh<\/em> massacre\u00a0 and their demand for a formal apology from Britain and the Venezuelan ambassador<\/em> who spoke in support of their government against media lies used to promote the \u00a0US-inspired and supported right-wing coup <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two unwelcome marchers held a banner with an anti-trans message woman an adult human female. Later following complaints they were challenged by march stewards and forced to leave the march. There is little support for this ‘Terf’ bigotry on the left which almost universally supports LGBTQ+ rights as an important area of human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can see more pictures at London May Day<\/a> .

My next post will look at some of the banners on the May Day March <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\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, please share on social media<\/em><\/strong>.
And small donations via Paypal<\/a> – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There has been a march in London on May Day, May 1st, for many years now, and since I went freelance I think I’ve attended it most or all years. Before when I was working as a full-time teacher, I was usually working on the actual May Day and unable to celebrate it, though back … Continue reading Shrinking 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":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[722,719,723,718,726,725,717,17,727,716,720,721,724,728],"class_list":["post-9980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-clerkenwell-green","tag-communists","tag-ethnic-communities","tag-international-labour-day","tag-jallianwala-bagh","tag-kurdish","tag-labour-day","tag-london","tag-massacre","tag-may-day","tag-socialists","tag-trade-unionists","tag-turkish","tag-venezuelan-ambassador"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980","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=9980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9982,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9980\/revisions\/9982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}