May Day: A Brief History
By Brian Lewis

ON May 1, millions of workers worldwide will celebrate International Workers Day. This May Day holiday was born in 1886, when half a million workers struck across America, demanding an eight hour day.

Over 90,000 took to the streets of Chicago, a mass torchlit procession marched along New York's Broadway and black and white workers marched in solidarity in Louisville, Kentucky.

The strike wave continued after May Day and state violence came into play.

Four workers died at the McCormack Harvester plant in Chicago, attacked by police who were there defending scabs.

A meeting held the following day in the city's Haymarket Square was ambushed; a bomb killed one policeman outright, six dying later.

Police fired into the crowd killing one man and injuring many more. A day later, on orders from the governor, local militia opened fire on a group of workers in Milwaukee.

Nine died. A coroner's jury praised the troops' action, employers gave them a reward and the press praised the governor.

The judges then handed out stiff sentences for "riot and conspiracy" to some of the workers.

Meanwhile back in Chicago, Marshall Law was decreed.

Mass arrests took place over the bombing and eight anarchists were finally selected for trial.

A hand-picked jury, including a relative of one of the policemen killed, ensured that there would be only one verdict. State Attorney Grinnell, in his summation to the jury, stated:

"Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions, our society."

All eight were sentenced to death.

The judgment was condemned around the world.

In Germany, Bismarck took fright at the workers' reaction to the Haymarket Trial and banned all public meetings.

Four of the defendants - Parsons, Engel, Spies and Fisher - died on the gallows on 11 November 1887. Another was found dead in his cell.

The remainder had their sentences commuted to life.

The last words of August Spies as he faced the hangman were: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."

These words were later carved on the monument to the Haymarket Martyrs.

May Day was soon to become a worldwide event. On the last day of the Marxist International Socialist Congress, held in Paris in 1889, a resolution was adopted to call for a worldwide stoppage around the demand for an eight hour day, to be held on 1 May 1890. The American Federation of Labor had already set that day for its own demonstrations.

The gains made by American workers after that second May Day were massive; hundreds of thousands saw their hours shorten and their pay increase as a result of their strike action.

More strikes took place on 1 May 1890 than on any other single day in previous American history.

Demonstrations also took place in most European countries and in London, on 4 May, half a million took to the streets. May Day was also celebrated in Havana.

Engels, in his preface to the fourth German edition of the Communist Manifesto, writes that: "The spectacle we are witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realise that today, the proletarians of all lands are, in the very truth, united.

"If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!"

As global capitalism plunders the planet, May Day has never been so important.

As we remember the battles of the past and fight those of the present, we look forward to that moment in time when we have made capitalism history.●