Our May Day...

 On the first day of May we remember those dark days of old when workers fought against grasping employers who would have them work all day, every day but Sunday, for a miserable pittance of a wage. And though the origins of May Day go back to hallowed antiquity when it was a festival for the ancient gods, it has also always been a day for working people. We also remember the pioneers of the labour movement that built the unions in Britain and throughout the rest of the world that curbed the worst excesses of the employers and set up the First International that declared May Day an international working-class holiday in 1889.

...and theirs…

May Day will be marked, as usual, by the labour movement in events up and down the country including the traditional march in central London and a rally in Trafalgar Square. It will also be marked by local elections for 23 councils and six mayors in England.
The Tories are facing a strong challenge, in hundreds of seats they won in 2021, from Nigel Farage’s Reform party. Some say the Faragists will make the greatest gains next week with Labour in second place and the Tories amongst the also-rans. The opinion polls currently put Reform slightly ahead of Labour with the Tories third, followed by the Liberal-Democrats and the Greens. Whether this will be reflected in the real May Day polls is another matter.
In the halcyon days of the 1970s when the unions packed a punch on the street the left focused on union elections and building grass-roots movements to mobilise the labour movement in the fight for the socialist alternative. While these long-gone campaigns were flawed they did, at least, try to involve the rank-and-file in the struggle – unlike the bogus “broad left” factions that run the bureaucrats’ gravy-train in most of our unions today.
We will, doubtless, see the return of the usual left social-democratic platforms in these elections – posing as a serious “alternative” to Labour while incapable of mobilising more than the protest vote that’s effortlessly garnered by the likes of Lord Buckethead or the Monster Raving Loonies.
The mainstream parties have done their best to inject some interest in these polls. But though around a third of the electorate in England will be eligible to vote few of them – a third at the best – will be bothered to go to the polling booths on the day.
There’s a number of reasons behind the lack of interest in local elections on the street. Indifference is bred from the fact that hardly anyone knows the names of their local councillors and the councils they represent have few real powers these days. Nevertheless the results will be closely scrutinised by the media pundits who see these polls, which include a parliamentary by-election in the Cheshire seat of Runcorn & Helsby, as a measure of the Starmer government’s standing following last year’s general election.