MAY DAY, the day of the international workers' movement has its origins in Chicago.
In the mid eighties America was swept by the demand for an eight-hour day. And right out in front of this movement of skilled and unskilled, men and women, black and white, native and immigrant, were the workers of Chicago.
So in 1866 when the American Federation of Labour adopted its historic resolution that 'eight hours shall constitute a legal days labour from and after 1 May 1866..' it was the workers of Chicago who led the way.
A Labour journal John Swinton's Paper reported that by the middle of April in 1866, 'there is an eight-hour agitation everywhere'.
Soon one quarter of a million workers were taking part in the struggle for this demand. In Chicago alone 400,000 workers were on strike.
A newspaper reporting on the dispute wrote 'no smoke curled up from the tall chimneys of the factories and mills and things had assumed a Sabbath-like appearance'. The employers, determined not to give in, used their press and their control of the city administration to spread stories of violence and anarchy.
For two days the strikes and lock outs were peaceful. Then the police opened fire on strikers at the McCormick Harvester Machine Company. At least one striker was killed, five or six others were seriously wounded.
On the night of 4 May a protest meeting was called in Haymarket Square and later transferred to Cranes Alley because the numbers were smaller than expected. Near ten o'clock as the meeting was ending a Socialist Action 29 April 1983 police column of 180 men led by Captains Bonfield and War arrived. A bomb was thrown at the police. One policeman was killed, six others died later. Then the police opened fire indiscriminately.
To this day no one knows how many demonstrators were killed or wounded.
In an atmosphere of hysteria encouraged by press and pulpit eight of the workers' leaders faced trial charged with inciting the bombings.
Closing the trial Grinnel, the state's attorney, said 'Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the grand jury and indicted because they were leaders; convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and you save our institutions and our society' Hang them they did.
August Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engel and Adolph Fischer went to the scaffold on 1l November 1887. Louis Lingg cheated the hangman by committing suicide. It is estimated that 500,000 mourners lined their funeral route.
Three others were sentenced to prison and on 26 June 1893 they were pardoned by the governor of Illinois who said he believed they were innocent.
This judicial butchery had provoked a storm of reaction in the world labour movement. The call for the eight-hour day and the use of a general strike to win it gained ever-widening support.
It inspired the first action of the newly formed Second International. Meeting in Paris in 1889 it carried a resolution calling for 1 May to be a day of international labour demonstrations for the eight-hour day.
May Day had been born out of the bloody class struggles between the workers and the employers' state. But despite their fine words the leaders of the Second International did not have the stomach to lead general strikes. They knew that if general strikes were used as political weapons to win an eight-hour day they could be used for other purposes like overthrowing governments.
To the reformist leaders, May Day is a time for speechifying and reminiscing. They even throw in the odd word about socialism. Then for the next 364 days of the year they can go about their normal business of class collaboration and sell out. Attention Workingmen!
TO-NIGHT, at 730 o'olook, principal prop fighting for world tyranny.
establish Solidarnosc,