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| Sunday, 1 May 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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When the workers of the world unite by M. P. Muttiah Today is May Day - the day that unites the workers of the world to demonstrate their solidarity with progressive forces for peace and better living standards, against oppression, neo-colonialism and the most recent phenomena capitalist globalisation.
The modern working class, whose exploitation is hidden by the wage system is only several hundred years old. Men, women and children were forced to work long hours in miserable conditions. which gave rise to the demand for limitations on the working day. Karl Marx said in 1867 that "the creation of a normal (fixed) working day is the product of a protracted civil war between the capitalist class and the working class." Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen of England instituted a 10-hour working day in his socialist enterprise at New Lank, in 1810. In England women and children were granted the ten-hour working day in 1847. French workers won the 12-hour day after the February Revolution of 1848. In the United States, the citadel of capitalism, where May Day was born, Philadelphia carpenters struck work in 1791 for the ten-hour working day. By the 1830s this had become a general demand. In 1835, Philadelphia workers organised a general strike. As a result of the continued struggle, the average work-day dropped to 11 hours by 1860. However, this demand for an eight-hour working day was being raised. At the 1863 convention of the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union, this demand was put on a priority basis. In 1872, a hundred thousand workers in New York city struck work and won the eight-hour working day mostly for workers in building trades. The movement for the eight-hour day dates back to the 1884 May 1, Convention of Federation of Organised Trade and Labour Unions of the United states and Canada. A resolution passed at the Convention said ``that eight-hours shall constitute a legal day's labour from and after May 1, 1886". The growing movement for this demand created panic and fear among the ruling class and by April 1886, over 30,000 workers were granted the eight-hour day. The world's first May Day was a massive success with hundreds of thousands participating in peaceful strikes and demonstrations. In New York 10,000 workers marched to the Union Square. Labour leader Samuel Gompers told the crowd that "May 1st would be forever remembered as a second Declaration of Independence". But the event that guaranteed May Day a place in the working class history did not occur on May 1, but three days later at Heymarket Square in Chicago. By May 3, the number of workers on strike in Chicago had risen to 65,000. In fear, the industrialists had decided that decisive action against the workers was necessary. At the rally on May 4, the police unleashed attack against the strikers. Despite this attack, more than 3,000 workers gathered for the evening rally. More than 100 policemen closed in on the speakers stand and demanded that the rally disperse. Fieldon, who was addressing the crowd, protested that the rally was peaceful. At the same time a bomb was hurled from the crowd and 66 policemen were wounded and seven out of them died later. The police turned their guns on the workers wounding 200 and killing several. Several leaders of the workers were arrested. The prosecution produced no evidence that any of the eight men threw the bomb nor that any of them had conspired to throw the bomb. All were sentenced to death except Neebe. Fieldon and Schwab who petitioned for clemency and had their sentences commuted to life in prison. Twentyone-year-old Lingg exploded a tube dynamite in his mouth and took his life. The other five were executed on November 11,1887. The eight-hour day strike collapsed and about a third of the workers who had won the demand lost it in June, after the Heymarket incident. The Heymarket event was condemned by the working people of other countries. In the year between the Heymarket incident and the execution, workers in England, Holland, Russia, Italy, France and Spain rallied and donated funds for the defendants. The decision to have the 1st of May as the International Labour Day demonstration was taken by the Congress which established the Second International held in Paris on July 14, 1889, on the centenary of the fall of Bastille in the great French Revolution. Congress' resolution said: "The Congress decides to organise a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and in all cities on one appointed day, the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well as carrying out of the other decisions of the Paris Congress. Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890 by the American Federation of Labour at its convention in St. Louis in December 1888, the day is accepted for the international demonstrations." May Day was celebrated for the first time in Russia, Brazil and Ireland in 1891. The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 in Russia had given a strong impetus to the unity of the working class movement. Chinese workers celebrated their first May Day in 1920 and in 1927, workers in India observed May Day with demonstrations in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The unity of the working class helped to defeat Nazism and Fascism during World War II. Defending the motherland was the slogan of the Soviet workers. The demand of the working class was peace and national liberation. The solidarity of the working class was the back-bone of the struggle for the liberation of developing countries from colonial yoke. In Sri Lanka, the first association of workers as a trade union was founded in 1922. A. E. Goonesingha founded and led the Ceylon Labour Union on September 2,1922. It was the Ceylon Labour Union which held the first May Day demonstrations and continued to have it for many years. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party was formed in 1935 and held its first May Day in 1936 at Price Park under a tree with Dr. Colvin R. de Silva presiding. Communists who had been expelled from the LSSP formed Colombo Workers' Club in 1941, held their May Day that year, with participants carrying red flags inscribed with hammer and sickle and shouting slogans for united action of the working class and for national independence for the country. Later the communists who formed the Communist Party of Sri Lanka held May Day in 1944 with the participation of thousands of workers. At that time the trade unions concentrated only on the urban workers. The LSSP formed All Ceylon Workers' Union in October 29,1939 and the Ceylon Indian Congress Labour Union was established by K. Natesa Iyer on June 2,1940. The ACEWU broadened its influence in the plantations and in the course of a strike at Mooloya Estate, Govindan, a worker, was shot dead by the police. Govindan was the first martyr who gave up his life for the working class of Sri Lanka. It was in 1956, after S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike became the Prime Minister, that T. B. Ilangaratne as Minister of Labour declared May Day a public holiday. Subsequent years saw trade union leaders becoming parliamentarians and cabinet ministers. In Sri Lanka almost all the political parties, including the UNP, hold May Day demonstrations reflecting their own political views. Although the life of working class has improved considerably with the introduction of new machinery and technology their struggle for their rights continues.
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| Produced by Lake House |
May
Day was born from the struggle for the eight-hour working day. The working
class existed since the development of agriculture about ten thousand years
ago. Serfs, slaves, tradesmen and others were forced to turn over the fruits
of their labour to exploiting classes. 
