May Day brings workers’ hidden power to the fore

By Dhaneshi Yatawara

On a path cleared and strengthened by their blood, sweat and tears, we march towards another May Day, not just through flashbacks of a dark history, but as a day that reminds us of the hidden power of hard-working people.

Irrespective of doubts whether we genuinely remember the sacrifices the working men and women made in those days, we still remember to keep International Workers’ Day special since the Socialist’s Second International in 1889 decided to remember the Martyrs of the 1886 Haymarket Affair every year on May 1.

This 1886 engraving was the most widely reproduced image of the Haymarket Affair. It inaccurately shows Samuel Fielden speaking, the bomb exploding and the rioting beginning simultaneously

The Haymarket tragedy in Chicago in the United States, at the end of a workers’ general strike demanding an ‘eight-hour workday’, became an eye-opener, depicting the true picture of the hard-working labourer of those days. The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during the general strike, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at them. The police reacted by firing on the workers, killing dozens of demonstrators and several of their own officers.

Two of the leaders who spoke at the rally, Albert Parsons and August Spies, as well as fellow anarchists, George Engel and Adolph Fisher, were arrested, tried and executed by the state in 1887 for being responsible for the bomb attack and triggering violence during the strike, according to historical records. Another activist, Louis Lingg was condemned to death, but killed himself in prison, records state.

Three other workers, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe were pardoned in 1893. The police firing at an unarmed group of civilians was heavily criticised while testimonies proved the innocence of the workers. Considering the era and the comparatively less connected world, the incident was never pushed under the rug.

Eight-hour workday

The world has moved far and long since then, in many cases replacing man with machines. Yet, the rule that was established to protect the working class remains intact though demands of the present business-minded people may lead to those rules being altered.

This ‘eight-hour workday’ concept brought in a balance between profit earning and the workers not being exploited.

One of the chief organisers and speakers at the Haymarket general strike, Albert Parsons, had told the Court hearing later, “Now, the money-makers, the businessmen, those people who deal in stocks and bonds, the speculators and employers, all that class of men known as the money-making class, have no conception of this labour question; they don’t understand what it means.

To use the street parlance, with many of them it is a difficult matter to “catch on to” it, and they are perverse also; they will have no knowledge of it, anything about it, and they won’t hear anything about it, and they propose to club, lock up, and, if necessary, strangle those who insist on their hearing this question. Can it be any longer denied that there is such a thing as the labour question?”

The famous speeches of the eight Chicago anarchists in court, when asked if they had anything to say as to why the sentence should not be passed on them, reveals an alarming social and economic issue that remained in the United States of that time. One could however question whether we see any difference today.

Workers finish installing a statue of a Chicago policeman in Haymarket Square in 1889. The statue now stands at the Chicago Police Headquarters

As Parsons said in his speech at the Court, “A wage-worker is one who works for wages and who has no other means of subsistence than by the selling of his daily toil from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, as the case may be. Their property consists entirely of their labour - strength and skill or, rather, they possess nothing, but their bare hands.

“They live only when afforded an opportunity to work, and this opportunity of the means of subsistence - capital - before their right to live at all or the opportunity to do so is possessed.” Does not this describe today’s working class as well?

Employees and employers

Since the Haymarket tragedy, many strikes and fights have taken place between employees and employers throughout the world and so it will continue as long as Planet Earth exists. However harsh and bitter the situation could be, thousands of brave men and women laid the foundation for the world, to seek justice for workers.

Another question still remains to be answered - Do people have to die, sacrifice themselves or be tortured every time, for the world to be concerned? Don’t we have enough bitter experiences? Why cannot people sit, discuss and listen to others’ woes and act on them rather than wait for the needy party to react with extremism or violence? Let the May Day remind us that it promotes the ‘give and take policy’ to bring justice to a world of demands and rights.

As it is said in the poem The worker’s Maypole by Walter Crane,

“Your cause is the hope of the world,
In your strife is the life of the race,
The workers’ flag Freedom unfurled
Is the veil of the bright future’s face.”