Socialist surrealism

May Day, or the International Workers’ Day, is celebrated around the world on May 1 to honour the working community. In Sri Lanka what is traditionally a day of rest and celebration has evolved into a highly politicised display with political parties and trade unions organising enormous rallies and processions to serve as shows of strength. Each faction and party vies with the other to produce more supporters, to fill larger venues, to make louder speeches and bolder promises to workers.

This year too, all the major parties and trade unions have made elaborate arrangements to hold May Day rallies and meetings today at a variety of locations around the country.

The SLFP May Day rally will be held at the Samanala Grounds, Galle. However, a group of SLFP Parliamentarians together with the MEP, NFF and Pivithuru Hela Urumaya have planned to hold a May Day meeting in Kirulapone. The UNP May Day rally will be held at the Campbell Park, the usual venue.

May Day, which has more or less become a political event, is also an opportunity for the political parties to show their creative and artistic side, from colourful floats to detailed costumes. Indeed, beyond the political slogans and the calls for better working conditions in Sri Lanka May Day has become an outlet for a very particular kind of artistic expression.

While almost all the parties have such a component in their rallies, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and its breakaway group the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) have taken it to a whole new level. Indeed, it is hard to match their flamboyance and scale when it comes to May Day celebrations.

Inspired by the international labour movement’s socialist themes, parties in Sri Lanka produce a whole gamut of costumes, stage props and floats for the occasion. Somewhat ironically, it is perhaps the closest thing Sri Lanka has to an American style parade with costumes, bands and banners, many of which decry the evils of “Uncle Sam” and capitalism.

It is a sort of Socialist surrealism with oversized Lenins, parodied Uncle Sams, and Styrofoam cutouts of muscled workers snaking their way along Colombo’s tropical streets.

The Sunday Observer went behind the scenes with the JVP and the FSP (FSP/Peratugamis) to look into the workshops and warehouses where these bizarre but deeply symbolic props are produced.

History of May Day

Demanding an eight hour work shift and several other requests, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the USA walked off their jobs celebrating the first ever May Day on May 1, 1886. (This marks the 130th anniversary of May Day).

What originated as a spring festival in the Northern Hemisphere countries, thus took a political turn, promoted by the international labour movement, anarchists, socialists and communists. (Labour Day is no longer celebrated in the USA on May 1; instead, it is marked on the first Monday of September. However, in all other Western countries, Labour Day is still celebrated on May 1).

Sri Lanka celebrated its first May Day in 1927, under the leadership of pioneering trade union activist Alexander Ekanayake Goonesinha who was also known as the Father of the Labour Movement in Sri Lanka. Ever since, political parties and trade unions have painstakingly planned their processions.

The marches and street demonstrations seek to promote workers’ rights and pressure employers and the government to recognize labour laws. While the issues have changed - today’s priorities include the rights of free trade zone employees, an improved pension scheme, more protection for migrant works and an end to male-female salary disparities, the overall theme has remained the same - the recognition of workers.

Today, flags of all colours, green, blue, yellow, red, will spread across the sky to celebrate the working men and women of Sri Lanka and The Sunday Observer hopes that in the dazzle of political colours, and costumes the issue of workers’ rights will prevail!

Happy International Workers’ Day!

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuma (JVP)

The JVP is a party with deep socialist roots and it goes without saying that they take May Day and the associated artwork very seriously. The Sunday Observer visited the JVP’s workshop where this year’s incarnation of the famous ship that has been paraded at the JVP rally every year for decades is being built.

If the question ‘why a ship?’ has ever occurred to you, Thumindu Kumara, a longtime JVP member from Moratuwa – Ratmalana area who annually overlooks the construction of the ‘ship’ for the May Day parade, responds with a reference to a historical event; the Russian cruiser, ‘Aurora’ fired a blank shot from her forecastle gun to signal the start of at the assault on the Winter Palace, the official residence of the Tsars, Russian Monarchs, which signalled the beginning of the Russian revolution in 1917.

The ship that will be paraded this year is named Niyamuwa and is 54 feet long, 10 feet wide and 14 feet tall. This is the largest permissible size for an object that can be carried on public roads in Sri Lanka.

When we visit around 50 – 60 volunteers were putting up the structure of the ship together and then covering it with cloth. Kumara admitted that most of the young men engaged in the work, even those doing specialized tasks like welding, have no professional training. He maintained however that they “carry out the work assigned to them with the discipline party expects them to practice.”

Kumara insists that the purpose of the May Day is not lost amidst all the colours, floats and structures. “We tell our young members about the workers’ strike in 1886 in the USA and how the eight hour working day came into being, though it is sad that 130 years later, we have failed to reduce one more hour from that eight hour work shifts, to give more time to the working community to enjoy their lives.”

Frontline Socialist Party (FSP)

The stage set up for the FSP in Fort is 80 feet long and 40 feet tall. The backdrop comprises enormous images of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin. They are depicted overlooking a labourers’ uprising. Ariyasena Kodikara, the designer of the stage, carries several sketches depicting the story of working people overpowering factory owners. The sketches show a crowd of people surging over the boundaries of factories and amidst the crowd an oversized fist is raised to the sky.

“Once the theme is finalised, it takes several drafts to come up with the final sketch. The fist symbolises the power of the working community and of course we included the hammer and sickle,” said Kodikara. Having dedicated much of his life to communist politics Kodikara is a celebrated designer and has designed stages for the JVP since 1994 and for the FSP since 2011.

Another talented hand, Prasad Hettiarachchi, paints the three faces of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He says he does not regret having a regular job and that he is happy to dedicate himself to party politics and make use of the skills he learned at art school. “We do not use digital printing. We draw and paint everything manually,” he says.

The attention to detail is everywhere - what might look to an outsider like a socialist pastiche is rich with meaning. Every figure is placed and represented for a reason. “Lenin is drawn alongside the communist ideologues Marx and Engels, because he made revolution a reality and showed us how communism should be implemented. He taught us that rebellion should happen in the colonised countries and spread to the colonizer not vice versa,” said Ravindra Mudalige, Central Committee Member of the FSP. The effort to produce the May Day stage, from conceptualisation to final execution requires hours of work but there is no shortage of labour. Mudalige explains that more than 40 volunteers participate every day. Most of the work is done at night when party members with full time jobs join their ‘brothers’ after work.