May Day , Our Great British Election and Democracy

It was May day only last week.The first of May 2010 .I love May day , it is my brother Nick's birthday as well as my mother in -law Anna's birthday. I had a great week end , two feasts one with the mother-in-law on the Saturday 1st of May and one with Nick at our mother's house on the Monday 3rd . It was such a nice bank holiday week end for me The gods had rewarded us with nice sunny weather . What a special day to have a birthday on .It is a day of much history and great importance for today.

Originally the first of May was celebrated as a pagan festival In Britain before the
Christians spread their unconditional love and turned the other cheek to many peoples they conquered with ruthless brutality .'Pagan' by the way being a derogatory term used by the 'Abrahamic religions' for all other ancient religions which they felt threatened by in the past and were determined to crush through organised ,sustained atrocities using military means.

In Britain before the Anglo Saxons and even before the Romans arrived ,the local people,predominately of Celtic stock , celebrated the First of May as Beltaine . This was a festival that acknowledged the beginning of the summer and a time for local people to burn their bedding and floor coverings that they needed to keep warm until it was time to replace them with new ones.This tradition was common in many parts of Europe as well as in Britain and Ireland.When the Romans came to Settle in Britain at about 55BC , they brought with them their particular celebration for the period around the first of May which was known as Floralia celebrating Flora the Roman goddess of flowers. It was in her honour that this five day celebration was held from April 28th and ended on May 2nd. The two festivals were somehow both gradually merged together. With the passing of time other variations added and eventually incorporated into Christian times. So the maypole decorated with flowers, children merrily dancing around it , became accepted and part of the 'Christian ' way of life even though the stark symbolism of a phallus amongst the flowers expressing fertility and new life were still subtly present.

The reason many people around the world celebrate May day as an international workers' day , associated with workers'rights is the following:Something which actually happened on the 3rd and 4Th May 1886 in Haymarket , Chicago , USA.

However on the 1st of May , 80 OOO workers marched in the streets of Chicago supporting industrial strikes requesting an eight hour working day .They were later supported by 350 000 people nationwide who halted work and showed their support for this cause.

On the 3rd of May ,in Haymarkeet , Chicago , during a rally in support of workers striking for better conditions and an eight hour day , there were scuffles between workers in favour of the striking action and those they called 'scabs' who were against the strike. Police opened fire and four people were killed.
The next day On May 4th , a group of militants were speaking at a rally of 2,500 people held to protest against the police massacre when 180 police officers arrived, led by the Chicago police chief. While he was calling for the meeting to disperse a bomb was thrown which exploded, killing one policeman. The police retaliated, killing seven of their own in the crossfire, plus four others of the protesting crowd; almost two hundred were wounded. The identity of the bomb thrower remains unknown.

On June 21st , 1886, eight labour leaders associated with the protests were tried in court for murder .The trial appeared to be a political show of strength rather than a search for justice , there were many reports of false allegations and scant evidence yet the establishment persisted with the witch hunt and On November 11th , 1886, four political activists were hanged and one had committed suicide hours before his execution .


Not many people even know their names .These men are known as the Haymarket Martyrs .The events surrounding the whole affair have given fuel to the those political commentators of the corporate press to use the influence of their privileged position as our scribes to deride socialists , anarchists and other militants that stand up for the rights of workers as mindless bomb throwing anarchists and 'hooligans'. Yet Haymarket martyrs are true heroes , these are martyrs in the true sense.People that were sacrificed for our rights, not for a religious dogma and an afterlife in heaven , but just so that working people can have some time for themselves outside of work to live and do other things like I am doing now.



The names of the victims were cited by a Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano in “A Terrible Drama”
(in his Memories of Fire, vol. II):

'The scaffold awaited them. They were five, but Lingg got up early for death, exploding a dynamite cap between his teeth. Fischer was seen unhurriedly humming the ‘Marseillaise.’ Parsons, the agitator who used the word like a whip or a knife, grasps the hands of his comrades before the guards tie his own behind his back. Engel, famous for his sharp wit, asks for port wine and then makes them all laugh with a joke. Spies, who so often wrote about anarchism as the entrance into life, prepares himself in silence to enter into death.'


It took time and an upward struggle but eventually the eight hour day was official.The United States Adamson Act in 1916 established an eight-hour day, with additional pay for overtime, for railroad workers. This was the first federal law that regulated the hours of workers in private companies.

Working on this computer , I was amazed to see the most well known search engine whose name is now an eponym for any search on the internet , on May 1st, did not make any mention of May Day as it normally does for various other notable dates of commemoration.The leading computer internet search engine will usually transform its quite versatile and unmistakable logo into whatever the company directors feel is important and the graphic design is always something worth looking at : St Patrick's Day , the invention of the Hubble Telescope ,the birthday of the musical composer Tchaikovsky all celebrated on the appropriate day of the calendar , but nothing about the Haymarket Martyrs on the 1st of May ,even though this search engine is an American company and the whole affair forms part of the fabric of the great country's history .

I wonder if this has anything to do with our type of democracy? or big business or even lack of democracy in favour of big business , does that sound familiar? We in Great Briatian , had our political elections very close to the beginning of May as always , this seems to be part of our democratic tradition.

6th May 2010. Yes in our democracy we were torn between the Labour , conservative and liberal democratic political parties .
Hardly worth voting at all , and looking at the number of people that turned out to vote , many people agree with me .For many people throughout the world know democracy is something we have to struggle for continuously.

And what is Democracy ? In its current form it still appears meaningless. It derives from the Greek 'Demos' =people and 'Cratos'= power .i.e Democracy is about people having the power.

Does our democracy where we have a right to vote in a new team of rulers every five years or so ring true? When these rulers are not accountable for their false promises , steal from you directly and indirectly in the most audacious fashion? But if you were to rise up against them to claim your rights they would treat you as a criminal ?. A group of professional political parties that have virtually identical belief systems and objectives?

A political establishment that invites you to play the the game of the illusion they have created .For they will praise you as an enfranchised citizen of a democracy if you partake in this meaningless ballot but in reality they see you as one of a group of consumers/producers/unemployed people that must be controlled and exploited within a set of clearly defined parameters, outside of which they fear revolution and change.

This principle seems to have remained from time immemorial , through the time of the Haymarket martyrs until the present day .Democracy is about claiming our rights outside the the theatre of our rulers' parliamentary pantomime.

So let's not forget that any rights , justice , equality or even the dignity of working a reasonable amount of hours a day was not handed down by government initiative ,debate or by the benevolence of business moguls.
Slavery of the African people by Europeans in its industrial proportions was not abolished at the whim of a political debate in parliament.

The right for women to vote (or to abstain) did not come about by the thoughtfulness of a politician , neither did the poll tax, implemented in Britain in the 1980's cease because our politicians decided. All these achievements came about when people stood together and challenged the rules imposed from our leaders above.

So the results of our latest election in Britain hang in the balance as the Conservatives won most seats on 6th may but without an over all majority and now have gone to bed with the liberal democrats currently debating(in sectret talks) how to seize power and rule as a coalition government . Mr Brown,current prime minister and leader of the 'labour' party is now squatting in no.10 Downing street secretly praying that these talks do not bear any fruit so that he can again wield power with the blessing of the leader of the liberal democratic party. Such is the hunger of these professional politicians that they feel capable of ruling us so that they can be allowed to continue to declare war and mayhem in distant lands in our name.

Yes ,this political establishment is always one step ahead and has now managed to achieve a meaninglessness to the value or our vote in the current set up. Britain ? we are a much more democratic society than many other countries but is it really true democracy?