Could Day 2004 – One of many many benefits of giving up full-time instructing round 2000 was that I used to be in a position to go to numerous occasions that beforehand came about once I was at work. And one in every of these was the London Could Day celebrations happening on Could 1st – beforehand I might solely participate in these when Could Day fell on day I used to be not at work. I hope to be taking photos of at this time’s march and rally as regular from Clerkenwell Inexperienced to Trafalgar Sq. gathering at midday.
Again in 1978, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan launched an early Could financial institution vacation, however quite than making Could Day – Worldwide Employees Day – a financial institution vacation we received as an alternative the primary Monday in Could. So just one yr in seven can we get a Financial institution Vacation on Could Day.
Even then, Tories have made a number of makes an attempt to get the Financial institution Vacation moved to a different time of yr – the primary makes an attempt got here with a invoice in 1982 and ten years later John Main recommended Trafalgar Day. The coalition authorities made one other try in 2011, however up to now robust opposition has stored the early Could vacation, although I think it might be underneath menace once more within the subsequent Labour authorities.
In 2004, twenty years in the past, Could Day was a Saturday, so many who would in any other case have been working have been in a position to attend the annual Could Day march and rally in London. I’ve written on some earlier Could Days concerning the origin of Could Day and the way it turned Worldwide Employees’ Day and quite than repeat myself you’ll be able to learn an article by Folks’s Historical past Museum researcher Dr Shirin Hirsch, Could Day: A Folks’s Vacation which has the benefit of some tremendous illustrations.
Right here, suitably corrected, is what I wrote about my Could Day twenty years in the past. All the images on this put up are from Could 1st 2004. There are numerous extra photos on My London Diary.
Could Day!
London’s TUC sponsored Could Day March and Rally is a peaceable celebration of Worldwide Employees’ Day. This was apparently first celebrated in 1886 in Chicago by placing textile employees.
In London, the celebrations are dominated by a number of Turkish and Kurd teams, with the MLKP and their youth wing being a few of the most vocal.
I used to be happy to fulfill up once more with members of Bristol Radical Cheerleaders, including their enthusiasm and slightly spectacle to the occasion. Thankfully they weren’t accountable for the route, as ‘To the left, to the left, to not the suitable, to the left’ may by no means have gotten us to Trafalgar Sq..
Possibly that wouldn’t have been a foul factor. The rally on the finish was one thing of an anti-climax. Not that London Mayor Ken didn’t mission his regular appeal – and Frances O’Grady and the others spoke properly, it was simply, properly, a bit uninteresting. It wants one thing that’s quite extra of a celebration and a celebration.
I wandered off, leaping on a bus down the Strand to Fleet Road and St Brides the place there was a marriage occurring. Maybe I ought to have taken greater than the couple of images right here, however I didn’t have an invitation.
Again in St James Park there was presupposed to be a celebration, and a recreation of ‘Anarchist Mayday Cricket’. It wasn’t fairly the climate for both, and I took a couple of snaps and got here house.
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