May Day Greetings

On May Day, the day of international working class solidarity and struggle, the Socialist Party of Great Britain sends its fraternal greetings to the working class. The Socialist Party sends its greetings to the workers of all countries the world over who are waging the same class struggle against capitalism. We have declared war upon the capitalist class, and upon the capitalist system. We are of the working class. We say: Arise, you worker! It is in your power to put an end to this system, seize and take control of the tools with which you work, and make yourselves the masters instead of being the slaves of industry. Long enough have we suffered ourselves to blindly and stupidly follow a leadership that has misled and deceived and betrayed. Wipe out the wage system, so that you can walk this Earth free men and women!


The Workers Maypole

World Workers, whatever may bind ye,
This day let your work be undone:
Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye,
And come forth and be glad in the sun.

Now again while the green earth rejoices
In the bud and the blossom of May
Lift your hearts up again, and your voices,
And keep merry the World's Labour Day.

Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope.

It is writ on each ribbon that flies
That flutters from fair Freedom's heart:
If still far be the crown and the prize
In its winning may each take a part.

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.

Be ye many or few drawn together,
Let your message be clear on this day;
Be ye birds of the spring, of one feather
In this--that ye sing on May-Day.

Of the new life that still lieth hidden,
Though its shadow is cast before;
The new birth of hope that unbidden
Surely comes, as the sea to the shore.

Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.

When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life--not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.

Walter Crane
Justice, 1894


The Wearing of the Red

I walked up-street this morning.
And it being May Day
I wore a crimson ribbon
You could see a mile away.
Most folks smiled in sympathy,
Others shook their heads,
And some just showed their ignorance
And terror of the Red.
But I smiled at those in pity
A smile of lofty scorn
Some men are slaves by circumstance—
And some for slaves were born.

Young lady with ambitions
To shine in "sassiety"
Says she, "I want to shine my shoes,
Will you give that rag to me?"
Poor simple little pin-head.
Oh, God, you owe her brains!
I just bowed to her politely,
And I left her in her chains.
She thinks she is a highbrow,
Above the working mass,
And to sneer at workers' emblems
Is a way to show her class.

Tho' her father and his fathers
All were working men,
She wants to play aristocrat,
And to discredit them.
The hand that rocked her cradle
Is far beneath her now;
The hand that toiled to shelter her,
The hand that held the plow:
Poor silly little infant—
Will you never come to know?
If it were not for the workers
You'd have starved long ago?

Yet they call us trouble makers.
I never shook my head,
And I never said, "You quitters,
You ought to wear the Red."
I leave them their opinions,
But, by God, they'll leave me mine,
I am choosing my own colors,
And I'll wear them every time—
On every such occasion
Will that banner be unfurled—
A tribute to the workers:
To the men who feed the world!

Dawn Fraser,
May 1st, 1924 



August Spies: You may strangle this voice, but there will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.

Albert Parsons: O men of America, let the voice of the people be heard!
Still bright, and searing ignorance and fear,
This stronger beacon that you tended burns
And on this day of each advancing year
The memory of that first May First
returns.

But now the widespread fingers strengthen,
grow
More lithe, and flexing at the wrist--
O fingers forming to the fist!

Now is the imminence of commmonweal--
The turgid lambency of molten iron
Hardening in even lines of steel.

Burton Jerome Barnett
New Masses,
 May 2, 1939.