It’s International Workers’ Day today, yay!
Not.
This year’s May Day also coincides with an unfortunate anniversary – 10 glorious years of New Labour. That does tend to take the gloss off things a little.
As for any advance in workers rights – the government’s sanctioning domestic slavery and human trafficking, all of the UK’s public service workers have voted to strike, doctors and nurses are getting militant, the local election results next week cannot be trusted and Britain is one of the most unequal, heavily-surveilled and policed societies in the world. The trade unions are having a May Day rally in Trafalgar Square today but the media’s ignoring it, so it apparently it isn’t happening.
Celebrations of International Workers Day ring a bit hollow at the moment, especially since if any of those tame union members should wander too close today to the free speech exclusion zone around Parliament in a slogan t-shirt they’ll be arrested.
Workers’ day, my arse; and here’s the perfect comment on the hollowness of today’s celebrations, courtesy of Edmund Schluessel :
Happy Labor Day, comrades!
