Happy May Day!

By Barry Camfield

In the face of a world in crisis, I thought I would write this little message of hope and encouragement to my good comrades in celebration of May Day. (Apologies for the homily!)

“Workers of the world unite” said Karl Marx and he was right! Let us break the chains that tie us down across the world. If Capitalism is the question, Socialism is the answer. We need to stand up for socialist ideas, argue and agitate for socialism against cynicism and despair, with courage, without fear!

May Day is International Workers Day and it reminds us all of our common struggle to redistribute income, wealth and power from the rich and elite to ordinary working class families. Whilst there are many separate struggles against various forms of discrimination and bigotry in our world today, real and lasting progress will surely only come when all working class peoples come together and unite for a radically different future, a socialist future for all humanity, regardless of age, nationality, race, gender, religion, sexuality and more.

 There lays power! 

May Day stands as a beacon of hope, for the coming together of the world’s common peoples in a united struggle for social justice, for trade union freedom, for the very saving of our planet and yes, for an end to massive private wealth and profits in the face of further growing poverty. Capitalism destroys, exploits, divides and is rotten to the core. But May Day calls out to us to reject Capitalism, in favour of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, which in turn will see quality public services grow, public ownership grow and at last, working class families flourish.

Trade unions across the world are increasingly seeing that non political trade unionism is a blind alley, and leading the way for workers. Workers need political parties that stand alongside them, fight with them and for them, unashamedly socialist in nature. Social Justice through a socialist future awaits if we have the courage and foresight to fight for it.

After all, we are many, they are few!

Happy May Day, keep up the fight!