MAY DAY -INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY

MAY DAY -INTERNATIONAL WORKERS DAY

 

 

The streets of Chicago witnessed huge assembly of protesters demanding 8 hour working day on 1^st May 1886. 40,000 workers were present in these demonstrations.  The agitation continued on the 2^nd and 3^rd May as well. On the 3^rd May at McCormick Farm Machinery Plant, using the pretext of clashes between strikers and strike breakers police opened fire killing six workers.  The Hay Market meeting was called on 4^th May to protest against these killings.  The meeting was peaceful, till the police appeared at the end.  An unidentified person hurled a bomb killing one police man and wounding five people on that fateful day at the Hay Market.  The State of Illinois which governs Chicago exploited this incident to suppress the working class movement.  Eight worker leaders of Chicago, seven of whom had left the meeting place before the bombing were arrested and jailed. Ultimately four leaders were hanged on 11th Nov, 1887.   Their names are Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer.  In 1893 the Governor of Illinois accepted that the trial had been patently unjust, condemning the entire judicial system.  The Jury was offered money by the Chicago Tribune if it found the eight men guilty.                                             

The words of Spies: “There will come a time when our Silence will be more vocal than our Words” were prophetic as May Day became International and the voices became deafening. Not many lives were lost in the Hay Market on May 4^th. The four trade union leaders sentenced to death and executed at Chicago in connection with this incident were the real Martyrs.  It is in commemoration of these Chicago Martyrs a Resolution was passed in the first conference of the Second International in 1889 at Paris on the centenary of the French Revolution to declare May 1^st as Labour Day.  

Rail workers have played a crucial and leading role in the history of the Indian Trade Union movement.   The struggles conducted by rail workers had begun in the 19^th century itself. The first war of Indian Independence, as is well known, had begun in 1857.  Within a couple of years, there have been struggles by railway workers, in different places.  Those struggles were all local involving a few workers.

             One of the important struggles, a really historic one, was the struggle of railway workers in Howrah, in Bengal, involving about 1200 workers.  It is historic in two ways. One the demand - The demand of the strike was for 8 hours of work a day. Two, it happened during April-May 1862.

       The historic importance of this struggle is that even before forming a proper trade union, a strike demanding 8 hours of work had been conducted. This had happened in Indian Railway, 24 years ahead of the struggle of Chicago workers for 8 hours of work!