Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 12:50:17 +0100 (BST) From: D S Byrne Reply-To: D S Byrne To: Priscilla Shorne Capital-and-Class@mailbase.ac.uk Subject: Re: May Day In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980504221022.006813b8@central.murdoch.edu.au> (1) I am glad May Day has gone well in other places. Here it didn't at least in Newcastle England where we have a long tradition of a May Day March (goes back to the founding of Newcastle Trades [union] Council in the 1870s). The turn out was miserable - only about 200 people compared with more than 1,000 on average in the 80s. The notable absence was the 'New' Labour Party (although the quotation marks should really be around Labour). There was no Labour speaker. This may not be unconnected with the recent defeat of the strike by the Magnet workers in Darlington who have been locked out in an official and legal dispute for more than two years. The New 'Labour' government did absolutely nothing for them, although Blair is actually one of their local MPs. This is quite different from previous Labour administrations which have generally defended basic trade union rights, whatever their other limitations. Summary impression - one of the world's oldest and strongest social democratic parties is social-democratic no longer, and not even christian democratic. (2) The socialist / labour May day event was on Saturday May 2nd. On Sunday May 3rd there was a May day event organised by various Green organizations. This took the form of an all day carnival. When we went there were more than 1,500 people present and I would guess 5 or 6 thousand would have visited during the day. The age profile was far younger with lots of teenagers and people in their 20s in contrast with the 40 and 50 year olds (me included) who made up the May Day Socialist March. There was a good deal of political content to the Green event, including third world solidarity stuff and various ecological politics. Is there a message here ? David Byrne Dept of Sociology and Social Policy University of Durham Elvet Riverside New Elvet Durham DH1 3JT 0191-374-2319 0191-0374-4743 fax