International Workers Day 2020

Every year on May 1^st, we commemorate those workers who went on strike, engaged in work stoppages, marched and rallied in demand of an eight-hour working day and working-class emancipation.

This year, 2020, is no different, whilst there will be no protest marches or gathering of comrades to mark the occasion, it will be marked internationally by trade unionists, political and community activists pausing to remember those who went before us fighting for the liberation of our class.

This year has a poignancy, in that as of today a number of front-line workers in the Six and Twenty-Six County states have died combating the spread of COVID-19. Our thoughts are with their families and their colleagues as they continue in their efforts, many without essential personal protection equipment (PPE) or access to tests and without hazard pay.

The working class, as always, will pay the highest price for the current crisis. Whether through front line deaths in efforts to combat the spread, higher exposure in front facing jobs and the impact of more working-class people being pushed into poverty and starvation. The limited statistics already released into the public domain show a clear link between class and exposure with deaths due to the Coronavirus. While some bankers and speculators are laughing all the way to the bank, increasing numbers of the working class are instead walking to food banks.

Let us be clear; the rich must pay for COVID-19. If the powers at be in the Six and Twenty-Six county governments think that the working classes of this island will accept another ten years of austerity, then they are mistaken. Our communities will not accept those who proclaim to be against cuts administering any further austerity measures. Whilst ‘Welfare Reform’, amongst other anti-working class initiatives, was designed in Whitehall, it was voted on by those in Stormont and administered by those living in our communities.

As Stormont, the bastion of capital in the occupied Six Counties, is to be lit up red for Mayday, those same parties who control the levers of power in its corridors lie sleeping at the wheel in terms of a response to the COVID-19 crisis; indeed, when it comes to acquiring much needed PPE for those on the front line of the fight against the virus, they have slipped into a coma. They have allowed hazard pay to be stripped from Belfast City Council refuse workers and sacked 27 staff from Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

As state agencies have again been found wanting, across the thirty two counties working class communities have rallied and organised themselves providing essential services to our citizens in their time of need.

Lasair Dhearg activists have been to the fore with these efforts in Belfast and the Community Defence Committees (CDC’s), an initiative which has shown the power of our collective efforts to provide essential services in the absence of the state.

It has provided to many across our communities a reminder of the renewed importance of self-organisation and empowerment that must be built upon as we move forward in our ambitions of realising the Socialist Republic.

There can be no return to the status quo of rampant capitalist and imperialist exploitation.

So, on this Mayday we reflect on the words of Cork born union organiser Mother Mary Jones who famously said: ‘Remember the dead, fight like hell for the living’.

For working class emancipation and a Socialist Republic.

Ar aghaidh linn le chéile.