Eleanor Marx

THE first May Day in its current guise in Britain can be traced back to the late Victorians – in May 1890, this spring celebration of the worker was formally recognised.

Around the world, trade unions, political groups, associations and guilds exercised their right to demonstrate, to discuss and to party.

In the politically charged atmosphere of Chicago and its meat industry, workers organised themselves and May Day became synonymous with a call for a legal eight-hour day.

In Paris, workers voted to use May Day as a date for mass demonstrations.

The first May Day demo in the UK came with some already-established traditions. It was a way of showing the respectability of working-class power, it was a day to flex organisational muscles – and a day of celebrating, too.

As well as speeches and marches, there was eating, drinking, games, sports and parties.

Some elements were inherited from miners’ galas, others from a more rural and older peasant-based economy, tying in with the pagan ideas of maypoles, spring and rebirth.

By 1890, the power of the trade unions and the growth of a global working-class consciousness was ablaze in the major industrial countries.

Karl Marx and Frederich Engels had published economic philosophy that explained people’s lives in a manner that offered structure to a struggle, and when a call came for a mass May Day demonstration in London, it was Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, who was invited to address the crowds.

Eleanor was brilliantly eloquent – she produced the first English translation of Madame Bovary, and was an Ibsen scholar. She worked as her father’s secretary and researcher, his editor on key political works and also laid out his biography.

Her own political philosophies were rooted in universal equality and feminism, ideas she said could not be considered separately when fighting for workers’ rights.

And she would become a key figure in organising the first May Day demonstration of the modern era, taking place in Hyde Park, 1890.

In the months leading up to the date, Eleanor had been working during the day in the docks, leading gas and dockers’ unions to organise a strike in Silvertown, and then editing a magazine called Time, which cost a shilling and was published once a month.

Eleanor had noted a resolution passed at the Paris Congress to establish May Day as an annual demonstration of the international solidarity of labour in the demand for an eight-hour day – an original aim of the May Day demonstrations in Chicago.

Eleanor spoke at union meetings and on the picket lines about the importance of May Day, and lobbied the Bloomsbury Socialist Society to organise a mass rally of London workers in Hyde Park.

As ever, voices of dissent believed the focus of the protest was too narrow, and members of the Socialist League decided they would have their own rally.

It meant when dawn broke on May 1, 1890, two different May Day marches had been planned. One met at Clerkenwell Green under the Socialist League banners, and attracted 3,000 people to hear William Morris speak.

Three days later, Eleanor’s Hyde Park demonstration took place and attracted 250,000 people. It was here Eleanor took the rostrum and addressed the crowds.

“We have not come to do the work of political parties, but we have come here in the cause of labour, in its own defence, to demand its own rights,” she said.

“I can remember when we came in handfuls to Hyde Park to demand an Eight Hours’ Bill, but the dozens have grown to hundreds, and the hundreds to thousands, until we have this magnificent demonstration.

“Those of us who have gone through all the worry of the Dock Strike, and especially the Gasworkers’ Strike, and have seen the men, women and children stand round us, have had enough of strikes, and we are determined to secure an eight hours’ day by legal enactment; unless we do so, it will be taken from us at the first opportunity. We will only have ourselves to blame if we do not achieve the victory which this great day could so easily give us.

“I am speak­ing this afternoon not only as a trade unionist, but as a Socialist. Socialists believe that the eight hours’ day is the first and most immediate step to be taken, and we aim at a time when there will no longer be one class supporting two others, but the unemployed both at the top and at the bottom of society will be got rid of. This is not the end but only the beginning of the struggle; it is not enough to come here to demonstrate in favour of an eight hours’ day.

“We must not be like some Christians who sin for six days and go to church on the seventh, but we must speak for the cause daily, and make the men, and especially the women that we meet, come into the ranks to help us.”

She then quoted Shelley, reading:

Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many – they are few.

Engels commented afterwards that “the English working class joined up in the great international army… the grandchildren of the old Chartists are entering the line of battle” and considered, as many others in Hyde Park that day felt, May Day was to become a sign of international workers’ strength.

Although planned as a one-off demonstration, its success – and the chance to have a day off work, mixing politics with fun – means 131 years after Eleanor took to the stage in Hyde Park, the workers’ holiday continues to be celebrated today.