Two May Days
Socialist Press1978 1978-05-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 2 →
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May Day 1977 was a day of massacres against the working class. In Turkey dozens of workers were murdered.
And in Spain, attempts to assert the basic democratic right to demonstrate were Taraki in 1964 under the title People's Democratic Party, usually shortened to The People (Khalq), the name of the party's newspaper. met with bloody repression by the Suarez regime.
But in Britain in 1977 workers still had the right to demonstrate.
On May Day 1978, as a speaker at the WSL's well attended May Day Rally in Conway Hall pointed out, with support for against Khalq.
Last year, however, the Kremlin appeared to despair of the long-term survival Spanish workers would show that they had won the right to demonstrate, insecure as this right remained.
Meanwhile, by a strange but significant reversal, it was in Britain (Leeds) where workers attempting to march on May Day were arrested and prevented from demonstrating by thousands of This made clear how it was not only in countries where dictatorships ruled attempted to hang on to power where the question of democratic rights was important.
Everywhere, including in "democratic" Britain, the capitalist • crisis leads the ruling class to call into question not only the workers' economic conditions but also the basic democratic rights which had seemed to be secure, which are essential if conditions are to be defended and extended.
In the event, as British workers were arrested, workers in Spain took to the streets in hundreds of thousands-a quarter of a milion marched in Madrid alone.
And in Portugal, over 100,000 marched in what was said to be the biggest demonstration since 1974.
Taking up slogans against repression internationally, Spanish and Portuguese workers chanted "Pinochet murderer!"
And only a few hours later dictator Pinochet sent his police to break up an illegal march and arrest 300 demonstrators, including fraternal delegates from the European labour movement.
May Day this year showed the strength of the working class, and the dangers that it faces -from Leeds to Santiago.