By Krishna Jha
As the new labour codes of the government threaten to take away many of the rights of the working masses, including that of the eight-hour working day, this May Day should act as a reminder of the struggle and strength of the workers across the world. It was during the economic slowdown between 1882 and 1886 when working masses became active to ignite opposition to unlimited working hours after which they took home only a paltry sum, not enough to even satisfy hunger for the entire family.
Workers from all over the world from every hue flooded in support of eight hour working day. The movement became stronger from 70,000 in 1884 to over 700,000 by 1886. The powerful trade union organisations in the US like the AFL, and Knights of Labour prepared the working class for the eight hour work day. The trade unions were already preparing for such a struggle since 1884 itself.
The forms of struggle started gaining significance as the international proletariat was growing more organised. There were massive rallies by unemployed workers, organized by Socialist Parties in different countries. The sharp rise among workers highlighted the accumulating strength and the spread of Marxism wide and deep. These years were significant also about the growing diversity in the forms of struggle of the working class. These struggles, usually initiated by the proletariat, were an invaluable experience for the working class. It was also spreading at a fast speed, gaining strength, and uniting them.
The final decades of the nineteenth century were a period of rapid growth of the trade union movement itself. In the entire Europe, workers were organized by their trade, and merged to form large trade unions. Writing about the period, Lenin said that “the development of the proletariat did not and could not proceed anywhere in the world other than through the trade unions.” There emerged branches of trade unions with cohesion within territorial boundaries. These factors reinforced the potential of the trade unions in their struggle against their employers. It also spread the imperative need for a United Front to fight.
With these basic forms of trade unions that had characterized them internationally, the policy of unity and struggle was also gaining popularity by 1880s and 1890s.Among them, the first was organization of the trade union. It was widespread in Britain, US, Canada and Australia. The second was trade unions relying on political parties, based on the principles of scientific socialism. These were in countries like Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries.
Lenin wrote in his “Left Wing Communism –An Infantile Disorder” about the workers who came under the influence of the Anarcho Syndicalism, a trend that evolved mainly in Spain and France. They believed in only improving the living conditions of the working class, not creating a new society with working class ruling the roost. Freidrich Engels had said, “Without the means of resistance provided by the trade unions, worker would not have obtained even what was due to him under the laws of system of wage labour.”
On May 1, 1886, workers took to the streets in a general strike throughout the entire United States to force the ruling class to give recognition to the eight-hour working day. Over 350,000 workers across the country directly participated in the general strike, with hundreds of thousands of workers joining the marches as best they could.
In what they would later call the Haymarket riots, during the continuing strike action on May 3 in Chicago, the heart of the U.S. labour movement, the Chicago police opened fire on the unarmed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works, killing six workers and wounding untold numbers. An uproar across the nation resounded against the government and its police brutality, with workers’ protest rallies and demonstrations throughout the nation set to assemble on the following day.
On May 4, Chicago members of the anarchist IWPA (International Working Peoples’ Association) organized a rally of several thousand workers at Haymarket Square to protest the continuing police brutality against striking workers on the South Side. As the last speaker finished his remarks that rainy evening, with only 200 of the most dedicated workers remaining at the rally, 180 armed police marched forward and demanded the workers to disperse. Then, deep within the police ranks, a bomb exploded, killing seven cops. The police opened fire on the unarmed workers – the number of workers wounded and killed by the cops is unknown to this day. The retaliation of the government was enormous in the days to follow, filling every newspaper with accusations, completely drowning the government murders and brutality of days past.
While the truth was that only one of the eight men accused was present at the protest, and he was attempting to address the crowd when the bomb went off. In one of the greatest show trials in the history of the working-class movement no evidence was ever produced to uphold the accusations, though all eight were convicted as guilty. Four of the prisoners – Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fisher – were executed, Louis Lingg committed suicide, and the three remaining were pardoned due to immense working class upheaval in 1893.
Almost after three decades, in 1923, May Day celebrations began in India. First it was in Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, in a struggle for the eight-hour workday. The Labour Kisan Party of Hindustan, founded by Malayapuram Singaravelu Chettiar, one of the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India, led the first celebration of May Day. But it was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who after becoming the Labour Member to the Viceroy’s Council in 1942 established the eight-hour workday in India in the 7th session of the Indian Labour Conference. He also established the Independent Labour Party for the rights of the working-class people. (IPA Service)
