This year's May Day demonstrations take place in the most critical political climate since the [illegible] Labour Government in 1964. At the time of writing it is not clear just how many trade unionists will respond to the call for a one day strike on Thursday, May 1st, against the Government's intention to implement the terms of the White Paper, "In Place of Strife". But reports are coming in daily of more factories, shipyards, etc., swelling the number [illegible] so that there is every chance of a more significant protest than [illegible] seen on February 27th.
The fact that strikes are now being called on May 1st is of great significance. For many years before the 1st World War the parties of the International proclaimed the brotherhood [illegible] working class and its international solidarity by organising strikes and demonstrations on 1st May. Even in times of comparative social peace this celebration of an International Day of Labour was a constant reminder of the [illegible] of the working class movement and its mass support. This tradition [illegible] nationalism [illegible] relation to imperialism.
In Britain, the demonstrations held on the Sunday following May Day have been reduced of late to an empty ritual. In many places they have actually been abandoned by a Labour Party which no longer wishes to stress its links with the working class movement. Even in Glasgow, where the [illegible] unions can usually [illegible] a demonstration of 5,000, the march has in recent years been almost totally devoid of political slogans - an aimless Sunday afternoon saunter ending in sporadic heckling of some Government spokesman.
The beginnings of a reversion to the traditions of a "May 1st holiday" are a welcome sign that, after many years of insularity and subservience to Fabian ideology, sections of the British labour movement are beginning to return to some of the better traditions in our history. In recent years the standard bearers of militant anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist demonstrations have been in the main the students and youth. It is apparent now that, as in a spectacularly deep-going fashion in May 1968, the workers' movement is beginning to be moved by these lessons in struggle. When this happens on a really big scale in Britain, the way will at last be opened for a mass revolutionary movement to emerge.
Meanwhile it is particularly to be hoped that the May 1st demonstrators will not concern themselves solely with the White Paper, important though that is. Let us also recall some of the internationalist spirit of May Day by proclaiming our solidarity with the workers and peasants of the neo-colonial countries, especially those fighting in Vietnam, with the workers of Northern Ireland battling the British-backed police thugs, with the [illegible] and students of Czechoslovakia and the other workers' states struggling for socialist democracy against the iron hand of the [illegible] bureaucracy.
The struggle [illegible] the Labour Government's anti-trade union legislation will of course not be limited to May Day. We are witnessing at this juncture the logical culmination of the whole orientation which the Wilson Government has taken since its accession to power. Faced with the problems of the British capitalist economy, exacerbated by highly unfavourable economic conditions throughout the capitalist world, the Government has never shown any sign of an attempt to break out of the straitjacket of bourgeois ideology. We see, as has been demonstrated time and time again, that, while in times of relatively favourable economic conditions the social democrats can make some reforms (as did the Labour Government, 1945 - 50), in the period of crisis for the imperialist economies, they can only act as the servants of the ruling class, using their relations with the working class movement to facilitate their savage attacks on the standard of living through price, tax and rent increases.
But in Britain our Labour "leaders" have a very intractable problem. The trade union movement has 10 million members. In the full employment conditions of last 20 years they have won [illegible]. Many advances have been acquired in [illegible] measure by localised, shop-floor bargaining. The trade unions, and in particular the shop stewards, stand in the way of the "rationalisation" of British capitalist industry because they will resist the detrimental effects of this process upon [illegible] wages, working conditions and in some cases, their actual livelihood. This is the logic of the Paper. The "softening-up" process has begun.
Revolutionary socialists welcome the fact that there has been such widespread opposition to these [illegible], not least from a large number of Labour M.P.s and a host of leading trade unionists. But we will treat this aspect of the opposition with some caution. For [illegible] years many of these "left-wingers" have tolerated the rightward evolution of the Wilson Government, supporting its racialist immigration laws, its wage freeze, its imperialist posture overseas. Because of their failure to decisively oppose this trend they have assisted the demoralisation and decay of the labour movement.
For a number of years it has been urgently necessary to rebuild the left on a firmer foundation. The events of the coming months can greatly [illegible]. But it is necessary to be very clear what is the objective. There can be [illegible] compromise with [illegible] present [illegible] which has [illegible] demonstrated its political [illegible] [illegible] "left-wingers" [illegible].
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