May Day greetings from Workers Solidarity
to all out net readers.

    from Workers Solidarity No 28

    paper of the Irish anarchist
    Workers Solidarity Movement

TRADITIONALLY, May 1st has been a day with 
special significance for the labour movement.  A day 
of worldwide solidarity, a time to remember and 
demonstrate our common interests_and common goal - 
the emancipation of labour.

It all began over a century ago when the American 
Federation of Labour adopted an historic resolution which 
asserted that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labour 
from and after May 1st, 1886".

In the months prior to this date workers in their 
thousands were drawn into the struggle for the shorter day.  
Skilled and unskilled, black and white, men and women, native 
and immigrant were all becoming involved.

CHICAGO 

In Chicago alone 400,000 were out on strike.  A newspaper of 
that city reported that "no smoke curled up from the tall 
chimneys of the factories and mills, and things had assumed a 
Sabbath-like appearance".  This_was the main centre of the 
agitation, and here the anarchists were in the forefront of the 
labour movement.  It was to no small extent due to their 
activities that Chicago became an outstanding trade union 
centre and made the biggest contribution to the eight-hour 
movement.

When on May 1st 1886, the eight hour strikes 
convulsed that city, one half of the workforce at the McCormick 
Harvester Co. came out.  Two days later a mass meeting was 
held by 6,000 members of the 'lumber shovers' union who had 
also come out.  The meeting was held only a block from the 
McCormick plant and was joined by some 500 of the strikers 
from there.

The workers listened to a speech by the anarchist 
August Spies, who has been asked to address the meeting by 
the Central Labour Union.  While Spies was speaking, urging 
the workers to stand together and not retreat before the 
bosses, the strikebreakers were beginning to leave the nearby 
McCormick plant.

The strikers, aided by the 'lumber shovers' marched down the 
street and forced the scabs back into the factory.  Suddenly a 
force of 200 police arrived and, without any warning, attacked 
the crowd with clubs and revolvers.  They killed at least one 
striker, seriously wounded five or six others and injured an 
indeterminate number.

HAYMARKET

Outraged by the brutal assaults he had witnessed, Spies went 
to the office of the Arbeiter-Zeitung (a daily anarchist 
newspaper for German immigrant workers) and composed a 
circular calling on the workers of Chicago to attend a protest 
meeting the following night.

The protest meeting took place in the Haymarket 
Square and was addressed by Spies and two other 
anarchists_active in the trade union movement, Albert Parsons 
and Samuel Fielden.

POLICE

Throughout the speeches the crowd was orderly.  Mayor Carter 
Harrison, who was present from the beginning of the meeting, 
concluded that "nothing looked likely to happen to require 
police interference".  He advised police captain John Bonfield of 
this and suggested that the large force of police reservists 
waiting at the station house be sent home.

It was close to ten in the evening when Fielden was 
closing the meeting.  It was raining heavily and only about 200 
people remained in the square.  Suddenly a police column of 180 
men, headed by Bonfield, moved in and ordered the people to 
disperse immediately.  Fielden protested "we are peaceable".

BOMB

At this moment a bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police.  
It killed one, fatally wounded six more and injured about 
seventy others.  The police opened fire on the spectators.  How 
many were wounded or killed by the police bullets was never 
exactly ascertained.

A reign of terror swept over Chicago.  The press and 
the pulpit called for revenge, insisting the bomb was the work 
of socialists and anarchists.  Meeting halls, union offices, 
printing works and private homes were raided.  All known 
socialists and anarchists were rounded up.  Even many 
individuals ignorant of the meaning of socialism and anarchism 
were arrested and tortured.  "Make the raids first and look up 
the law afterwards" was the public statement of Julius 
Grinnell, the state's attorney.

TRIAL

Eventually eight men stood trial for being "accessories to 
murder".  They were Spies, Fielden, Parsons, and five other 
anarchists who were influential in the labour movement, 
Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg 
and Oscar Neebe.

The trial opened on June 21st 1886 in the criminal 
court of Cooke County.  The candidates for the jury were not 
chosen in the usual manner of drawing names from a box.  In 
this case a special bailiff, nominated by state's attorney 
Grinnell, was appointed by the court to select the candidates.  
The defence was not allowed to present evidence that the 
special bailiff had publicly claimed "I am managing this case and 
I know what I am about.  These fellows are going to be hanged 
as certain as death".

JURY

The eventual composition of the jury was farcical; being made 
up of businessmen, their clerks and a relative of one of the dead 
policemen.  No proof was offered by the state that any of the 
eight men before the court had thrown the bomb, had been 
connected with its throwing, or had even approved of such acts.  
In fact, only three of the eight had been in Haymarket Square 
that evening.

 No evidence was offered that any of the speakers had 
incited violence, indeed in his evidence at the trial Mayor 
Harrison described the speeches as "tame".  No proof was 
offered that any violence had been contemplated.  In fact, 
Parsons had brought his two small children to the meeting.

SENTENCED

That the eight were on trial for their anarchist beliefs and 
trade union activities was made clear from the outset.  The trial 
closed as it had opened, as was witnessed by the final words of 
Attorney Grinnell's summation speech to the jury.  "Law is on 
trial.  Anarchy is on trial.  These men have been selected, 
picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because they were 
leaders.  There are no more guilty than the thousands who 
follow them.  Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make 
examples of them, hang them and you save our institutions, our 
society."

On August 19th seven of the defendants were sentenced to 
death, and Neebe to 15 years in prison.  After a massive 
international campaign for their release, the state 
'compromised' and commuted the sentences of Schwab and 
Fielden to life imprisonment.  Lingg cheated the hangman by 
committing suicide in his cell the day before the executions.  
On November 11th 1887 Parsons, Engel, Spies and Fischer were 
hanged.

PARDONED

600,000 working people turned out for their funeral.  The 
campaign to free Neebe, Schwab and Fielden continued.  
On June 26th 1893 Governor Altgeld set them free.  He 
made it clear he was not granting the pardon because he 
thought the men had suffered enough, but because they were 
innocent of the crime for which they had been tried.  They and 
the hanged men had been the victims of "hysteria, packed juries 
and a biased judge".

The authorities has believed at the time of the trial 
that such persecution would break the back of the eight-hour 
movement.  Indeed, evidence later came to light that the bomb 
had been thrown by a police agent working for Captain 
Bonfield, as part of a conspiracy involving certain steel bosses 
to discredit the labour movement.

When Spies addressed the court after he had been 
sentenced to die, he was confident that this conspiracy would 
not succeed.  "If you think that by hanging us you can stamp 
out the labour movement... the movement from which the 
downtrodden millions, the millions who toil in misery and want, 
expect salvation - if this os your opinion, then hang us!  Here 
you will tread on a spark, but there and there, behind you - 
and in front of you, and everywhere, flames blaze up.  It is a 
subterranean fire.  You cannot put it out".

REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS

One hundred and seven years after years after that first May 
Day demonstration in Chicago, where are we?  It has become 
little more than an institution.  We stroll though town with 
our union banners - about the only day of the year we can get 
them out of head office.  Then we stand around listening to 
boring (and usually pretty meaningless) speeches by equally 
boring union bureaucrats.  You have to keep reminding yourself 
that May Day was once a day when workers all over the world 
displayed their strength and proclaimed their ideals.
It is important that "once upon a time" it was like that.  
We can do it again.  We need independent working class 
politics.  No collaboration with government and bosses, no more 
PESPs.  Defiance of the Industrial Relations Act, not passively 
giving up.  Real solidarity with fellow workers in struggle, not 
a blinkered sectional outlook.

We need revolutionary politics.  That means politics 
that can lead us towards a genuine socialism where freedom 
knows no limit other than not interfering with the freedom of 
others.  A socialism that is based on real democracy - not the 
present charade where we can choose some of our rulers, but 
may not choose to do without rulers.  A real democracy where 
everyone effected by a decision will have the opportunity to 
have their say in making that decision.  A democracy of 
efficiently co-ordinated workplace and community councils.  A 
society where production is to satisfy needs, not to make profits 
for a privileged few.  Anarchism.
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The Workers Solidarity Movement can be contacted at 
     PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland

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