The May Day Rally organised by the Young Socialists and the Workers Revolutionary Party, took place in Holborn on Monday 4th May at the end of the 10,000-strong Trades Union Congress march from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square.
Opening the rally, Aabhinav Tiagi, Editor of the Young Socialist paper, said: ‘Today is a historic day, as the centenary of the general strike in Britain.’
He explained how the tradition of May 1st being the international day of the working class began in 1886 when thousands of workers walked out all over the United States, demanding an 8-hour working day.
‘In Chicago, 40,000 went on strike. Workers were brutally attacked by police outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company on 3rd May. A protest rally on the 4th May resulted in police arresting workers for their rebellious chants.
‘Today in desperation, the state wants to ban Palestine marches and ban the use of certain phrases.
‘Today, the only country which does not celebrate May Day is the US. The ruling class wanted to separate American workers from the international May Day.
‘Hitler also shifted May Day to move it away from connections with international workers’ day.
‘There has been an ongoing genocide in Gaza for three years, and now genocide in Lebanon, followed by the onset of an attempted imperialist war against Iran, marked by terrible atrocities.
‘All over the world violence is inflicted on workers; on bus workers, binworkers and nurses.
‘The Labour government won a huge mandate in the general election, but went back on all its promises. Labour’s reckless abandonment of the working class revealed its bowing to the interests of the ruling class. It now faces a huge defeat in the upcoming local elections.
‘Elections can provide no answers for workers. Now is the time for the working class to rise up all over the world. This energy must be about the working class taking over.
‘Come to our General Strike Centenary rally in Finsbury Park next Saturday (see advert page 1). We’re showing footage of the 1926 general strike.
‘The workers had established Councils of Action to the point where the bosses and police had to ask their permissions to move. At the Elephant and Castle, the workers held the power. It was at that point that the general strike was betrayed.
‘We must remember Lenin’s words that the trade union leadership act as the “Aristocracy of Labour” and against workers’ interests.
‘Workers are already powerful. The TUC and trade union leaders must be forced to act in the interests of their members.
‘This time, it is not just possible but necessary to achieve socialism and workers’ government.
‘It’s no longer a question of different capitalist parties, none of which will change anything. We must build a mass party with large number of youth to establish the taking of power – to change the fundamental basis on which society is run, not just putting a different face on the same old system.’
Nilly Brook, a British Iranian artist and activist against the pro-Shah lobby, said: ‘It is great to see News Line supporting Iran and breaking the ignorance. Very few papers put out serious narratives on Iran.
‘We can all see that the US is losing this war. The US chose it too. So many Iranian lives have been lost and some US lives, and many jobs lost.
‘The war exposes the weaknesses of imperialism, while we are taught that it is invincible. The US has not achieved its aims: of regime change, a balkanised country, and destruction of nuclear facilities and missiles. There is a shift away from petrodollars, and damage to the US economic reputation.
‘The events in Gaza have shown everyone how brutal imperialism is and the fallacy of democracy. The world is becoming more multi-polar.
‘Iran has suffered massive sacrifices, and destruction of infrastructure, but they knew it was coming. And know another attack is coming. The US onslaught is unifying Iran.
‘The US has such a distorted lens, which penetrates the whole of society. Iran is demonised as irrational and illegitimate.
‘News Line is doing a very good job.
‘The history of the Islamic Republic is that it always tried to cooperate with the US. General Sulaimani helped the US defeat ISIS in Iraq which the US never acknowleged and then assassinated him at a later.
‘There is a very long history of demonisation. Iran is the second most sanctioned country by the US in the world, which is crippling its economy. There are covert operations all the time…. There are 18 different operations acting in Iran, which contributed to the January riots. But it didn’t work.
‘They expected a war to be just a few days, like in Venezuela.
‘Gramsci is inspiring. He said it’s not just a question of power but about ideas. We have to educate people and tell them the truth.
‘Central to the Shia faith is the battle of Karbala. Its a story of Husayn fighting tyranny and has been with Iranians for 1,300 years.
‘It’s a binding force for justice. It’s not easy to fight imperialism. We must start by respecting and supporting the resilience of the Iranian people. The imperialists have an orientalism which looks down on Iran, with racism and negativity.
‘Iran is not a normal state. It is a civilisation. It adapted from the early years of the Iran-Iraq war. We’re a defender of a civilisation.’
Frank Sweeney from the Central Committee of the WRP thanked people for coming and the two speakers for explaining things so clearly.
‘For our part, we send fraternal greetings to the working class and youth of the world, especially to the heroic Palestinian people fighting a world-organised genocide doing its best to crush them.
‘But the Palestinians have defeated Israel’s objectives and the Iranian people have defeated Trump’s aims.
‘The Anglo-Persian oil company of 1905, resulted in a Left government in Iran setting about nationalising the oil. British and imperialist secret services then overturned the government, until the Islamic revolution in 1979 which has lasted for 47 years.
‘The people of Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan are still paying the price as are the those surviving the war in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
‘There has been nothing but imperialist wars for the last 30 years. This is not an accident. The capitalist system is in a terminal crisis on a world scale. They are desperate to massacre millions and destroy their lives.
‘Post second world war, there was less starvation and homelessness. But now there are going to be massive shortages and price rises.
‘The ruling classes are hated by their own populations. There are conflicts between these ruling classes but they all want to suppress the working class. Both the Labour and Tory parties are split. The working class is becoming more united and fighting to resist these attacks.
‘Lenin said that a revolutionary situation is when the masses cannot live in the conditions they were accustomed to and when the ruling class cannot rule in the way they were accustomed to.
‘We are a revolutionary Marxist party. There were a lot of factions demonstrating there in Clerkenwell Green today, but we do what we say we’re going to do.
‘We set out to overthrow the ruling class, not to appeal or bargain with them. We’re in the business of getting rid of them.
‘The Labour Party is splitting. We must fight for a general strike to bring down the government and establish a workers’ government and socialism where all the major industries are nationalised.
‘We hold out a hand of friendship to the Palestinians and Iran and all oppressed people. Forward to the world revolution.’