One more May Day

Now that I have written about three Day Mays in a row, I must also add a fourth, photographed the day before yesterday in London by Rustem Adagamov.



Judging by the score, the brass band plays R. B. Hall’s popular Death or Glory march (1895)

The previous posts about the Soviet, the Nazi and the Putinist May Day well outline the frames of interpretation of the pictures and of the event. In the socialist and corporative societies, as well as in those in perfect national unity, the working class has already reached every goal. Thus they do not come under the leadership of their trade unions to the May Day rally to demand their rights, but rather to express their joy before the state leaders who ensure those rights. And the momentum of their former protest against their class oppressors now turns against the imperialists of other nations.

In the backward capitalist societies, however, the trade unions, as ever since 1889, march on May Day for more wages, better working conditions, and to demonstrate their own lobbying weight. Therefore the images of Lenin, Stalin and Mao carried by them, though exactly the same as those carried in Moscow, represent completely different persons. Not the mass murderers well known from history, but merely the personifications of the antithesis of the existing system. Or so I hope.

The Communist parties of Iran, Turkey and the Kurds, illegal at home, also rally in London, of course strictly separately

The dog is patiently waiting until its master listens to all the speeches