May Day observed

The International Labour Day, widely known as May Day, was observed in Bangladesh on Friday, as elsewhere around the world, with colourful processions and the voicing of the workers’ demand for the establishment of trade union rights at all factories. Apart from the government, various trade and labour unions, human rights organisations, professional bodies, socio-cultural organisations and political parties observed the day by staging rallies, holding seminars, discussions and cultural programmes in the capital and elsewhere in the country. The day was a public holiday, and the entire city was full of programmes of the working class people carrying red banners and flags and chanting slogans for the workers’ rights. May 1 was adopted as the International Labour Day by socialist delegates in Paris in 1889. More than 400 of them met in Paris on the centenary of the French Revolution at the Marxist International Socialist Congress, the founding meeting of the Second International. The Federation of Organised Trades and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada, in its convention in 1884, passed a resolution: ‘Eights hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour, from and after 1 May, 1886.’ Many of the strikes in 1886 were unsuccessful but on 3 May, 1886 one of the anarchists, August Spies, addressed a crowd of strikers at McCormick Harvester Works in Chicago, Illinois, where a force of 200 policemen attacked the crowd. At least one striker was killed. About half a dozen were seriously wounded. The anarchists convened a meeting in the next evening in Haymarket Square in Chicago to protest against the police action. The police carried out a series of attacks on participants of the peaceful rally on May 4. A bomb, thrown from the crowd into the ranks of the police, wounded sixty-six policemen, of whom seven died later. The police pulled out their guns and fired salvo after salvo at the workers, two hundred of whom were injured and several killed. Labourer organisations, socio-cultural bodies and political parties in the country held a number of programmes to mark the day. The processionists carried colourful banners, festoons and flags and demanded the establishment of right to trade union and safety at all factories and workplaces. The president, Abdul Hamid, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, the the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Khaleda Zia, and leaders of various political parties and labour organisations issued separate messages to mark the day.

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