May Day is an international celebration of workers’ solidarity and class struggle. May Day is Our Day!

It is a time also to reject those who seek to divide workers whether on the basis of religion, race or toxic nationalism. The path to progress is through a united working class.

Poverty and inequality are inherent in the structures of capitalist society. Housing, health and education are under attack from a ruling class committed to the privatisation of public services in a ceaseless drive for profit. 

State Benefits and foodbanks

Work is low paid, precarious and casualised. The gains and achievements fought for and attained by workers over generations are being undermined and reversed. Many workers, although in employment, cannot earn enough on which to live forcing them to top up their earnings with state benefits or survive on food banks provided by charities while big corporations pay little or no tax.

Locally and globally, capitalism is already preparing the ground for the world after Covid-19. Rather than improving pay and conditions for those workers who have stood in the frontline, the capitalist class is moving to further privatise and profit from public and personal health; to cut back on public housing and education funding; to undermine social security; to place even greater restrictions on trade unions; to renew the attack on wages; to limit the minimum wage, extend precarious employment and to attack and further dilute workers’ rights.

We were never “all in this together”.

During the pandemic we have witnessed the enrichment of pharmaceutical companies in their pursuit of profit with the rich nations of the northern hemisphere, while the poorest regions are left to the ravages of the pandemic. While the working class and poor have been further impoverished the rich have become richer with a massive increase in the number of billionaires. We were never “all in this together”.

May Day is our day! It is an important occasion to celebrate our historic victories and to demonstrate our solidarity with workers’ struggles across the world.

See the Workers Party May Day statement in full here: