1st May - Labour Day.

 On May 1^st Labour Day is commemorated globally. The historic struggles of the labour movement are remembered. In the USA towards the end of the 19^th century, Trade and Labour Unions were pushing for the introduction of the 8-hour working day. Here our focus is on the rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois – then a major industrial centre – although many rallies were taking place throughout America at the same time.

On May 4^th, 1886 crowds converged to hear their selected speakers, the meeting was said to be a peaceful one, and the speeches were coming to an end. Suddenly the police arrived en masse, demanding that the people disperse. It was then that a home-made bomb was thrown at the police and shots were exchanged, though exactly what happened next is unclear. The upshot was that in all, 7 police officers and at least 4 workers were killed. From then on May 1^st was designated a day of remembrance and of maintaining the momentum of the labour movement.

Leading up to Labour Day in Greece, this was posted in many areas, produced by The General Confederation of Greek Workers, informing people of the upcoming strike, place and time of meeting. And that’s about it – no information as to why it’s happening, what is being commemorated, who will be involved. It is simply taken as given that they will honour the Union call to assemble.

                                                  

What really intrigued me was that the only additional ‘information’ was a list of words with positive connotations but how they related to the unions, the strike, its objective – nothing! Why should we automatically associate these words, which are unquestionably semantically positive, with the trade union movement? There is no monopoly on them. This struck me as being lazy copywriting and irresponsible of the organisers to make such an assumption.

 The words listed by the dove image are: democracy, justice, peace, equality.

 Nice words, good words. But if you should come across one of these posters where the word chocolate has been added – another good word which has just as much right to be included in that list as I see it! – I guess you know who the perpetrator was!