Among the largish march (the police said 3,000 but that is too low) I was amazed by the range of leftist groups, sects and pseudo-fronts. Globalise Resistance was basically a handful of SWP paper sellers with a few orange flags (I wonder if GR uses that colour in Northern Ireland or the west of Scotland?). A few trade union banners were there. Plus a selection of Stalinist and Maoist groupings carrying banners with the faces of all your favourite mass murdering Marxist dictators (Lenin, Stalin and Mao). I was also amazed by the lack of self-irony. For example, I saw the Workers Power front group "Revo" chanting "Whose streets? Our streets" while walking where the police told them to go. They also had someone on a megaphone shouting "this is what democracy sounds like" while the rest of the grouplet chanted it after him, which is not my idea of what democracy should sound like!
As a participant, I was appalled by some of what I saw but I know that socialism is not restricted to the authoritarian left. I have to wonder what people watching this procession made of it. Given that the unions did not bother to produce a leaflet explaining the march and why they should be in a union, its anyone's guess what they made of it.
Needless to say, it was pretty quiet. Marching from A to B, with only a few minutes of GR milling about and shouting outside Shell to worry the police as we turned into the Strand. We also got some shouting as we passed McDonalds and the Army Recruitment. Once in Trafalgar Square, we were subject to speeches by various people. Needless to say, the speech by the Colombian trade unionist recounting the repression and murder of his comrades was at odds with the rest. Here in the UK, the trade unions are quite happy working in such a way as to be little or no threat to the status quo. An unfortunate side effect of that is that many workers see them as irrelevant. And the reason is plain to see.
Listening to the trade union speakers it was clear that they considered the future of the unions as being dependent on getting the state to support them in terms of favourable laws. While this is understandable, given the favourable laws which the state enacts to support capital and property owners' power, it shows that the current labour movement does not understand its own history and traditions. It does not recognise that labour's power lies internally, not externally. It lies in our ability to create, to produce, to work. Without our muscles and minds, the world would come to a stop. It does not lie in politicians or the capitalist state.
It is this, our economic power, which the trade unions squander with their bureaucracy, sectionalism and their uninspiring vision of getting a few more crumbs rather than the whole bakery. It is this message that anarchists should be getting across.
Given all this, was it worth going? Yes, May Day is our day. It was born of direct action, solidarity and self-organisation. Exactly the ideas which could re-invigorate the labour movement and make it a force which can improve our lives under capitalism while giving us the vision and power to go beyond it into real freedom. We need to get these ideas across to others and that made our participation worthwhile.
It is significant that groups like the SWP and WP have to form "anti-capitalist" and other fronts to get people interested in them. The left, as May Day shows, really has its head up its arse. They have to present themselves in false, libertarian, colours to appear relevant. We should take it as a complement, just as we should the fact they consistently fail to mention the anarchist roots of May Day. The Weekly Worker, for example, noted that the Chicago Eight "were tried solely for their political beliefs" yet failed to say what they were. Unsurprisingly enough, as an honest account of anarchism may make their readers re-evaluate their ideas! That suggests that our ideas have an appeal, an appeal Marxists use to flog their outdated authoritarian dead-end ideas. And we let them get away with it by failing to present what anarchism and its history really is!
So where next for May Day? It seems to me that May Day needs a rethink. Next year May First falls on a Saturday. Perhaps instead of organising protests against specific institutions of capitalism, we could focus around a conference that could present the positive side of libertarian ideas? We could encourage people to participate in the "official" trade union march before hand, using the opportunity to get our ideas across to trade unionists and passers-by. We could have a basic leaflet explaining the origins of May Day and giving anarchist ideas on what we can do (most basic, organise industrially!).
We have a year to discuss this. What do you think?