Working people all over the world celebrate May Day. In every continent millions upon millions of working people raise the Red Flag in honour of the international working class holiday that is the spirit of determination, solidarity and resistance.

In Britain it’s the rallying point of labour movement in the struggle for workers’ rights, pay, health, safety, peace and socialism.

We celebrate May Day to honour those dark days of the 1880s when American workers united against grasping employers who would have them work all day, every day but Sunday for a miserable pittance of a wage. We remember the fight for the eight-­hour day and the struggle that took place in Chicago in 1886 that ended with workers gunned down in the street by the police and their leaders hanged on trumped­-up charges of conspiracy and murder.

The bosses fear the spirit of May Day because it represents the unity of working people.

“There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today” Last words of August Spies, one of the four Chicago labour leaders executed by the American state in 1887.