May Day and its conflicts

May Day dates back to the 19th century. And it is a day marked by labor disputes and claims. It all starts in the United States. American workers had planned a common movement on May 1, 1886 to demand the 8-hour day. But soon the repression made victims among the militants. So much so that during the international meeting of labor movements in Paris in 1889, a day of common action was decided. It will be May Day for all, still celebrated in more than 110 countries today. With the horizon, Sundays off and eight hours of work a day.

But on May 1, 1891, a demonstration was bloodily repressed. Sign that it will take time to admit this event.

In 1919, the day became a public holiday. Clemenceau, still head of government, fearing a Bolshevik contagion, adopts the eight-hour day and May 1 as a holiday. The interwar period and the Liberation were marked by large workers’ parades on May 1st. So much so that even the Vichy government cannot suppress this celebration. In 1947 a law made May 1 a public holiday. And the following year it is actually called Labor Day. This is a great victory for the left. Then begins a kind of competition of legitimacy, that day.

Already in 1949 the opposition between Gaullist and syndicalist celebrations structured two different manifestations. Because General de Gaulle decides to hold large meetings on May 1, around his movement, the RPF. As if he opposed resistant France to those he called the “separatists”, communists and trade unionists. The general persists, but his movement disintegrates in 1954. May 1 remains very colored by the Communist Party which finances itself with the sale of lily of the valley. This lily of the valley which imposed itself from the inter-war period. But 1954 saw the start of the Algerian War and May Day would not see a parade until 1968.

Since then, it has stood except during the Covid but its meaning remains conflicting. Thus in 2012 three gatherings are held. That of the Le Pen and the FN who since the 1980s have celebrated Joan of Arc on that day. It is also the date of Nicolas Sarkozy’s big meeting at the Trocadero. And the left joined the parade of the CGT. Everyone castigates the reading of the others and denounces a drift… In fact, May 1st is never an ordinary day. It remains an extraordinary day for all workers.