On 1st May 1892 Manchester workers marched for the first time in a mass labour demonstration for a shorter working week and an independent political voice. It was part of a worldwide movement as unskilled workers organised in mass trades unions and Socialism developed a mass political following.
May Day was instituted as an International Labour Day around the world from 1890 onwards. The impetus came in part from a long –running campaign to reduce the working day to 8 hours. In September 1866 the International Working Men’s Association (otherwise known as the First International) meeting in Geneva passed a resolution adopting 8 hours as a goal. In October 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, passed a resolution calling for an 8 hour day from 1st May 1886.
In May 1886 tens of thousands of workers responded across the United States. The most militant city was Chicago where on 3rd May the police shot dead six strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. In response strikers organised a massive rally the following day at Haymarket Square. The rally was peaceful, but, as it ended, someone threw a bomb into police ranks. This was followed by a savage battle in which a number of police died as well as members of the crowd. There was a political show trial of a number of anarchists, of whom four were convicted and hanged. They become known as the Haymarket Martyrs.
On 14th July 1889 the Second International meeting in Paris called on workers around the world to march on 1 May 1890 for an 8 hour day.
The Congress decides to organize a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and in all cities on one appointed day the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well as the carrying out of other decisions of the Paris Congress. Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890, by the American Federation of Labor at its Convention in St. Louis, December, 1888, this day is accepted for the international demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organize this demonstration according to conditions prevailing in each country.”
It coincided with a new mood amongst unskilled workers, hitherto ignored or excluded by the trades union movement which had, with a few exceptions, organised skilled male workers only. In July 1888, for instance, women workers at the Bryant and May march factory in East London went on strike and won with the support of Socialists. The following year there was a massive dock strike in London involving thousands of dock labourers which brought the miles of docks to a halt. The result was victory for the workers leading to higher pay, better working conditions and a new union for unskilled workers, The Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers Union The strike was led by trade unionists and Socialists including Tom Mann, John Burns, Ben Tillett and Will Thorne. For the first time Socialist ideas were getting a mass audience. John Burns wrote of the importance of the dispute after it had been won
Still more important perhaps, is the fact that labour of the humbler kind has shown its capacity to organize itself; its solidarity; its ability. The labourer has learned that combination can lead him to anything and everything. He has tasted success as the immediate fruit of combination, and he knows that the harvest he has just reaped is not the utmost he can look to gain. Conquering himself, he has learned that he can conquer the world of capital whose generals have been the most ruthless of his oppressors.
The story of the strike is told by Louise Raw in her book Striking A Light.
On May Day 1890 there were strikes and marches in many part of the United States and Europe. Frederick Engels wrote:
As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is mobilized for the first time as One army, under One Bag, and fighting One immediate aim: an eight-hour working day, established by legal enactment…. The spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!
The London march to Hyde Park was huge, with perhaps 100,000 attending. Engels wrote an account in the newspaper Arbeiter Zeitung:
There can be no doubt about that: on May 4, 1890, the English working class joined the great international army. And that is an epoch-making fact. The English proletariat has its roots in the most advanced industrial development and, moreover, possesses the greatest freedom of political movement. Its long slumber — a result, on the one hand, of the failure of the Chartist movement of 1836-50 and, on the other, of the colossal industrial upswing of 1848-80 — is finally broken. The grandchildren of the old Chartists are stepping into the line of battle.
The success in London was repeated in 1891; Manchester followed with its own march in 1892.
On 16th April 1892 the Manchester socialist newspaper the Clarion reported that a “a great labour demonstration” was being planned for 1st May. Trade union and labour societies were requested to communicate with Mr James Quinn at the County Forum, 50a Market Street. (The County Forum was a debating society). The organising meetings were to be held every Thursday.
Robert Blatchford (1851-1943) (collection of the Working Class Movement Library)
On the day before the march the Clarion‘s editor and founder, Robert Blatchford, wrote a millenarian editorial:
WE HAVE GOT A LABOUR DAY.
Let the heavy-shod Radical, the iron-clamped Conservative, the chaff-chopping Economist, and the sword-dancing Pressman rill their lungs with wind, and puff up their imaginations with vanity. Let them sniff and snore, and fold their hands in idle self-complacency, for it is their nature so to do. They cannot see facts!
And this Labour Day is a fact. Ah my masters, it is a great fact. It is a bodeful, pregnant fact, out of which shall spring things as yet undreamed of. Selah! Let the clarion sound. Behold, Great Demos is awakened and his ponderous and terrine stature shall ere long be seen.
Do you think it is a little thing. this Labour Day? Do you suppose it to be no more than the gathering of a few thousand enthusiastic men anxious for bigger wages ? Do you imagine that half-a-dozen speeches and a volume of cheers exhaust the significance?
Ah ! Be not deceived. It is much more than that. As yet perceived but faintly even by those it gathers together, its significance is tremendous. Twelve bands, ten thousand trades-unionists, Mr. Cunningham Graham, six platforms, hip, hip hurray, and Alexandra Park left vacant for another year.
But from Manchester, from Salford, from Ashton. Oldham, Bury, Stockport, and all the busy towns of this busy district, there will come crowds of men. There will be Trades-unionists, Liberals, Conservatives, Fabians, Social Democrats, men of the Labour Church, Englishmen and foreigners, a vast representative gathering of Lancashire workers!
With them will be delegates from London, from Durham, from a score of other big towns ; and they will meet together in the park, and then you will see something happen. Though not a speech were uttered, not a trumpet Moan, not a banner unfurled, you should stand in the presence of two great and potent facts.
You have the fact that Labour has claimed its day. Yon have the fact that all those men have met. You will never again wring that day from Labour’s hands nor unhook the grapples of the spirits of the people. As quicksilver rushes together, so will that multitude coalesce. Once they have seen each other, it is enough, once they have heard the sound of their own united voices.
Do yon think the lesson will be lost upon them? They will thrill with one emotion for the first time . They will hear the mighty roar of the voice of the people. They will realise what fraternity means, they will realise what union means, and how a hundred thousand men willing one thing are like a hundred thousand men shouting with one voice.
Know it or not, it is true. It is the first stroke of the hour. It is the first note of the war song. It is the first step of march of the army of Labour; an army vast and solid, and confident and irresistible. It is LABOUR DAY.
The people will meet, that is the main thing. We shall see each other face to face, feel each other should to shoulder, hear each other voice to voice, trust each other soul to soul and we shall go away open-eyed and conscious of a change. we shall have felt our strength, imagined our numbers, seen as a vision of the world the golden dawn streak of the day of our deliverance, and our triumph.
Manhood suffrage and payment of members! What are these? They are as candles to the sun in comparison with the new LABOUR DAY. …
Our labour day will bind us as corn in the sheaf. The sturdy miner, the skilful engineer, the broad-handed navvy, the white-fingered artist, the lusty farmer, the fragile seamstress, the outcasts of the streets, the despised denizens of the slums, the sweater’s slave, the hearty sailor. Strong and weak, feeble and brave, old and young, simple and wise, the workers shall band themselves together in fraternity and freedom. They shall march on from this Labour Day growing ever wiser, nobler and juster until there is honour for those who make more than those who mar, reward for those who labour better than for those who loaf, until snobbery and prejudice, and theft and butchery are banished into the Hell they came from; until Labour shall hold that which it wins, and England shall be the freehold and the home and inheritance of the English.
This, now, is my Labour Day prophecy. Mark it well. And on the day of its fulfilment we will set the bells s-reeling till we split the steeple, and the cannon shall roar forth salutes to something holier than murder, and the crown shall no more be placed upon the brows of them that make a trade of slaughter, nor shall the robber be repaid with heaped-up masses of gold for his iniquity. Meanwhile, as a foretaste, as an earnest, as a premonition, yon shall hear us shout aloud on Sunday, for it is OUR LABOUR DAY.
The procession was to assemble in Stevenson Square at 2.30pm and march to Alexandra Park by way of Oldham Street, Piccadilly, Portland Street, Oxford Street, Stretford Road, Great Jackson Street, Preston Street , Moss Lane and Alexandra Road. The order of procession was advertised as follows
The Manchester Fabian Societies
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants
Tailors
Bakers and Confectioners
The Labour Church
Shirt and Jacket Makers
Salford Social Democrats
North East Manchester Labour Electoral
Spindle and Flyer Makers
Horsehair and Fibre Workers
Dressers, Dyers and Finishers
Enginemen and Cranemen
Navvies and Bricklayers
North Manchester Labour Electoral
According to the report in the Manchester Guardian a white ensign headed the procession with the slogan “Work for all, Overwork for None”. Other banners stated “Unity is Strength” and “Equality by Right, Justice to All”. Members of the Labour Church carried a banner stating “God Is Our King” while the Social Democratic Federation contingent carried red flags and a red cap on a pole (the symbol of the French Revolution).
Due to the numbers the procession moved off before the appointed time and was enlivened by at least a dozen bands. The Manchester Guardian noted that watching crowds, especially women, cheered the mottos in favour of the 8 hour day. In Hulme the march was greeted by large crowd and “something like the fervour of enthusiasm”. The march reached the park at about 4pm with at least 60,000 people now present.
At the park there were six platforms with a mix of trade union and Socialist speakers who advocated the following political programme;
- Formation of an Independent Labour Party
- Payment of MPs
- Shorter Parliaments
- Adult suffrage
- Nationalisation of the land.
On one of the platforms Robert Blatchford moved the following resolution.
That this meeting recognises that the establishment of a working day of not more than 8 hours is the most immediate step towards the ultimate emancipation of the workers and urges upon the Government the necessity of fixing a working day by legislative enactment.
One of the platform was reserved for Jewish speakers who spoke in Yiddish, including Mr Wess from London. This platform was chaired by Mr R Abrahams who said that he hoped that next year Jews would be more numerous. There do not seem to have been any women speakers and women’s suffrage was not included as an aim.
In 1893 Manchester Council tried to stop the march taking place, turning down an application from 35 trades unions to use Alexandra Park. According to a report in The Clarion the Corporation Parks Committee had deemed it “inadvisable that Sunday demonstrations should be held in the public parks and considers that unless desired by a considerable section of the Manchester citizens they should not be permitted. This meeting believes the present application is not of such a nature to warrant such permission and therefore declines to grant. ”
Leonard Hall, chair of the Demonstration Committee, wrote to The Clarion to state that it was a labour demonstration open to all and not an Independent Labour Party or Socialist demonstration. After more public protests permission to use the park was eventually granted.
Manchester was alive with Socialist organisations and activity. In the week before the 1893 march The Clarion carried notices for meetings of the Independent Labour Party in various parts of Manchester and Salford as well as a “gigantic” excursion to Morecambe on Whit Friday, the Social Democratic Federation, Hyde Labour Club, Ashton ILP, Oldham Independent Labour club, North Manchester Fabians and Manchester Anarchist Group who held public meetings every Sunday in Stevenson Square. Joe Waddington (known as “Clarion” Joe) sold The Clarion, Labour Prophet, Labour Leader, Workman Times, Shafts, A Paper for Women and “Socialistic” literature from his shop at 4a Crown Street, Chester Road. The Manchester Labour Press was based at 59 Tib Street.
The march took place on 6th May leaving from Stevenson Square at 2.30pm.The Clarion reported that it had been attended by 20,000. In his editorial Blatchford attacked the “city fathers” who had tried to stop them using the park and the Chief Constable who had deployed very large numbers of police who were threatening to the crowd, pushing people off pavements.
In 1894 the authorities refused to allow the use of Alexandra Park and instead the march went to Phillips Park. The tradition of May Day marches continued for a century until it ceased in the wake of trade union decline and defeat.
In 1895 the Clarion published a art work by Walter Crane in its front page to mark May Day, perhaps his most famous and influential work for the socialist and labour movement.
“When Johnny comes
In this context Arthur Wise’s The Day The Queen Flew to Scotland for the Grouse Shooting (the meaning of the title will become apparent later), is unique, written as it was just months after the end of the war (indeed, at the time of its publication in Ireland, Wise was in Cell 4, Debtors’ Prison, York).
Wise sets the scene at the outset, trying to convey to the reader the perceptible change in atmosphere at the beginning of 1968 that a native returning to a Northern town in Lancashire or Yorkshire after a period of absence might have sensed:
Red Flag Walks 
