International Workers’ Day 2021
This year, like in years previous, we commemorate those workers who went on strike, engaged in work stoppages, marched, picketed and rallied in demand of working-class emancipation.
Whilst there will be no gathering of comrades to mark the occasion, it will be marked across the globe by trade unionists, and political & community activists, who will pause to remember those who went before us fighting for the liberation of our class.
This year is bittersweet. For many long months now, workers across the globe have faced the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. The ranks of nurses, doctors, paramedics and more have been thinned out, as many have fallen in the ongoing battle against the disease. Millions globally have died, and millions more will join them as capitalism fails to adequately organise against the virus.
But, we are offered hope. A hope, given to us by science and the worker. Hope, in the form of vaccines.
As with all wealth created by working people, those that control the levers of economic power have set about creating as much red tape as possible in order to ensure that they can profit from the pandemic. Some businesses, whose vaccines were funded with public money, are set to make billions, at the behest of the countries within which they exist.
We call for those lecherous governments to set aside their greed, lift the patents, and give to the workers that which they made; vaccines, like all aspects of healthcare, is a human right. It should not be withheld or hoarded for profit as women, men and children strain for breath and struggle for life.
The working class, as always, will pay the highest price for the current crisis. Whether through front line deaths in efforts to combat the spread, higher exposure in front facing jobs and the impact of more working-class people being pushed into poverty and starvation. The limited statistics already released into the public domain show a clear link between class and exposure with deaths due to the Coronavirus. While some bankers and speculators are laughing all the way to the bank, increasing numbers of the working class are instead walking to food banks.
Let us be clear; the rich must pay for COVID-19. If the powers that be in the Six and Twenty-Six county state’s think that the working classes of this island will accept another ten years of austerity, then they are mistaken. Our communities will not accept those who proclaim to be against cuts administering any further austerity measures. Whilst ‘Welfare Reform’, amongst other anti-working class initiatives, were designed in Whitehall, it was voted on by those in Stormont and administered by those living in our communities.
As Stormont, the bastion of capital in the occupied Six Counties, have again been found wanting, across Ireland working class communities have rallied and organised themselves providing essential services to our citizens in their time of need – initiatives which have shown the power of our collective efforts to provide essential services in the absence of the state.
It has provided to many across our communities a reminder of the renewed importance of self-organisation and empowerment that must be built upon as we move forward in our ambitions of realising a Socialist Republic.
There can be no return to the status quo of rampant capitalist and imperialist exploitation.
So, on this Mayday we reflect on the words of Cork born union organiser Mother Mary Jones who famously said: ‘Remember the dead, fight like hell for the living’.
For working class emancipation and a Socialist Republic. Ar aghaidh linn le chéile.
