Skip to main content
May Day is ours
The politics of the workers is the politics of hope – and May Day reminds us of our task to turn hopes into reality, writes GMB leader GARY SMITH

MAY DAY is ours. It celebrates all those things — work, the dignity of labour, the spirit of collective action, trade union unity and internationalist solidarity — that are nowadays rarely discussed and which run in a direct counter-current to the dominant values of a consumer society and a neoliberal economy. 

It is important because it symbolises hope, as each fresh spring brings with it renewal, growth and the promise of a future harvest. 

And hope remains both the vital essence of our movement and the key component in the message of organised labour to peoples across the globe. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
SOLIDARITY: Rally in Hyde Park during the General Strike of 1926
Features / 30 January 2026
30 January 2026

One hundred years after 1.7m workers shut the country down in defence of the miners, the struggles that sparked the 1926 General Strike are still with us – and will be honoured on London’s May Day march this year, writes MARY ADOSSIDES

THANKLESS JOB: A Stirling council gritting lorry gets stuck in the snow near Carronbridge, central Scotland
Aw That / 6 December 2025
6 December 2025

Behind the cute names of Scotland’s road gritters lies a workforce underpaid and overlooked – a fitting reflection of a Budget that protected profits, bungled its rollout and offered hardly a glimmer of hope, writes MATT KERR

 06/02/23 of workers on the picket line outside Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton during a strike by nurses and ambulance staff
Voices of Scotland / 23 September 2025
23 September 2025

Employment lawyer ALICE BOWMAN warns ‘day one rights’ include an undefined ‘initial period’ and the zero-hours contract fixes create baffling fixed-term loopholes. If the Bill doesn’t work properly and deliver, Labour is doomed

Train drivers from the Aslef union on the picket line at Euston station in London, April 5, 2024
Features / 19 July 2025
19 July 2025

As the labour movement meets to remember the Tolpuddle Martyrs, MICK WHELAN, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, says it’s an appropriate moment to remind the Labour government to listen to the trade unions a little more