May Day: The continuity of human struggle

It is May Day. In these difficult times for the world, for nations almost everywhere, it is a day when those who suffer in a multitude of ways must be talked about. It is a day to speak of the travails peasants and workers have throughout history gone through. It is a moment when we must not forget those who suffer, and have suffered, in our times. It is a time for empathy, of course. But more importantly, it is time for the world to go out to the its leaders with the message that May Day is much more than a commemoration of a historic sacrifice. It is a continuity of struggle for the attainment of rights everywhere.

On May Day, we remember that more than a century ago it was a defining moment which transformed global history. If the French Revolution of 1789 passed on the message to generations that were and that would be that the voice of the people mattered, in 1886 it was a clarion call which went out in defence of the rights of those who worked the mines, tilled the land and operated the factories. It is time to recall the unstoppable movement of the struggling masses which was to have a profound impact on life in societies struggling to free themselves of political and social bondage. May Day is that moment in history when we re-educate ourselves with the idea that those who sweat it out in the factory and on the land are the salt of the earth.

The observance of the day annually is essentially a journeying back to the sacrifices made by some brave men in Chicago in 1886 in defence of their rights as workers. That these men summoned the courage to let the world know that the pursuit of happiness in life came from a sharing of the world's resources is a tale we celebrate this morning. And yet this celebration is touched with sorrow, for in these fraught times for the world we know that human suffering mars the quality of life across vast regions of the globe. Death and pestilence are yet the human fate. When thousands upon thousands perish in Gaza and the world stays silent in pusillanimity, we know the old struggle has not ended. When in Ukraine citizens try pushing back those who would commandeer their sovereignty, it is the old struggle which does not die.

We surely observe May Day because it was those self-respecting men who instilled in all of us back in 1886 the idea that struggling for a cause affecting the collective body of people is the noblest act that people can undertake. Since that supreme sacrifice in Chicago, the idea has grown that it is through a constant reinforcing of courage and a clear understanding of contemporary realities that societies can move forward. The men and women forced by hunger and war to make their way to happier shores in their rickety boats today inform us that in a world of power and wealth, there yet are the vast desolations of pain we cannot look away from. Not many politicians have souls as kind and as expansive as Angela Merkel's. Even so, we hope for and wait for great men and women to arise and make a difference.

Today, it is the Sudanese who, having lost homes in the crossfire between their military and the rebels, need food and shelter and a restoration of dignity. It is the suffering of men, women and children in South Sudan which is a new nightmare for us. When indigenous populations, men and women who have for centuries inhabited their land, observe the sanctity of that heritage defiled by the malevolent in association with the crass, we know once again that May Day is more than a day to be observed around a decisive phase of history. It is a day of remembrance --- of the loss of home, of the murder of forests and the theft of rivers, of the dark arrival of bandits encroaching on land not theirs.

Nowhere is the lesson of May Day more poignant than in Bangladesh, for it is here that workers and peasants, indeed all citizens, have historically waged long, desperate battles to claim for themselves a niche in the wider community. These are men and women who have carried, with others, our nationalistic struggle of the 1960s forward. And again they did not flinch from linking up with the War of Liberation in 1971 to ensure for the nation a life to be lived in dignity underscored by liberty.

May Day for us, indeed for others around the world, is an affirmation of the idea that national development, indeed progress worldwide, is fundamentally a guarantee of happiness and prosperity for those who produce the goods, in the factories and in the fields. That is the imperishable truth. And yet we note with concern that large sections of our working classes yet struggle to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

That tens of thousands of men and women need opportunities to ensure square meals for themselves through employment in industry is a truth we cannot ignore. When workers of garment units take to the streets to demand their arrear payments, to ask for a better working atmosphere, we know that much more needs to be done to give them the wherewithal of coming by stability in life.

In circumstances where the rising cost of living exercises our minds day after day, where little children go out to work in order to assist their families, we know there is yet a very long road we need to travel for these children not to be compelled into premature adulthood through a lack of education and economic security.

May Day is but a simple message of how much more we can do to ensure for ourselves a well-ordered, economically viable society in Bangladesh. It is a metaphor for those in diverse regions of the globe in desperate need of the means of survival. It is a simple message to those who would shape politics around the world that they need to take all those steps that will roll back the damage inflicted on climate for generations on end.

May Day is a pledge for a fulfilment of promises, all the way from the local to the global. It is about upholding the dignity of men and women, of nations, of societies. It is about internationalism, the means which will bring people together around the principle that the world is theirs to shape in rainbow colours as a collective human enterprise.

ahsan.syedbadrul@gmail.com