Today is May Day, the international working classholiday, but it is much more than that.

The roots of May Day probably go back to the spring fertility festivals of ancient Egypt and India. We know that the Romanscelebrated the festival of Flora, the Goddess of Spring,from April 28 to May 3 and that similar celebrations could be found throughout Pagan Europe.

In the Celtic world, May Day, actually moonrise on April 30, marks the beginning of Beltane, the second half of the Celtic year. It is the opposite of Samhain which comes in the fall.

The ancient May Day festivals were a time of merry-makingand sexual license, but over time became co-opted by theChurch, which turned Pagan festivals into Saints Days.

In 1644 England, the Puritans actually outlawed May Day. It was celebrated again after the restoration of CharlesII, but some of its more exciting features disappearedfrom public practice. When the Victorians came along, itwas sanitized completely.

I can still remember, as a very young lad, my school’s May Day celebration, where we had a day of festivity and danced around the Maypole. Strictly the Victorian model celebration though — at six years old the more earthy Celtic practices would have been out of the question.

The modern association of May Day with labour has itsorigins in the 19th Century struggle for the eight-hourday. On May 1, 1886 the Knights of Labour called strikesin the United States and Canada to push the issue, and in Chicago, the police attacked and killed six workers.

The next day, during a demonstration at Haymarket Square to protest the killings, a bomb killed eight police. It was never clear whether workers bombed the police or a police agentfumbled a bomb meant for the workers, but eight workerstook the rap. Two were executed as an example to all whowould organize for better wages and working conditions.

In Paris 1889, the International Working Men’s Association declared May 1 an international working class holiday in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs, and the blood red flag became the symbol of the worker’s struggle for their rights.

Nowadays, reports come across my desk extolling thegrowth in the U.S. economy, while at the same time otherreports are coming in that say that American unemployment is at a nineteen year high.

Of course the economy is measured by how much money flows back and forth, employment is measured by how many people are getting some of it.

With lots of money flowing and fewer getting a part, a red flag should be going up, both figuratively and literally. As more and more workers are being left out on the street, we may be heading into another period like the times of Haymarket Square, when ordinary folk will have to take militant action to regain a fair share of the pie.

It is not only in America that ordinary folks are beingshut out from the benefits of society’s wealth. In British Columbia, thousands are being tossed to the wolves by Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government, as it cuts jobs and raises costs and fees in every sector.

In the last election, British Columbians wanted a change — now is the time for us all to ask ourselves if this is the change we wanted.

Privatization of public wealth, higher fees and fewer services with the savings being passed on to those who already have far more than they need, was that what we voted for?

Did we want the cost of post secondary education to skyrocket beyond the grasp of many workingclass families, primary and secondary education to bereduced, and old folks to be tossed out of theirretirement homes — some with only thirty days notice?

As the old Joni Mitchell song goes, “you don’t know what you got til its gone, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”