Join the traditional march from Clerkenwell Green, which will bring together countless international workers’ organisations in a statement against the far right
THE history of London May Day is rooted in the call for an eight-hour day by the Second International in 1890, and is marked by working-class activism and evolving political agendas. Several attempts to detach May Day from the labour movement, rejecting its roots in class struggle, have failed. May Day marches in Britain and London continue to be held annually.
One hundred and thirty four years later, on Thursday May 1 2025, London May Day marchers will assemble in Clerkenwell Green and march to Trafalgar Square led by the Big Red Band, where a rally will be held bringing together thousands of workers from many different unions and communities. Traditional, maybe, but more importantly, a gesture of class assertion, an assembly of trade unionists uniting on a working day, joining up with working-class organisations assembling in support of this year’s theme, Yes to Workers Rights, No to the Far Right.
Ismara Vargas Walter, Cuban ambassador to Britain, will address assembled crowds on the steps of the Marx Memorial Library where the march will assemble and then march to Trafalgar Square to hear speakers at the rally including Eddie Dempsey, recently elected RMT general secretary, Jackie Peckham (deputy general secretary of the NASUWT), Dr Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Tubisam Ahmed from Unite, a striking worker and representatives from community organisations.Many different organisations will be welcomed by trade unionists on the march, including representatives from Tamil, Kashmiri, Turkish and Kurdish, Cypriot, Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi communities and groups and many others too.
Student workers of Columbia organized in UAW 2710 participate in May Day rally. Photo: Wyatt Souers
On International Workers’ Day, workers around the world continued to join hands with the student movement to stand with Palestine
On May Day, workers around the world mobilized for the liberation of Palestine. “This May Day, workers of the world are called to declare their solidarity with Palestine, to denounce the Israeli Genocide, and to call for an end to all aggressions in the region and to all wars,” wrote the International People’s Assembly.
“Beyond the call for a ceasefire we must say no to the transportation of arms and arms caches to Israel. Workers in all industries – especially workers in the transport sector – that can withhold their labor in order to halt the continued slaughter of the people of Palestine are emphatically called to do so!”
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa released a statement calling on workers around the world to mobilize for Palestine. “The working class are the creators of wealth, and it is the united power of the working class that has the power to overthrow hateful, brutal regimes like Apartheid Israel,” wrote the union. “On this Workers Day, we call on workers of the world to unite in defense of Palestine so that its people can be free, from the river, to the sea!”
“The working class in South Africa must celebrate the defeat of Apartheid, because its destruction was due, largely to the unity of workers, who used their labor power to collapse the system through rolling mass action, strikes and protest,” the union added.
Several Palestinian union formations have called the people in the world to action against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. This includes the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, which in March called on US unions in particular to “be our voice and advocate inside and outside America.”
“What our people are experiencing and what workers and unions in particular, are exposed to is the most horrific catastrophe known to humanity in recent decades,” the PGFTU wrote. “We ask that you convey our message and give voice to the suffering of hungry, starving workers and their families—not just to the American people, not just to your unions, but to the entire world.”
Palestinian trade unions have also responded in support of the student movement for Palestine that has taken the world by storm. “The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in Palestine extends our deepest solidarity to you, the revolutionary youth who are changing the world,” reads a statement of support from a prominent Palestine farmworkers’ union, addressed to the students movement around the world that is taking action in solidarity with Gaza. “We write to you from Palestine to tell you that your actions are resonating across oceans. In you, we see the echoes of our struggle, the echoes of our resistance, and the echoes of our hope.”
“Our people, along with all the workers and free people of the world, commemorate the first of May this year, at a time when they are subjected to the most brutal and fierce campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, surpassing in savagery and bloodiness the fascists and the Nazis, at the hands of a group of murderers calling themselves an army for an invasive replacement entity, under the leadership, partnership, support, cover, and complicity of the American administration and the colonial Western imperial powers, the enemies of humanity,” wrote the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in a pre-May Day statement. “We send a salute of respect and pride to the university students all over the world, especially to the students at American universities, who are protesting against the crimes of the occupation and the support of the American administration for it, and who demand a halt to the aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Within the student movement in the US, university workers are mobilizing their unions to stand with their students in solidarity with Gaza. On April 29, within the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the City College of New York in New York City, university workers organized under the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) held a town hall meeting to deliberate on how to use their labor power to support the five demands of the student encampment. The members attending the town hall organized a wildcat sick-out, in which union members will call in sick en masse to disrupt business as usual at the larger City University of New York (CUNY) system. Workers in the United States face a variety of strike prohibitions, including a nationwide ban on striking for political reasons rather than economic issues such as wages and benefits under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.
Nevertheless, the PSC faculty at the town hall voted overwhelmingly to stage a sick-out. “At UT Austin, faculty did a one day job action in support of their students. Palestinian trade unions, National SJP, and National Faculty for Justice in Palestine have called for a mass job action on May 1st,” faculty wrote in a statement. “Our students are taking incredible risks to support the Palestinian people. They have asked for our help. We must stand ready to struggle alongside them, and to take these risks.”
Workers organized with the United Auto Workers, which also represents many graduate student workers across the country, staged a rally in Washington Square Park on April 26 in support of their students staging Gaza Solidarity Encampments at NYU, Columbia, and the New School.
Workers engaged in mass mobilizations around the world on May 1.
Thousands took to the streets in major US cities including Washington, DC and Los Angeles. In DC, demonstrators marched to the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at George Washington University.
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 1, 2024
✊🏽🇵🇸RIGHT NOW: A massive May Day march is en route to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at George Washington University pic.twitter.com/esXOVUrhqv
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) May 2, 2024
In New York City, unions such as the United Auto Workers and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance expressed explicit support for the Palestinian cause in a march of 20,000, which ended at the New York University Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Havana, like every year, was flooded with huge crowds on May Day as President Miguel Diaz-Canel sent an explicit message in support of Palestine and the pro-Palestine student movement. “All our solidarity with the students in the United States, who have taken the side of justice, have come out to support the cause of the Palestinian people, and are brutally repressed on their own university campuses. Today our [May Day] is also going through Palestine,” Diaz-Canel wrote.
In Bogota, President Gustavo Petro made a special announcement during the May Day celebration in front of thousands of Colombians: the nation would officially cut all diplomatic ties with Israel.
Activists with the Communist Party of Israel and Hadash made ceasefire and an end to occupation the central demands of their May Day 2024 actions. | Photo via Hadash
NAZARETH—Determined to derail a planned May Day rally centered on ceasefire and anti-occupation demands, heavily-armed police forces raided the office of the Nazareth branches of the Hadash coalition (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) and Communist Party of Israel (CPI) on Friday evening. April 26.
Israeli police raid the Nazareth branch office of Hadash, the Communist Party of Israel, and Zo Haderekh newspaper. This photo is a screengrab from a video taken by a member of Hadash during the raid. | @hadash.front via Instagram
When police stormed the building, activists from Hadash, the CPI, and the Young Communist League were involved in preparations for the central May Day demonstration being organized by Hadash and the CPI. At least two activists were arrested.
“We won’t let the fascists silence us!” declared Ofer Cassif, the CPI parliamentarian that the government has repeatedly attempted to suppress.
“Come to the demonstration, to raise a loud and clear voice against the criminal massacre in Gaza, against the ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, against the raging tide of fascism and in support of justice for all, before it’s too late!” he continued.
“The order of the day: Unite against fascism!”
Several rallies against the deadly war in Gaza and the occupation of the Palestinian territories will be held across Israel for May Day—in Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Kufr Yassif, Western Galilee, Jerusalem, and other locations.
This is the third assault on the branch in Nazareth in the past year. Police raided the office on Nov. 10, tearing down political posters and spray-painting over murals. “The Ben-Gvir police continues its political persecution and attempts to intimidate and silence the Arab public and other forces opposing the war,” Hadash said in a statement, referring to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s national security minister.
“We will not put up with these provocations. We will continue to lead the joint Arab-Jewish struggle against fascism, war and persecution,” Hadash said.
A year ago, on April 28, 2023, just before the May Day demonstration in the city, in another raid police took down the red flags and the Palestinian flag at the Nazareth branch and arrested the secretary of the Communist Party in the city.
