May Day is an international celebration of workers’ solidarity and class struggle. At a time when some attempt to dismiss the social reality of class, the power of capital and the continuing exploitation of labour expose the ideological nature of that attempt.
Ours is a class-based society, with unrestrained attacks on the social and economic conditions of workers and their families; the impoverishment of working people; the increased power of the monopolies and multinational corporations; the continuing attacks on living standards, labour rights, social protection, health, education, public employment and the provision of public services.
The times in which we live demonstrate the reality of capitalist exploitation and oppression. Housing, health and education are under attack from a ruling class committed to the privatization of public services in a ceaseless drive for profit. Work is low paid, precarious and casualised. The gains and achievements fought for and attained by workers over generations are being undermined and reversed.
Capitalism pollutes the environment, encourages child labour, exploits migrant workers and women, maximises profits through minimum wages, casts millions of workers onto the dole queues, carries on murderous imperialist wars which inflict misery, death and destruction and causes devastating environmental and infrastructural impact on the peoples of the planet, its flora and fauna.
The Workers Party actively campaigns against: the privatisation of public services; the introduction of water and services charges; the reduction of welfare benefits; proposals to remove free travel for older people; attempts to make working people and their families pay to see a doctor; payment for prescription charges and payment for essential public services.
Our Party took an active part in supporting the recent trade union days of strikes and industrial action in support of workers’ rights, pay and conditions and stood with workers, including teachers, doctors, nurses, health and social care workers, roads maintenance teams, transport staff and others. We have also actively, and successfully, fought to support workers who have been victimised for asserting their rights.
The capitalist system is in crisis. To open the road to socialism we must transform the politics of protest into the politics of class, asserting the centrality and primacy of class struggle and unity of the working class. The unity of workers who have nothing but their labour power to sell is more important than the cultural, ethnic, racial or national divisions which separate them.
Only socialism, with its social ownership of the means of production and its planned economy, can achieve the necessary changes to reverse the vast ecological crisis caused by capitalism to the environment.
As the class struggle intensifies, the unceasing drive by the monopolies for markets, critical materials, equipment, energy supplies, natural resources and securing travel routes continues apace. Two years since the commencement of the imperialist war in Ukraine, this bloody and destructive conflict continues. For as long as it persists, it exemplifies the brutal consequences of imperialist rivalry between the competing capitalist powers.
The vicious and genocidal war being waged on the Palestinian people by the apartheid state of Israel, and in particular, the deliberate targeting of civilians not only through direct attacks on people and civilian infrastructure such as residential buildings, hospitals and universities, but also through cutting off access to food, water, electricity and fuel demands our continued
action to stop the slaughter, end the illegal occupation and secure a free and independent State of Palestine and the legitimate rights and demands of the Palestinian people.
The Workers Party asserts the political character of May Day. It remains for us a symbol of class politics – not only a day of remembrance and celebration, under capitalism May Day will be a day of struggle for the immediate political demands of the working class and the urgent necessity for workers’ power and socialism. The working class is the driving force of history. Socialism remains the only alternative for the emancipation of labour and the liberation of the working peoples of the world.
On May Day 2024, the Workers Party extends its best wishes and solidarity to the struggling workers and oppressed peoples of the world in the fight for a new and better tomorrow – a future of peace, progress and socialism.
Workers of all countries unite!
For workers power and socialism!
Ted Tynan, President, on behalf of the Central Executive Committee
Workers Party
1st May 2024
Workers Party of Ireland 