MAY DAY GREETINGS

TO ALL CYCLISTS AND TRADE UNIONISTS THROUGHOUT THE LAND.

In 1894 Clarion cyclists spread Socialism with every turn of the pedal. The Clarion Cycling Club was the muscular front line of a political dream sweeping the world, giving new hope to millions.

May Day and the 8 hour day.

The idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organise a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favour of the eight-hour day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage after The Knights of Labor had adopted a resolution which asserted that ‘eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1st 1886’.

On May 1st, 1886, 250,000 took to the streets across America to demand universal adoption of the 8-hour working day. The heart of the 8-hour movement was Chicago The 1st of May demonstration in that city passed peacefully but, on the 3rd May fighting broke out between workers locked-out at the McCormick Reaper Works and scabs hired to replace them. The police moved in to restore order, leaving four unionists dead & many others wounded.

The anarchists, called for a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square to protest about police brutality. The occasion proceeded without incident but as the last speaker was about to leave the platform the police marched into the square and ordered the meeting to disperse. It was then a bomb was thrown killing one police officer and injuring 70. The city authority used this incident as an excuse to attack Trade Union activists and the anarchists in particular. Soon 8 of the city’s most active anarchists were charged with conspiracy to murder in connection with the Haymarket bombing. All eight were found guilty even though the State Prosecutor offered no evidence that any of the accused had thrown the bomb or had been connected to its throwing. He appealed to the jury, to ‘convict these men, make an example of them, hang them, and you save our institutions’.

On 11 November 1887, four of, them were hanged, another committed suicide in prison, the remaining three were released in 1893 when Governor John Altgeld pardoned all eight men. The Haymarket Incident figured prominently in the decision to make May 1st, 1890, a day of workers demonstrations throughout the world. By this period the Trade Unions and Workers’ movements across Europe had grown in strength, particularly so in Vienna, Paris and London. The most powerful expression of this movements progress occurred at the Congress of the Second International in Paris in 1889. The Congress, attended by four hundred delegates, decided that the eight-hour day must be the first demand. Delegate Lavigne of the French unions moved that this demand be expressed in all countries through a universal stoppage of work. The delegate of the American workers called attention to the decision of his comrades to strike on May 1, 1890, and the Congress decided on this date for demonstrations ‘in every country and in every town’ to ‘call upon the state for the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours’.

Engels writes the 1890 event in London to be “the most important and magnificent in the entire May Day celebration, the English proletariat, rousing itself from forty years’ winter sleep, re-joined the movement of its class”. May First soon became a public holiday in many countries (except Britain). An occasion when the Labour and Trade Union Movement reaffirms its commitment to the ideals of solidarity, equality, and a better life for all workers. This May Day why not cycle to a demonstration or better still to a picket line and live the words of Tom Groom: ‘A Clarion cyclist is a Socialist utilizing his cycle for the combined purposes of pleasure and propaganda’ system with accident liability, bike theft and legal protection insurance. Long standing members even received support in the event of death.

In May 1896, at the 4th Congress of Workers’ Cyclists, held in Offenbach am Main, delegates from 18 cycling clubs in 12 cities decided to unite to form the German Worker Cyclist Federation: “Solidaritat” the ARB, which stood for Arbeiter-RadfahrerBund. Three years earlier, in Leizig mostly socialist members had established a central organisation with an explicit political programme.

The Rad-und Kraftfahrerbund Solidaritat, which with over 300,000 members and 5,000 local groups was the largest workers’ sports club in the Weimar Republic and played a major role in the organisation of the Frankfurt Workers’ Olympiad in 1925.

The ARB grew rapidily during the Weimar Republic and soon became the largest cycling association in the world with several hundred thousand members. The association had its own bicycle factory, its own bike shops and an extensive social security

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 the whole of the German Trade Union Movement was banned and the same fate fell onto other Socialist organisations including the ARB. The fascists confiscated the property of ‘Solidarity’, closed the bicycle factory, the sales outlets, and fired the employees. The ARB was replaced by a Nazi organisation the ‘German Cyclists Association’. Many former ARB members fell victim to the Nazis due to their antifascist stance and their support for the courageous German Resistance movement.

In 1949 the association was re-established in Frankfurt and in 2015 it was renamed ‘Solidarity’ Germany 1896e.V. Today it has a membership of over 40,000.

(source: County Standard).