IWW May Day Statement 2025

Among all the unions that exist today the IWW has a unique connection to its origins. On the 1st of May 1886 Lucy and Albert Parsons led a march through the streets of Chicago to demand the eight hour working day. This formed part of a wider struggle including strikes and rallies that had been met by repressive violence, including workers being shot and killed by police.

A rally followed on the 4th of May condemning the killings by police. This day would become known as the ‘Haymarket Affair’. Police tried to disperse the rally, a bomb was thrown and the police responded by indiscriminately shooting into the crowd, killing seven more workers.

Despite neither of the Parsons being present for these events and plenty of testimony to prove his innocence, Albert was arrested and hanged alongside four other (almost certainly innocent) labour leaders. On the day of the hanging, Lucy and her children were stripped and thrown naked into a jail cell and released only after her husband was dead.

These events are still commemorated around the world on the 1st of May, or May Day, in celebration of the struggles of the international working class. We take this opportunity each year to reflect on the struggles against what seemed like insurmountable hardship and violence that won all the good things that we take for granted today.

Lucy Parsons was a founding member of the IWW in 1905 and continued to agitate for a better world throughout her life. Like Lucy Parsons, we cannot give up the struggle and hope for our emancipation today either, no matter how cruel and unfair the world may seem. We must do all we can to build the IWW into a union of workers who stand up for each other and for all of those facing exploitation and oppression.

This May Day we may feel very far from these goals and find it hard to celebrate. On the 1st of May there will be council elections in the UK and the outlook seems bleak, with the far-right Reform UK predicted to win many seats. Fascism and authoritarianism advance across the world with capitalism, patriarchy and the failings of neo-liberal democracies driving this.

Genocide is being committed before our eyes in Palestine while those in power profit on every dead child. The planet races towards ecological collapse, the warnings of scientists and the demands of the youth for a liveable planet now cast aside by global systems too greedy to change. The rights of women, especially trans and intersex women, have been betrayed by a recent Supreme Court ruling, made by old white men who seek to force women’s identity into a binary that serves the interests of male domination. These binary relationships have nothing to do with science or protecting people and everything to do with asserting control over people’s bodies and labour, enforcing power relationships.

Man > Woman

Owner > Worker

Master > Slave

We cannot overcome any power relationship like this without freeing ourselves fully from the binary dynamic that has imposed itself upon us all through a dominant culture.

So all of this is to say that even in the face of cruelty and injustice, just like Lucy Parsons we need to have courage, solidarity and hope. The struggle that the Haymarket Martyrs gave their lives for must still be fought today.

It is a struggle that starts simply enough, by building connections with our fellow workers.

Each new IWW member is a little victory for hope that we should celebrate.

So, this May Day, march and shout and remember and celebrate and build hope, one worker at a time. That’s the challenge.

This May Day, whatever else you do, invite one colleague, friend or family member to join the IWW and together let’s make a new world from the shell of the old.

An injury to one is an injury to all!