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This piece is the first in a month-long blog series that celebrates Labor History Month and examines how the labor movements past struggles and victories can inform the present fight for workers rights.

Just after announcing his reelection campaign, President Bidens first address was to the North Americas Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference. Biden called himself the most pro-union president in American history, telling the assembled crowd that he sees the country through the eyes of the working people I grew up with through the eyes of people like you.

The announcement suggests the possibility that Biden might center labor in his reelection campaign. The labor movement and workers rights were once at the center of the American political and legal system. However, as the neoliberal order came into shape over the past half-century, labor issues have receded. Today, we are witnessing new and exciting forms of worker mobilization, and as progressives frame a strategy for moving beyond neoliberalism, a vision fusing work and care may be a promising path forward.

Labor Primacy in the New Deal

In the late nineteenth century, on the heels of the Civil War and with the Industrial Revolution roaring, the labor question was a core part of American political and legal discourse. The labor movement, intellectuals, and political leaders struggled with the implications of a society increasingly composed of workers in firms and this realitys implications for democracy, republican values, and freedom.

Conflicts over labor and laws role in labor relations evolved throughout the Progressive Era and into the New Deal. Then, labor issues came to the center of a broad constitutional discourse. Labor organizations and a host of other social movement actors worked successfully to put into place a workers constitution, composed of the National Labor Relations Act, Social Security Act, and Fair Labor Standards Act. These three statutes redefined economic freedom for workers around security and sought to entrench worker security in the constitutional fabric.

The New Deal was defined by its labor primacyby its centering of labor in the efforts to build an economic constitutional order. Indeed, when envisioning building an economic constitutional order in 1932, FDR placed at its foundations the right to make a comfortable living and right to security when work dried up or injuries occurred on the job. Of course, the New Deal was about so much more; it involved, among other things, significant legislative achievements involving banking and securities, the environment, and public works. But the eras fiercest social and political mobilizations were about work and workers. And those mobilizations helped to frame and personalize the problems of economic power that animated the New Deal transformation.

The New Deal also had significant limits. They include the ways its policies baked in patterns of exclusion along the lines of race and gender and failed to protect domestic and agricultural workers. New Deal policies brought stability and security for many workers, but also left many behind.

Labors Decline & the Neoliberalism of the Left

The New Deal order ultimately ceded to the neoliberal order, and the decline of labor primacy looms large in that transition. In the 1970s, neoliberalismwith its focus on reducing the power of government in society and shifting power (and government solicitude) to marketsbegan to take hold in the United States. Many factors made its rise possible, including currents in international affairs, the economic challenges of the 1970s, and the unraveling of the New Deal coalition around civil rights issues. But the rise of neoliberalism is also a story about labor, Democrats, and the left.

Gary Gerstles recent book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, outlines various waysincluding surprising onesthat Democrats and the left contributed to the rise of neoliberalism. Gerstle argues that the neoliberal shift was facilitated by Ralph Nader and Jimmy Carters presidency. Nader, who had significant influence in the Carter presidency, shifted the terrain from workers to consumers, and framed as evils both corporate and governmental power, undermining New Deal faith in the affirmative power of government. President Carter, torn between New Dealers and deregulatory forces within his own ranks, began a path of deregulation that would continue strongly not only in the Reagan presidency but also the Clinton presidency.

For Gerstle, too, the fall of the Soviet Union features in the rise of neoliberalism and decline of labor. The fear of communism, he writes, made possible the class compromise between capital and labor that underwrote the New Deal order, and the collapse of communism cleared the way of capitalisms most ardent opponent. As a result, the need for compromise with working people dissipated.

Across these examples, a connecting thread is that a political order characterized by its labor primacy shifted to one where labor was decentered. Along the way, faith in government and its ability to reshape economic power relationships and provide for the security of workers was also shaken.

Towards the Future: Fusing Work and Care

The question of what will replace neoliberalismif the neoliberal era is coming to an end or has endedis on the minds of many progressives. The future of labor will surely center in that conversation. A new political order, however, would have in its sights so much more, including climate change, voter suppression and disenfranchisement, student debt, childcare and healthcare, the power of big tech, and mass incarceration.

Gerstles book, however, reminds us that a political order is much more than an arrangement of policies and electoral victories; it also grows from and is sustained by a vision that reaches people where they are, drawing from the stuff of their lives to demonstrate the pitfalls of the old order and the promise of a new one. Progressives and New Dealers spoke to the insecurity that people felt on the heels of the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression; they promised that government could tame markets and provide security for workers. Neoliberals, including forces such as Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand, offered those facing a growing bureaucratic state an ecstatic vision of freedomof being unbound, spontaneous, innovative, and unconstrained. The idea of freedom as throwing off restraint also resounded with the new Left and its critiques of the system. As with the rise of neoliberalism, its replacementto the extent there is onewill likely arise from articulating what neoliberalism robs and what a new order can bring or restore.

Today, in charting such a path forward beyond neoliberalism, it would be a mistake to return to a strategy of pure labor primacy. As that strategy developed in the New Deal, it focused too much on the workplace as a unit of emphasis and linked too many goodsincluding healthcareto that unit. But this does not mean that it would be wise to decenter labor, either. Instead, a promising path forward may be articulating a progressive vision fusing labor and care.

At the most basic level, these things hit home. So many of us spend our lives primarily engaged in work and care. A progressive vision centering these core life activities can meet people where they are and offer an opportunity to think about these activities and their relationship in broader and more inclusive ways. Such a vision might address the exclusion of housework and caregiving from how we understand the economy. And it might offer opportunities for the focus on labor to be expanded beyond its narrow historical lens. As an example, workers are increasingly bargaining for the common good, allying with other organizations to expand the sphere of bargaining to encompass broader policy and community issues, including healthcare, student nutrition, racial justice, and immigration issues. A progressive politics centering work and care thus provides an opportunity to think about how we define and support these endeavors and how we can engage in acts of solidarity and countervailing power to give people the security for which so many yearn.

Centering labor and care also holds the possibility of reaching and mobilizing people worn out by life under the neoliberal order. Neoliberalism affects peoples ability to work, care, and exist together securely. It takes the public spaces where people might gather, converting them for private gain. And it makes other spaces ones where people must bear sometimes maddening insecurity: where paying for childcare or elder care seems impossible; where family picnics go on the credit card; where job insecurity makes keeping the family afloat all the more difficult, while long hours take away time with loved ones; where an education brings with it debt that weighs heavily on young lives; where healthcare decisions pinch in painful ways; where the carceral state tears people apart; and so much more. As a society, we are impoverished by neoliberalism.

A progressive future might be sustained by a rejuvenated vision of securityof being together with a good measure of stability, being supported and healthy as we work and care, and doing so in a system that values human flourishing in engaging in these core life activities. A vision of labor and care is less ecstatic than the vision of freedom that neoliberals put forward, but potentially more cathartic, more attuned to present-day challenges and needs.

___________________

Luke Norris is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law.

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Labor's Past and Future: The New Deal Order, the Neoliberal Order ... - American Constitution Society

I would like to respond to a recent letter to the editor asking why are you a Democrat by asking why are you a Republican?

If you truly respect the Constitution, you would not attempt an insurrection by storming the Capitol in order to try to overturn a legally valid election. If you respect freedom you would not try to ban books, take a womans right to choose away from her or pass laws that affect transgender youth and gays and what is taught in our schools regarding slavery and racism. If you respect the law, you should be raising your voice in anger at the number of children that are killed in mass shootings in schools.

If we are under Republican law, I believe it wont be long before you and your family will have some freedom taken away from you if the Republicans dislike it or dont agree with it. So why are you still a Republican? Republicans claim socialism is one step away from communism. But how many of these socialist programs would you give up: Social Security, Medicare, CHIP, public libraries, EPA, museums, public parks, public schools, VA healthcare, zoos, free lunch program, Medicaid, FDA, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, public transportation and many, many more.

Consider changing your registration from Republican to Democrat. Send a message to the Republican Party that you are indeed tired of waiting for common sense change.

SHARON KOONS

Williamsport

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Why are you a Republican? | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu is a master of the slow-burn drama. His careful cinematic style using wide master shots and long takes, allowing the action to play out within the frame without edits is put to service in exploring complex, hot-button social issues abortion in his 2007 Palme dOr winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, state corruption in 2016s Graduation with a calm, almost scientific precision.

Mungius latest, R.M.N., takes this scientific approach literally. The title is the Romanian acronym for an MRI, which one of the characters receives in the film, and the movie, which hits U.S. cinemas on April 28, is Mungius cinematic brain scan of his country, revealing the layers of illness racial, social, political, and above all emotional buried in the national psyche.

The plot, inspired by real events, takes place over the Christmas holidays in a small village in Transylvania. Matthias (Marin Grigore), a slaughterhouse worker, returns home from Germany and rekindles a relationship with old flame Csilla (Judith State), who manages the local bread factory. But the arrival of new factory employees from Sri Lanka disrupts the community. Tensions build as the locals most of whom are actually Hungarian, an ethnic minority in the country debate whether they should drive the foreigners out, as they did, several years previous, with the Romani families who used to live there.

For Mungiu, R.M.N. is an attempt to understand racism, xenophobia, and the rise of right-wing populism, from the inside: By looking, listening, but not judging, the people who spout heinous views. You cant start hoping to cure a public attitude until you name it and are willing to talk about it, to understand why it is happening.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

The so-called Romanian New Wave had already started by 2007 but it really blew up internationally after you won the Palme dOr for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a film that took not just your career, but sort of the entire movement, to a new level. 16 years on, how do you think the focus of Romanian cinema has changed? From an outsiders perspective, it seemed the first wave of films was dealing with the communist period of Nicolae Ceauescu. The new films from Romanian, including your latest, R.M.N., seem to be more concerned with current-day events.

Well, I dont think that we were speaking, even then, about communism in particular, I think that we were at that age, when you revisit your adolescence or, you know, your youth. And we were making films that had a kind of nostalgia for what we lived through. Of course, they had communism as a background, but we were talking about our experiences. And if you remember, Corneliu Porumboius first film, the one about the revolution [2006s 12:08 East of Bucharest], it wasnt so much about communism. Cristi Puius second film [2005s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu] wasnt at all about communism. They were quite contemporary, they were speaking about the long-term effects of communism on people, and the way the country was shaped and the people were shaped.

I dont think that the new wave got all this attention because it was speaking about communism. But mostly, because we were speaking in a different way, in a different cinematic way. I think it was a formal thing, which dragged this attention our way. This way of making films with very, very long takes, was deliberate. Behind the new wave, there was a lot of thinking about the limits of cinema as an art, and about its particularities. Thats why we were shooting in these long takes, not because we like master shots, but because theres this integrity of time, that cinema can preserve, on the condition that you dont use editing.

I think we were motivating one another to really think very deeply about cinema, to take this very seriously. There was no point at all for us in making popular films because, by that moment, the cinemas in Romania were gone, there was no audience whatsoever for us. So we focused directly on making films that would be important for the history of cinema, not for the present. And we felt the way you made a film is as important as the story that you wanted to tell.

I think the movement has evolved quite well. Its brought some filmmakers into focus that really had a point of view on cinema and had something to say. But, like any wave, time passes, and even this novel style gets old and becomes sort of a norm. It doesnt surprise anybody any longer. So now its important for each of these authors to reinvent himself and to find something fresh and new to say in terms of topic matter, and also in terms of style. Thats the fate of waves, what comes as a wave goes as a wave. And you know, therell be another wave coming, even if, right now, its not clear where it will come from.

But these filmmakers, these individuals, have survived. We were perceived as a wave because we all emerged at the same time, we were pretty much the same age, and we were the first group of filmmakers expressing themselves after the fall of communism in Romania. But now, so many years later, we see which voices are strong enough to continue telling something.

Thats the most difficult thing in cinema. Its not difficult to make a film that can surprise people once. But to make the next film, and eventually, to build this kind of personal take on cinema, this is very complicated. And I think Corneliu was telling me at some point he had checked and, apparently, statistically, most directors make two or three films in their entire lives. So if youve managed to make two or three films that actually got noticed, thats quite good.

The other thing which is good is that the new generation of Romanian filmmakers is deliberately trying to be as different as possible [from the New Wave]. Which is normal.

Where did the idea for R.M.N. come from?

It came from a real story. The real story is quite close to what you see in the film. There is this little village in an area inhabited mostly by Hungarians. And, youd imagine, in an area inhabited by a minority, that the people would be more empathic towards another minority coming in. But they were not. From their perspective, it was: We dont have anything against these people, but this is a very poor region, we have made a great sacrifice to stay here and try and grow this community, to preserve our traditions, and you the owner of the bakery have broken the rules by bringing foreigners into this community.

One of the reasons people behaved so badly, of course, was the color of their skin. But, its also true that when this scandal emerged in Romania, the wave of sympathy for these people was overwhelming. People and factory owners all over wrote and said: Well hire them, well take them into our communities, they can work here.

I thought the story of this film was very, very relevant to the state of the world today. Even if it happens in Transylvania in Romania, I had the feeling that it speaks about the way we behave today about these very hot issues of xenophobia, and the truth. Ultimately, its a film about this huge distance between what we think and what we say.

I presented this film at Cannes last year and in a lot of other places and so many people came up to me and said: This could have happened in my country, with us as well. Its just that people dont dare any longer to speak about such issues in public. It was important to me to see if there is still enough freedom in cinema, that we can speak about the elephant in the room, about the sense that we all know that a lot of people think like this, but we behave as if they dont exist. Unless we manage to tackle these issues directly, theres no way of hoping that we can cure them. You cant start hoping to cure a public attitude until you name it and are willing to talk about it, to understand why it is happening.

You have a very empathetic way of portraying all the characters in the film, even the ones who spout horrible, racist, or xenophobic views.

The most important conflict in the film, for me, is the internal conflict, not the external one, the conflict between the good part of us, that feels empathy for others, and the instinctual animalistic part in us, which makes us consider others potential enemies that have come to steal our world, our food, our horse or whatever. Thats fight that we need to try to win. But before winning it, you need to talk about it, expose it, see how much of it comes from your instinct and karma, how much of it is contextual.

One important step is to listen to the people who are displeased about what is happening today. Migration today doesnt look like it did 1,000 years ago, when a bunch of people on horseback would ride over the hill. Now they come by plane and try to get work. But for many people, the feeling is the same: Here is somebody who doesnt belong. Its a consequence of globalization. And many people living in tiny, very traditional communities feel: I didnt ask for this globalization, but I have to pay personally for decisions I had no say in. The speed of change is too great for them. They need more time. I think we need to have the patience to talk to them , to understand why they think like this, before branding them as sinners, xenophobic, or whatever.

In this particular case, the villagers were not, in their minds, xenophobic against foreigners. They thought it was alright to be xenophobic agains the local Romani. This is what they were trying to protect their community from.

This is why I thought the story was worth telling, because they did not see what they were doing as wrong. And, people dont say this, but nobody really wants to live in a community next to the Romani population. After Cannes I screened this film in 30 different villages in the region, in small towns, and people agreed, in principle, that its good to be tolerant. But when things get scaled down to you personally, everyone would prefer to live on a street where there are no Romani people. Theres such a big gap between the principles we all agree on, and what really happens. Its important to engage in this conversation and to see where these stereotypes are coming from.

You also point out the hypocrisy of the ostensibly good people like the factory owner, who is kind to the foreigners, but also, in a way, exploiting them for their labor.

Well, I think that theres a tendency, particularly in cinema, to oversimplify things. Theres a tendency of thinking filmmakers should include their position, as citizens, in the films they make. This is precisely what I think we shouldnt be doing. My position as a citizen on this issue is not in the film. I think films should bring forward issues that are important for society at this moment. But I also think filmmakers should abstain from pushing their own views on you. My effort was to try and understand why things happen the way they do, why people act the way they act, and to respect the integrity of the truth and the reality, in every way possible. Also formally, which is why I make this huge effort of shooting without cutting. But also ethically, the idea is that whoever you are, I dont want to be the judge, I want to bring forward these peoples arguments.

But its true that in the end, theres a lot of hypocrisy, even in the way the film was discussed. Id have two kinds of Q&As: The official ones on stage talking to people, and the conversations Id have when I left the cinema, where people would talk to me personally. Suddenly, they started really saying what they think.

And you can see what this hypocrisy does to us. In France or in Italy, you see the effects of this hypocrisy, how populists are exploiting it for their own benefit. Theres no point in trying to ignore what people think or claiming that they shouldnt be thinking like that. The problem is not going to be solved that way.

Thats why we end up having all these big surprises when people vote. When the populist parties and the extreme right are successful, people go: Oh my God, how is this possible? Its possible because you havent listened to these people, you havent engaged in a real conversation. A conversation starts when you listen to the other person. Before explaining to him that his arguments are not valid, you need to listen to him. If you prevent him from talking, if make all these kinds of rules, telling him Shut up, that is politically incorrect, you cant say that, it wont change what he thinks. And the moment he has the freedom to express himself, he will just vote accordingly.

I dont think the film is polemic, but the conversation it has started has been very polemic. And it should be, because this is what cinema can do.

It seems many people now view art as an expression of the personal opinions or views of the artist. Has it become more challenging for you to say: This is my work, its not my opinion?

I choose to present the reality as objectively as I can. This is my position as an artist. Im not following this trend of saying my own personal view and opinion is all that matters.

I think its more important to bring forward issues, personal stories, where you have to have an opinion, where you have to take a stand. Thats what Matthias understands, by the end of the film, that he cant stay neutral, he has to take a side. You are responsible even if you try to avoid the situation. You have a personal responsibility. As a filmmaker, Im trying to signal to you as a spectator: You have this responsibility. You cant just say: I dont agree with the filmmaker, I dont have the same view. The issue is: What is your position? Do you dare to have a position and express it in public?

This kind of personal, critical judgment, is very difficult for people to develop today, because the Internet, all this fake news, this avalanche of information makes it hard to understand, hard to listen, hard to question yourself, and to think: What would I do?

Very often, people are so used to saying the correct thing, they wont even acknowledge, in public, what they really think. Its a kind of schizophrenia. This was the response that I got from so many people: This big difference between what people say publicly, and what they think, privately. I think its interesting in cinema to bring forward what people really believe, to show what they say privately when theres nobody around. Because thats the truth.

What was different for you in the making of R.M.N., then, stylistically, compared with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days?

The way Ive told the film isnt that different. My style hasnt changed much. The principle I use for 4 Months, one shot per scene, is still the same. Here a lot of the scenes are shorter, the film isnt just composed of very long moments. But then, because I really wanted to respect this style, I also have the longest scene Ive ever shot in a film, about 17-18 minutes without a cut. What is also different is that I think Ive become a master of my own style, so what I do now is to try and make sure the style isnt visible. Im trying to make sure that the style doesnt distract you from really watching the story. Because finally, what matters is the impact of this story on you as a spectator. So Ive tried to shoot in such a smooth way every shot leads into the next so that people dont notice how the film has been made.

How did you compose that incredible, 17-minute scene, of the town hall meeting, where the two women, the factory owner, and the manager, are arguing in favor of the migrants, and the other villagers are getting more and more aggressive towards them?

In this case, it was easy for me. The long shot at the end of the film is almost a replica, a reenactment, of the real town hall meeting. Its on the Internet. It was where the scandal started. The people in this small village thought this was a private conversation but somebody filmed it and posted it on the Internet the same day. And, all of a sudden, we had access to people saying what they actually thought in private, in public. I translated it because it was in Hungarian but I didnt need to invent too much. You can just watch, and you notice and understand. It was important for me to present these peoples arguments, their point of view, directly. Theres something about a lot of the cinema of today, that I really, dislike, which is that it has a kind of politically-correct agenda. By this, I mean that filmmakers of all ages are talking about the important issues of the day, diversity say, but being sure that everything is presented in the right way, that there is a positive stance on how to tackle these issues. This goes against my idea of creativity.

Of course, these films should be done too, but for me, artistic freedom means expressing things in a personal way. So there cant be just one point of view, one political perspective. There are a million other points of view that should be brought forward by art. I come from a country where censorship was very strong. Today, its difficult to speak about censorship, but I think there is a kind of positive discrimination, positive discrimination about very ethically-important issues. This positive discrimination comes from the bodies which finance films, it comes from the personal consciences of the filmmakers themselves. Everyone begins to agree on what stories should be told and how they should be told. But this is, in my view, against what cinema should be. Cinema needs to be creative and fresh. It needs to have a diversity of points of view. We have to have to strength to bear the political incorrectness of people we disagree with, and the strength to listen to all kinds of points of view. Thats where arts true strength resides.

The scene before the town hall expresses this. The townspeople are coming out of the church. They start walking towards the town hall. By the end, they are marching in lockstep. The marching marks this transformation from being an individual with your own position and opinion, and being part of the group and conforming to whats safe to think socially in a given moment. Thats why the characters of the two women are so important. They represent this need of talking about your own point of view, even if it is against everybody else.

IFC Films is releasing R.M.N. in the U.S. in select theaters on April 28.

See more here:
R.M.N. Director Cristian Mungiu on Xenophobia and the Dangers of Politically Correct Filmmaking - Hollywood Reporter

Raphael Samuel, who was a professor at Ruskin College, pictured at Oxford in 1993 [Alison Light and the Raphael Samuel Estate]

THERE was always excitement in the air as May Day approached and the scale of those who were planning to join in the annual workers festivities was such that marches from the four compass points in London were arranged, with people meeting in their hundreds of thousands in Hyde Park.

The May Day rallies of the early and mid-20th century were a huge show of force for working people, a day for hope and for solidarity.

For historian Raphael Samuel it was a key date both personally and in terms of the history of a global workers movement.

A professor at Ruskin College, Oxford, and the University of East London, through his long career Samuel played a key role in re-evaluating the study of history and promoting a more holistic, people-led approach.

Samuel was born in the East End in 1934 and would later move to Camden, living for periods in St Pancras, Belsize Park and Hampstead before settling in Spitalfields.

Along with the likes of Eric Hobsbawm and Stuart Hall, he helped spearhead interest in working class history, urban and rural labourers, and the successes and failures of progressive politics.

He promoted a new kind of popular history, commonplace today a democratic approach that considered the roles people played in shaping Britain, not just the politicians, generals and aristocrats.

Dubbing his work with fellow socialist historians, the History Workshop charted the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the people whose sweat and toil it was built on, while rooting his narratives in an understanding of what came before.

As a young activist, he recalled knocking on doors to discuss politics with possible supporters he recalled in a essay printed posthumously in the collection The Lost World of British Communism how it meant going down to the slums a descent in my case from the airy heights of Parliament Hill Fields to the basements of Kentish Town.

His mother, Minna Nirenstein, was a well-known activist and politics seeped through his family. My grandmother, a religious woman, was tolerant of this family communism and the passover which we held out of respect for her would begin with Hebrew prayers and end with Soviet songs, he would recall.

After a lifetime of research and political thought, in the 1980s he was interviewed for the BBC World Service programme, Postmark Africa, by reporter Shen Liknaitzky.

He was asked about the background to May Day, as well as his own memories of the importance the date meant for working-class people in the early and mid-20th century.

Its origin was a meeting of international socialists in July 1889, made up of people from the US, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Austria, Australia and Belgium on the occasion of the anniversary of the French Revolution, he responded.

They came together and decided May 1890 would be observed as an international demonstration in favour of the eight-hour day.The importance of the meeting, held in Paris, has reverberated down the decades, as Samuel explained.

It was the birth of the modern socialist movement and would become the Second International that linked socialists in all countries, he added.

And the May Day of 1890 left a huge impact on the rapidly politicised urban working class.

But it also drew in Europes landworkers, too, the descendants of peasants and tied labourers.

Because of the astonishing response of workers, farming people and peasants in Europe to that May Day and remember, May Day had simply been one demonstration it then became this annual festival. It was a discovery by the working class movement of different countries own collective resistance.

Its impact across nations was keenly felt.

In Vienna, 300,000 came out and from there a working class movement arose, he said. It saw small farmers in Finland link with meat packers in Chicago.

So why was May Day chosen to become a symbol of international workers? In the months running up to 1890, the American Federation of Labour had called on May Day to be used to campaign for shorter working hours.

The socialists calendar had other key dates March 18 marked the outbreak of the Paris Commune of 1871, while July 14 was celebrated annually as the start of the French Revolution.

But May Day had resonance and the idea stuck. Samuels theory as to why links to both a socialism that looked back to the pre-industrial age and the festivals that welcomed spring.

It was almost arrived at by accident, he said.

Firstly, it was a non-Christian holiday. There was a strong element of anti-clericalism, particularly in European working class movements.

In the UK, early socialists often had roots in non-conformist faiths such as Quakers and Methodists. Choosing a non-Christian holiday spoke to them. It was not a holiday, so in some ways it had a feel of an international strike. It was seen as our day.

As a child, growing up in a socialist household, May Day was a landmark event for Samuel.

When I came to London aged 10, having refused to go back to boarding school, I found myself in a completely communist environment. he wrote.

Our little corner of St Pancras seemed full of communist homes, and my aunts house was a hub of local activity with an unending stream of visitors. Our branch was a strong one and remained more or less intact through the years of the Cold War. In 1954, when we joined up with Kentish Town and took some part in the tenants movement, it began to expand.

Raphael Samuels book The Lost World of British Communism

His first May Day march was in 1942.

There were four large columns from different parts of London, he said.

If you understand what it meant in England, you have to go back to a long vanished English collective culture and the idea of a one-day holiday.

It was a party of people, a one-day festival, and the festival aspect is very important.

And perhaps surprisingly, considering how deeply ingrained the idea of May Day and the workers movement was, it only became an official holiday in recent times.

It only became an official holiday in 1977 when it had lost any collective meaning at all, he added.

And May Day also offered a chance to imagine a world made for workers not bosses.

It could be a declaration of opposition to an industrial society, added Samuels.

The early May Day banners saw people turning their backs on the factories and marching off into the countryside. They had bucolic and rustic images of escaping the city, no longer being factory workers. It was very Utopian.

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May Day: A day of hope and solidarity - Camden New Journal

On Monday last week, the Spanish authorities were confronted with one of mankinds eternal dilemmas: resolving to choose revenge over redemption and hate over hope. To mark his 120th anniversary, the left-wing coalition led by PM Pedro Snchez had legislated earlier last summer to disinter the bodily remains of Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera, the icon behind the far-right Falange party and a mainstay of the countrys turmoil leading up to the 1936-1939 Civil War. The exhumation fits into a larger law that claims to restore democratic memory, which built on an earlier and similarly aimed historical memory law passed by Snchezs socialist predecessor in 2007. Both laws amount to an Orwellian rewriting of History, one that overturns the pact of forgetting that underpinned Spains democratic transition upon the death of the wars victor, strongman Francisco Franco, in 1975. In its stead, on the pretext of honouring the memory of Francos victims (many of whose families are being compensated for recovering their bodies from unmarked mass graves), these two laws propound a slanted account of the war and the ensuing 40-year dictatorship as a Manichean contest of good (the republicans) versus evil (Francos nationalists).

De Riveras flirtations with fascism followed the cadence of a seesaw

Yet the logic of repairing past wounds seems, in Primo de Riveras case, to be working in reverse, with his desecration a redux of his execution after living through the wars initial months from prison. Up until Monday, his corpse lay in the Valley of the Fallen, a complex encompassing a memorial and a basilica near El Escorial, in Madrids northwest. Franco had intended the complex as a national act of atonement and reconciliation following the war, but Snchezs law has renamed it Valley of Cuelgamuros, exhuming Franco and evicting the basilicas Benedictine monks. Though their relations were strained and Francos so-called National Movement was distinct from Primo de Riveras brand of fascism it is hard not to see the latter as having laid the ideological groundwork for the strongmans 40-year rule. The two men were more in competition than in tandem, with Primo de Rivera angling to position Falange in the epicentre of any potential rebellion against the Republic which Franco would come to lead and corresponding with other chieftains. Until it made his death public in 1937, the regime referred to him as the absent (el ausente), moving his remains to El Escorial at the wars end and to the Valley of the Fallen in 1959.

His desecrators are right that Primo de Riveras deeds leading up to the war do merit greater scrutiny. He was in his 20s under the rule of his father, the right-wing strongman Miguel Primo de Rivera, becoming later convinced that his 1920s regime had failed for lack of a clear ideological foundation, something he single-mindedly put his mind to fashioning. In October 1933, along with two acolytes, he founded Falange as a four-legged ideological stool seeking at once (1) a Spain united by its universal destiny transcending class war and nationalism, (2) the idea of a new man carrying eternal values, (3) social justice availing everyone a dignified and humane life and (4) a sense of Spains Catholic roots. Profound as though they may seem on paper, De Riveras flirtations with fascism followed the cadence of a seesaw. In 1935, he was known to be paid a salary by Mussolinis fascist Italy to produce various reports on Spains political situation. His single visit with Hitler, however, had no import in his life. Starting in 1934, he gradually began to forswear fascism, claiming Falange would counter Spains decadent parliamentary democracy which he saw as beholden to communists by pursuing its own brand of right-wing illiberalism.

Equally illuminating in its ambivalence was Primo de Riveras approach to violence. Known to be hot-tempered, he indulged in rage when his fathers accomplishments were questioned and regularly quarrelled with magistrates and prison guards each time he was imprisoned. He once wrote that war is absolutely necessary and inevitable and cryptically extolled the dialectics of fist and gun. In March 1936, having lost his seat in that years February race which the left-wing Popular Front won and therefore his parliamentary immunity, he was detained for illegal possession of firearms and violent activities, leading Falange to be banned and 2000 of its adherents detained. The violent incidents featuring the party nonetheless continued in quick succession up until the wars eruption in July, with Primo de Rivera seeking to position the party as a driving force of the looming insurrection. On March 14th, he authored a sombre manifesto from prison, claiming that communism runs our streets. On 4 May, he sent a letter to the armys top brass many of whom he had been regularly corresponding with calling for an insurrection. The day before Franco rose up in arms, on 17 July, he expressed Falanges unreserved adherence to the rebellion.

Primo de Rivera stands as a testament that a different Spain is possible

Yet, in a stark depiction of his epoch, Primo de Rivera falls on the peaceable side of his contemporaries. Stanley Payne writes of him that he was, amongst the Falange leaders, the one who most shied away from employing violence and murder in a systematic way. In the months leading up to his execution by firing squad in November, he markedly softened his views, not least on whether violence against the institutions of the Republic was warranted morally. In April, made aware of the plans to kill socialist doyen Francisco Largo Caballero, who had served as his fathers minister, Primo de Rivera disowned the plot. During those early months of the war, he became the object of various prisoner swap plots, all admittedly with the aim of breaking free from prison to broker an armistice that would put an end to the hostilities, ushering in a reconciliation government. He wrote that Spain is undoing itself and that the absolute triumph of one side can bring back the Carlist wars, the series of civil conflicts that rocked Spain throughout the 19th century. Even Paynes nemesis, left-wing hispanist Paul Preston writes, Primo de Riveras apparent transformation fed the idea that he could have incarnated the great, lost opportunity for reconciliation.

He would soon be sentenced with conspiracy and rebellion, all but assuring him an afterlife as a martyr for his many acolytes. Payne writes that he became the object of the most extraordinary martyrs cult in all of Europe. Zira Box writes that for the falangistas, he would be exalted as a prophet, and even hailed for emulating Christ himself, spilling his young blood for Spains redemption. His last few words before death on 20 November ring ominously for eternity: May mine be the last Spanish blood spilled in civil discord. He went on: May all the peoples of Spain feel harmonized in an irrevocable unity of destiny. In the age of memes, these are often cited in contrast to a quote by Dolores Ibrruri, one of the Communist partys icons, who said in a meeting in Valencia in 1938: Rather than letting a single fascist free, we ought to rather convict 100 innocents. Although celebrating Primo de Rivera can cue support for a deathly ideology, it can also be construed as the opposite spirit to Ibrruris avengement. For all his youthful ideological fervour, he stands as a testament that a different Spain is possible, one reaching for concord amidst dissent. His arm lies outstretched to any who dare shake it. Snchezs government chose not to shake it. It chose to hate.

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Choosing hate | Jorge Gonzlez-Gallarza - The Critic