THIS Monday May 1 the Marx Memorial Library will welcome those assembling for the May Day demonstration on Clerkenwell Green to a very special open day.

Join us at 37a Clerkenwell Green for feature tours, stalls of second-hand books on the history of the working-class movement and refreshments.

Tours cover the atmospheric office complete with original features where Lenin edited the Russian Bolshevik newspaper Iskra during a 13-month stint in London.

Visitors can see archive copies of Iskra, in addition to thumbnail portraits of the brave comrades who smuggled the paper across Europe.

The MML’s reading room is dominated by a 1935 fresco by artist Jack Hastings depicting the overthrow of capitalism by a muscular worker surrounded by portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, William Morris and Robert Owen.

Hastings had worked with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and the influences are clear in this bold illustration of class struggle.

Visitors will be treated to digital displays celebrating the MML’s 90-year history. The MML was founded in 1933 by a Marx Commemoration Committee keen to honour Marx’s legacy 50 years after his death.

A national library of Marxism with a clear education function as a “workers’ school” was seen as a fitting memorial.

Over the decades the MML has accumulated an internationally significant collection of over 50,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals, in addition to archives on the Spanish civil war, the peace movement and over 2,000 posters.

Treasures include an International Working Men’s Association membership card boasting Marx’s signature, and ceramics dating back to the Peterloo Massacre.

Early correspondence courses and classes scheduled specifically for shift workers examined political economy, imperialism and the fundamentals of Marxism. While these subjects still resonate today, now our courses, lectures and classes are available both online and at Marx House.

The two series commencing in May — Trade Unions, Class and Power and Women, Work and Trade Unions — are currently open for registration.

On this significant anniversary, we look to the future. RMT president and MML chair Alex Gordon will speak to the gathering crowds on the green, reflecting on the current wave of industrial militancy and forthcoming opportunities and challenges, not least the threat of hostile anti-trade union legislation.

The MML has a unique position as a library and workers’ school of and for the labour movement. We are now proud to have eight national trade union affiliates.

This year sees the final volumes of our Unite History Project in print, concluding an ambitious piece of work involving grassroots oral history and archival research.

Visitors will also hear from Ruth Hayes, Islington councillor and MML trustee, on the redevelopment of Clerkenwell Green.

The area has a fascinating radical history. For centuries demonstrations — including the peasants’ revolt and crowds welcoming the return of the Tolpuddle martyrs — have gathered in this space.

Now work has begun pedestrianising the green and a statue, artist Ian Walters’ dynamic depiction of the Marxist feminist Sylvia Pankhurst striding towards the MML, will be erected. The maquette can also be viewed on our May Day tours.

MML has major development plans too. In receipt of a £93,710 grant from the National Heritage Lottery Fund for an anniversary project — Marx Memorial Library at 90: Enduring and Engaging — we are surveying our audiences, developing new outreach initiatives and bringing in expertise to look at redevelopment options for our historic building.

We want your thoughts on the Marx Memorial Library as we look towards our centenary.

What events, activities, subjects and resources would you like from your library of Marxism and the working-class movement? Our 90th birthday membership drive also continues apace — can you help us reach our 900 target? Sign up on May Day. Join us, meet the team and have your say on May 1.

The MML’s doors will be open 10:30am-3pm on May 1, at 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0DU — www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk.