MAY DAY celebrates the historic struggles of the working class across the world.

I didn’t know this when I was growing up. I just thought that everyone was celebrating my birthday!

Always being a bit slow — as some reading my random musings regularly give up their valuable time to write to remind me — I thought the news coverage on May Day of the Warsaw Pact parades through Moscow’s Red Square was entirely for my benefit.

It was complicated even more by the fact that I was watching this from Walsall in the Black Country. Walsall Pact or Warsaw Pact? Which was it? Did I care anyway? After all, it was all about me.

Some (but only some) of this is in jest, but May Day is decidedly no joke. We should never forget the sacrifices that have been made by working-class people across the globe to secure even the most basic wins.

Nothing has ever been given to us out of the goodness of what passes for the hearts of the ruling class. We have to fight for everything, and our victories have come because of our determination and our ability to organise.

Our history is important if we are to move forward. We must remember that it was in 1889 that an international federation of socialist groups and trade unions came together to designate May 1 as a day in support of workers.

They did so to commemorate the Haymarket uprising in Chicago on May 4 1886.

The previous day, the Chicago police killed one person and injured many more as they protected strike breakers during a dispute to win an eight-hour working day at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company.

To protest the brutal police attack, a mass meeting was called on the 4th in Haymarket Square. But this was also attacked by the police. During the conflict that arose from the police actions, seven police officers were killed and 60 others wounded before the violence ended.

At least eight protesters were reportedly killed and dozens more injured.

Haymarket sparked widespread hysteria against immigrants and union leaders, who were the backbone of the uprising.

Amid the panic, August Spies and seven other anarchists were convicted of murder on the spurious grounds that they had conspired with or aided an unknown assailant.

Many of the so-called “Chicago Eight,” however, were not even present at the May 4 event, and their alleged involvement was never proved.

Nevertheless, Spies and three other defendants were hanged on November 11 1887, and another defendant committed suicide.

The three remaining men were eventually (in 1893) pardoned by the state governor John Peter Altgeld in the face of stiff opposition from big business.

By this time, in 1891, US president Grover Cleveland, not being able to bring himself to recognise the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed in a new law to make Labour Day, the first Monday of September, the official holiday to honour workers.

But Haymarket inspired generations of activists throughout the world.

In Europe, May 1 was historically associated with rural pagan festivals.

The Romans celebrated the six-day festival of Floralia from late April into early May.

But post-Haymarket, the day more and more came to be recognised additionally as International Workers’ Day, such as in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations, as previously mentioned.

May Day is now celebrated as a public holiday in dozens of countries across the world, even though many, such as in Britain, can’t bring themselves to grant the holiday on the actual day, preferring instead — for the convenience of employers — to hold it on the first Monday in May.

Many in the ruling class have sought to remove the holiday altogether and replace it with such things as Trafalgar Day or, I seem to remember, something to commemorate Britain’s former far-right prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

The battle to remember our heritage is an important one. Forgetting where we came from makes it more difficult for us to wage the fights for workers’ rights that we currently are forced to wage across the globe.

But neither must we live in the past and dwell on past victories or, as is seemingly more often the case on the left, heroic defeats.

In recent times, May Day has been used as a rallying point on some of the key political issues of the day, such as immigration rights.

As I don’t presume to speak on behalf of the entire movement, I am using this May Day to rededicate myself to the fight against the growing tide of fascism across the globe.

Once again, I will await the correction from the usual comrades about how what we are experiencing is not fascism but some other form of authoritarianism. For me, if it walks like a dog, barks like a dog and wags its tail like a dog, then it’s probably a dog.

I will also use the day to remember the words of the brilliant journalist, writer and activist Vijay Prashad to remember why I write.

During a conversation with another friend, Mark Nowak, Prashad said: “As socialist writers, we take our lead from the people struggling to improve their worlds... The socialist writer is not merely a conduit from the picket line to the reader. The writer must shape the story,” and the intention is “to produce a confident community of struggle.”

That’s why I write what I do, and there can be no better way to reboot my energy to continue the struggle than May Day.

No activist or writer can be neutral on a moving train — as the historian Howard Zinn once wrote.

So once I have recovered from my birthday celebrations today, I will follow it the day after by launching my second book, The Rebirth of the African Phoenix — A View from Babylon. This will be a continuation of my small part in helping to build a community of resistance.

May Day is not a time to wallow in the past. It is a time to nurture the socialist future that this world so desperately needs.

Indeed, as the wonderful writer Arundhati Roy once said: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

My hearing is bad, but I swear that on some days I can hear her screaming!

So it’s a happy birthday to me and a happy May Day to you all.