Reclaiming England's May Day - an anticipation

Today is May Day – that time when all the Communists and assorted fellow travellers, useful idiots and such like bang on about “international workers” and the revolution. We get to hear the Internationale sung (by the three or four folk who can still remember the words) and tales of the workers struggle are voiced. This is the day of labour – which of course makes it a holiday.

Well dear commies, just as I want my flag back from the racists, I want May Day back from your ghastly authoritarian creed. I want us to reclaim May Day from banner waving reds and self-important lectures about work and workers. I want May Poles, Queen of the May, Morris Dancers, song, sunshine and a celebration of our ordinary lives and our ordinary history.

May Day isn’t a festival of workers. May Day is a festival of fertility – an anticipation of Summer’s fecundity. An excuse to let our hair down a little, sing, dance, get drunk. It’s a day of traditions – whether the maypole, the hobby horse or the green man.

So put away your banners, your red flags. Get out your bells, straighten your beards, dress up fine and get with the magic of nature. Look about at the fresh green shoots, the skippety young animals, the blossom of apple, may and blackthorn and the glories of England around you.

Let’s have back the festival Cromwell’s puritan work ethic tried to kill. Let’s celebrate life and growth, nature and land, good things, fine people and what we share in this great land of ours. Let’s put away the destructive message of class war, of workers revolution, of communism’s cursed legacy.

Let’s have the English May Day back.

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