“May Day is our day, and we hope everyone will join with us as we wear ‘Red for Workers’. Celebrating workers that make the wealth of this country, and kept it going through a global pandemic.”
By Robert Poole and Henry Fowler
Five years ago, I got a message from Rob, an NEU member in Bolton, asking me what I thought about a May Day action— encouraging people to wear red— in solidarity with key workers at the height of the pandemic.
My response was “yes, this is an excellent idea.” The rest is history, as they say.
‘Red for Key Workers’ was a deliberate attempt to respond to the ‘hollow gimmicks’ of the Government, including clapping, whilst their billionaire mates got ‘nice fat’ contracts to make defective PPE. We were also clear that lockdown shouldn’t stop our celebration of May Day. A chance to reignite May Day, in a period of staying at home.
We had no idea what the reaction would be, but Rob skilfully gained the backing of some major activists and politicians across our movement, and the momentum began to build.
It was a great success that May Day, thousands of people wore red and shared solidarity messages for the incredible key workers up and down the country, who were keeping our society going.
The potential for building a place for coordinating solidarity, to empower workers, became clear to us both.
We didn’t know what the next steps would be, but we knew we couldn’t let this momentum go. In a search for understanding what we thought about this action, we met with some of the incredible founders of Labornotes—a US grassroots union organisation, supporting rank-and-file activity.
The meeting was extremely positive, as we listened to wider heads than us about how to be patient in building these types of initiatives.
Wind on several months, and in December 2020, I contacted Rob after reading an inspirational book— Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives— by now our very good comrade Robert Ovetz.
The idea was a simple one. Could we map where every strike was happening in the UK and encourage people to visit picket lines? We both reflected on the fact that despite being active in the movement, it was often hard to find our nearest strike, with lots of unions not publicising action or burying it on a press release on a webpage you cannot find.
We decided after speaking with senior activists in the movement, we would launch Strike Map and so we did on 23 December 2020. The response was huge. And over the last four years, Strike Map has grown into a project now with a fantastic steering group and 120 affiliates supporting the mapping of over 230,000 strikes.
As we reach the fifth anniversary of ‘Red for Key Workers’, and later this year Strike Map, we wanted to repeat Red for Workers, asking everyone to wear something red on 1 May. This is not some nostalgia, but due to the growing importance of unity of the working class to face the multiple crises of our society.
May Day is our day, and we hope everyone will join with us as we wear ‘Red for Workers’. Celebrating workers that make the wealth of this country, and kept it going through a global pandemic.
This May Day we salute the power of a united working class to build a better society.
See you on the streets, in your best red of course.
Here is how to take part:
- Wear your favourite something red on 1 May
- Take a photo of you wearing red, with a solidarity message.
- Upload to social media tagging red for workers/ strike map and using #RedForWorkers
- Encourage your co-workers to do the same.
- You can follow the Wear Red for Workers initiative on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
- You can follow Strike Map on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and YouTube.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
