“For trade unionists the warning could not be clearer. The demand for ever-increasing proportions of GDP to be spent on military spending is the latest direct attack on the living standards of workers.”
By Alex Gordon
May Day is international Workers’ Day, celebrated across the world from Cuba to New Caledonia.
On 1 May 2025, over 600,000 Cubans filled Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución while over five million took part in demonstrations across the island.
This year millions will march in support of Cuba’s socialist revolution amidst the drastic social crisis created by the illegal US blockade and Trump’s executive order that came into effect on 29 January 2026, strangling energy supplies to the socialist island already suffering from sixty years of economic, commercial, and financial siege warfare.
Undaunted by the US threat, the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba (CTC) and its national unions are calling for May Day celebrations across the island under the slogan: “The homeland must be defended” (‘La Patria se defiende’)[1].
China introduced a May Day public holiday following the revolution in 1949. In 2026, in China workers enjoy a five-day national holiday, the so-called “Golden Week”, in which millions Chinese travel, visit friends and take part in public celebrations.
Since International Workers’ Day was first celebrated on 1 May 1890, socialists have always linked the demands of the workers’ movement for shorter working hours, better rights and social justice with calls for peace and against militarism and war.
In 1913, Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote, “The brilliant basic idea of May Day is the autonomous, immediate stepping forward of the proletarian masses, [in] a direct, international mass manifestation: the strike as a demonstration and means of struggle for the eight-hour day, world peace, and socialism.”[2]
4 May 2026 in Britain also marks the centenary of the British general strike, which began at one minute past midnight on Tuesday 4 May 1926 and ended in betrayal and despair with the TUC’s ignominious surrender nine days later.
In our new pamphlet, ‘Red Flag, or White?’ by Robert Griffiths (available here,) the economic and political crisis that led to the 1926 general strike and the catastrophic consequences of the defeat of organised labour by capitalist monopolies and the state is brilliantly laid out.
The determination of Britain’s ruling class after World War 1 to re-establish profitability and dominate world markets faced with a revolution in Russia and growing movements for national independence from Ireland to India, drove them to slash wages at home (starting with the miners) and to shackle trade unions to prevent workers fighting back.
The betrayal of the British general strike on 13 May 1926 after nine days of exemplary militancy and class solidarity, saw organised labour falter and fall back in disarray from which it did not recover for almost half a century. 1926 was also an inflection point in the drive to militarism and war.
Japan’s invasion of China in September 1931, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935 and the eruption of the Spanish civil war from July 1936 all aimed to boost profits by imperialist conquest abroad and destroy the power of organised labour at home.
Today, we are faced with eery parallels. Since 2020 we have heard a crescendo of demands from politicians, arms manufacturers and military top brass for an increased proportion of public spending to be devoted to military expenditure.
This week right-wing economist, Roger Bootle writing in the Telegraph noted, “In 2024-2025 spending on benefits totalled £384bn, of which spending on pensions was £146bn. Defence spending was only (sic) £64bn.”[3]
Bootle argued, “Judicious cuts to welfare spending could increase the labour supply and hence boost GDP.”
Thatcherite die-hards at the Telegraph see an opportunity of jumping on a bandwagon to achieve their real ambition of cutting what is referred to as the social wage, which is to say pensions and the welfare state to boost military spending.
For trade unionists the warning could not be clearer. The demand for ever-increasing proportions of GDP to be spent on military spending is the latest direct and deliberate attack on the living standards of workers and their families.
The new Cold War warriors in Britain and France and Germany, following the example of Donald Trump in the US see the new arms race as an opportunity to achieve the swingeing cuts in the welfare state that they have dreamed of for so long.
The Communist Party is calling on trade unionists to support the International Meeting Against War[4], which will take place at Westminster Central Hall on Saturday 20 June 2026.
For workers, trade unionists and socialists on May Day this is why we march for peace.
[1] CTC, Call for May Day 2026: Unity and Patriotism. Trabajadores (Organo de la Central de Trabajadores de Cuba), 16 April, 2026 https://www.trabajadores.cu/20260416/call-for-may-day-2026-unity-and-patriotism/
[2] Rosa Luxemburg, The Idea of May Day on the March, Liepziger Volkszeitung, April 30, 1913 https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/04/30.htm
[3] Roger Bootle, There is only one way to fund defence spending – and it’s not more borrowing, Telegraph, 26 April 2026 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/04/26/there-is-only-one-way-to-fund-defence-spending/
[4] International Anti-War Conference, Sat 20 June 2026 https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/european-peace-conference/
- Alex Gordon is former RMT President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.
- You can follow Alex Gordon on Twitter/X and CPB here.
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