Sunday 1 May is celebrated the Workers Day, the day dedicated to the remembrance and celebration of the struggles fought all over the world to obtain better working conditions. In Italy this date is National holidayand is characterized by numerous themed initiatives, which also include the traditional “Concertone” in Romefor which the return to Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano is expected this year (here the complete program).
The US strikes and the Chicago uprising
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Labor Day has its roots in an episode that occurred in the United States on May 1, 1886, when the most important federation of trade unions in North America, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU), proclaimed a general strike to demand fair and decent working conditions in factories. The date chosen for the protest was not accidental: on May 1, 1867, the first historic law that introduced the 8 hour working day. On the occasion of the nineteenth anniversary of that conquest, the FOTLU claimed its extension to the whole American territory.
In Chicago, however, the strikes had a dramatic effect: to disperse the crowd, the police fired at the demonstrators gathered in front of the McCormick harvester factory, killing two people. The brutal assassination sparked a new wave of protests, which culminated in tragedies on May 4 facts of Haymarket square, also in Chicago. Here, a completely peaceful workers’ garrison was upset by the explosion of a bomb who killed an agent. The police reacted by opening fire indiscriminately, with a death toll of eleven civilians and policemen hit by stray bullets, as well as an unspecified number of wounded.
The attack was followed by a much discussed trial, which led to the death sentence by hanging of seven anarchists (two later pardoned), despite the lack of evidence linking the accused to the launch of the explosive device. The day of the execution was marked by the last passionate words August Spiesone of the five condemned: “The day will come when our silence will be stronger than the voices that today suffocated with death”.
Labor Day in Europe and Italy
The events in Chicago also had a great impact in Europe. At the International Congress of Paris in 1889, the Second Socialist International sanctioned that for obvious symbolic reasons May 1st would host the International Workers’ Day from then on. The decision was soon put into practice in several countries, and was ratified also from Italy two years after.
With the intention of erasing its leftist origins, during the Twenty years of fascism the anniversary was moved to April 21, coinciding with the Birth of Rome, becoming a public holiday starting from 1924, with the name “Birth of Rome – Labor Day”. At the end of the second World War the party returned to its place, maintaining its status as a holiday.