Mayday celebrations across the East Midlands

Nottingham: Saturday May 1st

This year, organisers of Nottingham Mayday have faced the full force of Notttingham City Council’s bureaucratic machinery, and had to jump through any number of legal and financial hoops. Despite these obstacles, the event went ahead on Saturday May 1st with perhaps a couple of 100 people turning up to celebrate International Workers' Day.

In recent years, Mayday has been held at the Brewhouse Yard, near Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, This year the council had exiled it to Victoria Park in Sneinton, round the corner fron Sneinton Market and Victoria Leisure Centre.

There were a wide range of campaigns represented, many of them familiar faces from previous Maydays: Shut Down H&K, Greeenpeace, Friends of the Earth, CND, SWP, Socialist Party, Veggies and others. One new group was Nottingham Radical History Group.

The weather forecast had not been encouraging, but for much of the day it was sunny and warm, at times even hot. The weather even held out for the duration of the march.

Inevitably beginning late, the march was led by a samba band, as in previous years, and the Urban Gypsies belly dancing tribe with their impressive portable sound system. Marchers wound their way from the park, past Victoria Leisure Centre, itself recently closed as part of the city council’s cost saving exercises. From their the march continued onto Parliament St up to King Street and down to Speaker’s Corner.

Here there were speeches from Notts County Unison and others before we continued on our way. There was an abortive attempt by a group of anarchists to encourage people to move into the Market Square, but few people followed them and the march was soon on its way again, along the pre-arranged route.

Moving along Smithy Row onto Pelham Street and up through Hockley, the march returned to the park, passing once again past Victoria Leisure Centre. This time there was a brief stop outside to protest against the facility’s closure, although people were hurried on to ensure we had time for speaker’s at the closing rally.

Once back at Victoria Park, demonstrators were addressed by speakers from various local campaigns including Shut Down H&K, Notts Stop the BNP, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Nottingham City Unison and others. There was also a speaker from the Mayday organising committee who was critical of the many obstacles the city council had put in the event’s way this year.

Speakers were interspersed with music and dancing from Ngomo, Urban Gypsies, Wholesome Fish and others, although the arrival of the expected rain showers did dampen people’s enthusiasm somewhat.

Chesterfield: Monday May 3rd

Chesterfield Mayday is traditionally one of the largest celebrations of International Workers’ Day in the region if not the country. Although substantially smaller than at its peak, the event continues every May bank holiday weekend.

The 2010 event was attended by several hundred people with many groups represented.

Unions were present, but not in huge numbers. There were banners for UCU, UCATT, Unison and flags for Unite. GMB were inexplicably absent.

Lefty groups were out in abundance with usual suspects like the SWP and Socialist Party supplemented by Stalinoid sects like the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star and the Communist Part of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist).

There were also banners, placards and/or stalls from Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Revolutionary Praxis, Greenpeace, Notts NUM and others.

I was particularly surprised by the prevalence of the Labour Party. I’ve never seen so many people from the party in one place and was a little surprised that they could still muster so many people or that any of them had the chutzpah to carry a banner with the slogan “Forward with Socialism” after 13 years of Blair and Brown.

The day consisted of a march followed by a rally. Marchers were entertained by the Urban Gypsies who had also been at Nottingham’s Mayday event and led by a brass band.

The weather was decidedly changeable going from sunny to rain to hail and then back again. Which inevitably meant that it would start raining just after I’d taken a layer of because it was too warm.

The most interesting moment on a largely uneventful march came when the demonstrators went past the offices of LibDem MP Paul Holmes when Socialist Party members and Labour Party members began chanting for him to be removed from power.

The march ended at the New Square where marchers were able to listen to speakers or peruse the many stalls (an odd mix of campaigning groups and plant sales).

There was some controversy when it emerged that UKIP had booked a stall (apparently under false pretences) and found themselves being harassed by lefties. The police turned up and spent a long time hanging around their stall. Suffice to say, I can’t see them having secured many votes out of the exercise.