I come from a working class family who votes Labour. Going to Church schools in the 1990s wasn’t easy at all, class war was rife and most of my schoolmates hailed from more affluent families from less southern areas. New ‘friends’, new settings, a new educational establishment: I was lost and there was definitely no space to be in a class of my own – unless that meant being one of the very few Labour.
So, May 2 – in those years – meant you shouldn’t really tell the others you’ve been to the May Day parade. I did that only once, in my first year, and was pinned down for going to the ‘carnival’, as a banker’s son put it to me with a disdain that still rings in my ear to this day.
Admittedly, it was nothing similar to Italy’s Primo Maggio concert in San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, where leftist (and world-class) musicians and crowds gather for a day out, brought together by red flags, red slogans and ideology.
And I’ve mixed memories – not exactly nostalgia – of the partisan satire aimed at Fenech Adami’s economically and socially conservative government which was, perhaps in contradiction with its ideals, taking the country into the liberal Europe.
Ask me if I miss the crowds, the noise and all that and I’ll say no. Yet, much like the remnants of socialism in the 1990s, May Day and its parade are but scattered ashes in the memory of some.
A few years ago, I met that particular banker’s son at a wedding. I wasn’t too keen on catching up and, as one does at weddings when there’s no escape, you have to stand, smile and go with the small talk. And this is where the small talk took us: my former classmate is now an IIP concessionaire, with a couple of small side gigs and a huge townhouse in an otherwise narrow alley.
Ironies about making a quick buck under Labour aside, my former classmate displayed little apprehension at the doings of the Muscat government and the scandals that emerged.
My interlocutor had long since abandoned the PN’s youth wings and corruption was a secondary concern, to be referenced in passing, in spite of everything ‘Eddie’ brought and taught. Christmas at Courmayeur mattered, summer in Capri mattered, bonds and stocks mattered.
I made my excuses and sauntered off to the next small talk session a few metres away. My former schoolmate’s evolution, or transformation, had the same motivation as that of the left, in Malta and abroad.
What used to be a political force brought together by ideology and red flags is now in shambles.
After the fall of communism – which crumbled under its own weight in between systematic abuses of human rights and corruption and the subconscious resignation that capitalism had won over utopia – the left struggled to find its feet. When it did, it found itself on a completely different plain. In came the Tony Blairs and the ‘managerial’ style of government, where the state, too, became a profit-making venture.
Big foreign capitals started being ‘invested’ in real estate, energy projects, infrastructure, stock markets; the new political class of the left threw away its Marx and Engels and fully embraced the neoliberal tide.
Just like my former colleague, the left’s days of idealism and innocence dissipated at the sight of money.
Its working class, anti-racist, anti-fascist narrative was artfully weakened by the far right’s hypocritical crusade against the elites – by extension, against itself – further weakening a fragmented, loose union of intents busier on keyboards than in the streets.
Cheap labour outside Europe dealt another fatal blow to organised and unionised communities in the old continent, marginalising workers and taking power from the masses and placing it straight into the hands of the classes.
It brings us to nowadays. May Day is but a public holiday; it falls on a Saturday, so that’s a holiday missed because of the economy.
Now, we’re getting the extra day back, again – a decision also taken in economic interest.
Shops would open as usual if it weren’t for the pandemic. Instead, May Day means a day of work for thousands of people who, in the aftermath of what was hailed as an economic boom, are still forced to work extra hours, weekends, public holidays, to pay off mortgages, rent, education.
On May Day, Bolt and Wolt drivers will, yet again, wake up for a strenuous day of driving and delivering, earning a fraction of what they deserve, indeed, of what they’re really worth as humans who deserve their dignity.
For all my (possibly misguided) nostalgia about my youth, there is one crucial factor that’s nowhere to be seen any longer: collective action.
May Day’s significance needs to be rekindled and I don’t mean the way of the ‘carnival’.
It is time for those who fight for social justice and against oppression, greed, corruption, discrimination and the hypocrisy that dominates our political class to come together.
It is time to unite against the vested interests that dominate policymaking in our country while dressing it up as a democracy; a travesty, if not a carnival of the sickening type.
It is also time for genuine socialists to raise their heads and to revive the fight for social justice through various forms of social and political activism.
We, too, will follow the path of Charles Miceli and Joe Bartolo.
Wayne Flask, member, Moviment Graffitti
