1 MAY 006 :: MAYDAY PARADE
Meet 12pm Clerkenwell Green to join the Autonomous Bloc

This Mayday we invite all self-organised workers, migrant workers, non-unionised workers, agency workers, cash in hand workers, dole claimants, free-lancers, work rejecters and all of those who fall outside of traditional union organisation to join our autonomous bloc on the TUC march. To make Mayday a day where the invisible claim a common voice.

MAYDAY is International workers day, born out of the struggle for an 8 hour day in 1886. Over 100 years later our lives are still taken up by the world of work. Even more so now, as the work imposed by Capitalism has become more casualised (temporary contracts, flex time, part time, no time!) forcing us to adapt to the point where it's hard to tell when, where or even if we are working. This leaves us in a situation where our lives are always on hold, on call and at the mercy of the market. May 1st this year falls on a bank holiday, yet for many it will be just another day at work. Our leisure time too is filled with anxieties. The anxiety of not being able to have enough money to pay the rent, go to the cinema, a nice restaurant, shop for food, clothes, anything! In reality our work never finishes and when we're not at work we still end up making some other person even richer. Even looking forward to a nice retirement is set to become a thing of the past, with us soon to be working ‘til we drop and a pensions’ crisis leaving many of us in fear of an old age of poverty.

Around Europe people call this new working and living condition "precarity" and over the past few years the “EuroMayday” parades of casualised workers, temps, part-timers, immigrants and unemployed have marched through Europe's capitals to demand new social rights. The riots of marginalised suburban youth, and the rebellion against new contracts of insecurity for young workers in France; the massive strike over pensions by public sector workers, and the mobilisation of agency employed cleaners to fight for a living wage in the UK are all struggles against a life of insecurity.

This Mayday we call for freedom of movement across borders for everyone and the right to stay and work in the country of their choosing, with access to all the benefits and freedoms available to that population. We reject an immigration system which allows the movement of goods but not people, of the rich but not the poor; which forces migrants, refugees and asylum seekers into a choice between destitution and illegal, often dangerous work.

On May 1st we act in solidarity with the many Mayday actions against precarity and insecurity which are taking place around the world; and with the French workers refusal of a future where the only certainty is insecurity. We take action on May 1st because May Day is a celebration of the struggles won by workers for a better world. One less day of working and one day more for us.