Nice one. We’ve been trying to shake things up for May Day in Bristol. Last year we set out with these ideas:

May Day goes unmarked in many cities in the UK, few have significant events. Between about 2002 and 2011 Bristol had no noticable May Day events, we should change this.

Not enough people even know that May Day is workers day, fewer still know the history of May Day (and the labour movement), we should raise awareness of it.

Anarchism has been central to the day since its inception in 1886, we shouldn’t leave it to the authoritarian left and trade union buerocrats.

It resulted in Bristol AFed calling together a wide group of activists to plan a week of May Day actions in 2012. It went pretty well, some leftists dropped out before the actions, and the ‘Trades Council’ didn’t jump on board ’till the last minute but it was better than nothing.

This year the Trades Council arranged a planning meeting and didn’t invite us. When we came anyway they wouldn’t allow an anarchist speaker. We didn’t have time to plan our own event (due to the bookfair), but I think we still did pretty well. We had about the biggest bloc on the march, and definitily the loudest! We arrived on time and took our place near the very front (we were usually near the back before now). We subverted the ‘A2B march with rally’ format to take action against primark. We sang songs against the bosses of the unions and had our ‘remember hay market’ banner next to the speakers. Apparently we made quite an impact because in an angry looking exchange the head of the trades council informed us we’d have a speaker next year.

UK May Day is only going to get better with anarchists at the front, many at the top of the unions seem happy to do the same old routine every year! Depending on the local situation we may be best off organising horrizontally with everyone on the left (as we did last year), injecting life into a leftist march (like this we did this year) or calling our own may day events instead (as I think was aimed for in liverpool this year).

See you all on the streets next year, maybe even on the right day!