WORKERS REVIVE MAY DAY TRADITION
Cologne, Germany
In the liquidation of socialist concepts and traditions, a process which the West German Social Democracy has taken to ever new depths since adopting the infamous Godesberg program, an outstanding casualty has been the traditional May Day demonstration, All that generally remains now is a public meeting, held, if possible, without red banners or songs of the labor movement.
In Hamburg this year even the public meeting gave way to a kind of frolic with brass bands, a musical show and cabaret songs, all of it without the slightest political content and aimed only at diversion,
In other West German cities, however, socialists have been struggling to reverse the trend. Four years ago the unions in Cologne, for example, gave up mass May Day demonstrations. The Socialist Youth nevertheless turned out. Last year they managed to bring out some hundreds of workers from the big Ford plant, organizing an impressive demonstration of international solidarity between Greek and Turkish workers in the plant at a time when chauvinists of Greek and Turkish origin in Cyprus were cutting each other's throats.
Militant elements in the Cologne trade-union movement thought so well of this demonstration that they decided to press the German Metal Workers Union (with nearly 2,000,000 members, it is the biggest union in the world) to officially sponsor a May Day demonstration in Cologne this May Day.
After long discussion at a meeting of factory delegates from all the Cologne metal plants, a proposal by the Ford shop stewards to put it up to the Cologne Trades Council was adopted by 110 votes to 50. At the meeting of the Cologne Trades Council the Metal Workers' proposal was lost by a small majority. The Cologne district of the Metal Workers Union then decided to sponsor the demonstration alone. The Chemical Workers Union and numerous left- “wing youth organizations backed the decision.
The slogans, placards, conditions of the demonstration, etc., were decided upon in lengthy discussions and finally more than 4,000 workers and youth marched behind the red banners of May Day.
Most of the slogans were of a political nature: Protests against the U.S. aggression in Vietnam; protests against the preparations for nuclear war; appeals for a firm struggle against the proposed state-of-emergency law which threatens civil liberties.
A Spanish group heading the march carried many slogans against the Franco regime. Its militant bearing and discipline were impres~ sive.
—~l4n
The Greek workers again carried a banner like the one of last year: "We Greek socialists greet our Turkish brother workers."
The march ended with a public meeting attended by some 10,000 people.
WEST GERMAN INTELLECTUALS