Sunday Times 2
A May Day plea: ‘Mayday or M’aider’
View(s):I have amused myself this week watching all the May Day activities taking place in our country.
May first was traditionally celebrated as the first day of Spring in northern Europe—which explains how activities like wearing spring flowers and dancing around a Maypole became associated with May Day.
In 1891, the delegates at the Second International (conference of socialist and labour parties) chose the first of May as the International Day of Workers—partly to commemorate the massacre of workers that took place at a demonstration in Chicago on May 4th five years previously. The day soon became a day of solidarity for workers all over the world.
This festival of workers being associated with Communism, Pope Pius XII in 1955 decreed that May 1st would be celebrated as the feast of St Joseph the Worker (carpenter and the foster father of Jesus Christ). The church has always been quick to take over ‘pagan’ festivals and convert them into Christian festivals. Just look at how they used the Scandinavian Winter Solstice festival Yuletide (using candle-lit evergreen trees and Yule logs) to celebrate the birth of Christ—and the Spring Equinox festival (complete with bunnies and eggs) commemorating the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eastre, to celebrated Christ’s resurrection at Easter-time.
So throughout history Church and State have used May Day to show off their strength—folk could choose to attend church to celebrate the feast of St Joseph the Worker or participate in a May Day rally with the Socialists and the Communists.
Even in those days in Europe, I am sure some folk would have placed their bets both ways by showing their face at church in the morning and then going off to a socialist workers’ rally later in the day—just as last Wednesday we saw our trustworthy politicians hedging their political bets. After all, except for a few like our current president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has stuck to the same political party through thick and thin, through resounding victories and disastrous losses, many of our ministers and MPs have belonged at various times to various parties, loyally wearing the colour most likely to benefit them at the time.
Democratic elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality. When it comes to finding the best answer to economic and political questions, there is no doubt that some people are better qualified and more rational at finding the best answers to these questions than others—and more capable of implementing these solutions Asking us gullible voters to decide how the economy should be structured is like asking the passengers in a Colombo-Kandy bus to decide which route the bus should take—and then following the route that appealed to the majority of the passengers!
Our cunning politicians know that we the people, just like most voters in the so-called democracies of the world, can be relied on to vote with our feelings rather than with our thoughts. When we are given the chance at elections to let it be known what we THINK, we really cast our votes to let it be known how we FEEL.
No less a personage than the SLPP general secretary Sagara Kariyawasam boasted this week that his party is the only party that conducted its May Day rally at a playground—claiming that other parties were unable to secure similar venues. What a great achievement! Does he think that voters will vote for him and his ilk because they staged their rally in a playground? I would find his reasoning ludicrous—were it not for the fact that there are actually some folk who will vote for one party because they had more participants than others!
May Day commemorates International Labour Day—the working community of Sri Lanka who labour in the fields, factories and offices to keep this country functioning. But our politicians have turned this day of working class solidarity into a day of circuses—a day of musical extravaganzas—with parties trying to outdo each other to woo the feelings of the populace to ‘think’ that THEY are the ones who can look after the working class.
We have UNPers who a few years ago were SLFPers, we have SLPPers who a short while ago were SLFPers (and before that were UNPers), we have Telephone party people who had no one to call and so abandoned the elephants and hands that fed them). We not only witnessed a musical fiesta but also circuses with jumping clowns.
Now there is another meaning to this word May Day that is even more relevant to us in Sri Lanka today. When written as one word (Mayday in contrast to May Day) it becomes a distress signal, a call for help (like the Morse “SOS”).
After voice radio transmission improved so much that it replaced the Morse code of dots and dashes previously used for communication, a British radio operator Frederick Stanley Mockford was asked to select a code word that ships and planes could use to communicate that they were in distress and in urgent need of help. Mockford selected the word “Mayday” – an Anglicisation of the French “M’aider’ meaning “Help me”.
The call Mayday is now the standard international radio distress signal used by ships and aircraft.
Our current politicians are too preoccupied with their own slithering and jumping to hear our calls for distress. They remain with torches poised, unsure which leader to light their torches for but ready to jump with their pandan to serve any leader who provides them with the perks of office.
And we poor citizens can shout “Mayday, Mayday” or even “M’aider,M’aider’ for all we are worth—but the politicians of today are more concerned with getting duty-free cars and electoral nominations rather than looking after the welfare of the workers.