May Day greetings
Around the world, tens of millions of workers gather today to celebrate May Day, International Workers’ Day: to celebrate their victories, to voice their grievances, to express international solidarity, and to show their support for Cuba and other countries that, under very unfavourable conditions, continue the difficult task of social transformation to build socialism.
The Communist Party of Ireland sends its warmest greetings of anti-imperialist solidarity to all those struggling against imperialist domination, who are resisting the destruction of their jobs and communities. Workers are experiencing continued attacks on their working conditions, on their wages, while precarious employment continues to spread like a virus throughout the capitalist economies.
We are also witnessing the spread of precarious shelter, the increase in extortionate rents and the growing power of global corporate landlords.
To women workers everywhere, we stand in solidarity with you in opposing gender-based violence, in opposing the super-exploitation of women in very precarious working conditions, brought about by the capitalist mode of production and its aggression in the super-exploitative global supply chain.
We call on Irish workers and workers globally not to march to the drumbeat of war or militarism. The forces of imperialism continue in their strategy of domination and control, to carve and re-carve the world into spheres of influence, control, and super-exploitation.
We send greetings to the Ukrainian and Russian working class, the latest to experience the devastating impact of war, the loss of life, and the destruction of cities, towns, and villages. We support the call by peace forces around the world for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of peace talks.
Militarism and wars are also major factors in the enormous waste of vital natural resources and in environmental destruction.
While western media propaganda concentrates on events in Europe, with their racial prejudice, we send our solidarity to all victims of war and aggression, and in particular to the people of Yemen, who have been slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Saudi Arabian regime, armed and backed by western imperialist states.
We salute the heroic Palestinian people, who daily suffer mass repression, violence and murder from the Zionist settler state of Israel, armed and backed by the western imperialist powers.
While Russia must be held responsible for launching the present conflict, we also oppose the expansionist actions pursued by the aggressive NATO war alliance and its strategy of encircling Russia and China, a strategy aimed at regime change, to oppose all and every challenge to imperialism. It is NATO that is the main danger to world peace, allied with the growing militarism and military co-ordination of the European Union.
The global working class alone has the potential to save our planet from environmental collapse, to establish a balanced approach in harmony with nature in the shared use of our natural resources. It is only the global working class that can reconnect human development with nature and the protection of the natural world, while the profit drive of capitalism is pushing us to an environmental abyss.
Now more than ever we need workers’ unity. We need international working-class solidarity, the rustproof weapon of our class, if we are to end the global threat of war and the total destruction of the global environment. We need workers’ collective solidarity and collective action if we are to end poverty and super-exploitation.
A united working class is essential to ending the scourge of racism, sexism, and all and every form of division created to keep people divided so as to aid their exploitation.
The call is as clear as ever: WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
