Stirring May Day statement from the Workers' Party of Ireland.
STATEMENT OF THE WORKERS PARTY OF IRELAND ON INTERNATIONAL
WORKERS DAY 2023
The Workers Party of Ireland sends warm regards and socialist greetings and solidarity to our fellow workers and their families, and to our comrades and friends at home and across the world. Every year on 1st May, workers across the world celebrate and commemorate International Workers' Day (May Day). This important event commemorates past labour struggles, celebrates historic victories and renews a commitment to the struggle for workers’ rights and a better future. It recalls the gains and achievements of the international working class and outlines the continuing battles to be faced.
We know the reality of our class-based society. We see the unrestrained attacks on the social and economic conditions of workers and their families; the impoverishment of working people; the increased power of the monopolies and multinational corporations; the continuing attacks on living standards, labour rights, social protection, health, education, public employment and the provision of public services.
On May Day, we assert our determination to struggle for proper pay, conditions and pensions for workers; against low paid, precarious and casualised work; against the privatisation of public services. We declare that poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression are inherent in the nature of our social order, capitalism, a system which must be abolished. It cannot be reformed.
We renew our support for the international peace movement against imperialist war. The capitalist system in its unceasing pursuit of profit pollutes the environment, encourages child labour, exploits migrant workers and women, maximises profits through minimum wages, casts millions of workers onto the dole queues, carries on murderous wars which inflict misery, death and destruction and causes devastating environmental and infrastructural impact on the peoples of the planet, its flora and fauna, through coercion, intervention, occupation and war.
This weekend, the Workers Party of Ireland participates in May Day Rallies across Ireland. Today, we renew our commitment to a better world, a socialist future. We celebrate and protest together with our class. We demonstrate our solidarity with workers’ struggles across the world. A better future can be constructed, a world of peace, progress and socialism.
In the upcoming local elections in Northern Ireland later this month, our Party will again offer the secular, socialist, and anti-sectarian alternative to working people. Our message is clear: class unity, class struggle and that socialism is the alternative.
Workers of All Countries Unite!
For Workers’ Power and Socialism!
1st May 2023
Ted Tynan, President
Gerry Grainger, International Secretary
On behalf of the Central Executive Committee, Workers Party of Ireland