May Day: From the maypole to the picket line

Trade unions are still the best way of organising resistance to the violence of capitalism

- Vashna Jagarnath

Long before the red flag waved from factory gates and trade union halls, 1 May was a day of greenwood misrule.

In medieval Europe, it marked the turning of the seasons. Villagers gathered around the maypole, to celebrate the fertility of the earth and renewal of communal life.

On this day, the usual hierarchies were unsettled. Peasants and nobles danced in the same space and the daily rhythm of labour briefly gave way to collective celebration.

Yet even these early rituals carried the seeds of organised struggle. As historian Peter Linebaugh reminds us, May Day was not only a tribute to spring, it was a rehearsal of freedom.

In the forests and commons surrounding early villages, people gathered herbs, cut wood, grazed animals and met to share knowledge and organise resistance. These communal forms of life represented early collective politics. Long before formal trade unions existed, there were forms of mutual obligation and shared labour that resisted exploitation.

As pioneering social historian EP Thompson argued in The Making of the English Working Class, these customs reflected a moral economy grounded in reciprocity and collective rights. In medieval England, peasants held woodland, marsh and pasture "in common", defending them through customary law and communal action.

When these spaces were enclosed and turned into private property, they were defended, often collectively, through early proto-union-style alliances between villagers.

But with the rise of capitalism, the commons were systematically dismantled. From the late 15th to the 18th century, enclosure laws stripped communities of access to shared land.

Hedges were raised, fences hammered into the soil and what was once held in common became the property of landlords and merchants. This was the beginning of what would become a generalised wage relation.