Bloodied and intertwined with the struggles of the workers, the May Daywas established as a day of remembrance for the rebellion written in black letters on the pages of world history and known as “the Haymarket Massacre”.

In May 1886 labor unions in Chicago rioted demanding 8 hours and better working conditions.

However, the bloody uprisings of Chicago workers in early May 1886 followed successful claims by workers in Canada in 1872.

In 1884, a decision was made at the convention of the American Federation of Labor to hold strike actions and demonstrations in Chicago on the first of May 1886, the largest industrial center in the US at the time. Request the reduction of working hours and slogan “Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of sleep.”

On May 1, 1886, more than 600,000 people participated in strikes across the country, and over 80,000 in Chicago.

On that Saturday in 1886, it was a working day, the workers set out with their wives and children to demonstrate peacefully at the assembly site, Haymarket Square.

A police force consisting of 1,350 people, armed with submachine guns and revolvers, had been lined up in the surrounding area.

And while the crowd watched the speeches, the head of the police force orders the rally to be broken up.

A grenade was thrown by the demonstrators against the uniformed and 7 police officers were killed on the spot. The police then started firing indiscriminately.

The number of victims is still unknown since many injured people ended up in the following days. Officially 16 dead police officers and four protesters have been verified.

Eight arrested protestors were tried, four of them to death and he even committed suicide in prison.

The international exposure of this trial created the foundations of Labor Day as a Labor Day.

On the contrary, however, we have the festival of flowers and Spring, the ancient May Day. The so-called Anthesterias, the festival of flowers, was the first official flower festival of the Greeks, which was established first in Athens and then in other cities of Greece, where during the ceremony processions of flower-carrying canes were directed to the holy places.

When was Labor Day established in Greece?

It was 131 years ago when Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in Greece. Since then it has been associated with the history of the country and with its struggles, not only for the defense of labor rights but also for freedom itself and to throw off the foreign yoke.

The first celebration took place in Athens in 1893 on the initiative of Stavros Kallergis, head of the Central Socialist Association. Among the demands of the protesters was the establishment of 8 o’clock, as well as Sunday as a public holiday, as well as the awarding of pensions to the victims of work accidents.

Even that first celebration was episodic. Kallergis submitted a resolution to the Parliament, but the obstruction of the Speaker of the House to read it caused his strong protest, with the result that, after the soldiers of the guard hit him with their stocks, he was arrested for disturbing the meeting and imprisoned for ten days on prisons of the Old Barracks.

Labor Day was celebrated almost every year in the years that followed. In 1936 he “drown” in blood, when in the tobacco workers’ mobilizations in Thessaloniki twelve people lost their lives due to the intervention of the forces of order. A mother’s lament for her dead son, 25-year-old Tassos Toussi, at the intersection of Venizelos and Egnatia streets, inspired Yiannis Ritsos to write his poetic work “The Epitaph”.

Eight years later, May Day would be associated with one of the greatest crimes of Nazi atrocity. On April 27, 1944, ELAS rebels set up an ambush on the Molaon-Sparti road, in Laconia, and killed the German military commander of the Peloponnese, General Franz Krech, and three men of his entourage. In retaliation, the Nazis decided to “execute 200 communists, as well as the execution of all men caught between Molao and Sparta.”

Despite the efforts of the rebels, but also of Archbishop Damascenes, 200 will be executed at the Shooting Range of Kaisariani on May 1, 1944, while those executed in Laconia exceeded one hundred.

In the turbulent post-war years, the first open gathering will take place in the Panathenaic Stadium. In post-colonial Greece, May Day events are mainly held indoors due to the restrictions imposed on public gatherings.

No event takes place on May Day 1967 as a few days earlier, on April 21, the junta of the colonels has been imposed. From the following year, the dictatorial regime establishes May Day as a holiday.

The first May Day gathering of the Metapolitization, in 1975, takes place in Kotzia square and is characterized by massiveness. From next year, the May Day gathering will be hosted on the Areos Field in front of the GSEE building.