Eight hours a day,
that’s what
the Haymarket eight
bought us on the gallows.
Blamed for throwing the bomb
at the police, at the demonstration
for worker’s basic rights
on May 4, 1886 in Chicago.
Over eight policemen
were killed by the bomb.
Five rioters and
a further four policemen,
in the handgun battle
that followed the bomb’s vicious work.
Hundreds were injured on both sides.
Eight anarchists were arrested.
All immigrants.
All recent arrivals
in the land of the free.
The land where unrestrained
Christian capitalism,
allowed them to live like animals.
The land of the free
that imprisoned them
and executed them,
when they showed their teeth.
Comrades Engel, Fischer, Parsons
and Spires became martyrs
for the labour movement,
despite only earning
a hangman’s rope
for their part in the wild carnage.
They had discussed
creating an outrage,
disrupting a peaceful protest,
throwing dynamite bombs.
They were not
the bomber of Chicago.
It has been suggested
that the bomber
was a provocateur,
deployed with disastrous effect
to discredit the democratic
labour reform movement.
The Second International
declared the men martyrs,
and commemorates their sacrifice
every 1 May, all over the world.
No one remembers
the Second International,
when working people
began educating themselves,
because nowadays
they have been bribed
and bought off,
given enough luxury
not to give a shit
about the welfare
of their fellows,
because they have
to keep up their payments
on all the luxury goods
they have been conned
into buying to exercise
their privilege of individuality
in lieu of community
“I’ve got mine,
I don’t give a fuck about you.”
Whilst all those crazy bastards
in China
or Guatamala
or Cambodia
or Pakistan
are working sixteen hour days
for starvation wages, so that
the great great grand children
of the bloody anarchists,
who fought with the police
to improve their lives
can buy stuff cheap
with their welfare cheques,
because no one works
in Chicago any more.
And whilst the same rich men
dream their golden dreams
on their cold beds of krugerrands,
all those crazy bastards
in China
or Guatamala
or Cambodia
or Pakistan
are dreaming of how to build
a big enough bomb
to wake the rich world up,
enough to remember
that the job’s not quite done.
Funnily enough,
this is not what
they’re taught in school
or what they see
at the movies or on TV.
And everyone forgets,
that this is the time
of the year when
we used to dance
with each other
to celebrate the return
of the summer.
But not in China
or Guatamala
or Cambodia
or Pakistan
or even Chicago
or even here.
