Celebrating 'Our City's Not For Sale'

May Day 2012 Rally speech from John Stevenson, UNISON City of Edinburgh Branch President.
Last year, and the year before, we came here saying ‘Our City’s Not For Sale’. Then it was an aspiration, now it’s a reality. We won. You won. But most of all we won together.

New vibrancy on May Day around the world

May Day events took on a new significance yesterday as trade unionists around the world took to the streets in defence of working people and the right to organise.

“It’s safe to say that for the last five or six years it (May Day) was about celebrating the past, but this year all of us are fighting for our lives and our movement, and it’s brought a great vibrancy to it”, UNISON’s Jennifer McCarey told The Herald before the Glasgow Rally

Our City's Not For Sale

May Day 2010 Edinburgh, being the speaker after the comedian! Many years ago I was a semi-pro magician, believe it or not, and one of the key showbiz maxims was ‘never follow a comedian’. All those years and I’ve never learned. Mind you, there’s a lot of not-learning around as we run up to this election.

MayDay Address: Night for Gaza – Newtongrange Miners Club 1 May 2009

National Mining Museum Newtongrange

From medieval times, Mayday was a big celebration in Britain – not for the unions at the time, mind you – more a pagan festival, that got more and more rowdy. http://www.unison-edinburgh.org.uk/news/2009/0105.html  

So rowdy that the Government stopped celebrations in 1708 after writer Ned Ward wrote that he was shocked to find comedy booths and prostitutes doing ‘good business’.

Perhaps then, it was no coincidence that the 2002 London Mayday rally fell apart in disarray after a surprise demo by 300 sex workers.