MAY DAY,

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 142, 18 June 1930, Page 6

MAY DAY,

RED BANNERS AND BLISTERED FEET.

(By NELLE M. SOANLAN.) '

To-day is May Day—Labour Day. In London not only does Labour keep it as a holiday, but the Stock Exchange does also. They keep thenown holidays and everybody else's as -well. The bank rate dropped another half per cent, but it made no difference to the Stock Exchange. It was closed. The financiers of the City were playing golf in the sun. May Day! From ten different parts of Britain —from Scotland, from Wales, from Lancashire, and the rest of them —lean, hungry unemployed have walked to take part in a .Communist demonstration in Hyde Park. A poor, pathetic, ragged procession, for the most part. Blistered feet and cracked voices; shoulders stooping wearily under their packs after the long week's march. Tired and disillusioned, some of them. So'many young men and lads, small, undersized,, ill-conditioned. Old men with ragged beards, sturdy women and pathetic, pale-faced rebels, sustained by a fierce and fiery spirit. Red flags and banners, red ties and badges, red shirts. A tall clergyman bearing a cross. Young Indians defying Britain and carrying their standard of liberty. Some banners had Russian inscriptions which no one could read. "Up the Reds! Up the Reds!" cheered their sympathisers in the crowd. They sang the "Internationale." Queer mixtures of instruments made little bands and much noise here and there down the long, straggling lines. One group sang the "Marseillaise" to an accordion. "Who'll get it in the neck?" "Ramsay Mac Donald!" came the 'reply in chorus. • i -"Come on, comrades, join up!" They 'leaned out of their ranks, shaking col-, lection boxes, and urging the crowd to join in. "Dow.n with the capitalist classes!" An old couple, arm in arm, limped along. A. young idealist with a youth's full beard marched with a band of young miners. Policemen on horses, policemen on foot, escorted them through the streets of London, with their flags of revolution, their flaming ardour, their blistered feet, their banners inciting the workers to revolution. "You'd never get a revolution in England!" shouted one disgustedly. "You haven't got the guts to shoot! . .• . You shot in the war. You can have your King!" "Just mind that language," said a policeman quietly. "I don't mind what you say, but just mind that language." The London crowd disciplines itself. The police are good-humoured and give ample latitude. When a rebel has shouted some wild 'statement a dozen times, and no one has tried to stop him, or argue with him, and the policeman just smiles— well, his ardour pales. You can say almost anything in London, except what is officially known as "language." You can't use language. In little groups about the park heated arguments were going on—Labour, Communism, capitalism—every point of view, and wild words were tossed about. But the policemen moved up and down. A tall, raw-boned, red-headed Irishman, with a broad accent, a check cap and a green scarf, discussed Irish history with a fellow countryman. Discussed is perhaps not quite the word. "'Twas in 1877 the Act was passed." " 'Twas not, 'twas in 1878." "Well, go on, then—but in 1901 the Government " « "I say 'twas in 1902." "Well, niver moind about that, go on, go on, will you?" "I mind me when Mike O'Leary from Skibbereen came recruiting " ' "Mike O'Leary was not from Skibbereen—he was a Macroom man from County Cork " "He was from Skibbereen!" "I say he was from Macroom, and I was in his regiment " "'Twas Skibbereen " ."'Twas Macroom. ..." , Whatever the original subject of discussion, it was well lost between Skibbereen and Macroom. A little woman with bright brown eyes like boot buttons, who spoke Welsh to her daughter and shouted English to the crowd, pointed to a handsome police sergeant on a fine bay horse. She was a fiery particle, less than five feet high. "Look at him! That's what he's paid for— sitting on a horse and pushing us about. That's what we pay for —him. Get five pounds a week for it. Pretty, aren't you! If you sit there much longer, you'll get corns!" The policeman smiled down at her and patted his horse. Old ladies were safely escorted across the road by the police, and traffic held up for prams, while they constantly urged the crowd back on to the kerb, to keep an open road. Plump old gentlemen in limousines grew purple in the face as they were held up on their way to the club while the ragged procession passed. After waiting for an hour on a special point of vantage, three large vans drove up and parked in front of the people. On top of the vans slick young men erected film cameras, "talkie", cameras, still cameras. They completely blocked the people's view at this point. I expected a riot or revolt. The crowd—the peaceful, patient London crowd, just melted away and formed elsewhere. Ladies with lorgnettes slid by in purring motor cars, elegant and easy. Oxford Street' was crowded with shoppers. Nursemaids wheeled babies in the park. Twelve students started ■ singing "God Save the King" and nearly started a riot. They were severely handled by the Reds. Ambulances were parked round corners in case of need. But London went on its way, just pausing to look a moment at the thousands—some say ten thousand—of derelicts banded together against misfortune. But they were not all°down and out. Many strong, well-dressed young girls led the singing; negroes walked with white women; Indians foregathered with the Welsh. They had believed that the capitalist Government had caused their woes, so they put a Socialist Government in Westminster. To-day there are ' more unemployed than in the last Government's i regime. ( "You can't do it by voting—it will take force to win." "Who'll get it in the neck?" "Ramsay!" Last night young David Tennant, the Hon. • David Tennant, of the same family as gave world Margot Asquith, had a party—a Mo rt ? party. Mayfair is still talking about it. The ■ strawberries alone cost four hundred pounds. . ■ ] THE MONKEY BURGLAR. J < Truth is not stranger than fiction, but only a good deal later. When somebody has invented a thoroughly improbable story the slow processes - of reality proceed to put it in action. j Consider the case of the monkey of the Zoo of Chapultepec. It is in Mexico, which, besides the indigenous forms of crime, lias the latest improvements of civilisation, among them a cat ( burglar. " , For a long time he had been out of action, j but feline burglaries still occurred, till the police 1 detected a monkey operating and chased it home , to the burglar's house. There were found the 5 spoils of many nights. The defence was that the s burglar could not be responsible for the habits J of his monkey, -and, not knowing the origin of \ the goods, could not return them. So he is in , gaol and the monkey in the Zoo. " j But it is a shameless imitation of the classics. ] The animal that steals for its owner is as old as Puss in Boots. In a good old English detective , story there was a parrot very ingeniously taught to steal from rooms to which its owner had not access. The monkey who gets into upper storeys < and there does dreadful deeds comes'out of Poe. i Mexico must try and think of 'something for itself. —H.C.B. , i