The Co-option of Labour Day Parade during the Derg Regime, 1975-1991

Abstract

The declaration of May First or May Day as the holiday of the working people of the world or an International Workers' Day on 14 July 1889 was one of the major achievements of the Second International. It marked the commemoration of the Haymarket workers demonstrations for eight hours work in Chicago on 1 May 1886. Thereafter, May Day has been celebrated with colorful parade and has been serving as a platform for workers to make their voices heard. Though May Day had begun to be celebrated at the world stage since 1889, the Ethiopian workers and their organization began to observe it in 1975 nearly 86 years later. It was the military regime that declared May Day to be celebrated as one of the national holydays in the country on 10 January 1975. This paper therefore attempts to investigate how Labour Day parade has been celebrated in Ethiopia during the military regime. Since this is a qualitative study, data for the study was collected through document analysis and in-depth interviews. The collected data were analyzed thematically. The findings show that the May Day parade was fully co-opted by the military regime to indoctrinate its ideology and disseminate its propaganda to the public in general and workers in particular. Thus, the very foundational objective of May Day has been co-opted by the military regime.

Keywords: May Day, Communist Manifesto, Internationalism, Derg, Proletariat

DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/14-1-02

Publication date: January 31^st 2023