LALIT celebrates Labour Day
02.05.2022
LALIT held its May Day celebration at Grand River North West on Sunday 1st May on the theme of the working class linked to the two issues of the day: “War, No!” and “Food sovereignty, Yes!”
The event was presided over by Cindy Clelie. She welcomed everyone, noting how this year’s Labour Day event was limited by the 50-people-limit still in place as the Covid epidemic begins, hopefully, to wane. Usually our celebration is broader than just members – whole families come, and people in associations around LALIT, too are present. So that is why this year we limited our eent to branch members only.
Cindy outlined the history of May Day from the Chicago strike in the 19th Century, 1886 to be precise, until today, via the first ever marking of Labour Day by some Mauritian workers exactly 100 years ago in 1922. She gave the context of this Labour Day: Covid, an economic crisis, war, food insecurity, and how this has led to a series of localized uprisings in Mauritius recently.
Ram Seegobin’s Speech
Ram Seegobin spoke for LALIT, outlining how LALIT comes to take a position on something like the war being fought out between Russia, on one hand, and a Ukraine armed-and-trained by the USA and its NATO allies, on the other. We do not just take sides between “nation-states”.
First, we study and discuss how the working class in the countries concerned and world-wide is affected by the war, and then how the war is playing out in the unfurling of the history of the class struggle under capitalist rule. In this process, for us “internationalism” is not an “add-on” but the very basis of our program and our strategy. He outlined the pitfalls in “patriotism” and “nationalism” or Mauritianism – with Mauritian examples – and how these forms of mobilization undermine both the class consciousness and the internationalism necessary to bring socialism. Mobilizing on the basis of “nationalism” runs the risk of the working class slotting in behind not just bourgeois nationalist forces, but even behind populist and fascist forces. During war times, the dangers become mortal. Working classes get divided from one another as each “national” working class gets enlisted behind its bourgeoisie.
He also warned of the need to avoid falling into the traps set by the disinformation propounded by the media, in general and even more so in times of war. Sometimes, it is hard to see through the propaganda on TV stations like CNN and the BBC, unless you work at it he said. There is also a degree of hypocrisy in the media that makes it abject. He gave an example, comparing the media coverage of the plight of the Palestinians for over 50 years of Israeli encroachment and war of aggression, with the tears shed, rightfully, for the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Similar tears were never shed by the western media for Palestinians and still are not. Arms are supplied to Israel for use against them instead.
Ram concluded by showing how it is erroneous only to cry “No war” and to organize only to end each war, one by one, as they unfurl, one after the other. When was the USA ever not at war in the past 75 years? We need to organize, as LALIT is doing, to close down all those 700 – 800 USA’s military bases outside the USA, bases that are the means for preparing the next war, or wars. We need to organize, too, to close down all the armaments factories, and stop dealing in arms. This way we can prevent war, not just wait for it to break out, then mobilize to stop it. This is particularly important when the arms available to powers like Russia and the USA are nuclear weapons – enough of them to blow the whole of humanity to smithereens. One wrong move in a war like the one in Ukraine, and the effects could be fatal for humanity. All the more reason to mobilize to prevent war by closing all bases and all arms factories, starting now.
Rada Kistnasamy’s Speech
Rada Kistnasamy spoke on food sovereignty and how the Government pays lip-service to it, and does absolutely nothing. The big sugar cane bosses sit on the arable land and produce either cane or they sell off the land for gated communities of millionaires looking for an investment abroad, or even a second residence or even, if they put in enough cash, nationality. What we need is simple to take, say, one-third of the sugar estates land, uproot the cane on it, and plant food crops. Or pass a law that all sugar cane rows be re-organize over the course of a few years’ crops, to permit interline cropping of food. The research shows it can be done. At the same time, we need to force the estates to set up production units to preserve and transform the food crops. All the infrastructure around old sugar mills is still in place, after centralization. Meanwhile, phase out the permits given to fishing ships from abroad to wreck our waters, and instead build a proper, sustainable fishing industry, that can “fish-tail” in with the agricultural preservation industry. This way, there is not just food security, food sovereignty in these difficult times, he said, but also stable jobs are created, and with exports organized, more foreign exchange brought in.
We have to look at the major obstacles to this kind of policy. “Everyone” seems to agree that we need it. The Government, the Opposition parties, every thinking person interviewed in any newspaper, all talk about the need for production, and in particular food production. So, why do we continue to import 75% to 80%, including almost all staples? Why?
Rada explained that there are three main obstacles: First the Government is too cowardly to force the land-owners to do anything, and instead just gives out bits of paper granting them permission to sell off their land for a one-time gain. So, we need to force the government to act, and in turn to force the land-owners to act.
Then, we have the media, the MBC and the Press. The media, too, seem unable to pronounce the very words “force the sugar estate owners” to do anything including invest in agriculture and fishing for food.
And the third obstacle is the trade union leadership. While many of the leaders can and do sign up to documents like our Charter for Food Security, they leave their signature on it, and do not, in their press conferences, or ongoing work, manage to integrate the program with which they agree on paper. They do not mobilize their members for food security, let alone, to force land-owners to produce food or invest in fishing. Instead, they come up with lists of unrelated points, pasted together, in the style of a “shopping list”, and this even for Labour Day when it is a moment to look through a broad lens in the name of the working class that the union leaders represent.
Poems
On the program for May Day celebrations, too, were poems read by members. Anne-Marie Joly read “Fam Kur Zedi Vizyonn Guernica” about war. It is a “found poem” from the words expressed by women at a literacy course as they studied a poster of Picasso’s “Guernica” mural. Sudha Ramen read “Kontrol Uvriye”, a sharp witty poem translated from the original by Ken Coates and Tony Topham about the nature of the capitalist class, how flexible it seems until,
“Pu li pa perdi pozesyon
ki li finn akimile,
li byin fupamal
si li detrir lemond antye.”
International links for the Day and for always
Lindsey Collen gave an outline of messages from all four continents, showing in action the importance of internationalism. And she explained how we knew and worked with the organizations concerned – in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. It was a rich tapestry of experience, linking decades of individual and party work. She ended by reading the list of countries in which organizations like ours and similar had signed up to a Declaration organized by the International Workers’ Committee, whose members LALIT has been in contact with for some 30 years.
Mini-Concerts
Rajni Lallah played two mini-concerts on an electric piano, sending shivers down our spines, to quote one young man’s appreciation. The music is based on her own creative compositions – powerful, deeply emotional, utterly uplifting.
The Internationale
And after the second concert, we took off our masks – Covid masks are still the rule – stood as far from each other as possible and sang, a cappella, L’Internationale in Kreol. This too was deeply moving.
