How LALIT spent May Day
02.05.2024
LALIT marked May Day remembering that it is the day, each year, where we consider the power of our own “kuraz”, our “labour power”, as we oppose private “capital” and its organized State. We mark the day in a spirit of world-wide unity of working people, in the spirit of internationalism. We also do so in the context of working class history. On the wall of the LPT Hall in Grand River North West, behind the speakers, was a photograph of an early Labour Day gathering at Champs de Mars in Port Louis, highlighting the importance of situating our struggle in terms of history.
Presiding, Rada Kistnasamy, said we were marking the day in times of genocide. By this he meant it was not a day for the usual “celebrations”, which imply joy. Israel is committing genocide on the people of Palestine, and we see it every day. The complicity of Western imperialism, meaning in particular USA, UK and Germany is also before our very eyes every day. And “their” media outlets – as one of our members, Laval, put it – are also exposed for their role in trying to cover up and hide the genocide.
We are amongst those all over the world, Rada said, that are opposing the genocide and trying to put a stop to it – by our marches, demonstrations, vigils, open letters with demands to our own Governments, by being in common fronts, as we are in Solidarite Morisyin ar Lepep Palestinn.
He added that, in addition to the genocide making this Labour Day a day of solemnity, we have, at the LPT building, suffered horrific flash floods that have, once again, destroyed the ground floor of our shared premises that were five-foot under water, again, and when the water subsided almost immediately, it left inches of mud in the building and in the yard. That, too, demanded labour power, kuraz, to clean up. As well as heavy machinery not unlike what Israel uses against Palestinians in the West Bank. And us hurling ruined furniture and fittings and broken panes of glass, and ruined books into a tip for a lorry to carry away. The signs of the floods were still all around us as we met upstairs in the Hall for Labour Day celebrations.
This day is marked as Fet “Travay” or “Labour” Day and not fet “travayer” or Workers’ Day, as some misguided people are now starting to call it. “Fet travayer” are, of course, a regular event, especially over weekends and public holidays, world-wide! But Labour Day is when we celebrate the creativity of our own labour power, which needs to be freed from the chains of private capital, and the capitalist class’s bourgeois state.
LALIT cadres met on the annual public holiday Wednesday 1 May at the Grand Rivyer LPT Hall, without our usual celebrations, without the big bring-and-share lunch that everyone plans for, without the music and songs and poems, without the usual celebratory atmosphere. It was a stripped down event – with two speakers, and general discussion after each, followed by a warm, loud delivery of “The Internationale”, and then some “gato” people had brought, around a cup of tea or coffee or juice. It was galvanizing in its content, and appropriate to the reality around us – international and national – and it was just members. We could not even invite families to come along this year, because the premises are not in order enough, secure enough, after the 21 April floods, following so soon after the January floods.
Lindsey Collen gave an outline of the immense struggle of the Palestinian people under the onslaught of the Israeli armed forces, armed, financed and given political backing by the UK-USA, that has brought in working people world-wide in support of their struggle against the Israeli genocide. She said how at this very moment an immense students’ movement is in process in American universities, exposing and opposing this last remnant of pure colonialism – the genocide being enacted by Israel in Gaza and the whole of Palestine – that is a more extreme version of the USA-UK’s continued colonization of Mauritius-Chagos-Diego Garcia. Lindsey said how a member present Anne-Marie had, about 8 years ago, asked how it was that LALIT had chosen to concentrate on the issues of Palestine and Diego Garcia/Chagos – how did we know that these issues would remain centre-stage throughout the decades? she asked. Lindsey said we knew they were colonial fault-lines in the imperialism of today, an imperialism that morphed out of centuries of European colonization that continue to exist in Palestine (including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) and in Mauritius (including Chagos, which includes Diego Garcia).
Most of Lindsey’s talk was on these death throes of colonialism – in the genocide in Palestine – and the importance to putting an end to the genocide, and to creating a free Palestine. This means exposing those that “use” Israel as their “military base” to protect the source of so much oil, and those that “use” their military base on the Mauritian land of Diego Garcia, in order to perpetrate illegal wars and illegal imprisonment and torture. She hailed the American students for their courage and determination, and their telling the world about the genocide and their own university’s complicity, as well as their own country’s complicity.
It is a time of all dangers, she said, but also of all opportunities.
Debate on the world situation was lively, and included reference to the corruption of capitalist “democracy” by Zionism, in the USA and UK, at times when there are elections in so many countries. In Mauritius, we, too, see “democracy” increasingly reduced to something completely empty of political content, in a year of general elections.
Alain Ah Vee then spoke about the political situation in Mauritius, as the two alliances of similar parties on Government and Opposition sides now assemble and then fall-apart. The PMSD has just left the Labour-MMM Alliance. And this is without any reason. Part of the MMM – Muvman Liberater and Linite Militan – have formed up in alliance with the MSM, which was, remember, itself a part of the MMM. And a part of the PMSD, now called Nuvo Demokrat, has allied with the Labour-MMM alliance. How could they possibly have different programs? Or even “programs” in the true sense of the word?
During concluding debate, we organized how to prepare the third part of our “program”, the electoral program that is now nearly ready to publish. The first two parts came out of our 6-Day Congress, held in 2022. They are called “LALIT’s Philosophy” and “LALIT’s Strategy” and are already being circulated in book form and are available on our site. The third part will be available soon. The link between these three parts of our program is what keeps our party so vital and alive.
In conclusion, with the genocide Israel is perpetrating, and with its backers literally egging Israel on with arms, money and political cover, the words “Mayday” echo their secondary meaning, from the French, “M’aidez!”, in English “Mayday”, as an SOS call for help from the Palestinians to all of us thinking people, working people, and feeling people of the globe. Let us be present to stop the genocide. It has been going on since 1948. It must stop. Land, food and peace! That is the slogan for democratizing the world.
