The speech below was given recently by Canadian trade union organiser Bruce Allen. In it he describes his personal experience of the Quebec demo and explains why he feels that "the Left in this country will never be quite the same ".
LT

May Speech on Quebec City

Greetings comrades. I would like to thank you for your very kind invitation to extend greetings to you on the occasion of your celebration of May Day. May Day should be celebrated both as an occasion rooted in mass struggles of the working class against the bosses and to win historic gains beneficial to the class as a whole. And it should be viewed as an occasion synonymous and imbued with working class internationalism. May Day should likewise be an occasion to call for heightened and intensified class - based social resistance the likes of which we saw in the streets of Seattle a year and a half ago and just two weeks ago in Quebec City.

Immediately after the victory in Seattle I was asked to write a short commentary for a program on a university - based radio station. I wrote,

"The protests this week in Seattle and elsewhere against the WTO have been truly impressive manifestations of social resistance to the global corporate agenda and they should serve as an inspiration to workers and other oppressed peoples around the globe. The protests accordingly should also serve as a catalyst for a revival of sustained mass action against the imposition of the global corporate agenda here in Canada.

The events in Seattle, in particular, were also a warning to those who hold power. They signal that we could be on the threshold of a new wave of mass social resistance on a global scale the likes of which have not been seen since the 1960s. It was often said back then that it only takes a spark to start a prairie fire. Seattle could and should be such a spark because the whole world was, indeed, watching."

I can say with some pride that our experiences in Quebec City and the upsurge of resistance evident around the world to mark May Day this year have shown that I was not over optimistic. Indeed, the battles fought in Quebec City rivaled in significance those fought in Seattle and have already constituted a defining moment for the labour movement and the Left in this country. Neither will ever be quite the same again.

The reasons for this are many but none was more definitive than what happened mid-afternoon on Saturday, April 21st when the legal, anti-FTAA march headed off to a vacant parking lot several kilometers away from the Canadian ruling class' Wall of Shame". And, it became a huge non-event, impotent, pathetic in some respects, and essentially irrelevant. Indeed, it reminded me of another big non-event which was the May 15, 1993 march on parliament in Ottawa by 100,000 people.

Those responsible for this non-event are still wiping the egg off their faces and will not easily live down their display that afternoon. I was standing at the corner where the demonstration divided. There young militants, the very best of their generation, were waving people on to go to the wall and I overheard an undercover cop on a cell phone reporting that the unions were heading where they were supposed to and praising them for it. Need I say more? In striking contrast to the cop's remarks one of the young militants who was urging people to go to the wall eloquently yelled out, "Enough political masturbation!"

So there it was. The union bureaucracy and an undercover cop encouraging us to go one way. Meanwhile the people who are the real vanguard to the anti-capitalist resistance were passionately telling us to go another way.

And how instructive it was to see how the mouthpieces of the state, who had bankrolled the legally sanctioned activities in Quebec City, responded to those who headed for an vacant parking lot to listen to speeches that have already faded from people's memories. And how they responded to those prepared to challenge the wall. The former were praised. The latter faced nearly 5,000 canisters of tear gas, over 800 rubber bullets, water cannon and mass arrests.

Clearly the State well understood whose actions challenged the bosses' interests and had the potential to do to the FTAA what the heroic youth who were victorious in Seattle did to the WTO and they understood whose actions were effectively harmless and truly insignificant.

As I have already indicated the Left in this country will never be quite the same in the wake of last month's events in Quebec City because we have taken a critically important step forward. Nothing exemplifies this more than the fact that, as in Seattle, thousands of young workers and labour activists defied the plans of the labour misleadership. They did this by standing side by side with the students and other young people. Those who understood where they belonged and were absolutely determined to be there despite massive clouds of tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon and thousands of heavily armed thugs dressed in black riot gear, the riot police.

The task now before us is to build on their achievement and displays of courage and heroism and on the show of force we manifested in Quebec City. We must strengthen the developing ties between these militant youth and workers who stood strong in the face of the massive violence of the bosses' state. We must do so and give these ties organizational form and political direction and, simultaneously, marginalize those who prefer the serenity of a vacant parking lot to the front lines of the struggle.

If this is done when we gather again next year to celebrate May Day we will REALLY have something to celebrate. We will be able to be bolder in our words and in our vision and be able to say more than a better world is possible. We will be able to say that a better world is increasingly within reach.

Happy May Day. Workers of the World Unite!

Bruce Allen,
Toronto, May 5, 2001

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