May Day Greetings 2017

May Day Greetings 2017   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Paul Gerrard, North West Socialist Party paper organiser

No, we’re not in distress! But we do want to celebrate May Day, and we want to see a paper full of May Day greetings that proudly reflects the hard work of our members but also the solidarity we’ve worked for across the labour movement.

Every Socialist Party branch should have this on their agenda each week, urgently drawing up lists of organisations to approach, checking which members are going to chase them up, and, importantly, monitoring progress each week.

In 2017 in the North West we had a target of nine greetings, and we achieved ten, so this year we’re aiming for 12. Already the Lancashire branch has drawn up an impressive ‘hit-list’ of four trades councils, two anti-cuts campaigns, two trade union branches and a Socialist Students group. In each case someone is checking contact details of secretaries and the dates when they meet so we can approach them in good time.

Following Manchester’s ‘mini strike wave’ around Christmas and on the strength of the outstanding coverage in the Socialist, we are approaching housing maintenance and bus workers. After the successful strike at Arriva in Merseyside and Cheshire we’re targeting all the Unite the Union branches affected. Plus of course the RMT branches who are still locked in battle over driver-only operation.

What you need to know:

  • Urgent – for trade union branches and trades councils make sure May Day greetings for the Socialist comes up in ‘correspondence’, ideally at their March meetings
  • If you can’t get a donation from your union branch use a sign-up sheet to get donations and book greetings in the name of ‘Socialist Party members and supporters in X union’
  • There is a 20% discount on greetings placed by 30 March, so, for example, a 1/8 page advert costs £72 instead of £90
  • Final date is 11 April

Lets’ make this a record-breaking May Day edition of our paper!