It was 131 years ago when Labor Day was celebrated for the first time in Greece. Since then it has been associated with the history of the country and with its struggles, not only for the defense of labor rights but also for freedom itself and to throw off the foreign yoke.
That first celebration took place in Athens in 1893 at the initiative of Stavros Kallergis, head of the Central Socialist Association. Among the demands of the protesters was the establishment of 8 o’clock, as well as Sunday as a public holiday, as well as the awarding of pensions to the victims of work accidents.
Even that first celebration was episodic. Kallergis submitted a resolution to the Parliament, but the obstruction of the Speaker of the House to read it caused his strong protest, with the result that, after the soldiers of the guard hit him with their stocks, he was arrested for disturbing the meeting and imprisoned for ten days on prisons of the Old Barracks.
Labor Day was celebrated almost every year in the years that followed. In 1936, he was “drowned” in blood, when twelve people lost their lives during the tobacco workers’ mobilizations in Thessaloniki due to the intervention of the forces of order. A mother’s lament for her dead son, 25-year-old Tassos Toussi, at the intersection of Venizelos and Egnatia streets, inspired Yiannis Ritsos to write his poetic work “The Epitaph”.
Eight years later, May Day would be associated with one of the greatest crimes of Nazi atrocity. On April 27, 1944, ELAS rebels set up an ambush on the Molaon-Sparti road, in Laconia, and killed the German military commander of the Peloponnese, General Franz Krech, and three men of his entourage. In retaliation, the Nazis decided to “execute 200 communists, as well as the execution of all men caught between Molao and Sparta.”
Despite the efforts of the rebels, but also of Archbishop Damascenes, 200 will be executed at the Shooting Range of Kaisariani on May 1, 1944, while those executed in Laconia exceeded one hundred.
In the turbulent post-war years, the first open gathering will take place in the Panathenaic Stadium. In post-colonial Greece, May Day events are mainly held indoors due to the restrictions imposed on public gatherings.
No event takes place on May Day 1967 as a few days earlier, on April 21, the junta of the colonels has been imposed. From the following year, the dictatorial regime establishes May Day as a holiday.
The first May Day gathering of the Metapolitization, in 1975, took place in Kotzia Square and was massive. From the following year, the May Day gathering took place in the Field of Ares in front of the GSEE building.
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