What do the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany have in common with today’s France, Italy, Finland and most other members of the EU?
Quite a few things, actually. But the one springing to mind today is that they all celebrate 1 May as a national holiday.
Red flags are flying everywhere, just as they flew in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, if with different superimposed symbols.
The livery of national socialism has fallen into disrepute, and most political parties in Europe feel rather squeamish about it. Not so with the pictorial and vocal symbols of international socialism.
The conferences of our own dear Labour party, for example, are adorned with red flags and accompanied by rousing renditions of The Internationale, whose original lyrics were produced by Eugène Pottier in 1871, during the heady days of the Paris Commune.
It’s only fitting that on this glorious day you should be regaled with the full English translation. After all, in a week’s time we may well be governed by chaps who belt out these lyrics with gusto:
Stand up, damned of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of starvation
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption to the end.
Of the past let us make a clean state
Enslaved masses, stand up, stand up.
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all.
(Refrain):
This is the final struggle
Let us group together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race.
There are no supreme saviours
Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.
Producers, let us save ourselves,
Decree the common salvation.
So that the thief expires,
So that the spirit be pulled from its prison,
Let us fan our forge ourselves
Strike the iron while it is hot
(Refrain)
The state oppresses and the law cheats.
Tax bleeds the unfortunate.
No duty is imposed on the rich;
The rights of the poor is an empty phrase.
Enough languishing in custody!
Equality wants other laws:
No rights without duties, she says,
Equally, no duties without rights.
(Refrain)
Hideous in their apotheosis
The kings of the mine and of the rail.
Have they ever done anything other
Than steal work?
Inside the safeboxes of the gang,
What work had created melted.
By ordering that they give it back,
The people want only their due.
(Refrain)
The kings made us drunk with fumes,
Peace among us, war to the tyrants!
Let the armies go on strike,
Stocks in the air, and break ranks.
If they insist, these cannibals
On making heroes of us,
They will know soon that our bullets
Are for our own generals.
(Refrain)
Workers, peasants, we are
The great party of labourers.
The earth belongs only to men;
The idle will go to reside elsewhere.
How many of our flesh have they consumed?
But if these ravens, these vultures
Disappear one of these days,
The sun will shine for ever.
(Refrain)
On general principle, the song adopted by a political party as its own expresses its philosophy. Hence a Labour member, or for that matter voter, must in all conscience endorse every word of The Internationale, or at least its overall sentiment.
Those who do must be commended for having the power of their convictions. The rest of us should get into the holiday spirit and scream:
“Mayday! Mayday!”