Dear Editor,
I note, with continued surprise, that the May Day Parades were even more fragmented this year than they were before, with seemingly different routes, and swarms of space between one group and the next.
My heart went out to the very courteous Police Traffic ranks on duty.
I thought the various GAWU placards had exhortations that befitted the occasion, with some of the fire of the long-ago days. The GTU seemed to adopt a Mathematical theme, with shouted slogans involving the numbers 1 to 10 like: “Two, two: Five per cent just cannot do!” “Three, three: “WRONG age for Nursery!”
However, I didn’t seem to recoognise the old timers like: “One, two, three, four: Teachers are the employed poor!” “Two, four, six, eight: We may have to emigrate!”
With the bright, sunny day available in Georgetown, trade unionists must have had excellent after-parade nosh-ups at their various Union halls. But after the parades, what? A colleague remarked to me: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (“The more things change, the more they remain the same”). Is he being prescient?
By the way: where were all those boom boxes and steel bands of a previous era?
Yours faithfully,
George N. Cave
