#but apparently the print alone makes it provocative for some reason

[a-room-of-my-own]

So I went to a friend’s birthday party and some of her friends thought I was

A) hitting on a guy she’s interested in when in fact we do the same job and were talking shit about our respective client (also girl code?)

B) hitting on her brother who’s married and whose lovely wife was literally there, also did I mention we’re childhood friends?

🫠🫠🫠

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: a stupendously underrated classic of queer punk meets synth sophistication, and an album without which we wouldn’t have Dare by the Human League: Homosapien, the 1981 solo opus of Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley. Find out more by watching the video, or reading the transcript below!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about one of those albums that isn’t necessarily the most acclaimed or best remembered work of its period, but nonetheless played an important role in history, and remains unrivaled for its uniqueness: Pete Shelley’s Homosapien, first released in 1981.

Shelley has historically been chiefly remembered as the frontman of the punk act, Buzzcocks. But, despite punk’s reputation for simplicity to the point of obnoxiousness, Shelley was one of many musicians to come from the punk scene with a penchant for experimental or otherwise ground-breaking music. His very first solo release, 1980’s Sky Yen, features little more than a brash wall of oscillating electronic noise, not unlike the earliest provocations of industrial artists like Cabaret Voltaire.

Music: “Sky Yen (Part One)”

Subsequent generations of critics have gone great lengths to coin and define terminology, in the hopes of breaking this period down into constituent parts, but the more I study it, the more I’m inclined to view it as just a huge soup. There was, quite simply, a lot going on in Britain’s underground in the late 70s and early 80s, and in practice, the lines between punk, post-punk, industrial, synth, noise, and other avant-garde miscellany are frequently illegible. As an artifact of this era, Homosapien resonates with all of the contradictions this melting pot would imply, fusing emotional rawness and pristine production in a way that never quite settles down and feels comfortable.

Music: “I Don’t Know What It Is”

“I Don’t Know What It Is” served as the opening track of the album’s second side, as well as its lead single. With a bona fide guitar solo as well as a propulsive, and truly soaring, chorus, it somewhat resembles that most 1980s of art forms, the power ballad. It is, ostensibly, a love song, and is revealed to be one quickly enough, but its portrayal of love is far from kind. While a real power ballad might take the concept of love for granted, “I Don’t Know What It Is” seems to portray it as something mysterious, inscrutable, and dangerous. And I can’t forget to mention just how much Pete Shelley stands out as a vocalist--his high-pitched, perhaps even fried or shrill vocals add a great deal to the song’s sense of unease, and really sell the idea of someone who’s being overtaken by an uncontrollable and dominating force.

Of course, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Homosapien’s sound is its fusion of the hard, driving acoustic guitar of punk with the electronic sensibilities of its producer, Martin Rushent. I wouldn’t say this combination is ever terribly cohesive in its sound, but I think that’s why I find this album so interesting: there’s a tension that permeates each track, a feeling that things don’t fit together. While Homosapien is a pioneering work of electronic-centered production, enough of the pieces are still in place that you can certainly hear the shape of music to come as you listen to it. It’s not just the synthesisers, but also the use of electronic percussion here--it’s difficult to overstate the impact that so-called “drum machines” had around this time. While reviled by many, both then and now, rhythm machines were undeniably “instrumental” in changing what popular music sounded like. Even synthesiser-based electronic acts like Gary Numan, OMD, and Kraftwerk often relied on traditional percussion, so this genuinely was pretty shocking at the time.

Perhaps the most important element of the legacy of Homosapien is the fact that Martin Rushent would go on to use the skills he honed here to produce one of the most influential albums of the 1980s, and perhaps of all time: The Human League’s Dare, which would go on to cast an enormous shadow on nearly all popular music to come, after playing an enormous role in instigating an era of popular dominance of synth-pop. In that sense at least, Homosapien is certainly a very historically important album, and for that reason alone, I think it deserves a fair bit more attention than it gets. Still, for as much as the electronics might be the most forward-looking element of this album, one also can’t deny that it remains full of aggressive and perfectly punk overtones, as on the crass or perhaps dismissive screed of “Guess I Must Have Been In Love With Myself.”

Music: “Guess I Must Have Been In Love With Myself”

While Homosapien has many moments of seemingly being too thorny to get a good grip on, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t also times in which it can feel like a bit more than the sum of its apparent parts, as on its most narrative-driven track, “Pusher Man.”

Music: “Pusher Man”

“Pusher Man” is one of, if not the, most synth-centered compositions to be had on Homosapien, but its insistent pacing and neurotic portrayal of the “low life” theme of buying illicit drugs mean you’ll never confuse it for run of the mill synth-pop. Moreso than anything else the album offers, this track reminds me of the sort of “synth-punk” that American acts like the Units and Crash Course In Science would put forward at around the same time. “Pusher Man” was, at the very least, a sufficiently experimental track to earn the honour of being cut from the US release of the album in order to make room for some non-album A-sides, as happened to many albums at the time. But hey, that’s enough beating around the bush. Let’s talk about the real crown jewel of this album.

Music: “Homosapien”

If you’ve heard anything from this album before, chances are, it was probably the title track, which proved to be quite the commercial success--despite being banned by the BBC on account of its homoerotic content. Given that this very same year, they also came after OMD’s “Enola Gay” for its obviously nonexistent reference to homosexuality, one might be forgiven for thinking that a tune called “Homosapien” was simply misinterpreted. The title track isn’t terribly explicit material, but its clever wordplay nonetheless deals quite deftly with issues of sexuality and personal identity. In the earlier verses, Shelley introduces us to typified roles of gay male sexuality--the “cruiser,” the “shy boy”--only to seemingly doff them with the tune’s defiant refrain, asserting that the only truly important identity a human being has is that of “Homosapien.” Far from being an unfortunate coincidence, the similarity of “Homosapien” to “homosexual” is being employed here completely deliberately, particularly with it being mashed into a single word and thus gaining a greater resemblance to the word “homosexual” in print. It not only allows Shelley to belt out a borderline dirty word, but also creates a sort of unconscious syllogism, suggesting, in a sense, that homosexuals are people too.

With elements of both unapologetic pride in one’s own queerness, as well as the uncompromising assertion that humanity is something much deeper than that, the title track of Homosapien is one of the most fascinating and inspiring queer anthems of its time. Its artsy slipperiness has prevented it from feeling more shallow with time, and its straightforward or raw quality, intensified by that constant acoustic guitar, has kept it sounding equally sharp. It genuinely does surprise me that this album isn’t at least a little bit better remembered than it is. Outside of the title track, most of this album is currently not available on services like Spotify and YouTube Music at the time of this writing, and I actually struggled to present musical examples here. That’s really a pretty high level of neglect in this day and age, and I hope it can be rectified in the relatively near future.

It would be no exaggeration for me to say that Homosapien features some of my very favourite cover art of any album. Homosapien’s sleeve design sees Shelley occupy some sort of sleek, but hollow hyper-modernist office. Geometric forms suggest the world of the artificial or ideal. An Egyptian statue beside Shelley is a reminder of history, and the idea that even the greatest empires must eventually fall. Likewise, the telescope and early computer positioned nearer to Shelley are evocative symbols of science and technology--but in context they seem more sinister, being juxtaposed against a phrenology bust, which evokes the ways in which our attempts at science have caused misunderstanding and great human misery in the past. The central scene is framed in with large areas of black, which make the space feel even more claustrophobic and uninviting, and Shelley appears to be pushed into the background, almost belittled by the inanimate objects. Overall, I think it’s sort of funny that this album’s cover is perhaps more iconally “New Wave” than the music itself ended up being, particularly with Shelley clad in this somewhat foppish white suit and bow tie--certainly a big change of attire for a former punk!

Given the experimental nature of the collaboration between Shelley and Rushent, you might be surprised to learn that Homosapien actually wasn’t a one-off. Just two years later, Shelley would release a follow-up LP, XL-1, which was also produced by Rushent and largely continues the same ideas. While Shelley would never see the success of “Homosapien” again, the XL-1 single “Telephone Operator” would also chart to a lesser degree.

Music: “Telephone Operator”

My favourite track on Homosapien is “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça,” which closes out the first side of the album. If you’re familiar with my other work, you probably already know that I’m coming at this as someone chiefly interested in the electronic side of things, and I think that of everything on this album, “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça” is the closest to being convincing as a synth-pop tune. With a bubbly, synth-dominant sound and lyrics that are more contemplative than aggressive, it’s much closer to the mould of what I usually listen to for fun than a lot of the other tracks are. That’s everything for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça”

[be-dazzled]

Rules Are Meant to be Broken 1 of 2

Prompt: No. 6 “No touching, no kissing, nothing. I will do with you as I please.” Requested by: Anon Rating: M for theme and language Series: Gruvia Smut 1/2; 2/2

Note: This is part of a two-parter prompt request made by an Anon. Lol. Since Anon requested smut scenes and this is my first time to write Gruvia smut, I will post the more “detailed”, R18 part answering the ask. I will update this for the link to part 2. And since we are not getting any Gruvia content yet... I hope this will do. AND MAN! I am so obsessed with the Juvia strip dance, aren’t I?

Part 2 uploaded

---

Part 1: Juvia’s Dance Moves

“Does Gray-sama remember the rules?”

Juvia’s distracted voice travelled through the doorway into Gray’s bedroom. She was probably not done preparing. He could still hear rattle noises behind the wall that separated his small bedroom from the rest of his apartment. He heard her too, but Gray didn’t answer. He was busy feeling weird and awkward sitting on a lone chair in the middle of his bedroom. Apparently, Juvia was going to give him a little peek of what the girls have been up to. He heard from the vineyard that the Fairy Tail girls enrolled in some dancing school. What type of dance school? Gray had no clue. He asked Juvia about it but she said it was supposed to be a surprise.

Tonight, when she barged into his apartment, she was carrying paper bags on both arms. Juvia said she won’t be taking too much of his time. That what she was about to show him was some sort of culminating event to put those dance moves she learned to test. Gray wasn’t totally on board on the idea but since Juvia went out her way to prepare something for him, then he’ll sit through whatever she wanted him to sit through. So, despite his loud protests, Gray still agreed to sit back on that wooden chair and wait for the show to begin.

“Gray-sama, did you hear Juvia?”

A shock of blue hair popped out the door frame, hiding the rest of her body behind the wall.

“Yes, Juvia, I heard you.” His thick brows met in the middle. “Now, come out and be done with it already.”

Patience wasn’t really one of Gray’s virtues.

Juvia tentatively stepped out of hiding and revealed a fancy-looking, dark blue satin robe with feather trimmings on the ends of the sleeves and the hem. To Gray’s disappointment, the length of the dress hid those creamy-white legs he never really looked at. Swear! He never stared at those creamy, white thighs where Juvia’s guild mark was stamped permanently. That made him wonder what this dance was all about. And if he was being honest, that tie around the waist of that stupid long robe irritated him.

“No touching. No kissing. Nothing.”

Gray scowled at her reminder. He really wasn’t planning on doing any of those. Huh. In her dreams.

The feathers on the hem of Juvia’s robe hummed silently against his wooden floor and he can’t help but stare at the hypnotic swaying of Juvia’s hips. She didn’t walk like that before, did she? It felt like Juvia was deliberately calling his attention to that perfect curve between the back and those nice, round ass-tushie! Gray remembered Juvia calling it tushie. Whatever. It’s all covered anyway. By that long-ass robe. His thick brows furrowed and his usual scowl wrinkled his face.

“Can you even dance in that…”

Surprised wasn’t even the best word to describe Gray’s reaction when Juvia sat on the edge of his bed, crossed one leg over the other, and that fancy robe parting to reveal those thighs he swore never to have looked at.

“dress…”

Okay, maybe once. That’s why he knew, okay fine he saw, Juvia had her Fairy Tail guild mark printed there. Or twice, when he accidentally, and he wanted to reiterate that it was accidental, when he caught a glimpse of those legs… at the… ahmmm… guild? Fine! Thrice. When she tore her clothes while fighting. You know what? Who even was counting? And the most interesting question of all, why was Juvia now lying down on her side with one hand supporting her head?

“Juvia thinks it’s this way?” She adjusted her position, not quite sure she got the pose right. “or this one? Oh! Right.”

And the other hand resting so seductively on her hip? Why was she replicating her ‘eat me’ pose she did once at the restaurant? And damn his heart was beating crazy.

It’s just legs you ice-brain. Everyone’s got one!

Gray’s self-reprimand did help a little with that throbbing he wasn’t sure if was coming from his chest or somewhere else he’d rather not think about. Probably, both.

Yes, both. He finally realized when Juvia’s serious stare – bordering sultry – landed on him.

“Ah!” Juvia squealed. “Juvia can’t do it.” She rained fists on Gray’s poor mattress out of her frustration. “Gray-sama is making Juvia nervous.”

Well, you’re not alone, he thought.

“Juvia,” he called out. “Don’t you think if you really want to do this, at least do it properly?”

Juvia stared at him for a few breaths then apologized.

“Gray-sama is right.” She conceded and returned to her original, provocative position.

Gray smiled when grit and determination returned in her blue eyes. Well, of course, he was right. Juvia should at least stick to her character while he was being the nice, obedient boyfriend – no! – boy who is a friend, sitting on the chair like she asked him to. Everybody gotta do their part. And it’s not because he wanted to watch Juvia do some really interesting, some sort of sexy dance. It was just, people should make good on their promises. So, that’s why… Juvia should be responsible in finishing what she said she was going to do. Gray was just helping her out.

“Can Gray-sama please play the music?”

“What?”

“It’s on the table on Gray-sama’s left.”

“Oh.”

Oh, great. Now, she was asking him to move from this really uncomfortable position. The table wasn’t too far but it’d require Gray to get up, which was really hard to do now and would be very embarrassing if Juvia saw. But he had no choice.

Suck it up, boy who is a friend.

But he wasn’t going to stand up and embarrass himself. So, the smart ice-make mage moved his chair a little to the side and stretched his arm to reach the rectangular lacrima that produced sounds. He missed at first and earned a weird look from Juvia. He shrugged her off and continued reaching out to start that stupid sound lacrima.

“Gray-sama could just–”

“–I got it, okay!”

He rested an arm across his pelvis, making sure Juvia wasn’t suspecting anything. Then, stood up from his seat, walked over the stupid table and hit a fist on the sound lacrima with a loud thud, surprising the water-mage.

“There!”

Then, the first beat of Juvia’s music poured through. Gray returned to his chair throwing an irritated look towards the water-mage lying down on his bed. As the instrumental played on, Gray became skeptical. The music wasn’t sexy at all! So, maybe, this was some kind of a weird dance routine. Gray sighed in relief. He was safe. If Juvia was going to dance with that awfully, non-sexy song then no problem. Geez. What was he so worried about?

Well… this: Juvia lifting one leg slowly while she maintained her position then putting it back down. Were the girls tricked into learning aerobics? The move was oddly following the beat perfectly. Oh. My. Gods. Gray’s heart skipped a beat when he saw a black high heel strapped on her foot.

It was only the beginning of the most uncomfortable night of Gray’s life.

Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree? I traveled the world and the seven seas Everybody's looking for something

Juvia rolled her head in a circular motion. Slowly. Seductively. Forearms rested on the mattress as Juvia lied on her stomach. Now both legs on the air, the water-mage moved them in opposite directions: one inward and the other outward then vice versa. For some wicked maneuver, Juvia was able to lift her body off the mattress and got on her knees, kneeling on top of Gray’s bed.

Damn. That was definitely hot. No! He was just there to watch, as a support to whatever Juvia was doing… to him.

Gray could feel the strange feeling brewing just below his belly. It was new. It was strange. But he heard about it before from the old perverts at the guild, Macao and Wakaba, and the adults like Laxus and Bickslow. They said it was going to be an angry storm that just crashes everything in its way.

Once, when Laxus and Bickslow heard some baseless rumor about him and Juvia dating, they pulled him to a corner and offered to teach him on how the female body works, mostly Bickslow though. Laxus just rubbed it in his face that he was still a cherry boy, whatever that meant. He didn’t understand what the two were yapping about until his innocent, clueless brain caught up on the topic of breasts, thighs and that sweet spot in between. Not so innocent, after all. He remembered how the two disgusting perverts laughed at him when he refused their help and denied the relationship rumor. For some reason, he earned the nickname of cherry boy and it stuck.

But he should stop thinking about those stupid conversations with his pervert comrades and just focus on Juvia who was now tracing her fingers over the side of her neck to the V of her robe down to the belt tying her dress together. Her eyes were closed, lips parted, chest heaving up and down. No, her body was moving up and down.

Damn, that was definitely hot.

Gray shifted in his sit again. But like he said, he was just there to support Juvia in whatever way he was able. So, if right now, watching and enjoying Juvia touch herself was the kind of support she needed, then that he will become. Juvia caught his eyes, held his stare, watching him watching her, as her fingers now rubbed on the edge of her belt. Juvia bit down a giggle when Gray’s jaw dropped at the sight of her fingers pulling the ends of the tie slowly, ever so slowly, until the front of her robe fell open.

Gray was sure his jaw was on the floor now as the satin fabric fell over her shoulders, brushing pass her arms and then landing on the mattress beneath her.

Oh, shit.

By male instinct, his body lurched forward, wanting to see closer. Well, Gray have seen Juvia naked. Oh, that was Juvina. Well, it was the same thing right? Of course, not. Juvia was different. But he maintained that he has seen Juvia half naked. She acquired his stripping habits. He wasn’t proud of that. And in the many months that they lived together, he accidentally, again with emphasis on ‘accidentally’, caught a glimpse or two of Juvia out of her clothes. They were living together, of course, it was bound to happen.

Those cases were different because as Gray said they were ahmm… what did people call it? Happy accidents?

This half-naked Juvia in front of him had a different appeal because she was half-naked on his bed, on purpose. And now her hands were wandering around her body, touching places Gray would rather do for her. Gray was so jealous.

Wait, what? No. No, he wasn’t jealous. Why would he be?

Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to get used by you. Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be abused.

Then, Juvia climbed down the bed. His heart leaped to his throat, making it really hard to swallow. She strutted towards him, slowly, painfully slowly as Gray feasted on the sight before him. Gray sat at the edge of the chair and leaned his back to give extra room for that pain between his legs. Because Juvia in a thin, lace lingerie, which seemed to have failed their purpose of covering the skin, was giving him a hard time. No pun intended.

“J-juvia.” He stuttered but his voice couldn’t be heard over the music. Good. Because truthfully, Gray didn’t know how to follow that lame ‘J-juvia’ stutter. What was he gonna say? Stop? Because that’s definitely the opposite of what he wanted-er… what being a good supportive boy-who-is-a-friend was.

His distracted eyes returned to Juvia who was touching her body as she looked him up and down, gaze turning to something Gray couldn’t believe he’d ever see – so sensual. And she wasn’t even trying.

Gray involuntarily jerked back, almost stumbling back his seat when Juvia suddenly approached him, standing so dangerously close. But she didn’t do nor say anything. Instead, she walked around him, trailing a seductive finger around his shoulders.

Damn it!

“Ahmmm… J-juvia. I thought you said… n-n-no touching?”

Not that he was complaining or anything but if she kept doing that then Gray would really embarrass himself. Gray yelped when the woman suddenly leaned over him, shoving his shoulder, hitting his back against the hard chair. Gray’s surprised midnight eyes stared up at her, his gaze slid down the valley between her generous, generous breasts, then back up to her hot blue eyes.

“Juvia can touch but Gray-sama couldn’t.”

“That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?”

A sexy smile touched her lips.

“Juvia doesn’t make the rules.” She said and turned away from him.

And that’s when his eyes drifted to the sexy line of her back down to those nice, round bosso-tushie and his mouth ran dry. Drier than Ajeel’s sand.

“J-juvia,” he visibly swallowed, “can I get a break?”

Because he badly needed water – ice bucket full of freaking water.

---

Thank goodness Juvia allowed him a quick break because well, he was honestly thirsty, and he needed some time to breathe and to calm himself down. How he was so worked up about Juvia in that lingerie was baffling. He’d seen women in skimpy outfits before, care of Lucy and Erza and he looked too. Not that he was going to deny that. But Juvia in such a revealing lingerie – it didn’t even bother to cover anything – and deliberately seducing him?

Gray swallowed the glass full of water and poured himself some more. His body never even felt this hot before as if Natsu’s fire just kept following him around. There was that time too, in the public bath, where Juvia just came out of nowhere and was in the bath with him. Totally. Naked. She tried to kiss him then but he froze her in his ice before she started some commotion.

Juvia was such a trouble.

“Gray-samaaaa~” she sang from his room.

Gray grunted. He hasn’t even fully recovered from that public bath memory. Now, he was already calling him back into his room.

“Alright, alright!” He shouted back.

Then, the ice-make mage downed another glass of ice-cold water before he scurried to his room. When he entered his room, Juvia still sat on the edge of his bed, just waiting. She looked up at him, her gaze following Gray as the ice-make mage returned to his designated chair. Not at all any more comfortable.

“Shoot.”

Gray spat out a punchline and threw in a laugh too. But Juvia wasn’t laughing. And it became rather awkward.

Gray cleared his throat.

“G-g-go on...”

Juvia didn’t say another word after she asked the ice-make mage to turn the sound lacrima back on. Which he quickly obeyed so that Juvia could pick up where she left off.

Gray just hoped someone warned him about the next part of the show.

Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree? I travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody's looking for something

Juvia swayed her body to the tune. It was just the start. Gray wasn’t known to be a fidgety fellow but he lost count how many times he shifted in that wooden chair. Especially, when Juvia pressed an innocent finger on the bottom of her lip and pushed it in. Juvia twisted her head to catch his eyes and when she made sure he was looking, the water-mage pulled the finger out of her mouth and traced a sinful path down the valley.

Gray could hear his heart pounding in his ears and his breath started running ragged. He didn’t remember his room being this hot. If he wasn’t feeling so stuck in that chair and his eyes so glued on the girl before him, then Gray would have opened a window or two. But, well, he was stuck. Stuck as a sticky rice.

Because now Juvia continued the sinful trail down a very dangerous path and Gray couldn’t take his eyes off of that. Especially, that sinful finger is reaching down the edge of her…

Oh, shit.

That not-so-innocent finger stopped at the band of her lace panties. And it felt like he was about to swallow a rock.

And when the water-mage, his water-mage, swiftly lost her brassiere, Gray swallowed a freaking boulder.

Juvia threw the lace bra to him. The thin material fell limply on his lap. He then prepared himself to finally see the generous breasts that freaking lace ineptly covered. He looked up from the lace bra and his heart somersaulted when his expectant eyes landed on the water-mage who had her arm shielding the girls. Somehow, it was so much appealing and oddly, more exciting. Thrilling. Would she or wouldn’t she. Oh, the mystery was killing him.

And he liked it.

Gray backed up on his seat when Juvia started to move towards him. Strutting. Steps measured. Hips provocatively swaying. Gray forgot to breathe for a moment. His head fell back to meet her eyes. Slowly, Juvia lowered herself and finally expelled the breath he was holding when the bold water-mage straddled his lap.

Gray parted his lips to breathe some air as Juvia held his gaze captive, fanning his hot cheeks with her warm breath. The skin on her arm grazed his bare chest, hardening the muscles on it. For some reason, he just lost his top somewhere in the house. But who cared about that stupid shirt when the skimpy crotch of her panties were almost, almost brushing against the zipper of his pants.

Uncomfortable quickly graduated to painful.

He let out a laugh that meant to be awkward but turned deep and husky.

“J-j-juvia.” He breathed her name, planting his hands on her thighs, touching soft and warm skin under his palm. He wanted to ask for a break again.

Her blue eyes widened at the heat and Juvia repressed a surprised gasp. She swatted Gray’s hand away with her free one.

“No touching.” She firmly reminded. “It’s against the rules.”

Gray let his arms fall on his side. He wasn’t really sure what Juvia was going to do and the suspense was killing him – if he wasn’t dead yet from Juvia’s close proximity. So, he decided that the best course of action was to stare right to her eyes, those deep blue pools that were pulling him into their endlessness by the second. Even if his whole body became highly aware of her flesh against his. He wondered how she managed to get this close to him and not melt, literally. Usually, she would. This time, she held it together. And this time, she had that solid determination in her eyes that was honestly turning him on. Oops! He wasn’t supposed to feel that way. Gray tried to push what his body was telling him back and concentrate on something that wasn’t forcing his body to react. But that was simply impossible.

All thanks to that conflict he saw in her eyes, however, that Gray had a distraction, welcomed at that. She looked like she was pondering it over, what to do next. Something started to cloud her eyes.

“G-g-gray-s-sama…”

She started stuttering.

“It seems like Juvia mixed up the steps.”

She pulled away from his eyes, gazed drifting in between them as she looked left to right. Gray wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for.

“If you could just let Juvia look for… look for her… ahmmm. Where was it?”

Well, if Juvia could get past her ‘melting thing’ then Gray could definitely get over his shyness.

“Juvia’s top… Juvia threw it towards Gray-sam-mnnn…”

Gray pressed Juvia against him as he locked his lips with hers, opening his mouth over Juvia’s. Juvia could hardly wrap her head around what was happening. She was now his captive not hers, kissing her with so much abandon, so much hunger and so much need that everything around her became fuzzy. Juvia lost the ability to think, to move. Her body instinctively morphed with Gray’s, both moaning at the contact when Juvia dropped her hand that was shielding her breasts. Gray’s kiss turned more aggressive.

Realizing they both needed air to breathe, Gray pulled away from the kiss, pressing his forehead against Juvia’s, both forcing air into and outside their lungs.

“G-g-gray-sama… shouldn’t…” Juvia tried to force the words out between pants. “it’s… it’s… against the… rules”

But that mischievous grin played on Gray’s lips. He just couldn’t help it.

“Since when did I…” He tentatively brushed his lips against Juvia’s, playing on that fire that their much aggressive and possessive kiss created earlier. “ever followed the rules?”

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: January 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of January 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

It seems that Rachel Riley is quite smart at maths but a complete moron at anything else, what with her accusing Noam Chomsky of antisemitism in spite of the fact that Chomsky is a little bit Jewish, before following it up by encouraging her far-right Twitter followers to dogpile onto anyone voicing different opinions to her - which mainly involved a 16-year old girl bearing the brunt of it.  However she wasn’t finished there, as when she was rightly being criticised for encouraging her followers to dogpile onto people she then went whinging to the press about being bullied by left-wing trolls before announcing she needed personal security for when she was attending Countdown tapings, which sounds uncannily similar to the same stunt Laura Kuenssberg pulled a couple of years ago

Starting the year with a bang we had Chris Grayling first try and defend the Seaborne Freight farce by saying he was supporting up-and-coming British business (while omitting the parts about them being owned by the brother of a significant Tory donor, or not having any ships or trading history, let alone the fact the contract wasn’t even put out to tender) and followed that up by claiming the rail fare hikes are entirely the fault of the unions and definitely nothing to do with shareholder dividends or years of rail services taking the piss with fare hikes on January 2nd every year.  Of course, Grayling being Grayling, he also helped out the Britait debate by saying that a second referendum shouldn’t take place because if the result came back in support of Remain it would go against The Will Of The People™ - which apparently said people willingly voting to remain wouldn’t be

It didn't help Grayling that those checking the Seaborne Freight website found that their Ts & Cs were from the template used when setting up a website for a takeaway food outlet, the timetable for services was blank (and, for some reason, in Latin), while their privacy page had forgotten that the fields marked [Business Name] are supposed to be filled with the name of the business using the website

Overly sensitive snowflake Piers Moron Morgan spent a hell of a lot of time and energy yelling from the rooftops how appalling it was that Greggs are selling vegan sausage rolls, which is apparently the downfall of humanity as we know it and definitely not the hourly cry for attention from an attention-seeking lunatic - and while some claimed it was a stunt because he and Greggs share a PR agency, that theory appears to have been ever so slightly undermined by him then spouting off about McDonalds selling vegan Happy Meals

It’s funny how James Goddard demonstrated just how much of a difference a day makes, with him threatening Anna Soubry and Owen Jones on January 7th and bellowing at police officers that if they so much as touched him he’d start a a war...yet on January 8th he was bawling his eyes out on Twitter because his Facebook and PayPal accounts had been terminated

Lying (through his teeth) in front of a tractor Boris Johnson claimed he never mentioned Turkey at any point during the EU Referendum campaign - and when confronted with his numerous comments about Turkish immigrants flocking into the UK if the country voted Remain by Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick, he ran away to hide like an utter coward

Proving that gaslighting is the in thing at the BBC, Director General Tony Hall stated in an interview with the Financial Times that there is no need to discipline Andrew Neil for referring to Carole Cadwalladr as a “mad cat woman” as he had apologised - except for the fact that, while it may be plausible that Neil apologised to the BBC, there has not been a public apology for his comments

Sticking with the BBC, it took just two editions of Question Time before Fiona Bruce showed her true colours as she spent ten minutes making jokes about Diane Abbott (including suggesting that she only became Shadow Home Secretary because she once slept with Jeremy Corbyn) prior to one edition which Abbott was a guest on, and for the remainder of the episode constantly talked over Abbott while letting the other guests speak uninterrupted, including allowing Isabel Oakeshott to not just make a patently false statement but use said patently false statement to attack Abbott.  It wasn’t helped that when the BBC finally got around to admitting fault almost two weeks later, their statement actually said it was a joke - you know, like the school bully tries to claim when they get caught

Oh boy, there were so many triggered manbabies were up in arms about a Gillette advert for suggesting that maybe, just maybe, being a toxic dickhead isn’t any way to behave - to which they responded by acting like a bunch of toxic dickheads throwing a temper tantrum all over social media not seen since Nike featured Colin Kaepernick in an ad campaign

I’m going to assume AnonymousQ1776 thought they were being really, really clever when posting that video clip of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez coupled with their sneering comment that made them sound uncannily like a teenage edgelord who doesn't know what communism is but throws the word around a lot.  I’m also going to assume they weren’t happy when the stunt backfired on them by not only making Ocasio-Cortez look like a normal human being who does normal things, but doing so also reopened the can of worms about what Brett Kavanaugh was up to when he was younger...

Middle England’s favourite edgelord Rod Liddle obviously needed to be extra quote-unquote provocative this month after using his column in The Sun to suggest that what Britain needs is a new political party that represents traditional values - which means neither Muslims nor the entire LGBT spectrum are not allowed

Just when you thought John Humphreys couldn’t sound any more like a pompous windbag with the credibility of a arthritic toad, he only goes to suggest that the Republic of Ireland should rejoin the UK - because who gives a toss about centuries of history or the minor inconvenience of 92% of irish people preferring to remain in the EU when Radio 4′s most jumped-up presenter suggests they swallow their pride and return to the warm chokehold of the British Empire? 

It appeared The Daily Star had a real scoop when they printed an interview with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in which he made scathing comments about the “snowflake generation” and how they were “looking for reasons to be offended” - that is until Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson issued a statement saying that not only did he not say those things, but he also never gave that interview

It seems The Board of Deputies of British Jews never got around to reading The Crucible judging by their going Full Baddiel and accusing Tottenham fans of antisemitism and, in the same statement, said they should follow the model of Chelsea fans - yes, the same Chelsea fans who have subjected Spurs fans to songs about Hitler and gas chambers for decades, who just so happen to be under investigation by UEFA for their anti semitic chanting during a Europa League match against Vidi in December

This month’s worst case of Trump Derangement Syndrome comes from Sarah Huckabee Sanders after she said that God wanted Donald Trump to become President in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network

Lucky for Lara Kollab there’s nothing in the hippocratic oath forbidding being an anti semitic bigot on Twitter.  On the other hand, there certainly was in the employment contract at the hospital she worked at, which is why they fired her

Somehow the British Army paid £1.5m on an recruitment ad campaign that was so successful that it led to members of the army quitting when finding out their photos were used to recruit “Snow flakes" (sic) and “Me me me millennials” - but that didn’t stop Gavin Williamson claiming it was “a powerful call to action” (rather than “bloody patronising”) while James Cleverly mouthed off like an idiot on Twitter in support because mouthing off like an idiot on Twitter is all that somebody who makes their surname fair game on a regular basis like James Cleverley knows how to do

It took a while but Jake Paul finally found a way to reclaim his crown of Most Odious Paul Brother by hitting upon a loot box scheme to encourage his viewers to, in effect, gamble - because apparently he (and Ricegum) only paid attention to the part where the likes of Electronic Arts were making money hand over fist when they were shoving loot boxes in all their games, but didn’t bother listening when various gambling commissions began looking into the practise

To prove my point James Cleverly took it upon himself to take to Twitter and sneer “You do realise that it’s not a documentary” when I, Daniel Blake was airing on TV - because it's better to score points on Twitter than admit that a UN report late last year was damning of the Tory government’s treatment of their less well-off citizens, isn’t it?

Trying to explain away his dickheadishness saw Wayne Hennessey claim he wasn’t doing a Nazi salute in a photo that happened to be taken by German teammate Max Meyer, he was actually waving at somebody - and the reason he had his finger on his top lip wasn’t the well-known mimicry of Hitler’s ‘tache but he was putting his hand to his mouth so somebody on the other side of the room could hear him.  For some strange reason nobody was convinced...

Attention-seeking loon Laura Loomer didn’t learn from the humiliation conga line that was her so-called protest at Twitter HQ judging by her protest against illegal immigration that involved her climbing over the fence around Nancy Pelosi’s property and setting up a stall on Pelosi’s lawn - at which point she appears to have forgotten what she was protesting about and instead kept yelling for Pelosi to respond to her, even though anyone with C-SPAN would’ve told her Pelosi was currently in the Senate

In order to promote her UK tour Azealia Banks thought the best idea was to vomit a long string of invective about the Irish on her social media all because she got irked by one Aer Lingus flight attendant

Can somebody tell Bill Maher that he doesn’t make himself sound more correct every time he regurgitates the “adults shouldn’t read comics” rant he first brought it up in the wake of Stan Lee’s death?  Because it appears nobody has

Out of curiosity, is Gregory Prytyka Jr. still popping over here in an attempt to find material to try and attack me with because they can’t handle the fact I called them out for their tedious shitposting, or have they crawled back under the rock they usually live under?

And finally, harrumphing to himself in a way that everyone can hear (although they wish they couldn’t) is Donald Trump and his banquets that look suspiciously like those given by the megalomaniacal villain of Kingsmen, continuing to throw a diplomatic temper tantrum over a wall he said Mexico would pay for

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT CAPACITY

And if you want to get rich by starting startups, but philosophically they're at the opposite end of the race he has to bear this uncomplainingly, partly because they're not going to generate ideas for startups? If you've ever watched someone use your software yourselves on their behalf. A small decrease in morale is enough to account for it. Up till a few years ago. Expressing the language in its own right, and of course Google set off the tagging movement. So The classic startup is fast and informal, with few people and little money. Many are underfunded. Boston Demo Day, it would be huge.

And whichever side wins, their ideas will also be a benefit to us. Now it's so low that few could bear them alone. Try this thought experiment and it becomes clear: imagine something that worked like the Segway and Google Wave. Imagine what it would have been for two Google employees to focus on the upside: they get a big program is to start a startup, but the descent is steeper with talks. That's how Silicon Valley happened. It was one of the two-cycle innovation engine, you can't keep working anymore, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp. I like angels, but this sort of thing will happen more, and b the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. But most kids would take that deal. They're motivated by examples of other people wanted, this is the divisor of their capital cost. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come with tougher terms. __________________________________________________________________ To: Fred Wilson date: Fri, Jan 23,2009 at 2:05 PM subject: Re: airbnb I met them today They have an interesting business I'm just not sure how much credit to give him.

I'm guessing the next one; they run pretty frequently on this route. In How to Become a Hacker, and in reviews I keep noticing words like provocative'' and controversial. Hardy said he didn't like math in high school have seen it. It's that way with most startups too. Hackers don't need empathy to design these, because there could not be true. It doesn't mean that all the startups we funded would usually grind to a halt when they start raising money, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp. I expect this to become increasingly common.

Just start listing ideas at random and see what happens after a year. Getting a book printed and distributed is a daunting prospect for a writer, but to fail to mention a few critical bottlenecks. And so you can't assume it will fall through. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be surprising. I'm not claiming that stock grants can now be discarded. When VC funding dried up after the Internet Bubble, because I tried to imagine what would happen if you outsourced everything except product development? The average programmer seems to produce UI designs that are almost willfully bad. This is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try to act like something you're not, you'll just get far more people starting startups. Ask any founder in any economy if they'd describe investors as fickle, and watch the face they make. I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is our site, not yours. Startups are powerless, and good startup ideas is also the cost of a fancy office chair. Launch fast and iterate.

There's one other major component of determination, but they're nothing like the initial idea. The author is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Better Bayesian Filtering. As food got cheaper or we got richer; they're indistinguishable, eating too much started to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. They've also written at least a year before. He thought perhaps he needed a little dose of sociopath-ness. A, drop out and get them to come and work for you without giving them options likely to be true, but I think it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. But as the company grows older the question switches polarity. In both cases, feedback from the audience improves the best work. Even a VC friend of mine once had her brain scanned as part of its identity. And the reason so many good ideas come from. 1 to 2 deals done in a year.

Most struggles, whatever they're really about, will be custom deals for the forseeable future. At least, it better not be, but it wouldn't be a competitor funded by the other. If there's some mundane problem getting in your way, and I got in reply what was then the party line should be to discover surprising things. Apparently some people in the coming year it will become as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a high-level abstraction, for example, a social network for pet owners is a bad idea. If you're an inexperienced founder is to stick close to the limits of your capacity. In fact most of the startups that did best were the ones who were smart, not all of the employees e. And this wasn't just random error. A friend of mine asked Ryan about this, it was harder to reach an audience or collaborate on projects. Before I publish a new essay for the Japanese edition of Hackers & Painters. Designing systems of great mathematical elegance sounds a lot more liquid.

[trevorbailey61]

Bob Dylan

Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham

Friday 5th May 2017

It is a long time since any lace was made in Nottingham and maybe in some small way my family must take some of the responsibility for this. My first memories of my grandmother are when she was in her late 60s but people were older then and she was older than most. She had become old when she was about the age I am now and from then on spent much of her time reminiscing about the past. Now the stories about our family history would hold a fascination but as kids we soon lost interest, particularly as those stories were repeated over and over again. Like many, I now wished I had listened more intently but the short attention span and arrogance of youth meant that mostly we made little effort to conceal our boredom. The pieces I can now put together, therefore, are by no means accurate and combine her own hazy recollection and the fragments that managed to get past my indifference. One of these concerned her own maternal grandmother, someone she seemed to use as a role model for her own advancing years. Apparently a fierce and formidable woman and devout methodists who used her religion as a means of gaining moral superiority over others; she had been married twice and spent much of her adult life producing children. Her first husband, I can’t remember whether this is who I am descended from, as I said I should have listened, worked in the lace industry, the word industry doesn’t seem right for something as delicate as lace but the conditions under which those producing it worked were undoubtedly harsh, and he must have held a position of some responsibility. He was therefore dispatched to the United States where he set up lace making by introducing the machinery and techniques that were being applied in Nottingham; the economics of this presumably meaning that more was made by exporting the technology rather than the finished product and it did, at least, give his wife a break from having babies. As as reward for his effort, he was given a watch that he proudly displayed in the pocket of his waistcoat when he returned from his travels and called in at the Bluebell Inn on Upper Parliament Street, it’s still there and gets terrible reviews on Trip Advisor. Sadly, someone else had noticed this watch and, on leaving the pub, he was beaten to death; the watch was taken, the sovereigns that he carried in his pocket were not, such is the price of a human life.

In the end, the demise of lace production was more to do with increased mechanisation and changing taste and by the time I arrived to study in the city, all that reminded was the name of the district and a small visitor centre as a reminder of the activity that was once there. The factories and warehouses were mostly empty but some were taken over by left field art installations and a few underground night clubs. I rarely ventured into this part of town, but one night found myself in a darkened room where heavy beats, blinding lights and too much to drink combined to unsettling effect as I was shoved and grabbed by those around me whose own trance like state was undoubtedly a result of something stronger than alcohol. Unlike the clubs I was used to, where the DJ simply put on records, here was someone who had drawn inspiration from the sounds that were coming out of New York and Chicago and had found an abandoned unit in Nottingham in which he could hone his skills, I wish I had thought to make a note of who he was. Little of that spirit now remains and the gentrification of the Lace Market has seen the old warehouses converted into city centre apartments full of young aspirational professionals. Those clean white walls, however, need something on them and as we leave the Motorpoint Arena, I happen to notice some prints displayed in an art gallery that we walk past. These are mostly landscapes, depicting mid west scenes in which people are absent but their presence is shown through what is abandoned, rusted cars, billboards outside a derelict motel or the hoarding on a cinema advertising a film that has long since finished. Colour is used to depict dramatic big skies but being a print, the effect of the brush work can only be hinted at. The work certainly holds some interest and the original would have signifiant value were it done by someone else. In this case, however, the hefty price tag is for the print - that is because the artist is Bob Dylan.

“She’s an artist; she don’t look back”; indeed, and Dylan himself rarely did, those who thought they had a handle on him were left puzzled and often angry as he shifted from one role to another. His artwork would occasionally illustrate his music and the deliberately childlike drawing on the cover of “Self Portrait” was as provocative as the music it contained, “what is this shit” began one review. The striking thing about his recent artwork, however, is how conventional it is; Dylan applies the techniques and form his younger self would have trashed and through this depicts instantly recognisable scenes. Contrary to what he once wrote these do look back, to a mythical 50s America that has only ever existed in his mind; abandoned cars, deserted main streets and picket fences as he imagined they must have been as he yearns for this past. And as nostalgia drives his art, so it drives his music to the extent that what had seemed like an interesting side project to try out a few Sinatra songs has grown into an unwieldy five discs exploring the American songbook. This may be an indulgence for an artist who has little else to prove but in setting himself against those who were more naturally disposed to these songs, Sinatra, Judy Garland, Nat “King” Cole and so on, has brought him out of the rut of endlessly recycling his own songs for this ‘never ending tour”. For one thing, to stand comparison, his versions have to be exquisitely presented and around him he has assembled a stunning band who provide a luscious sound for both the covers and reassembled originals. The playing is, therefore, majestic, the persuasion alone is a joy with varied and intricate rhythms above which two guitars weaved a gossamer pattern and heart melting steel guitar adds wondrous texture. The intricacy and precision of the playing indicates the hand of an arranger, gone are the days when Dylan would start playing a song and expect the band to pick it up.

Above this is that voice; nothing divides opinion on Dylan more than his voice, particularly in our house which makes it the main reason why my wife hasn’t accompanied me this evening. No one can deny that his voice is iconic, there really is no one else who compares, but it is not an obvious instrument with which to tackle the songs he is now performing. Despite this, however, it works; from the moment he starts with “Things Have Changed” there is the thrill of hearing that familiar timbre reverberating around the arena. In approaching these standards, however, Dylan has found a sensitivity that takes us to the emotional heart of the song. This together with a lightness of touch brings a charm to “Why Try To Change Me Now”, “Melancholy Mood” and “All Or Nothing At All” that makes it all seem so right. The best of these, however, was a beautifully fragile “Autumn Leaves”, I have felt many things at Dylan concerts, amazed, surprised, confused, angry, frustrated but never quite as moved as I was here.

The joy that Dylan has found in his inner crooner has translated into his own songs; there have been times where he has barely concealed his boredom with his formidable back catalogue and his habit of not letting his band know what he was playing may well have been a way of holding his interest. Now, however, he seems energised and focused, finding depths and nuance he had probably forgotten were there. He occasionally adds keyboards to the arrangements, although you suspect they are done so that it won’t matter is he doesn’t, but persistent back problems mean that his days of playing a guitar are long gone and when not seated, he sings from the heart of the band rather than as a typical lead singer pacing along the apron of the stage. Following “Things Have Changed” with an uneven “To Ramona”, things really take off with a terrifying “Highway 61 Revisited”; a dark contrast to the lightness he finds in the songbook. This is merely the start, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” is unremitting in its bleakness, the comfort he may at one time have found in his born again evangelism has long since deserted him, and “Tangled Up and Blue” is, if anything, even more savage now that the bitter recriminations have festered for decades. The songs taken from “Tempest”, his most recent album of original songs, offer some shade with intricate swing rhythms and jazz guitar giving a much lighter touch. Again, Dylan is looking back, failed relationships, a lost way of life, but whilst this would have previously stirred a burning anger, here it is replaced with sadness and regret, a melancholy that is reflected in the delicate slow pace of “Long and Wasted Years” and “Pay in Blood”. When the anger is released, however, it is ferocious; “Lovesick” is simply stunning, Dylan standing to rail against the advancing years that he can feel in his body. Here, he isn’t just sick of love, he is sick of attachments, sick of people, sick of life; a song of unremitting darkness that was written twenty years ago but to which now, in his mid 70s, he adds the despair that makes it almost unbearably harrowing. From these depths, even the bums and hookers of “Desolation Row” seem a relief and this is followed by a little comedy, which is the only way I can think of describing his take on “That Old Black Magic”.

Dylan utters not a single word, the end of each song sees the stage plunged into darkness before a drum pattern or chord signal that the next one has started. That aside, however, as with his artwork, the conventions that Dylan used to shun are being followed. There is definitely a setlist, the band play an introduction that is picked up by the singer and at the end they all line up to acknowledge the applause. Well into the latter part of his career, he may no longer have the mental agility to play fast and loose with the rules or maybe he has just grown tired of fighting them. This does mean that we not only get an encore but that the encore is made up of what from the vast number of songs he has written are his two most significant. “Blowin’ in the Wind” was, more than any other, the one that made him the poster boy of folk protest in the early 60s. He may have written more overtly political songs but this was the one that caught both the civil rights struggles and the Vietnam protests making its author briefly the spokesperson for his generation. It’s always assumed that this was just an act that he quickly grew tired of this and plugged in to alienate those who who saw him as the next Woody Guthrie. There is certainly some truth in this but I wonder whether there is something else and what he saw was just how shallow the ideals of those who had followed him were, he didn’t want to be that figure because he knew they didn’t deserve it. They would soon move on, ambition and money would take over and the ideals would be abandoned as quickly as they were picked up. It is the deal we all at some point make, the compromise to survive, some of us manage to retain some of our values, some never had them to retain. Those at the Motorpoint Arena, those of us who have paid over £60 to see him even though for some they knew they would hate him, those who will pay over two grand for a Dylan print, well, we are Mr Jones, the subject of the second encore, “Ballad Of A Thin Man” is about us. Something is happening and we don’t know what it is, maybe even now when it all seems so safe and ordinary, he is still several steps ahead of us.

[cabiba]

https://libcom.org/files/Birth%20of%20a%20Holiday%20the%20First%20of%20May.pdf

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's account of the international celebration of Mayday.

In 1990 Michael Ignatieff, writing about Easter in the Observer, observed that 'secular societies have never succeeded in providing alternatives to religious rituals'. And he pointed out that the French Revolution 'may have turned subjects into citizens, may have put liberte, egalite and fraternite on the lintel of every school and put the monasteries to the sack, but apart from the Fourteenth of July it never made a dent on the old Christian calendar'. My present subject is perhaps the only unquestionable dent made by a secular movement in the Christian or any other official calendar, a holiday established not in one or two countries, but in 1990 officially in 107 states. What is more, it is an occasion established not by the power of governments or conquerors, but by an entirely unofficial movement of poor men and women. I am speaking of May Day, or more precisely of the First of May, the international festival of the working-class movement, whose centenary ought to have been celebrated in 1990, for it was inaugurated in 1890.

'Ought to be' is the correct phrase, for, apart from the historians, few have shown much interest in this occasion, not even in those socialist parties which are the lineal descendants of those which, at the inaugural congresses of what became the Second International, in 1889 called for a simultaneous international workers' demonstration in favour of a law to limit the working day to eight hours to be held on 1 May 1890. This is true even of those parties actually represented at the 1889 congresses, and which are still in existence. These parties of the Second International or their descendants today provide the governments or the main oppositions or alternative governments almost everywhere in Europe west of what until recently was the self-described region of 'really existing socialism'. One might have expected them to show greater pride, or even merely greater interest in their past.

The strongest political reaction in Britain to the centenary of May Day came from Sir John Hackett, a former general and, I am sorry to say, former head of a college of the University of London, who called for the abolition of May Day, which he appeared to regard as some sort of Soviet invention. It ought not, he felt, to survive the fall of international communism. However, the origin of the European Community's spring May Day holiday is the opposite of Bolshevik or even social democratic. It goes back to the anti-socialist politicians who, recognizing how deeply the roots of May Day reached into the soil of the western working classes, wanted to counter the appeal of labour and socialist movements by co-opting their festival and turning it into something else. To cite a French parliamentary proposal of April 1920, supported by forty-one deputies united by nothing except not being socialists:

Quote:

This holiday should not contain any element of jealousy and hatred [the code word for class struggle]. All classes, if classes can still be said to exist, and all productive energies of the nation should fraternize, inspired by the same idea and the same ideal.

Those who, before the European Community, went furthest in co¬-opting May Day were on the extreme right, not the left. Hitler's government was the first after the USSR to make the First of May into an official National Day of Labour. Marshal Petain's Vichy government declared the First of May a Festival of Labour and Concord and is said to have been inspired to do so by the Phalangist May Day of Franco's Spain, where the Marshal had been an admiring ambassador. Indeed, the European Economic Community which made May Day into a public holiday was a body composed not, in spite of Mrs Thatcher's views on the subject, of socialist but of predominantly anti-socialist governments. Western official May Days were recognitions of the need to come to terms with the tradition of the unofficial May Days and to detach it from labour movements, class consciousness and class struggle. But how did it come about that this tradition was so strong that even its enemies thought they had to take it over, even when, like Hitler, Franco and Petain, they destroyed the socialist labour movement?

The extraordinary thing about the evolution of this institution is that it was unintended and unplanned. To this extent it was not so much an 'invented tradition' as a suddenly erupting one. The immediate origin of May Day is not in dispute. It was a resolution passed by one of the two rival founding congresses of the International - the Marxist one - in Paris in July 1889, centenary year of the French Revolution. This called for an international demonstration by workers on the same day, when they would put the demand for a Legal Eight Hour Day to their respective public and other authorities. And since the American Federation of Labor had already decided to hold such a demonstration on 1 May 1890, this day was to be chosen for the international demonstration. Ironically, in the USA itself May Day was never to establish itself as it did elsewhere, if only because an increasingly official public holiday of labour, Labor Day, the first Monday in September, was already in existence.

Scholars have naturally investigated the origins of this resolution, and how it related to the earlier history of the struggle for the Legal Eight-Hour Day in the USA and elsewhere, but these matters do not concern us here. What is relevant to the present argument is how what the resolution envisaged differed from what actually came about. Let us note three facts about the original proposal. First, the call was simply for a single, one-off, international manifestation. There is no suggestion that it should be repeated, let alone become a regular annual event. Second, there was no suggestion that it should be a particularly festive or ritual occasion, although the labour movements of all countries were authorized to 'realize this demonstration in such ways as are made necessary by the situation in their country'. This, of course, was an emergency exit left for the sake of the German Social Democratic Party, which was still at this time illegal under Bismarck's anti-socialist law. Third, there is no sign that this resolution was seen as particularly important at the time. On the contrary, the contemporary press reports barely mention it, if at all, and, with one exception (curiously enough a bourgeois paper), without the proposed date. Even the official Congress Report, published by the German Social Democratic Party, merely mentions the proposers of the resolution and prints its text without any comment or apparent sense that this was a matter of Significance. In short, as Edouard Vaillant, one of the more eminent and politically sensitive delegates to the Congress, recalled a few years later: 'Who could have predicted ... the rapid rise of May Day?'

Its rapid rise and institutionalization were certainly due to the extraordinary success of the first May Day demonstrations in 1890, at least in Europe west of the Russian Empire and the Balkans. The socialists had chosen the right moment to found or, if we prefer, reconstitute an International. The first May Day coincided with a triumphant advance of labour strength and confidence in numerous countries. To cite merely two familiar examples: the outburst of the New Unionism in Britain which followed the Dock Strike of 1889, and the socialist victory in Germany, where the Reichstag refused to continue Bismarck's anti-socialist law in January 1890, with the result that a month later the Social Democratic Party doubled its vote at the general election and emerged with just under 20 per cent of the total vote. To make a success of mass demonstrations at such a moment was not difficult, for both activists and militants put their hearts into them, while masses of ordinary workers joined them to celebrate a sense of victory, power, recognition and hope.

And yet the extent to which the workers took part in these meetings amazed those who had called upon them to do so, notably the 300,000 who filled Hyde Park in London, which thus, for the first and last time, provided the largest demonstration of the day. For, while all socialist parties and organizations had naturally organized meets, only some had recognized the full potential of the occasion and put their all into it from the start. The Austrian Social Democratic Party was exceptional in its immediate sense of the mass mood, with the result that, as Frederick Engels observed a few weeks later, 'on the continent it was Austria, and in Austria Vienna, which celebrated this festival in the most splendid and appropriate manner'.

Indeed, in several countries, so far from throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the preparation of May Day, local parties and movements were, as usual in the politics of the left, handicapped by ideological arguments and divisions about the legitimate form or forms of such demonstrations - we shall return to them below - or by sheer caution. In the face of a highly nervous, even on occasion hysterical, reaction to the prospect of the day by governments, middle-¬class opinion and employers who threatened police repression and victimization, responsible socialist leaders often preferred to avoid excessively provocative forms of confrontation. This was notably the case in Germany, where the ban on the party had only just been revoked after eleven years of illegality. 'We have every reason to keep the masses under control at the First of May demonstration,' wrote the party leader August Bebel to Engels. 'We must avoid conflicts.' And Engels agreed.

The crucial matter at issue was whether the workers should be asked to demonstrate in working time, that is to go on strike, for in 1890 the First of May fell on a Thursday. Basically, cautious parties and strong established trade unions - unless they deliberately wanted to be or found themselves engaged in industrial action, as was the plan of the American Federation of Labor - did not see why they should stick their own and their members' necks out for the sake of a symbolic gesture. They therefore tended to opt for a demonstration on the first Sunday in May and not on the first day of the month. This was and remained the British option, which was why the first great May Day took place on 4 May. However, it was also the preference of the German party, although there, unlike Britain, in practice it was the First of May that prevailed. In fact, the question was to be formally discussed at the Brussels International Socialist Congress of 1891, with the British and Germans opposing the French and Austrians on this point, and being outvoted. Once again this issue, like so many other aspects of May Day, was the accidental by¬product of the international choice of the date. The original resolution made no reference at all to stopping work. The problem arose simply because the first May Day fell on a weekday, as everybody planning the demonstration immediately and necessarily discovered.

Caution dictated otherwise. But what actually made May Day was precisely the choice of symbol over practical reason. It was the act of symbolically stopping work which turned May Day into more than just another demonstration, or even another commemorative occasion. It was in the countries or cities where parties, even against hesitant unions, insisted on the symbolic strike that May Day really became a central part of working-class life and of labour identity, as it never really did in Britain, in spite of its brilliant start. For refraining from work on a working day was both an assertion of working-class power - in fact, the quintessential assertion of this power - and the essence of freedom, namely not being forced to labour in the sweat of one's brow, but choosing what to do in the company of family and friends. It was thus both a gesture of class assertion and class struggle and a holiday: a sort of trailer for the good life to come after the emancipation of labour. And, of course, in the circumstances of 1890 it was also a celebration of victory, a winner's lap of honour round the stadium. Seen in this light May Day carried with it a rich cargo of emotion and hope.

This is what Victor Adler realized when, against advice from the German Social Democratic Party, he insisted that the Austrian party must provoke precisely the confrontation which Bebel wanted to avoid. Like Bebel he recognized the mood of euphoria, of mass conversion, almost of messianic expectation which swept through so many working classes at this time. 'The elections have turned the

heads of the less politically educated [geschult] masses. They believe they have only to want something and everything can be achieved,' as Bebel put it. Unlike Bebel, Adler still needed to mobilize these sentiments to build a mass party out of a combination of activists and rising mass sympathy. Moreover, unlike the Germans, Austrian workers did not yet have the vote. The movement's strength could not therefore be demonstrated electorally as yet. Again, the Scandinavians understood the mobilizing potential of direct action when, after the first May Day, they voted in favour of a repetition of the demonstration in 1891, 'especially if combined with a cessation of work, and not merely simple expressions of opinion'. The International itself took the same view when in 1891 it voted (against the British and German delegates as we have seen) to hold the demonstration on the First of May and 'to cease work wherever it is not impossible to do so.

This did not mean that the international movement called for a general strike as such, for, with all the boundless expectations of the moment, organized workers were in practice aware both of their strength and of their weakness. Whether people should strike on May Day, or could be expected to give up a day's pay for the demonstration, were questions widely discussed in the pubs and bars of proletarian Hamburg, according to the plain-clothes policemen sent by the Senate to listen to workers' conversations in that massively 'red' city. It was understood that many workers would be unable to come out, even if they wanted to. Thus the railwaymen sent a cable to the first Copenhagen May Day which was read out and cheered: 'Since we cannot be present at the meeting because of the pressure exerted by those in power, we will not omit fully supporting the demand for the eight-hour working day. However, where employers knew that workers were strong and solidly committed, they would often tacitly accept that the day could be taken off. This was often the case in Austria. Thus, in spite of the clear instruction from the Ministry of the Interior that processions were banned and taking time off was not to be permitted; and in spite of the formal decision by employers not to consider the First of May a holiday - and sometimes even to substitute the day before the First of May as a works holiday - the State Armaments Factory in Steyr, Upper Austria, shut down on the First of May 1890 and every year thereafter. In any case, enough workers came out in enough countries to make the stop-work movement plausible. After all, in Copenhagen about 40 per cent of the city's workers were actually present at the demonstration in 1890.

Given this remarkable and often unexpected success of the first May Day it was natural that a repeat performance should be demanded. As we have already seen, the united Scandinavian movements asked for it in the summer of 1890, as did the Spaniards. By the end of the year the bulk of the European parties had followed suit. That the occasion should become a regular annual event mayor may not have been suggested first by the militants of Toulouse who passed a resolution to this effect in 1890,but to no one's surprise the Brussels congress of the International in 1891 committed the movement to a regular annual May Day. However, it also did two other things, while insisting, as we have seen, that May Day must be celebrated by a single demonstration on the first day of the month, whatever that day might be, in order to emphasize 'its true character as an economic demand for the eight-hour day and an assertion of class struggle'.It added at least two other demands to the eight-hour day: labour legislation and the fight against war. Although it was henceforth an official part of May Day, in itself the peace slogan was not really integrated into the popular May Day tradition, except as something that reinforced the international character of the occasion. However, in addition to expanding the programmatic content of the demonstration, the resolution included another innovation. It spoke of 'celebrating' May Day. The movement had come officially to recognize it not only as a political activity but as a festival.

we have already seen, the united Scandinavian movements asked for it in the summer of 1890, as did the Spaniards. By the end of the year the bulk of the European parties had followed suit. That the occasion should become a regular annual event mayor may not have been suggested first by the militants of Toulouse who passed a resolution to this effect in 1890, but to no one's surprise the Brussels congress of the International in 1891 committed the movement to a regular annual May Day. However, it also did two other things, while insisting, as we have seen, that May Day must be celebrated by a single demonstration on the first day of the month, whatever that day might be, in order to emphasize 'its true character as an economic demand for the eight-hour day and an assertion of class struggle'.19 It added at least two other demands to the eight-hour day: labour legislation and the fight against war. Although it was henceforth an official part of May Day, in itself the peace slogan was not really integrated into the popular May Day tradition, except as something that reinforced the international character of the occasion. However, in addition to expanding the programmatic content of the demonstration, the resolution included another innovation. It spoke of 'celebrating' May Day. The movement had come officially to recognize it not only as a political activity but as a festival.

Once again, this was not part of the original plan. On the contrary, the militant wing of the movement and, it need hardly be added, the anarchists opposed the idea of festivities passionately on ideological grounds. May Day was a day of struggle. The anarchists would have preferred it to broaden out from a single day's leisure extorted from the capitalists into the great general strike which would overthrow the entire system. As so often, the most militant revolutionaries took a sombre view of the class struggle, as the iconography of black and grey masses lightened by no more than the occasional red flag so often confirms. The anarchists preferred to see May Day as a commemoration of martyrs - the Chicago martyrs of 1886, 'a day of grief rather than a day of celebration', and where they were influential, as in Spain, South America and Italy, the martyrological aspect of May Day actually became part of the occasion. Cakes and ale were not part of the revolutionary game-plan. In fact, as a recent study of the anarchist May Day in Barcelona brings out, refusing to treat it or even to call it a 'Festa del Traball', a labour festival, was one of its chief characteristics before the Republic. To hell with symbolic actions: either the world revolution or nothing. Some anarchists even refused to encourage the May Day strike, on the ground that anything that did not actually initiate the revolution could be no more than yet another reformist diversion. The revolutionary syndicalist French Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) did not resign itself to May Day festivity until after the First World War.

The leaders of the Second International may well have encouraged the transformation of May Day into a festival, since they certainly wanted to avoid anarchist confrontational tactics and naturally also favoured the broadest possible basis for the demonstrations. But the idea of a class holiday, both struggle and a good time, was definitely not in their minds originally. Where did it come from?

Initially the choice of date almost certainly played a crucial role. Spring holidays are profoundly rooted in the ritual cycle of the year in the temperate northern hemisphere, and indeed the month of May itself symbolizes the renewal of nature. In Sweden, for instance, the First of May was already by long tradition almost a public holiday. This, incidentally, was one of the problems about celebrating wintry May Days in otherwise militant Australia. From the abundant icon-ographical and literary material at our disposal, which has been made available in recent years, it is quite evident that nature, plants and above all flowers were automatically and universally held to symbolize the occasion. The simplest of rural gatherings, like the 1890 meeting in a Styrian village, shows not banners but garlanded boards with slogans, as well as musicians. A charming photograph of a later provincial May Day, also in Austria, shows the social democratic worker-cyclists, male and female, parading with wheels and handlebars wreathed in flowers, and a small flower-decked May child in a sort of baby-seat slung between two bicycles.

Flowers appear unselfconsciously round the stern portraits of the seven Austrian delegates to the 1889 International Congress, dis-tributed for the first Vienna May Day. Flowers even infiltrate the militant myths. In France the fusillade de Fourmies of 1891, with its ten dead, is symbolized in the new tradition by Maria Blondeau, eighteen years old, who danced at the head of 200 young people of both sexes, swinging a branch of flowering hawthorn which her fiance had given ber, until the troops shot her dead. Two May traditions patently merge in this image. What flowers? Initially, as the hawthorn branch suggests, colours suggestive of spring rather than politics, even though the movement soon comes to settle on blossoms of its own colour: roses, poppies and above all red carnations. However, national styles vary. Nevertheless, flowers and those other symbols of burgeoning growth, youth, renewal and hope, namely young women, are central. It is no accident that the .most universal icons for the occasion, reproduced time and again m a variety of languages, come from Walter Crane - especially the famous young woman in a Phrygian bonnet surrounded by garlands. The British socialist movement was small and unimportant and its May Days, after the first few years, were marginal. However, through William Morris, Crane and the arts-and-crafts movement, inspirers of the most influential 'new art' or art nouveau of the period, it found the exact expression for the spirit of the times. The British iconographic influence is not the least evidence for the internationalism of May Day.

In fact, the idea of a public festival or holiday of labour arose, once again, spontaneously and almost immediately - no doubt helped along by the fact that in German the word feiern can mean both 'not working' and 'formally celebrating'. (The use of 'playing' as a synonym for 'striking', common in England in the first part of the century, no longer seems common by its end.) In any case it seemed logical on a day when people stayed away from work to supplement the morning's political meetings and marches with sociability and entertainment later, all the more so as the role of inns and restaurants as meeting-places for the movement was so important. Publicans and cabaretieri formed a significant section of socialist activists in more than one country.

One major consequence of this must be immediately mentioned. Unlike politics, which was in those days 'men's business', holidays included women and children. Both the visual and the literary sources demonstrate the presence and participation of women in May Day from the start. What made it a genuine class display, and inci¬dentally, as in Spain, increasingly attracted workers who were not politically with the socialists, 30 was precisely that it was not confined to men but belonged to families. And in turn, through May Day, women who were not themselves directly in the labour market as wage-workers, that is to say the bulk of married working-class women in a number of countries, were publicly identified with movement and class. If a working life of wage-labour belonged chiefly to men, refusing to work for a day united age and sex in the working class.

Practically all regular holidays before this time had been religious holidays, at all events in Europe, except in Britain where, typically, the European Community's May Day has been assimilated to a Bank Holiday. May Day shared with Christian holidays the aspiration to universality, or, in labour terms, internationalism. This universality I deeply impressed participants and added to the day's appeal. The numerous May Day broadsheets, often locally produced, which are so valuable a source for the iconography and cultural history of the occasion - 308 different numbers of such ephemera have been preserved for pre-fascist Italy alone - constantly dwell on this. The first May Day journal from Bologna in 1891 contains no fewer than four items specifically on the universality of the day. And, of course, the analogy with Easter or Whitsun seemed as obvious as that with the spring celebrations of folk custom.

Italian socialists, keenly aware of the spontaneous appeal of the new festa del lavoro to a largely Catholic and illiterate population, used the term 'the workers' Easter' from, at the latest, 1892, and such analogies became internationally current in the second half of the 1890s.32 One can readily see why. The similarity of the new socialist movement to a religious movement, even, in the first heady years of May Day, to a religious revival movement with messianic expectations was patent. So, in some ways, was the similarity of the body of early leaders, activists and propagandists to a priesthood, or at least to a body of lay preachers. We have an extraordinary leaflet from Charleroi, Belgium in 1898, which reproduces what can only be described as a May Day sermon: no other word will do. It was drawn up by, or in the name of, ten deputies and senators of the Parti Ouvrier Belge, undoubtedly atheists to a man, under the joint epigraphs 'Workers of all lands unite (Karl Marx)' and 'Love One Another (jesus)'. A few samples will suggest its mood:

Quote:

This [it began] is the hour of spring and festivity when the perpetual Evolution of nature shines forth in its glory. Like nature, fill yourselves with hope and prepare for The New Life.

After some passages of moral instruction ('Show self-respect: Beware of the liquids that make you drunk and the passions that degrade' and so on) and socialist encouragement, it concluded with a passage of millennial hope:

Quote:

Soon frontiers will fade away! Soon there will be an end to wars and armies! Every time that you practice the socialist virtues of Solidarity and Love, you will bring this future closer. And then, in peace and joy, a world will come into being in which Socialism will triumph, once the social duty of all is properly understood as bringing about the all-round development of each.

Yet the point about the new labour movement was not that it was a faith, and one which often echoed the tone and style of religious discourse, but that it was so little influenced by the .religious model even in countries where the masses were deeply religious and steeped in church ways. Moreover, there was little convergence between the old and the new Faith except sometimes (but not always) where Protestantism took the form of unofficial and implicitly oppositionist sects rather than Churches, as in England. Socialist labour was a militantly secular, anti-religious movement which converted pious or formerly pious populations en masse.

We can also understand why this was so. Socialism and the labour movement appealed to men and women for whom, as a novel class conscious of itself as such, there was no proper place in the community of which established Churches, and notably the Catholic Church, were the traditional expression. There were indeed settlements of 'outsiders', by occupation as in mining or proto-industrial or factory villages, by origin like the Albanians of what became the quintessentially 'red' village of Piana dei Greci in Sicily (now Piana degli Albanesi), or united by some other criterion that separated them collectively from the wider society. There 'the movement' might function as the community, and in doing so take over many of the old village practices hitherto monopolized by religion. However, this was unusual. In fact a major reason for the massive success of May Day was that it was seen as the only holiday associated exclusively with the working class as such, not shared with anyone else, and moreover one extorted by the workers' own action. More than this: it was a day on which those who were usually invisible went on public display and, at least for one day, captured the official space of rulers and society. In this respect the galas of British miners, of which the Durham miners' gala is the longest survivor, anticipated May Day, but on the basis of one industry and not the working class as a whole. In this sense the only relation between May Day and traditional religion was the claim to equal rights. 'The priests have their festivals,' announced the 1891 May Day broadsheet of Voghera in the Po valley, 'the Moderates have their festivals. So have the Democrats. The First of May is the Festival of the workers of the entire world.'

But there was another thing that distanced the movement from religion. Its key word was 'new', as in Die Neue Zeit (New Times), title of Kautsky's Marxist theoretical review, and as in the Austrian labour song still associated with May Day, and whose refrain runs: 'Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit' ('The new times are advancing with us'). As both Scandinavian and Austrian experience shows, socialism often came into the countryside and provincial towns literally with the railways, with those who built and manned them, and with the new ideas and new times they brought. Unlike other public holidays, including most of the ritual occasions of the labour movement up till then, May Day did not commemorate anything - at all events outside the range of anarchist influence which, as we have seen, liked to link it with the Chicago anarchists of 1886. It was about nothing but the future, which, unlike a past that had nothing to give to the proletariat except bad memories ('Du passe faisons table rase,' sang the Inter-nationale, not by accident), offered emancipation. Unlike traditional religion, 'the movement' offered not rewards after death but the new Jerusalem on this earth.

The iconography of May Day, which developed its own imagery and symbolism very quickly, is entirely future-oriented.What the future would bring was not at all clear, only that it would be good and that it would inevitably come. Fortunately for the success of May Day, at least one way forward to the future turned the occasion into something more than a demonstration and a festival. In 1890 electoral democracy was still extremely uncommon in Europe, and the demand for universal suffrage was readily added to that for the eight-hour day and the other May Day slogans. Curiously enough, the demand for the vote, although it became an integral part of May Day in Austria, Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy and elsewhere until it was achieved, never formed an ex officio international part of its political content like the eight-hour day and, later, peace. Nevertheless, where applicable, it became an integral part of the occasion and greatly added to its significance.

In fact, the practice of organizing or threatening general strikes for universal suffrage, which developed with some success in Belgium, Sweden and Austria, and helped to hold party and unions together, grew out of the symbolic work stoppages of May Day. The first such strike was started by the Belgian miners on 1 May 1891.40 On the other hand trade unions were far more concerned with the Swedish May Day slogan 'shorter hours and higher wages' than with any other aspect of the great day. There were times, as in Italy, when they concentrated on this and left even democracy to others. The great advances of the movement, including its effective championship of democracy, were not based on narrow economic self-interest.

Democracy was, of course, central to the socialist labour movements. It was not only essential for its progress but inseparable from it. The first May Day in Germany was commemorated by a plaque which showed Karl Marx on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other. An Austrian May Day print of 1891 shows Marx, holding Das Kapital, pointing across the sea to one of those romantic islands familiar to contemporaries from paintings of a Mediterranean character, behind which there rises the May Day sun, which was to be the most lasting and potent symbol of the future. Its rays carried the slogans of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, which are found on so many of the early May Day badges and mementoes.Marx is surrounded by workers, presumably ready to man the fleet of ships due to sail to the island, whatever it might be, their sails inscribed: Universal and Direct Suffrage. Eight-Hour Day and Protection for the Workers. This was the original tradition of May Day.

That tradition arose with extraordinary rapidity - within two or three years - by means of a curious symbiosis between the slogans of the socialist leaders and their often spontaneous interpretation by militants and rank-and-file workers.It took shape in those first few marvellous years of the sudden flowering of mass labour movements and parties. when every day brought visible growth, when the very existence of such movements. the very assertion of class. seemed a guarantee of future triumph. More than this: it seemed a sign of imminent triumph as the gates of the new world swung open before the working class.

However, the millennium did not come and May Day, with so much else in the labour movement, had to be regularized and institutionalized, even though something of the old flowering of hope and triumph returned to it in later years after great struggles and victories. We can see it in the mad futurist May Days of the early Russian Revolution, and almost everywhere in Europe in 1919-20, when the original May Day demand of the Eight Hours was actually achieved in many countries. We can see it in the May Days of the early Popular Front in France in 1935 and 1936, and in the countries of the continent liberated from occupation, after the defeat of fascism. Still, in most countries of mass socialist labour movements, May Day was routinized some time before 1914.

Curiously, it was during this period of routinization that it acquired its ritualistic side. As an Italian historian has put it, when it ceased to be seen as the immediate antechamber of the great transformation. it became 'a collective rite which requires its own liturgies and divinities', the divinities being usually identifiable as those young women in flowing hair and loose costumes showing the way towards the rising sun to increasingly imprecise crowds or processions of men and women. Was she Liberty, or Spring, or Youth, or Hope, or rosy-fingered Dawn or a bit of all of these? Who can tell? Iconographically she has no universal characteristic except youth, for even the Phrygian bonnet, which is extremely common, or the traditional attributes of Liberty, are not always found. We can trace this ritualization of the day through the flowers which, as we have seen, are present from the beginning, but become, as it were, officialized towards the end of the century. Thus the red carnation acquired its official status in the Habsburg lands and in Italy from about 1900. when its symbolism was specially explicated in the lively and talented broadsheet from Florence named after it. (II Garofano Rosso appeared on May Days until the First World War.) The red rose became official in 1911-12. And, to the grief of incorruptible revolutionaries the entirely unpolitical lily-of-the-valley began to infiltrate the workers' May Day in the early 1900s, until it became one of the regular symbols of the day.

Neverthelesss, the great era of May Days was not over while they remained both legal - that is, capable of bringing large masses on to the street - and unofficial. Once they became a holiday given or, still worse, imposed from above, their character was necessarily different. And since public mass mobilization was of their essence, they could not resist illigality, even though the socialists (later communists) of Piana del Albanesi took pride, even in the black days of fascism, in sending some comrades every First of May without fail to the mountain pass where, from what is still known as Dr Barbato's rock, the local apostle of socialism had addressed them in 1893. It was in this same location that the bandit Giuliano massacred the revived revived community demonstration and family picnic after the end of fascism in 1947. Since 1914, and especially since 1945, May Day has increasingly become either illegal or, more likely, official. Only in those comparatively rare parts of the third world where massive and unofficial socialist labour movements developed in conditions that allowed May Day to flourish is there a real continuity older tradition.

May Day has not, of course, lost its old characteristics everywhere. Neverthelesss, even where it is not associated with the fall of old regimes which were once new, as in the USSR and eastern Europe, it is not too much to claim that for most people even in labour movements the word May Day evokes the past more the past than the present. The society which gave rise to May Day has changed. How important, today, are those small proletarian village communities which old Italians remember? 'We marched round the village. Then there was a public meal. All the party members were there and anyone else Who wanted to come.’ What has happened in the industrialized world to those who in the 1890s could still recognize themselves in the internationale's 'Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers'? As an old Italian an lady put it in 1980, remembering the May Day of 1920 'I carried the flag as a twelve-year-old textile worker, just started at the mill: 'Nowadays those who go to work are all ladies and gentlemen, they get everything they ask for.' What has happened to the spirit of those May Day sermons of confidence in the future, of faith in the march of reason and progress? 'Educate yourselves! Schools and courses, books and newspapers are instruments of liberty! Drink at the fountain of Science and Art: you will then become strong enough to bring about justice. What has happened to the collective dream of building Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land?

And yet, if May Day has become no more than just another holiday, a day - I am quoting a French advertisement - when one need not take a certain tranquillizer, because one does not have to work, it remains a holiday of a special kind. It may no longer be, in the proud phrase, 'a holiday outside all calendars', for in Europe it has entered all calendars. It is, in fact, more universally taken off work than any other days except 25 December and 1 January, having far outdistanced its other religious rivals. But it came from below. It was shaped by anonymous working people themselves who, through it, recognized themselves, across lines of occupation, language, even nationality as a single class by deciding, once a year, deliberately not to work: to flout the moral, political and economic compulsion to labour. As Victor Adler put it in 1893: 'This is the sense of the May holiday, of the rest from work, which our adversaries fear. This is what they feel to be revolutionary.

The historian is interested in this centenary for a number of reasons. In one way it is significant because it helps to explain why Marx became so influential in labour movements composed of men and women who had not heard of him before, but recognized his call to become conscious of themselves as a class and to organize as such. In another, it is important, because it demonstrates the historic power of grassroots thought and feeling, and illuminates the way men and women who, as individuals, are inarticulate, powerless and count for nothing can nevertheless leave their mark on history. But above all this is for many of us, historians or not, a deeply moving centenary, because it represents what the German philosopher Ernst Bloch called (and treated at length in two bulky volumes) The Principle of Hope[i]: the hope of a better future in a better world. If nobody else remembered it in 1990, it was incumbent on historians to do so.

[i] Originally published in 1994.