And whether you’re keeping the red flag flying here, celebrating the Internationale or just twirling around a maypole it’s Mayday Bravo today.
It was, of course, an Irishman, Jim Connell, who came up with the emotive words in 1889 to go with the tune O Tannenbaum.
He had been travelling by train, where you can do a lot of your thinking, in London.
So to mark May Day we’ll revive our Rainy Days and Songdays occasional series with these May Day tunes.
Way to go, Joe
Folk champion: Joan Baez
Joe Hill – Joan Baez: And this workers anthem relates to a union leader, framed on a murder charge and executed in Salt Lake City.
But the organiser stands for everyman and of course returns to the narrator in a dream.
And in typical American storytelling style it covers the geography of the whole country… from San Diego up to Maine.
Lennon doctrine
Comrade Lennon: And Jimmy in Prague
Working Class Hero – John Lennon: They were more Lennon than Lenin in Prague during Soviet rule.
When they would congregate at the Lennon wall to protest.
Lennon, the Working Class Hero from Liverpool, has influenced as many if not more around the world from Hamburg to New York and beyond.
Tennessee tunes
Music town: Memphis, Tennesse
Sixteen Tons – Tennessee Ernie Ford: This ditty of a song with the catchy refrain derives from Kentucky’s Merle Travis in 1947.
And the line ‘You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt” came from a letter written by Travis’s brother John.
We’ve taken Tennessee Ford’s 1955 version which hit the top of the Billboard charts and was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.
The New Boss
Something to say: The Who
Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who: And the Cockney Four whose shows were as much about menace as music nail it here.
And they captured the working class fascination of the Mods in Quadrophenia in their odyssey to Brighton.
But it’s this anthem against The Man and its clarion call: ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’
Lady Donna
Summer time: Donna Summer
She Works Hard For The Money – Donna Summer: Now you might not associate the Queen of Disco with a societal message.
But the New Yorker penned this after seeing a toilet attendant asleep on her shift at a post-Grammy event in West Hollywood.
And a reminder too for all that while music is replete with messages of working men, working women have had it just as bad and worse.
I must have been one of the very few kids in Glasgow to be lullabied to sleep with old Republican songs… and because of that and my own journey I’m an avowed internationalist republican which is why today I say Vive La Republic of Barbados.
Now you’ve heard me wax lyrical already many times about the magical island of Barbados and my Kiss With Rihanna and Rumba there.
And Bim, as it is affectionately known (hence me being known on the island as Bim Jim) is the talk of the Scottish and British Travel scene with the Bridgetown route rolling out from Edinburgh next month.
Now to celebrate Barbados becoming the latest country to throw off the shackles of monarchy and go out on their own, here’s to all those nations who have taken their destiny in their own hands.
And decided to be governed by one of their own.
Now a true republic, just like a true democracy or a true anything these days in double speak, is a moveable object.
But you’ve got to start somewhere which is why we’re going with 160 (now Barbados have signed up).
All republics lead from Rome
And if you know you’re Classic History, and my Latin is better than my Ancient Greek then you’ll know that republic derives from the two Latin words res and publica (public thing).
So that’s one of the famous things that ‘the Romans did for us’ although, of course, if you’re British then it’s an experiment from which we’ve run far away.
Apart, of course, from a brief period from 1649-1660 when these islands of Britain and Ireland entered into a Commonwealth which was really a theocracy.
But while Westminster claims to be the mother of all parliaments (doubtful, and Europe’s oldest in Iceland might have something to say about that).
It’s Rome which is the mothership of all republics, and we have the good fortune that the Forum, the hub of Roman public life is still there.
No fools those Ancient Romans though with their togas as I found out when I almost fainted in the Eternal City heat in my modern clothes.
An Italian fixture
Venice: And let’s catch a gondola back to Padova
Now where Rome led the rest of Italy followed.
And chief among them was the 1100-year Venetian Republic which still styles itself thus and is hewn into every gondola and the very bricks of the Campanile.
Florence, Siena, Amalfi, Pisa and Genoa all saw what the Doges were doing and how fetching their hats were and followed suit.
But the republicaniest of all the republics and the longest-standing is San Marino.
And so what they lack in football skills (0-10 v England) they more than make up for in their political skills.
La Republique, mais oui
Je suis L’Empereur: Napoleon
Ah, yes, the French. like so much, would have us believe that they are the shining light of Republics.
So much so that they have had five of them ever since Corsican Napoleon got le ball rolling.
Notre ami soon decided though that L’empereur sounded so much better…
And he did that with one arm behind his back (or affectedly tucked in his jacket then).
It must be a poncey royal thing because the UK’s Prince Charles who very graciously decided to attend the signing-over papers to the Bajans (and bag himself some sun at the time) does pretty much the same thing.
And on a tangent we’ll not say anything about the carbon footprint, Prince Save The World.
None of us are perfect, of course, it’s just the rest of us don’t bleat on about it and preach to the rest of us who do hop on planes.
Middle Ages and Middle Europe
Can I be trusted on a bike? In Amsterdam
The breeding ground for republics in the Middle Ages was what we now know as Germany.
And a quick count chronicles 62 in the northern European powerhouse.
All of which would be a good exercise and excuse to traverse modern-day Germany with a Michael Portillo type notebook.
I’d have to start in my favourite German city Hamburg first of course.
There are some who have gone the opposite way to the Bajans and jumped from republic to monarchy like the Dutch.
Others who have had a brief dalliance with republicanism, Catalonia, and still have hopes of a return to those halcyon days.
Battle hymn of the Republic
Southern men: At the statue of Stonewall Jackson at Manassas
Yes, their eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
And while the North eulogised its Republic, the South too held its close to its bosom, albeit for just five years.
That said the Confederate States of America still exist in the hearts and minds of many in the Deep South.
And you don’t need me to tell you that that was the first battle of the US Civil War.
Post-colonial
Cool for cats… in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
There were, of course, a rash of republics in the post-colonial world which is where Barbados join us now.
While in Africa and Asia the cry went up for the ‘public thing’ which alas all too quickly became the ‘dictator thing.’
And because of these precedents it ratchets up our hope that the South African Rainbow Nation experiment proves successful despite its challenges.
And the USSR and its satellites
The voice of Dresden: With Ingrid in Dresden
Dogmatic ideologists, of course, think nothing of hijacking the word republic for something that looks nothing like it.
And hovering up previously self-governing nations, which is where Russia came in and formed the bloated Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic.
Unless I find me a time machine a trip back to those days will inevitably elude me, although that’s where museums and heritage come in.
And you can still immerse yourself into the spirit of those days on any trip out there.
Which is exactly what you get when you visit the old DDR.
Now we all know of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie but more of us should visit the mural to communism which stands as a reminder of Russian misrule and occupation in Dresden.
Irie, Barbados
It’s a republic, now: With Ruby in Barbados
And so good luck to the incumbent President of Barbados. Sandra Mason, incidentally also the last governor-general.
Vive La Republic of Barbados.
I’ll raise a glass of rum punch to you on the official date of handover tomorrow.
Which is a shared holiday, Barbados’s National Day, and Scotland’s too.
In Scotland, Barbados: Honest
And until my own native land becomes a republic (I’m not holding my breath) I’ll. mark yours, and America’s and France’s.
And the whole lot of you, 160 or so, who have taken the revolutionary step of deciding that you wanted to be ruled by someone of the people.
But it would be safe to assume he would have been at the forefront of all the great struggles of our day.
The Fall of the Wall, Apartheid, Black Lives Matter, Freedom from Covid.
Lennon bestrode his world, leaving his imprint, and still does.
And as his adopted New York celebrated his legacy by turning the Empire State Building blue, here are four Lennon cities.
Liverpool Lou Lennon
Liverpool 4
Oh Liverpool Lou, lovely Liverpool Lou, why don’t you behave like other girls do?
And we have Yoko Ono to thank for knowing this, that John would sing this song, his Mum’s fave, around the house.
John’s statue stands alongside his pals on the Liverpool waterfront near the Beatles Story museum.
Lennon is everywhere in his home city and the under-threat Cavern Club is a good first stop while let someone else do the work for you on their Magical Mystery tour.
Growing up in Hamburg
I didn’t grow up in Liverpool, I grew up in Hamburg.
Not that John was dissing his home city, it was just that he was giving an honest reply to a reporter.
Lennon and the boys (five of them then, with Stuart Sutcliffe on board and with Pete Best instead of Ringo Starr) lived in Hamburg between 1960-62.
On the road again, I just can’t wait to get on the road again, the life I love is makin’ music with the my friends, and I can’t get wait to get on the road again.
Willie Nelson
And when I was asked by woman-of-many-trades (she asked me to write this) Aileen Eglington to pick my song for her Destinations Anywhere show on Dublin South FM I plumped for Willie Nelson’s classic to the Open Road.
And so continuing my top roads I’ve been on (or hope to trudge) which included the Appian Way, Rome. Beale Street, Memphis, The King’s Highway in Jordan, the Royal Mile, Edinburgh and Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem On the Road again… I give you five more.
The arc of angels
There’s a golden sun. Photo by TravelingTart on Pexels.com
Avenue desChamps-Elysees, Paris: And, yes, you are taking your life into your own hands when you cross the road here.
The Arc de Triumph with its record of French victories is, of course, the centrepiece although there hasn’t been an inscription on it for many a year. Either in war or the Tour de France which passes through it. See https://en.parisinfo.com.
Aspiring Dublin
O’Connell Street, Dublin: And if you like your streets lined with historical statues then this is for you.
At one end is the Liberartor Daniel O’Connell, with bullet holes from the Easter Rising, and at the other ‘The King of Ireland’ Charles Stewart Parnell. There’s the modern-day Centennial Spire but my favourite is the statue of workers’ hero Jim Larkin. See http://www.visitdublin.com.
The long, long road
Yonge Street, Toronto: And why let the facts get in the way of a good story. The Guinness Book of Records tagged it as the longest in the world until it became clear that they were conflating the Downtown Street with Ontario Highway 11 to make it 1,896kms.
When it’s actually 56kms long. And this being Toronto it’s cleaner, safer and with a laid-back vibe than New York which it is often unfavourably compared to. See http://www.seetoronto.com and Canadian high.
It’s a Shambles
The Shambles, York, England: The Old York, as it’s never called, has something the New York has.
This has overhanging timber-framed buildings that date from the 14th century. And if you like your trains there’s also the National Railway Museum. See https://www.visityork.org.
A night on Der Town
Beatles history in Hamburg
And if it’s good enough for the Beatles then…
This is where the Beatles grew up and George Harrison got his first taste for mud-wrestling Germans. It’s the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. And let Stefanie Hempell who runs the best music tour you’ll find.
The Lennon Wall, Prague
