by  Andira Vitale

The first May Day celebrations arose pre-Christian times, with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries.

This day, when the flowers of love bloomed and were distributed, it was later celebrated as the “Defence of workers’ rights”. One of the first blood dripped on May Day, 122 years before our time, in the small industrial town of Fourmies. The tradition of giving flowers to loved ones on May 1 was also present here. Young betrothed couples had given each other branches of flowering buckthorn for centuries. On this beautiful day, the flowers will be covered with blood; after that day, the flower of love and the labour day will never be separated…

It was May 1, 1891. Half of the Fourmies, where Maria Blondeau lived as a cotton worker, were in the textile industry. Of the 6,910 residents, 3,790 worked in the textile industry. The workers’ wages were low, and the working hours were long. The Young French Workers’ Party also opened a local branch here. They grew more robust, and workers that day, including Maria Blondeau, demanded the eight-hour day and a rise in wages.

At 5 in the morning, the activity started in the city. Demonstrators oscillated between factory occupations and street parades. Although the atmosphere was festive initially, the situation became tense after the gendarmes arrested a dozen demonstrators at 3 pm. From then on, Maria Blondeau took charge of the regiment, along with her fiancé Kléber Giloteaux and other young workers. In the foreground were the “May bearers”, a group of young girls who played a significant role in the May Day celebrations. They were responsible for holding bouquets of hawthorn, the symbol of spring, and leading the procession. Maria was one of these ‘May bearers’. She also carried the hawthorn bouquet her fiancé had given her early that morning. At 18:15, a single salvo was fired without warning after a final series of quarrels. The proximity between the soldiers who came, in addition to the gendarmerie and the demonstrators gathered in the village square, caused the sudden death of nine people and the injury of more than 35.

One of the dead was Maria Blondeau. She was holding a bloody branch of “buckthorn” in her hands. Just that morning, her fiancé had given her this flowery branch, the symbol of lovers. Born into a humble working-class family like herself, Maria became the symbolic figure of the day on May 1, 1891. With a flower in hand…

The symbolic image of Maria Blondeau, a worker holding a bouquet of bloody hawthorn in the face of the police’s violence, has made her one of the emblematic figures of nonviolent struggles and the defence of workers’ rights. Her image, particularly the depiction of her holding the ‘May bearers’ bouquet, has had a significant influence, mainly in the register of popular songs. These songs, which often recount the events of that fateful May Day, remind workers of the sacrifices made in the fight for their rights.

On the first day of May, people present a stalk of Hawthorn flowers to their relatives or strangers. These flowers and May Day are inseparable from this time; they are remembered together.