Workers Worldwide Mark May Day

Workers marked the May Day labor holiday with street protests around the world. Violent clashes erupted in Germany, where neo-Nazis and left-wing extremists went on a rampage. In Seoul, South Korean workers clashed with riot police. China, meanwhile, warned its workers that economic reform could cost their jobs but reassured them that they remained the masters of the state. In Moscow and former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Ukraine, nostalgic Communist parades marked the holiday. In Britain, May Day is not a public holiday and was marked not by workers’ marches but by traditions such as dancing around the maypole on village greens--remnants of an ancient fertility rite--and folk dancing.