As on every warm and sunny May 1st since coming to live here, I watched yesterday as families sauntered to the Varosliget alongside a man bearing a cloud of foil balloons filled with helium to sell in the park. Unawares, they passed by closeby to our resident homeless man, who in the warmer Spring weather has returned to living on the railway embankment (see Blog for Jan. 26th).
As on all such bank holidays now, the various political parties were also gathering, this time in the wake of the general election, to lick their wounds or celebrate their successes. May the first, Labour Day or International Workers’ Day, has traditionally celebrated the rights of working people and the right to form unions which represent those same people. In Hungary, as in other European countries, approximately ten percent of the workforce is unemployed while political loyalties further divide a society increasingly disparate in terms of wealth and living standards. Thus, the political rallies which now dominate every national holiday – be it October 23rd, March 15th or May 1st – fail in every way to achieve the sense of unity that bound a society (albeit on a certain level of hardship), which could celebrate one hundred percent employment. There was then undeniably also the element of ‘them’ and ‘us’ – the ‘them’ being Kádár and the other party officials standing on the tribune, the ‘us’, everyone else. But there was no-one eeking out an existence in the city’s underpasses, disused railway carriages or woods.
We then lived on Garay tér, a small market square just off Dózsa György út. Sleep became impossible after six o’clock in the morning, as groups of people from various factories and other places of work, gathered beneath our windows. Buses arrived from every part of the country carrying thousands of people who would represent their co-operative or union. By the start of the parade at 10 a.m. the whole road had become a swathe of marching bodies, a sea of people bearing flags, banners, balloons, salami sandwiches and bottles of beer: an ocean whose current was so strong, that when I ventured around the corner I was swept along, unwittingly, behind representatives of a shoe factory, and in the midst of the sailors’ union MAHART. Speakers which had been attached to lamposts in the preceding week bellowed out communist songs, rallying cries and thunderous applause. And thus it continued for hours, the never-ending swarm of humanity - uncountable numbers - moving as one before the tribune and the statue of Lenin, until they spread out into the park behind Hősök tere: to peruse the stalls (where such rarities as Matchbox cars and Smarties could be found), to picnic – or simply to stretch out on the grass and fall asleep in the sun.
As on all such bank holidays now, the various political parties were also gathering, this time in the wake of the general election, to lick their wounds or celebrate their successes. May the first, Labour Day or International Workers’ Day, has traditionally celebrated the rights of working people and the right to form unions which represent those same people. In Hungary, as in other European countries, approximately ten percent of the workforce is unemployed while political loyalties further divide a society increasingly disparate in terms of wealth and living standards. Thus, the political rallies which now dominate every national holiday – be it October 23rd, March 15th or May 1st – fail in every way to achieve the sense of unity that bound a society (albeit on a certain level of hardship), which could celebrate one hundred percent employment. There was then undeniably also the element of ‘them’ and ‘us’ – the ‘them’ being Kádár and the other party officials standing on the tribune, the ‘us’, everyone else. But there was no-one eeking out an existence in the city’s underpasses, disused railway carriages or woods.
We then lived on Garay tér, a small market square just off Dózsa György út. Sleep became impossible after six o’clock in the morning, as groups of people from various factories and other places of work, gathered beneath our windows. Buses arrived from every part of the country carrying thousands of people who would represent their co-operative or union. By the start of the parade at 10 a.m. the whole road had become a swathe of marching bodies, a sea of people bearing flags, banners, balloons, salami sandwiches and bottles of beer: an ocean whose current was so strong, that when I ventured around the corner I was swept along, unwittingly, behind representatives of a shoe factory, and in the midst of the sailors’ union MAHART. Speakers which had been attached to lamposts in the preceding week bellowed out communist songs, rallying cries and thunderous applause. And thus it continued for hours, the never-ending swarm of humanity - uncountable numbers - moving as one before the tribune and the statue of Lenin, until they spread out into the park behind Hősök tere: to peruse the stalls (where such rarities as Matchbox cars and Smarties could be found), to picnic – or simply to stretch out on the grass and fall asleep in the sun.
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