From the archive: ‘May Day: Edinburgh Demonstration’

The Labour leaders had called for a general cessation of work for the day, but there was a very limited response to their appeal in Edinburgh.

A considerable body of the working classes in the city remained at work, and of those who took a half holiday only a proportion joined the demonstration which assembled in Charlotte Square and marched by way of Princes Street and Leith Walk to Leith Docks. The demonstrators numbered about four thousand.

In front of the procession were lorries on which groups of children belonging to the Socialist Sunday schools were seated, then came the representatives of the Socialist Labour party, whose banner bore a picture of Karl Marx, followed by the Workers’ International Industrial Union, bearing their banner with the watchwords “Take and Hold” and “Abolish the Wages System”.