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May Day
Set over a three-day period in mid-1930s London, 'May Day' is a fast-paced novel that follows the fortunes of a diverse range of characters as militant anger bubbles over in the East End and spills into the City and West End on May 1st.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1936
About the author
John Sommerfield
15 booksJohn Sommerfield was a British writer and left-wing activist. He worked as a merchant seaman and as a stage-hand (the subjects of his first two books) and then joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He continued writing until the 1960s.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 2, 2014
FORWARD TO A SOVIET BRITAIN! Not perhaps a slogan to inspire today’s workers, but back in 1936 these were the words that fired the imagination of a young John Sommerfield.
May Day is a novel of the immediate future – possibly just a few short months away – when the embattled workers of London have finally had enough, heed their party comrades, and come out on strike to march under the red flag on May Day. “Communist romanticism” is what Sommerfield himself calls it in his late-in-life foreword to this 1984 edition – and there is an energy in the novel that makes you think the young writer was not only excited by but absolutely confident in his imminent predictions.
Why read it now? Because Sommerfield was happily unaware of the yet-to-be-translated edict of the 1934 Soviet Writers’ Congress denouncing experimentation in favour of party-approved Socialist Realism. So May Day is experimental and often cinematic in scope, like some of the classic urban and industrial documentaries of the time. In his introduction, Andy Croft notes that in the 48 hours leading up to May Day, we experience events through over ninety different characters – emphasisizing the multiplicity of the industrial city. And it is the city – London itself – which is at the heart of the novel:
”London extends itself around the grey-silver curling worm of the river like some sprawling monster. The million sounds of machinery and voices and laughter, of traffic and typewriters and hammers and saws, of dogs barking and the cries of birth and death, the sounds of music and bicyclebells and pigeons cooing, blend together and rise into the air, varying in tone from hour to hour, the monster’s breathing.”
It is the backdrop of London that ties the vignettes of May Day together and counterpoints the sadly naive (but not too obtrusive) soviet rhetoric. And it is this London backdrop that makes the novel not just an historical curiosity but something that’s worth reading today. Even if the prose is distinctly purple, it still retains a youthful enthusiasm and vitality.
”The tide now ran swiftly with homeward hurrying workers. Under the clay, the crowded trains burrowed their wormy courses, and far from sight and sound of natural things, in a steelcased electric day that burned precariously in the dank and fearful subterranean darkness, thousands of living human beings sat thinking their lonely thoughts [...] And the scarlet buses roared through the streets, pouring east and west, north and south, packing together in a blocked, slow-moving mass, like jostling treetrunks floating down a narrow river.”
May Day is a novel of the immediate future – possibly just a few short months away – when the embattled workers of London have finally had enough, heed their party comrades, and come out on strike to march under the red flag on May Day. “Communist romanticism” is what Sommerfield himself calls it in his late-in-life foreword to this 1984 edition – and there is an energy in the novel that makes you think the young writer was not only excited by but absolutely confident in his imminent predictions.
Why read it now? Because Sommerfield was happily unaware of the yet-to-be-translated edict of the 1934 Soviet Writers’ Congress denouncing experimentation in favour of party-approved Socialist Realism. So May Day is experimental and often cinematic in scope, like some of the classic urban and industrial documentaries of the time. In his introduction, Andy Croft notes that in the 48 hours leading up to May Day, we experience events through over ninety different characters – emphasisizing the multiplicity of the industrial city. And it is the city – London itself – which is at the heart of the novel:
”London extends itself around the grey-silver curling worm of the river like some sprawling monster. The million sounds of machinery and voices and laughter, of traffic and typewriters and hammers and saws, of dogs barking and the cries of birth and death, the sounds of music and bicyclebells and pigeons cooing, blend together and rise into the air, varying in tone from hour to hour, the monster’s breathing.”
It is the backdrop of London that ties the vignettes of May Day together and counterpoints the sadly naive (but not too obtrusive) soviet rhetoric. And it is this London backdrop that makes the novel not just an historical curiosity but something that’s worth reading today. Even if the prose is distinctly purple, it still retains a youthful enthusiasm and vitality.
”The tide now ran swiftly with homeward hurrying workers. Under the clay, the crowded trains burrowed their wormy courses, and far from sight and sound of natural things, in a steelcased electric day that burned precariously in the dank and fearful subterranean darkness, thousands of living human beings sat thinking their lonely thoughts [...] And the scarlet buses roared through the streets, pouring east and west, north and south, packing together in a blocked, slow-moving mass, like jostling treetrunks floating down a narrow river.”
January 22, 2025
Weird little book on a few levels. Completely bizarre lines in an apparently serious political novel: 'it was not all love and breasts and the romance of big business', 'it was a humiliating thought to remember how dependent the world was upon the vaginas of hens'. Weird also to see evidence of the strong push for Soviet Britain in the 1930s! Not sure the form really comes off that well. Would not recommend as a read in itself, but I would say the intro by John King is well worth it. [edit: also randomly quite misogynist in parts]
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June 7, 2022The author later described this as "Communist romanticism". He's right.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews