Dear Editor,

I had anticipated more violence during this year’s May Day demonstrations globally.

Labourers of all ages are justly concerned about their worsening standard of living, even compared to that of preceding generations.

This typically coincides with the wealthy getting wealthier – and little or no indication such significant income disparity may/will be corrected.

How could it be?

The rich and powerful basically have their interests protected by the police and/or the military, which answers to the Government. Those armed forces have to physically enforce any law or regulation, even if they do not serve the basic needs of the many but rather the additional wealth of the relative few or the one.

Thus, unjust inequities and inequalities, even in modern democratic nations, can and often enough do persist. We see this appalling reality, for example, through proliferating over-reliance on food banks, exacerbated by unrelenting inflation of food prices.

Long ago social/labour uprisings favouring the masses had occurred, albeit they rarely succeeded and only after much suffering by the peasantry.

I can’t see them happening again. I can, however, see valuable lessons having been learnt by big money/power interests to avoid repeats.

Frank Sterle Jr

fgsjr2013@gmail.com