There are those who will tell you that May Day is an anachronism. That the battles it commemorates are long won, that the movement it celebrates has served its purpose. That the world has moved on. Every year, I read that argument somewhere. Every year, I find it not merely wrong, but dangerously wrong. May Day is not a museum piece. It is a mirror. It reflects back at us issues about inequality of power and about the enduring vulnerability of working people when they stand alone. Lets face it, this is as relevant in 2026 as it was when the first workers marched under that red banner and demanded to be treated as human beings rather than units of production. With AI pushing the limits of productivity from the human workforce, these issues are as live today as they were 1887 when the Chicago Martyrs faced their deaths. The International Workers' Day we mark on the first of May was born in struggle and baptised in sacrifice. The men and women who built this tradition did not do so in comfortable circumstances. They risked their livelihoods, their liberty, and in some cases their lives, to establish the principle that workers are not a commodity. That the person who turns up to work each morning carries with them an inherent dignity that no employer, no contract, and no economic doctrine can extinguish. We owe them more than a day off. We owe them our continued vigilance. In Gibraltar, May Day has always meant something particular, but we cannot forget that for many years it was not remembered as it should be, with a Bank Holiday. Ours is a small community, built on work. The work of generations who loaded ships, worked on the docks and in the dockyard, provisioned the garrison, staffed hospitals, taught our children, policed our streets and, in more recent decades, built one of the most successful financial centres in the world. The prosperity of modern Gibraltar was not gifted to us on a plate. Our forefathers fought for it. It was constructed, brick by brick, by working people and the institutions that represented them. The trade union movement in Gibraltar is woven into the very identity of this place, and on no day is that more worth saying aloud than today. The GSLP was founded in that tradition and has governed in it, now with our Liberal colleagues.

The scholarships our students enjoy today are the way the GSLP ensured the children of working people should have the same opportunities as those of the families of the better off.

And now, when we have sat at the negotiating table in our own right, it has been the interests of ordinary Gibraltarians, working Gibraltarians, that have guided us.

That is not sentimentality.

That is the founding purpose of a labour movement, translated into the daily practice of a government born from that movement.

Governing well is not the same as just making arguments and shouting from the sidelines. The left and the labour movement exists precisely because rights, once won, must be actively defended.

The right to organise and freedom of assembly. The right to fair pay. The right to safe conditions at work. The right to a retirement lived in dignity. These are not permanent achievements. All must be defended in an increasingly competitive world.

That requires that each generation understands why they were fought for in the first place. This May Day, as I reflect on what this day means and what the left and socialist principles demand, I find myself thinking not of the past but of the future. Of the young Gibraltarians entering the workforce now. Of the pressures they will face on the cost of living, on the shape of work itself in an era of automation and artificial intelligence and on housing. On all of those, my Government has sought to provide solutions.

We will continue our work in the lifetime of this Parliament always looking to provide the answers the ordinary, working people need. That is our commitment to our people and the best way to honour the reasons why we celebrate the 1st of May. Because May Day still matters.