ORDINARY workers offered their unique take on the meaning of May Day to the Morning Star yesterday on a thousand-strong march through Glasgow.

Anne Dean, an NHS community team manager from East Renfrewshire, said she was glad of the opportunity to gather across trade-union lines, an action made all the rarer by restrictive laws outlawing solidarity strikes.

The GMB member, who wore a Scottish Labour pin, said she had been a committed party supporter but the coming year represented a “last chance” for leader Ed Miliband to pledge legislation protecting trade-union freedoms to demonstrate and bargain collectively.

“At the moment [the party] very much lives on the back of the trade unions instead of working with them,” she said.

Fellow marcher Peter Watkins, a slater for North Ayrshire Council with the construction union Ucatt, was not one to mince his words: “It’s an opportunity to put the message across that we won’t put up with this shite.”

Mr Watkins said his union’s membership had been “swelling” across his region as the Con-Dem cuts hit home, even as work had nominally increased in the sector.

“People are realising that we’re all in it together. That’s not how the Tories meant it, but we’re realising that’s the only way out.

“If you look around today, I think this is the biggest turnout we’ve had in five years.

“Today gives you optimism: it’s not just us old guys out, it’s everyone — it’s all aspects of working people,” he said.