Bermuda’s first Labour Day public holiday was joyfully anticipated, celebrated and marked some 44 years ago this year, on the first Monday in September, 1982. That was September 6, 1982. This year it will be Monday, September 7.

Traditionally, the Europeans, including the United Kingdom, commemorated this day as May Day on May 1. Eventually the then-prime minister, Harold Wilson, made it a public holiday in the 1970s.

However, our vast neighbours across the wide “pond” in the United States began holding marches and other festivities to mark Labour Day in about 1882 in New York, followed by Colorado, then Massachusetts and New Jersey with parades and speeches until the US Congress decreed it a public holiday in 1894.

According to the late Richard Alexander “Doc” Lynch: “Bermuda had a workforce somewhere in the region of 38,000 and of that number less than 20 per cent consists of what could be called organised labour. Despite this, the labour movement in Bermuda has exerted an influence larger than the size of its membership would suggest.”

Comrade Lynch as he was widely known is credited, along with Kingsley Tweed, with motivating the crowds who were milling outside the movie theatres, in the city of Hamilton, during the successful 1959 Theatre Boycott organised by the Progressive Group, not to be confused with the Progressive Labour Party, which was not yet born.

As far back as 64 years ago, the first unofficial Labour Day march took place on May 1, 1960 with stalwart union workers and others marching from St George’s to the City of Hamilton carrying crosses and placards.

Throughout the creation of mankind and the development of our world, mankind has always laboured and is continuing to labour for the betterment and the beauty of our world not only physically but, more importantly, spiritually as well.

From the Garden of Eden to the Garden of the Atlantic latterly referred to as the Bermudas or the Somers Islands, which was eventually revoked about 1925 and we are now known as Bermuda, we all have laboured in one way and another and we continue to labour.

A cursory viewing of the Holy Scriptures of some of the world’s great religions, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism or the Baha’i Faith, shows they all exhort humanity/mankind to “labour”: to work, to serve our fellow man as a means of fulfilling God’s purpose.

From the Old Testament, Genesis 2:15 we read: “And the Lord God took man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

From the New Testament, Ephesians 4:28: “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the things which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.”

From Thessalonians 1:3 “Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.”

And John 6:27: “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.”

As Bermuda prepares to celebrate and mark the 2026 Labour Day public holiday on this 42nd occasion, let us pause and reflect on the many past Labour Day speakers who have grace our podium here: Mayor Andrew Young, Reverend Al Sharpton, Mayor Johnny Ford, Mayor Thurman Milner, Reverend Joseph Lowery, Mayor Sharpe James, Naomi Tutu Seavers, Mayor Robert B. Ingham, Reverend Calvin Butts, Reverend Ben Chavis, Reverend Clifton Davis, Dr Delores Tucker, Congresswoman Helen Diane Foster, Reverend Lorne Bean, Mary Moore, former Premier Alex Scott, Bill Butler and Reverend Charles Hayes, just a few outstanding ladies and gentlemen from far and near who have joined us here in Bermuda during the early days of our Labour Day holidays.

Now, as we prepare to mark the seventh Bermuda public holiday of the year, let us pause and reflect on our year so far: Twelve traffic road deaths, multiple vehicle turn-overs on our narrow winding roads, the seemingly reckless riders.

Let us not point fingers at the Bermuda Government, nor at the Bermuda Police Service but rather at ourselves — each one of us as individuals, as families, and let us ask ourselves: how do we strengthen our fundamental institutions in our midst, in our neighbourhoods, in our communities, in our parishes, institutions such as the smallest family structure — the foundation of our society, our schools and other civic entities, to help serve our collective common hopes towards contributing to a better Bermudian society for us all.

And lastly from the writings of the Baha’i Faith: “Whatever the progress of the machinery may be, man will have always to toil in order to earn his living. Effort is an inseparable part of man’s life. It may take different forms with the changing conditions of the world, but it will be always present as a necessary element in our earthly existence.

“Life is after all a struggle. Progress is attained through struggle, and without such a struggle life ceases to have a meaning; it becomes even extinct. The progress of machinery has not made effort unnecessary. It has given it a new form, a new outlet.“ (This from a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual Baha’i 26 December 1935).

So, as we celebrate the fruits of this Labour Day, let us pause and reflect on the struggle our forebears endured, underwent in order for us today to have and enjoy this public holiday. And from the writings of Baha’u’llah: “It is made incumbent on every one of you to engage in some occupation, such as arts, trades, and the like.

“We have made this — your occupation — identical with the worship of God, the True One. Reflect, O people, upon the Mercy of God and upon His favours, then thank Him in mornings and evenings.”

∙ Leighton Rochester is a former journalist and lawyer and a member of the Baha’i Faith in Bermuda