‘Labour’, a centennial history of the Labour Party Socialist and workers’ parties around the world this weekend celebrate the international day of labour, or May Day. But not in New Zealand and a handful of other countries, which separately mark the contribution of the labour movement. New Zealand’s Labour Day was set on the fourth Monday of October in 1890, one year after the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris, or Second International, declared the first May Day. Common to both were demands for an eight-hour day, a call that had been answered for some New Zealand trade unionists as early as 1840 through the efforts of Auckland carpenter Samuel Parnell.