For the first time since the war, the International Labour Day march – an iconic fixture in the communist calendar - will not be seen on the streets of the Polish capital this year.

The official reason is that the march clashes with the beatification ceremony of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican and a religious parade celebrating the penultimate step in the late pontiff's path to sainthood is set to take place in Warsaw.

Warsaw city authorities have told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper however that left-wingers would have been granted a separate parade, had they applied for one.

According to the paper, the decision to leave Warsaw is political, as the celebrations are being transferred to the coastal city of Szczecin, location of the embattled former state shipyards.

“We're moving with the spirit of the times,” says Tomasz Kalita, a spokesman for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), a party created from the ranks of former communists.

“In Paris and London, the modern left is demonstrating in the vicinity of deteriorating work places. We're following in their footsteps,” he added.

“We have chose the Szczecin shipyard as its a flagship example of the incompetence of Donald Tusk's government,” he said, referring what he sees as the government’s neglect of traditional manufacturing industries such as shipbuilding. (nh)