1984 Revisited: How Irish activists took a stance against apartheid

She was aware of what was going on in apartheid South Africa and had an instinctual sympathy for what was being visited on the oppressed majority there. But like the vast majority in this country, it didn’t impact on her life. And then it did.

On the day in question, she and nine other workers in the Henry Street shop refused to handle goods from South Africa. Their union, IDATU (later renamed Mandate) had passed a motion refusing to handle the goods, but it was really observed in spirit only. No other members in retail bothered much about it, but now these workers in Dunnes Stores had put their jobs on the line.

The conditions in South Africa at the time were an abomination to anybody who believed in the concept of human rights. Black people were restricted in how they lived, how they worked, how they were educated, who they married,  and what they were subjected to by the criminal code.

In 1984, the population of the country was 32.7m. Of these nearly three quarters were black, 14% white and
the remainder made up of those classified as Asian or “coloured”.

The whites ruled the country and did so in a way to maximise their wealth and influence. By the 1980s, a programme was underway to further confine black people to specific areas.

On completion, the black population would be entitled to live on 13% of the land. In order to move more than 20 miles (32km), they required a pass from the government. Frequently, they were arrested for being outside their specified zone without a pass. They were not allowed to vote.

Mary Manning was unaware of much of this. Later, she would say that she wasn’t sure what exactly was going on but she knew it was wrong.

If industrial relations had been better in their Dunnes Stores branch, things might not have gone as they did. But once they started, she and her co-workers educated themselves on the specifics.

For a long time, though, they ploughed a lonely furrow. While many others shared abhorrence of apartheid, few were willing to make a stand. Manning referenced this in her memoir, Striking Back: The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker.

“One letter after another arrived from other unions and companies that supplied Dunnes Stores, stating that while our action was a courageous one, it could not be supported for various reasons.”

The attitude was mirrored in government where the economic ties with South Africa were prioritised over any stance against a morally corrupt regime.

Support was forthcoming from various quarters, but most of it was qualified. This was even the case with Kadal Asmal, the South African who was the head of the anti-apartheid movement in Ireland at the time.

His initial warm support cooled somewhat as the strike went on. Mary believes he, like others, didn’t want to discommode the Irish establishment on which he relied for support for the cause.

The unions and the Catholic Church, including Eamon Casey who was head of Trócaire, trod warily around the strikers.

To some extent, Mary and her colleagues disrupted a comfortable order that made all the right noises from a
safe distance.

“Who were we?” she wrote in Striking Back. “Ten working class shopworkers, nine women and one man, in a recession-hit country, where most felt lucky even to have a job, striking about an issue that affected people in a country thousands of miles away.”

For Ben Dunne, then chief of the retail chain, the strike was an affront to his power. (In 2008, he apologised on RTÉ to the strikers for how he handled the whole affair.) His position certainly received support from all the people who mattered.

Mary Manning recounts how she was visited at home by members of the special branch, a unit which at the time was largely engaged in battling with the IRA.

Why the government of the day would regard a group of innocent shop workers as a threat to the State remains baffling.

The tide did turn after the strikers were invited to London to meet Bishop Desmond Tutu in 1985.

He publicly endorsed the campaign but the strike continued until April 1987. By then apartheid was crumbling under its own weight and everybody was rushing to be on the side of the angels.

In 1990, Nelson Mandela met the former strikers when he visited Dublin, pointing out that “ordinary people far away from the crucible of apartheid cared for our freedom” and kept him going while he was in prison.

With such a commendation it must all have been worth it for the young woman and her colleagues who made their stand one July day in 1984, for an oppressed people on the other side of the globe.