This Month in
Labour History

South African Boycott

In 1880 an English land agent in Ireland was in a conflict with tenants. They refusal to pay the high rent or work as labourers on the Lord’s estates. He became so unpopular that local merchants refused to serve him and he was forced to leave Ireland. His name was Charles Boycott. His name has been used ever since when people refused to support or buy something.

On July 19, 1984, a 21-year-old casher, Mary Manning, a member of the Irish Distributive Administrative Trade Union (IDATU), was at her till in Dublin’s Henry Street branch of Dunnes Stores. Her union had joined the anti-apartheid movement opposing the South African governments policies toward non-whites. All union members were told not to handle the sale of South African goods. When a customer approached Manning with South African grapefruits. Manning told her that, under instruction from her union, she was unable to register the sale. Management suspended her and marched her out of the shore. Witnessing this her shop steward called for everyone to stop work, and they marched out in unison. 

The strike was not easy. Workers were giving up their wages and fighting an uphill battle against; business, government, and the church. Slowly workers began to drift back inside. Public support was soft and racism prevalent. In the end, there were ten out on strike. 

To their own admission the strikers had very little understanding of apartheid. Then Nimrod Sejake joined their picket line. Sejake had been in exile from his home country for 20 years. A founder of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) he had been arrested and jailed. For a time, the cell mate of the future Black President Nelson Mandela. On his daily visits to the picket line, he talked about the injustices of apartheid South Africa.

Slowly support for the strikers and the boycott grew. By winter it was common to see more than 300 supporters on Saturdays. Their struggle went international when Archbishop Desmond Tutu invited the strikers to meet him in London, on his way to receive his 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. He invited them to South Africa to see apartheid first-hand. In one night of passing buckets around Dublin’s pubs and standing on street corners they raised more than £7,500 needed to travel. However, upon arrival they were arrested and deported. Passing through security gates in Dublin airport, they were greeted by a mob of supporters. 

Thanks to them the support for boycotting South African goods grew in Ireland. Finally in February 1986 the government declared a total ban on the sale of South African products. The 10 strikers returned to work one year and nine months after they had first walked out, and only when the last South African items were off the shelf at Dunnes. 

Canadian workers learnt what was happening through the work of the SACTU solidarity committee supported by many unions including CUPE. Canadians joined the boycott and forced our government to call for changes. Finally in 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections. A black majority government swept to victory and apartheid laws were scrapped. When Mandela died in 2013 the Irish government gave in to public pressure offering up one of their seats at his funeral to the Dunnes strikers. Their union paid for the other 9 to attend. Those strikers represented not only their union and country, but all the workers everywhere that used a boycott to bring about justice in the world.