The Irish shopworkers strike against apartheid

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1984, a 21-year-old Irish shopworker refused to serve a customer buying two South African grapefruits. Mary Manning was suspended from the Dunnes store in Dublin, and ten of her colleagues walked out alongside her in protest.

It was the start of a strike that lasted almost three years, and ended when Ireland became the first western country to impose a complete ban of South African imports.

Why did Mary do it? In 1984, she and her colleagues were part of the Irish workers’ union, IDATU, which had told its members not to sell items from South Africa.

At the time the 11 strikers knew little about apartheid – South Africa’s system of racial segregation - but they soon learnt.

Their protest would lead to them addressing the United Nations, winning praise from Bishop Desmond Tutu, and meeting with Nelson Mandela.

Mary tells Jane Wilkinson about what drove the strikers to continue despite little initial support.

(Photo: Strikers outside Dunnes store in Dublin in 1985. Credit: Derek Speirs)

Transcript

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0:29.1	Sounds. Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC Will Service with me Jane
0:39.6	Wilkinson. I'm taking you back to Ireland in 1984 when a group of Dublin shop workers went on strike for almost three years.
0:51.0	For a long time when you mentioned the strike it wasn't a positive thing people didn't look at it in a positive life
0:57.5	It's only in the last maybe 15-20 years. I suppose when Nelson Mandela mentioned us when he came over to Ireland, he kind of changed
1:05.2	people's views of us as people.
1:08.2	Because this protest wasn't about oppression in their own country, it was against racial segregation and violence
1:15.1	happening on the other side of the world.
1:19.4	South African police have shot dead 17 black demonstrators.
1:24.0	Shootings have been condemned in South Africa, in Washington,
1:27.6	and as an anti-aparte rally in London
1:30.3	where there were calls for concerted economic and other action against South Africa.
1:34.0	That was a BBC Newsnight report, one of many highlighting the brutality of South Africa's apartheid policy.
1:41.0	Ten thousand kilometers away in Ireland's capital Dublin, 21-year-old shop assistant Mary Manning was on the
	...

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