I am often asked by my students, "What power do ordinary people have to make change in the world?" In these times of hate and ethnic, religious, and racial tensions in this nation and around the world we often feel powerless against the powerful. Yet ordinary people do have power, and not just to influence change in their own neighborhoods or countries.
This is the story of a group of 10 young Irish working-class women and one young man who worked in a shop called Dunnes Stores on Henry Street in Dublin in 1984, who made a difference in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, many thousands of miles away from where they were in Ireland.
Who were they?
The eleven Dunnes Stores workers from Henry Street were: Mary Manning, Cathryn O'Reilly, Karen Gearon, Theresa Mooney, Vonnie Munroe, Sandra Griffin, Alma Russell, Michelle Gavin, Liz Deasy, Dorothy Dooley and Tommy Davis. They were later joined by Brendan Barron who worked in the Crumlin branch of Dunnes Stores.
Dunnes Stores Anti-Apartheid Strikers Tribute:
Follow the music and step below the fold for the lyrics and the rest of the story.
Dunnes Stores, lyrics by
Christy Moore
Close your eyes and come with me back to 1984
We'll take a walk down Henry Street to Dunnes
Department store.
The supermarket's busy and the registers make a din'
The groceries go rolling out and the cash comes rolling
In.
Mary Manning is at the checkout and she's trying to
Keep warm,
When a customer comes up to her with a basket on her
Arm
The contents of the basket Mary's future is to shape
But the label clearly stated "Produce Of The Cape"
I can't check out your oranges Mrs, now won't you bring
Them back.
For they come from South Africa, where White oppresses
Black
I'd have it on my conscience and I couldn't sleep at
Night
If I helped support the system that denies Black
People's rights
Our union says "Don't Handle Them. it's the least that
We can do.
We Fought oppression here for centuries, we'll help
Them fight it too"
The managers descended in an avalanche of suits
And Mary was suspended cos she wouldn't touch the
Fruits.
Chorus:
Dunnes Stores Dunnes Stores
Dunnes Stores with St Bernard Better Value Beats Them
All
Well, her friends are all behind her and the union gave
Support
And they called a strike and the pickets brought all
Dunnes' Stores to a halt
No one was going to tell the Boss what he bought or
Sold
These women are only workers, they must do as they are
Told.
Isn't it just typical of a partite screwball law?
It's not just in South Africa, the Rich Temple and the
Poor.
He wouldn't have a boycott, he couldnt give a tinker's
Curse
Doesn't matter how he fills the shelves as long as he
Lines his Purse
Chorus
The messages came rollin' in from all around the world
For such concern and sacrifice and for courage brave
And bold.
When 14 months were over, 10 women and a man
Had helped to raise the consciousness all around the
Land.
Cleary's in O'Connell street wouldn't sell South
African shoes.
Best Man sent all their clothes back, Roches Stores
Sent back their booze.
Until all South African goods were taken off the
Shelves in Dunnes.
And Mary Manning was down in Henry Street sticking to
Her guns
Chorus
I was working on writing a piece on
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey last month, and while driving home from school, I had the radio tuned to the
Moth Radio Hour, which was broadcasting a program taped in Dublin. I heard a woman's voice, with an Irish lilt, and although I had arrived home, I stayed in the car until her portion of the program ended because the story she told was so compelling, and it was a piece of history about Ireland and South Africa I was unaware of.
Her name was Karen Gearon, and she was one of the Dunnes Stores strikers.
You can listen here, and you can see and hear her in this video, Karen Gearon, Dunnes Stores Striker speaks at ANC Mandela birthday:
How it all began
Professor Tom Lodge tells the story on the History Ireland blog:
“On Thursday 19 July 1984, Mary Manning, a cashier at Dunnes Stores in Dublin’s Henry Street, told a customer that she would not check out any Outspan grapefruits. A few minutes later she confirmed with her manager that she would not sell any South African fruit that day or any other. She was upholding a decision made by her trade union, the Irish Distributive Administrative Trade Union (IDATU). Three months earlier the union had decided that its members would not handle South African goods. Mary Manning was supported by her shop steward, Karen Gearon, who walked out of the store with her. Most of the workers at Dunnes in Henry Street went on strike that day, and eight of them joined Mary Manning and Karen Gearon thereafter. They would stay on strike for the next two and a half years, surviving on strike pay of £21 a week, returning to work only after the Irish government prohibited the sale of South African fruit and vegetables in Irish stores.”
“The protest by Mary Manning and her colleagues was exceptional—they were joined only by a single worker at another store—and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions withheld even rhetorical backing for over a year. Nor at first did their actions appear to engender much sympathy among members of the public. The strikers established a picket line outside the store entrance, attracting derision and abuse from shoppers. People called the strikers ‘nigger-lovers’ and even spat at them. Two of the strikers received a visit from the Special Branch. Public perceptions of the strike were to change, however. There was growing support for the movement, partly as a consequence of a meeting in London in December between the strikers and Archbishop Desmond Tutu while he was on his way to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.”
During the two-year-and-nine-month strike, they not only met Archbishop Tutu, they got to
address the United Nations and tell their story. In 1990, four months after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, the Dunnes Store strikers
got to meet him when he came to Dublin.
There is another important piece to that story, now being told in a documentary film, Blood Fruit, directed by Sinead O'Brien. An older black man came and joined the strikers on the picket line.
In 1948 following a general election the South African government passed a regime segregating black and whites known as apartheid. Nearly forty years later, Mary Manning a 21 year old check-out worker at Dunnes Stores in Henry Street in Dublin refused to register the sale of an Outspan grapefruit under a directive from her union in support of the anti-apartheid struggle. She and ten other workers who supported her action were suspended with immediate effect and so a strike ensued. Mary and her colleagues knew little or nothing about apartheid and assumed it would be a matter of days before they could return to work but the arrival on the picket line of Nimrod Sejake changed everything.
Nimrod Sejake (1920-2004) was a black South African who in the late 1950’s had emerged as a talented and militant union organiser and during the infamous Treason Trials he had shared a cell with Nelson Mandela. In order to avoid the death penalty he was forced into exile but continued his crusade against the apartheid system from outside of South Africa. His influence on the strikers and their struggle to bring about change proved to be the central turning point in their motivation for not only continuing the strike but advancing it on to the international stage.
Within months Desmond Tutu, the United Nations, Jesse Jackson, Unions from all over the world, the South African government and the South African Police all embroiled themselves on opposing sides of this dispute. We will expose how opposition to this strike came from all quarters – including the Irish government, the Catholic Church and most astonishingly the Anti-Apartheid Movement revealing the bitter rivalry that escalated between all parties as the eyes of the world shone on these strikers in their fight against apartheid.
In this documentary film we will follow two stories that will ultimately become one: the story of these Irish check-out workers and their two and a half year strike that only ended when the Irish government agreed to implement a complete ban of the import of South African goods and the story of Nimrod Sejake, the man from a township in Johannesburg whose own personal journey inspired these workers to change the face of the anti-apartheid movement around the world.
In 2013, the Dunnes Store strikers met Nimrod Sejake's family in South Africa, as detailed in the
Irish Times article,
‘We kept going because of Nimrod,’ Dunnes group tell activist’s family:
The group of 11 former supermarket workers, who made history in the mid-1980s by going on strike in protest against the apartheid regime, are officially in South Africa to attend events connected to the late Nelson Mandela and the union federation Cosatu. But going to Soweto, a township on the edge of Johannesburg, to visit the late Sejake’s children and grandchildren was a far more poignant and meaningful experience than even Mandela’s memorial service on Tuesday, they said.
And here’s why: In the early days of their strike, Sejake, an elderly exiled anti-apartheid activist who had spent time in jail with Mandela, was their comrade-in-arms on the picket lines outside Dunnes Stores’ Henry Street branch in Dublin. “Nearly every day he came to offer us encouragement and explain the nature of the apartheid system of governance,” recalled Theresa Mooney. “He explained why our stance against handling the South African produce was so special, unique and important.”
The strike, which began because Mary Manning was suspended for refusing to handle South African produce, lasted two years and nine months and led to Ireland being the first western country to ban goods from South Africa in 1987. Veronica Monroe summed up her feelings about Sejake: “He was even more special to us than Nelson Mandela, because we spent so much time in his company. Mandela is a great man, but I don’t know him like I know Nimrod.”
There is now a
plaque in front of the Dunnes Store on Henry Street that reads:
On the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day this plaque was dedicated to Mary Manning, a young Irish woman who led a strike against apartheid from 1984-1987. She represents the courage and commitment of women to the struggle for peace, justice and a better life for all.
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki President of South Africa 8 March 2008
Irish television, RTÉ, has a wealth of interviews and an
exhibition dedicated to the strike.
The story has not ended. Dunnes Store workers have recently staged a walkout, and have been involved in other boycotts, like one supporting Palestinians.
Teaching young people about this history opens a door to discussions about unions and worker right here at home, the odious "right to work laws," and the power of solidarity between struggles.
Ordinary people can do extraordinary things, and make a difference.