IMAGINE THE SCENE today: 11 young retail employees launch a strike in solidarity with oppressed people thousands of miles away, risking their livelihoods in the process.
In recession-hit Dublin in 1984, this is exactly what a group of Dunnes Stores workers did, in protest at the selling of products from apartheid South Africa.
Mary Manning, a 21-year-old cashier at Dunnes, spearheaded the protest. A customer had approached Manning at the checkout with two South African Outspan oranges, but the Dublin worker told the customer she couldn’t handle the goods because they were South African.
The southern African country was under apartheid rule at the time, a social and political policy of racial segregation and discrimination enforced by white minority governments until 1994
Manning and her colleagues embarked on a near three-year strike, a courageous action given Ireland’s unemployment predicament at the time.
Eventually, the Irish government agreed to ban the importing of South African fruit and vegetables until the apartheid regime was overthrown. Today in Johannesburg, a street is named after Mary Manning.
A plaque donated by the government of South Africa dedicated to this special group who stood firm against apartheid was unveiled outside the Dunnes Stores branch on Henry Street last year.
Former Deputy Lord Mayor Anne Carter, who proposed the plaque’s placement, commented: “Mary and her colleagues became a household name in South Africa – and across the world – and they have been personally commended by Nelson Mandela and his successor Thabo Mbeki for their actions.
“It is astonishing that there is a street named after Mary in Johannesburg, but that she and her colleagues have received so little recognition for their brave stance in their own home city of Dublin where the strike actually took place.”
