ONE OF Ireland's most bitter, long-running and unusual strikes has also become one of the first to be marked with a commemorative plaque.
Dublin's deputy lord mayor Anne Carter yesterday unveiled the plaque, which honours the 11 Dunnes Stores workers who staged a 2½-year anti-apartheid strike in the 1980s.
The dispute fundamentally altered Ireland's attitude to the regime then in power in South Africa and was regarded as an inspiration to anti-apartheid movements internationally.
Among the first to welcome the commemoration of the strike with a plaque embedded in front of Dunnes's store on Henry Street was former South African president Nelson Mandela.
"Young workers who refused to handle the fruits of apartheid 21 years ago in Dublin provided inspiration to millions of South Africans that ordinary people far away from the crucible of apartheid cared for our freedom," Mr Mandela recalled, in remarks relayed through Kader Asmal, the chairman of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement at the time of the strike.
The event also drew an admission by Labour TD Ruairí Quinn, who, as minister for labour, introduced the ban on South African fruit and vegetables that brought the strike to a successful conclusion.
He revealed that the Fine Gael-Labour cabinet was split on the issue and the sanctions were agreed only on the casting vote of taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
It would not have been possible to introduce the sanctions but for the tenacity of the strikers and their supporters, he said.
Contacted yesterday, Dr Fitzgerald said he couldn't recall the vote but that he had supported the ban.
Dunnes representatives were invited to the event yesterday but organisers said they declined to attend.
South Africa's ambassador to Ireland, Priscilla Jana, told a breakfast in City Hall later that the strike was "one of the longest, most bitter and one of the most profound acts of solidarity" of the struggle against apartheid.
"These brave men and women were in the prime of their youth then. No ego, no glory, no personal gains, just a dogged determination to fight against what they believed was unjust, unfair and inhuman."
She paid individual tribute to the 11 original strikers and a 12th who joined later - Mary Manning, Catherine O'Reilly, Karen Gearon, Theresa Mooney, Vonnie Munroe, Sandra Griffin, Alma Russell, Michelle Gavin, Liz Deasy, Dorothy Dooley, Tommy Davis and Brendan Barron.
Prof Asmal, a former minister in post-apartheid South Africa, said the strikers' actions evoked admiration from all sectors of Irish and international opinion. While there had been strikes against apartheid in Sweden and Australia, these were of short duration while the Irish strike was an indefinite one.
Brendan Archbold of the shopworkers' union Idatu (now Mandate) said the Dunnes workers had gone on an official strike by bravely and staunchly following union policy. Union members had a duty to stand by their colleagues in the developing world, but didn't always deliver on this.
All the strikers are still living in Ireland and most attended yesterday's event. Some returned to work in Dunnes after the dispute ended but didn't stay for long and have moved on to other jobs or are now raising families.
"It's a long time ago now but it changed us all," recalled Sandra Griffin.
She said the low point in the dispute was watching other Dunnes workers waving their Christmas bonuses in her face when she was on the picket line; the high point was meeting Mr Mandela when he came to Dublin in 1990 after his release from prison.
