Pitched Battle

by Larry Writer

  Given his views, did Bedford consider withdrawing from the Australian tour to make a stand against apartheid, as the Australian players had done? ‘Never, even though I knew our government was using us to lend legitimacy to apartheid and other policies, because I felt that every opportunity for all of us to experience life in advanced democratic countries and broaden our outlook should be taken, so then, using our prestige as Springboks, we could be inspired and come home and press for change. But, of course, we maintained a laager mentality on that terrible tour, too.’

  Two months before the Springboks flew out, Australian Rugby Union president Charles Blunt wrote to the Springboks to allay their qualms about the hostile reception that awaited them in Australia. His letter, headed, ‘We Will Not Haul the Flag Down’, assured them that their tour was being warmly anticipated by the great majority of Australians, who, like themselves, were fair-minded sports-lovers ‘who know no politics, colour or creed’. Yes, troublemakers were threatening to disrupt the tour, but they should have no doubt that it would proceed to schedule. ‘The solidarity of public opinion in favour of this tour will prevail and the elements who attempt to disrupt our game will find it a problem in which they will inevitably become involved with the law.’ For the ARU, this tour was ‘a venture in sport promotion because for the first time in our history we are bearing the financial responsibility of bringing a national team on a major tour. Normally we might have expected to proceed unhampered with our arrangements but obstacles have been placed in our way. Opinions on whether we should proceed or decide to cancel the tour are varied but with South Africa willing to undertake the tour and with the Australian Government supporting us, we feel that to withdraw would be to haul down the flag. That is not the spirit of Australians.’

  W.R. McManis, chairman of the executive committee of the New South Wales Rugby Union (NSWRU), sensing the growing anger in rugby union circles at the prospect of protesters coming between them and their sport, added an addendum, aimed as much at reminding local authorities of their responsibilities and hosing down rugby fans as reassuring the Springboks about their safety: ‘Security measures during the tour of Australia by the South African Rugby team pose a big problem. The ARU and the NSWRU look to the normal law enforcement bodies, the Commonwealth and the State Police, to carry out protective and preventive measures to ensure the safe conduct of all matters pertaining to the tour. It is realised that attempts at disruption will be made, but assurances have been received from the Commissioners of Police that all steps necessary will be taken by the forces at their command to control any breaches of the law. It is particularly emphasised that any outbursts of violence be left to the authorities to deal with and therefore rugby supporters are asked not to engage in any way with demonstrators.’

  Addressing Australian rugby folk, Charles Blunt continued to insist that there was no cause for alarm and all was rosy in rugby’s garden. The demonstrators, he insisted, were clueless, and their plans to ruin the tour would never get off the ground. Moreover, Australia’s international standing would be enhanced by hosting the Springboks. By welcoming them, Australia was demonstrating its concern for other countries’ problems. ‘We, as Australians, must show the rest of the world that the only way understanding can be achieved is by tolerance, understanding and patience.’ Blunt believed in something he called ‘the inevitability of gradualism’. Australian sportsmen, by extending their hand to the South Africans, were doing ‘more to break down racial prejudice than any other single entity in the world. We have never once asked how they choose their teams and, as sportsmen, I hope we never do.’ Blunt’s blithe assurances were met with hilarity in anti-apartheid circles.

  Yet Blunt was not quite as confident as he appeared. Through an intermediary, he sought an urgent meeting with Prime Minister William McMahon to gauge whether the government would guarantee that the tour would proceed despite the mounting opposition, and to impart a not-so-subtle message that, because the ARU had invested heavily in it, if the politicians cancelled the tour the government might have to financially compensate the rugby body. McMahon received the following note from a mandarin: ‘Apr 20. Mr Jack Pollard telephones. He is a publisher and author of several books on sport and acts in an honorary capacity as an adviser to the Rugby Union. He stressed that he is not a salaried PR man but his only interest is love of the game. On Mr Pollard’s recommendation, Mr Charles Blunt, president of the Australian Rugby Union, wishes to call on you. Mr Pollard understands Mr Blunt is well known to you … The ARU is terribly worried about the forthcoming South African tour. They feel it could blow up politically and they have an enormous amount of money at stake. For a major tour like this money has been outlayed [sic] over several years already. They are very anxious that nothing should go wrong. The purpose of Mr Blunt’s call would be to brief you on an “off the record” basis. They feel you should know the exact position about this potentially difficult matter. Mr Pollard did mention that in Britain when the British Minister of Sport cancelled a cricket tour by South Africa, a large amount of compensation was paid by the British Government to the sporting authorities. Mr Blunt would like to see you within the next 10 days and could travel to Canberra at any time you nominate. Do you wish to see Mr Blunt?’

  If McMahon and Blunt met, there is no record of such a meeting taking place, but soon after, the prime minister released a statement outlining his position on the impending tour by the Springboks. The government, while insisting that it despised racism and abhorred apartheid and believed that there should be no discrimination in sport on the grounds of race or colour, took the line that nations had the right to make their own laws, and therefore it was not Australia’s place to meddle in South Africa’s internal affairs. Also, politics and sport were separate entities. One must never be allowed to impact on the other, declared the government (rising above the inconvenient truth that non-whites were ineligible for the Springboks because of the political policy of apartheid). The government believed that international sporting competitions were best arranged by the sporting associations concerned. And the Springboks were fine sportsmen representing a country that was an old and true friend and a trading partner of Australia. The tour would go ahead. The statement ended: ‘The Australian Government has a duty to prevent violence in protests and demonstrations and it believes that Australian citizens should not be prevented from watching visiting sporting teams if they wish to do so.’

  There was an early portent of the mayhem to come when in Canberra on 10 April two men in Nazi uniforms barged into a group of anti-apartheid campaigners standing vigil outside the South African Embassy holding signs saying ‘Stop the Springbok Tour’ and ‘Ban the Boks’. Garry Mangan, 24, was charged with striking Lawrence Somosi. In court, Mangan professed not to know what the fuss was about. ‘I was only doing my duty hitting nigger lovers,’ he reasoned to the magistrate, who, despite this defence, found him guilty and fined him $10. The following month, four Australian National University students were arrested in the grounds of the embassy and charged with trespassing.

  ACTU president Bob Hawke — with the Springboks, the government that supported them, and the Australian government that supported them in his sights — ordered unionists servicing aircraft and airports or employed in the hospitality industry to black ban any racially selected South African sporting team. The majority of associated unions agreed to obey their fiery leader.

  Charles Blunt bristled at the refusal of domestic airlines TAA and Ansett to fly the Springboks around the country and at threats by the Transport Workers Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Sheet Metal Working Industrial Union, and the Storemen and Packers Union to ground any charter airline or private airline that attempted to fill the breach and carry the players. ‘We’ll find transport for the South Africans even if we have to carry them on our backs,’ he bristled. And if hotels and land transport were denied to the visitors by unions, rugby supporters in each state
had pledged private accommodation and cars to the players and officials. Blunt’s South African counterpart, Danie Craven, said his players would hitchhike around the country if need be. ‘The tour is definitely on, even if there is a total public transport boycott against us.’

  The union bans prompted The Sydney Morning Herald to join with the prime minister in accusing Hawke of seeking to usurp the role of the elected government. By imposing black bans on the Springboks, the union movement had misjudged the electorate, which did not generally support apartheid but resented being dictated to by unions. The newspaper expressed its disappointment that Hawke’s challenge to authority was consequently undermining any gains made by the anti-apartheid movement, and dooming the Labor Party to defeat at the 1972 general election. ‘The South African rugby tour boycott cannot be excused as an isolated and special misuse of trade union power. On the contrary, it is the culmination of a number of issues on which the ACTU leadership of Mr Hawke has attempted to impose its will on the people in areas outside his legitimate field.’ To lend weight to his case, the editorialist quoted a Labor MP who was worried that Hawke’s bans would harm his party.

  In April, to rally Australian opposition to the rugby tour and give advice on strategy to protesters, CARIS and the AAM invited two eloquent and charismatic international anti-apartheid campaigners: Bishop Edward Crowther, the former bishop of Kimberley in South Africa and now assistant bishop of California and lecturer in South African affairs at the University of California, who had been deported from his native land in 1967 for speaking out against the government; and Peter Hain, the 21-year-old economics student and chairman of Britain’s Young Liberal Movement, who had organised the demonstrations that derailed the 1969–70 Springbok rugby tour of Britain and caused the cancellation of the ’71 cricket tour of England by South Africa. Hain was born in Kenya in 1950, and lived in South Africa until age 16, when his parents (leaders of the Liberal Party) were jailed without trial and cast out of their homeland for their outspoken opposition to apartheid. Jim Boyce believes ‘Peter Hain not only gave heart to the major figures in the Australian anti-apartheid movement, he also lent intellectual weight to the campaign.’

  In October 2014, in the final days of a successful political career as a Labour MP, 64-year-old Peter Hain remembered the heady days of 1971 when as a young anti-apartheid activist he came to Australia to counsel anti-apartheid activists on the tactics that had made his Stop the Tours campaign in Britain such a notorious success. ‘I received a call from Peter McGregor on behalf of CARIS and the AAM. He’d seen what we achieved in Britain, which was pretty seismic in terms of isolating South Africa from international sport. He invited me to Australia to talk to his campaigners and spread the word in the media that the Springbok tour should be stopped. Peter agreed to fund the plane trip, which meant I could fly to Australia for a few weeks. I arrived early in the morning and within an hour I was in a press conference in Sydney and very shortly after that on the road up to Brisbane. I did a lot of TV, radio, and newspaper interviews and had private meetings with activists talking about how we’d disrupted the rugby and cricket matches in the UK, discussing some of the problems we’d encountered and some of the opportunities. I spoke at big public meetings on university campuses in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide, getting enormous coverage. My message was always that stopping these sporting tours was a way of hitting decisively at apartheid in South Africa. Hitting South African sport seemed to be the only tactic that had an effect.

  ‘People like us couldn’t fight big business, but we could stop rugby and cricket tours. We invaded the fields while games were being played, lay down on the grass and had to be dragged off. We released rabbits onto the field at Twickenham. We gummed up the door locks in the footballers’ hotels so they couldn’t get out and the doors had to be broken down. We made it a disastrous tour for the Boks. What we did terrified white sports officials in South Africa. Despite their evil system of apartheid, and status as pariahs of the world, they could still trade, host tourism, do business, and be accepted as respectable guests in the sports arenas of the world, but now their sport was being stopped and they hated it.’

  Nelson Mandela himself later told Hain that the anti-Springbok campaigns in Britain and Australia had lifted his spirits while he was imprisoned on Robben Island. ‘He and his colleagues followed proceedings avidly and took heart as the tide turned. What we were doing gave them hope. Although we were trying to have economic sanctions and other cultural boycotts imposed, the direct action at sporting events, which I think I pioneered, was something that those collaborating with apartheid, such as sporting bodies in Britain and Australia, had never encountered. They’d been used to symbolic opposition, anti-apartheid protesters writing letters to newspapers, raising the subject in Parliament, keeping passive vigil outside grounds. But to actually physically interfere, that was something else again. When we were passive, we were treated disdainfully by rugby authorities, but when we threatened the tours in a physical, tangible way, that’s when it worked.’

  At his many gatherings in Australia, Hain stressed the importance of getting inside the ground and onto the field to disrupt a match in progress. Hain was not interested in peaceful vigils. ‘My priority was physically stopping the matches. So we talked about how we’d scale the perimeter fence, chain and handcuff ourselves to the goalposts … how we’d lay siege to the Boks at their hotels … all of which would be done in Australia.’ He also stressed that ruining the rugby union tour would make it impossible for the Springbok cricket series to be staged that summer.

  Hain schooled campaigners in how to answer those who argued that politics should never interfere in sport. ‘My point was that what made South African sport unique was that politics infested every part of it, that is, you could not play for your national side if you did not have white skin, you couldn’t play provincial sport if you did not have white skin, you couldn’t play mixed sport at school, and the schools themselves were segregated. For example, as a schoolboy in Pretoria I couldn’t play with or against anyone without white skin. Even beyond that, at sports grounds the spectators were segregated by law, amenities were segregated — you couldn’t use the same toilets, the same baths. Even if you were a black rugby player playing in a black rugby competition wanting to go to an away match, you had to get permission endorsed on your pass, because every black South African carried a pass restricting them to their municipal area. So apartheid infested every nook and cranny of sport, it was right at the heart of it, and politics was right at the heart of apartheid. This was different from objecting to playing against teams from the Russian regime or fascist Chile, because in those countries the regime’s oppressive politics did not influence or reflect the structure of their sport. South Africa’s did.’

  Another question Hain was often asked was how far should demonstrators go to stop a match. Running onto the field and stealing the football or chaining yourself to the goalposts, making noise, setting off smoke bombs — such non-violent direct action was fine. What was not was physical violence, no matter the provocation. ‘We never hurt people, not purposely, although we were often badly assaulted ourselves by police, rugby stewards, or the public. Violence is not running onto a football field and sitting down and then being dragged away or making noise to keep your target awake at night. Throwing rocks at people, hitting people, exploding tear-gas canisters, that’s violence. I never advocated, although I’ve been blamed for it, spreading tin tacks or broken glass on the field, because these could cause serious injuries to the players.’

  In the short time he was in Australia, Hain was impressed by the enthusiasm of local campaigners. ‘The environment in Australia and the radical spirit was very similar to that in Britain 18 months earlier. There was a terrific belief that we were doing something important to right a terrible wrong. We had a direct impact on all that happened later. Energy and dedication shone from Meredith and [her sister] Verity Burgmann … Meredith im
pressed me as dynamic, charismatic, a brilliant organiser and motivator, very brave. Fantastically brave. That recklessness. A figurehead of the campaign.’ Hain, in fact, felt considerably more than admiration for Verity Burgmann. The two had a long-lasting relationship.

  Peter Hain was also impressed by Bob Hawke and his leadership of the ACTU. ‘The Australian trade unions did much more than the British unions, which never managed to organise hotel and airline workers to boycott the Springboks.’

  On arrival in Australia, Bishop Crowther, tall, imperious, and with a ringing, mellifluous voice made for the pulpit, accused the Australian government of supporting the racist South African regime by green-lighting the Springbok tour. When denouncing apartheid, he always pronounced it ‘apart-hate’. ‘It’s not the appalling deeds of a few evil men which make the darkest pages of history, but the indescribable silence of many good people.’ For welcoming the Springboks, the Australian government were in that category. It was not too late for Prime Minister McMahon to withdraw the invitation to the Springboks and in so doing denounce apartheid. ‘People in Australia are not well-appraised with the situation in South Africa … I would never demonstrate against an individual sportsman, but this racially-segregated team, in Prime Minister Vorster’s own words, are the ambassadors of the South African way of life. And what a loathsome way of life it is.’

  Crowther said he wanted opinion-makers, politicians, sports people, church leaders, and academics to alert the public to what was happening under apartheid so good Australians would turn their backs on the tour. ‘South Africa sends sportsmen here to test Australia’s reaction to apartheid, and by accepting their all-white teams, Australia is implicitly accepting their racist policies. Australia is one of the few countries South Africa can call a friend.’ Australia stood condemned for never having officially raised its voice against apartheid. Critics of Crowther accused him of being an ‘ignorant blow-in’ and, in the case of Country Party MP P.E. Lucock, ‘a “so-called” Bishop trying to sow the very seeds of hatred we are trying to overcome’.