'He had an incredible goodness in his heart': Dunnes strikers pay tribute to Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Government Buildings, during a visit to Ireland in 1998. File picture: Billy Higgins 

Two of the leaders of the Dunnes Stores strike pay their own personal tribute to the man who inspired them, writes Noel Baker. 

Mary Manning was unsure and nervous. Archbishop Desmond Tutu had requested a meeting with her and other representatives of the Dunnes Stores strike while he was travelling to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. How do you act in front of someone like that? What do you say?

They needn't have worried. 

"When we met him, [fellow striker] Karen [Gearon] and myself were really nervous about meeting him. He walked into the room and just walked over and hugged the two of us. I wasn't expecting that at all," she told the Irish Examiner on the day that the death of the archbishop was announced. 

Karen Gearon has a similar memory. "He threw us totally," she says. 

"I know it's different now, but in the eighties, nobody hugged. He had real warmth, it was just amazing. He was just a lovely man and very funny and witty."

Surreal, unreal, but true. 

On July 19, 1984, Mary had refused to sell two Outspan grapefruits in support of a union policy. She was suspended from work and nine of her co-workers walked out in support. It sparked a struggle between the workers and store management that became an international emblem of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa and thrust Mary, Karen and others into the global spotlight. 

Luckily, Archbishop Tutu was there to soften the rays.

Karen Guerin and Mary Manning, pictured in 2004, who were Dunnes Stores workers on Henry St, Dublin, in 1985 and went on strike because the store were selling South African goods. File picture: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

Just months later, on December 8, 1984, Archbishop Tutu was on his way to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, and he had asked to meet the Dunnes Stores strikers. Contact had been made through the Irish NGO Afri, which had first invited him to Ireland in 1982, when he had been refused a travel permit by the apartheid government, and again in 1984. 

As Afri tweeted on his passing, "he became our patron and a loyal friend."

Mary and Karen Gearon travelled to London Heathrow and met the then-Bishop. "I had never met anybody of such significance before," Mary says. "You're 21 years old, I didn't know how to act in front of someone like that."

But then came the hugs. 

"He was a lovely man, he put us at ease, he commended what we had done - he was awe-inspiring to us."

The women were later introduced at a press conference, boosting the actions of the Dunnes protesters at a time when they had been meeting resistance at home.

According to Karen: "You're 20 years of age, it's miserable weather, you have no backings from the trade unions, the government is against you, you've just heard the church has stood up at pulpits and told people to pass the picket...

"And then you get this man, on his way to Oslo to collect the Peace Prize, looking to meet you and he endorses what you are doing and saying this is what black South Africans have been saying we should do."

"That was the significance," Mary says. 

Sandra Griffen, Alma Bonnie, Karen Gearon, Nimrod, Mary Manning with anti apartheid activist Nimrod Sejake and Tommy Davis in 1985. File picture: RollingNews.ie

"We had been out on strike five months at that stage and getting nowhere. So the fact he was clergyman [helped], we had had a huge argument with the Irish Catholic Church, they were not supporting us at all, they were actually fighting us. And the fact that the was a black South African, and because he was collecting his Nobel Prize, it made it more significant."

The contact didn't end there. The following year Bishop Tutu sent an invitation to Mary and others to come to South Africa. The authorities refused them access, magnifying the shame of the apartheid system before the eyes of the world; in a later documentary, Archbishop Tutu said the refusal to allow Mary and others into the country backfired disastrously for the governing regime.

Karen says: "The youngest of us was 17, the eldest was 23 or 24. We were ordinary workers working in the shop, none of us were political before the strike and then we became political."

On arrival in South Africa, Karen recalls the group being held under armed guard by a 32-strong detail, feeling intimidated and scared and finally "sent home on the same plane that we arrived on.

"Tutu initially put us on a semi-world stage but the South African government put us on a massive, worldwide, planet-scale."

Desmond Tutu speaking during the One Young World Summit ceremony in 2010. File picture: Zak Hussein/PA Wire

"He saw that as a pivotal point as well," Mary says, adding that later, when the strike was finally over, another message followed, telling the group "he was proud of what we had done".

Mary describes him, alongside Nelson Mandela, as one of the iconic figures of the entire anti-apartheid struggle, and also mentions his broader humanitarianism.

"It is the end of an era, especially in the apartheid regime, he would have been one of the big iconic figures," she says.

"It's a big loss for everybody, he was such a humanitarian as well."

"You think it is not going to affect you but it does affect you. It was a big part of our lives."

Karen says: "His legacy is absolutely incredible. My abiding memory is [him] hugging me. The warmness of him and the fact that no matter what he always tried to find a peaceful solution.

"He had an incredible goodness in his heart, and that will always stay with me."