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TO BUILD SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE, LABOUR MOVEMENT MUST LOOK TO THE
PAST  
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Chris Webb
October 2, 2024
Socialist Project: The Bullet
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_ Drawing lessons from history does not mean we romanticize past
struggles. For a new generation of labour activists, however, they
demonstrate that this work has been done before, and that it requires
an array of tactics to build worker power. _

UAW-Canada President Bob White and South African anti-apartheid
activist Archie Sibeko (Zola Zembe) at the founding convention of the
UAW-Canada, 1985. Photo by Murray Mosher, (photo by Murray Mosher).

 

The South African anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 80s serves
as a significant source of inspiration for Palestine solidarity
activists today. The reasons for this are hardly surprising; the
movement was widely successful in pushing for sanctions and divestment
at multiple levels of government, in business and across civil
society. Less attention, however, is paid to exactly how this movement
was so successful, what strategies and tactics it employed, and how
these might be adapted by labour activists organizing around Palestine
today.

It is worth remembering that opposition to South African apartheid was
not a given for Canada’s labour movement. It took dedicated
organizing amidst polarizing Cold War attitudes to get union
leadership on side. Solidarity, after all, is not something that
pre-exists, or can easily be assumed based on abstract principles—it
has to be built through the messiness of social and political
struggle.

The Canadian anti-apartheid movement provides a wealth of examples for
understanding solidarity as a theory and practice shaped by both the
global reach of capitalism and structures that opposed it. But there
is another reason for re-examining this history. Today, certain
segments of Canada’s ruling elite, from university presidents to Bay
Street executives, have an unearned reputation as friends of Mandela.
Such revisionism overlooks how powerful people were either indifferent
to or complicit in the endurance of apartheid.

Organizing from above and below

Between March 13 and 19, 1986, over 30,000 Canadian workers embarked
on a series of unprecedented labour actions in solidarity with South
African workers. Following the call from the African National Congress
(ANC) to boycott all South African goods and services, they refused to
connect phone calls with South Africa, sell airline tickets bound for
South Africa, offload ships with South African goods aboard, and
deliver mail with South African addresses.

The week of action was organized by the SACTU Solidarity Committee
(SSC), a group that had been actively organizing among Canadian
workers since the early 1980s. The actions involved years of
organizing among union members and were officially sanctioned by
labour leadership who promised to defend any member disciplined for
their actions. Jean-Claude Parrot, then president of the Canadian
Union of Postal Workers, personally blocked delivery trucks entering
the South African embassy in Ottawa.

How was it that a small group of Toronto-based activist were able to
coordinate a cross-Canada boycott of South African goods and services
and do so with the support of Canada’s labour leadership?

SACTU, or the South African Congress of Trade Unions, was a national
trade union federation formed in 1955. It was closely allied with the
ANC and the South African Communist Party and advocated for both
economic and political rights for South African workers. By the
mid-1960s many of its leaders had been banned or exiled, and it
operated clandestinely from offices in London and Lusaka while
maintaining connections with underground union structures inside the
country. SACTU was formally affiliated with the World Federation of
Trade Unions (WFTU), composed largely of trade unions from Soviet and
non-aligned nations. During the 1970s and 80s it worked to build
support among Western trade unions in Europe and North America.

The SACTU Solidarity Committee emerged from the campus based
anti-apartheid movement of the late 1970s, specifically the Free
Southern Africa Committee in Edmonton. Two student activists, Ken
Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, came into contact with SACTU exile leaders
in Canada and through them they worked directly with SACTU leadership
in London. They were tasked with recording an oral history of the
union and writing its history. The resulting book, _Organize or
Starve: A History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions_, was
among the first histories of South Africa’s labour movement. Inside
South Africa. It was banned and had to be smuggled into the country
disguised as a bible.

After returning to Canada, Luckhardt and Wall were given a mandate by
SACTU’s leadership to start a solidarity group that could make
inroads with Canadian unions. The committee began organizing in
Ontario in 1980, producing a regular newsletter and contacting
sympathetic union activists and leaders. One of the first challenges
they faced was convincing Canadian unions to support SACTU. The major
unions, if they thought about international issues at all, largely
followed the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), which was hostile to any
communist-aligned unions.

The situation in South Africa was headline news during this period.
Internally the struggle was intensifying, and Canadian unions
expressed interest in education around South African labour issues. By
1982, the committee had completed a series of cross-Canada tours with
SACTU leaders, speaking to smelter workers in Kitimat and public
sector workers in Québec. The tours served a dual purpose. They
communicated the issues facing South African workers to the Canadian
public, and they legitimized the group among Canada’s labour
leadership.

This work allowed them to secure meetings with influential union
leaders, including Bob White, the Canadian leader of the United Auto
Workers (UAW) and Jean-Claude Parrot of the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW). Jane Armstrong, one of the committee’s core members,
remembers that the support of White and Parrot was critical to the
early success of the committee. “It meant that through their
approval we got access to the locals, and through them we branched out
and started our educational work.” With leadership’s backing they
were invited to attend local meetings across southern Ontario, and
later across the country. Through this they built a roster of local
activists to distribute newsletters and educational materials and
fundraise for the SACTU strike fund, to which Canadian workers
ultimately donated over $250,000.

The committee’s initial success was due to a number of factors.
First was their ability to have a core group of organizers working
full-time on organizing and education campaigns. One of the
committee’s key members, Ken Traynor, describes how they would use
the benefits provided by a more generous Unemployment Insurance system
at the time. They worked the required number of weeks to receive
benefits and then worked full-time as organizers. Central to their
outreach and education work was their ability to win over labour
leadership and gain access to union locals in key economic sectors.
Sam Gindin, research director with the UAW’s Canadian section at the
time, recalls that having a charismatic labour leader like White on
board made all the difference to the committee. “When Bob was behind
things like this, it lent them credibility, so you could go to a CUPE
or steelworker local and say Bob White supports us, and it
mattered.”

Another critical component of the groups’ success was the detailed
industrial research that accompanied their organizing and education
work. Their report, _Trafficking in Apartheid: The Case for Canadian
Sanctions Against South Africa_, provided granular-level detail on the
flow of trade between Canada and South Africa. It allowed the
committee to identify workplaces and unions where there was a direct
link between Canadian and South African workers. Traynor, one of the
report’s authors, recalls, “When we identified a workplace with
trade to South Africa we always tried to make a connection with the
union. In the case of Ford Oakville, we found out that parts were
being shipped out to Port Elizabeth for assembly. So that direct
connection was very real to those workers.”

The committee later arranged a tour with a former worker from Ford
South Africa who had recently been fired for his political organizing.
“There’s no doubt that solidarity is about personal
connections,” Traynor notes. “Bringing people out to speak to
Canadian workers really cemented those ties.” These connections at
the workplace level were highly effective. By 1986, workers at the
Ford Oakville plant were demanding that management remove fluorescent
lightbulbs made in South Africa.

Organizing at the local level had another major benefit: it allowed
union members to hold labour leadership to account. At its 1982
convention, for example, the CLC invited two leaders from FOSATU, a
South African trade union formation which held a non-political line,
in an effort to undermine the work of the SSC. The SSC, with the
support of union members, brokered a meeting between SACTU and FOSATU.
The FOSATU leaders refused to address the convention, and resolutions
supporting SACTU were passed on the convention floor the following
day.

Attempts by the CLC to undermine the committee’s work continued in
future years. These efforts were largely rebuffed by union members due
to the extensive organizing done by the SSC at the local level.

There were historical and structural factors that enabled this work.
As Gindin notes, the structure of unions like the UAW allowed the
committee to reach a wide number of locals with leadership’s
blessing. “The centralization of the UAW at this time was helpful,
far more so than in unions like CUPE which were more decentralized and
locals often did their own thing. Under Bob White, the UAW’s central
leadership had a greater degree of control over what happened at the
local level.” This was combined, Gindin adds, with a history of
militancy in the union forged through workplace struggles in the 1960s
and 70s which gave rise to a layer of class-conscious leadership. As
Traynor recalls, this recent history of militancy facilitated close
connections with SACTU leaders. “When you come to a union leader and
say here’s a South African union which is banned and can’t legally
represent their members, they just knew it was important.”

SACTU Solidarity Committee Week of Action picket in Toronto, 1986.

Solidarity in the workplace

Throughout the 1980s the committee embarked on an extensive education
and fundraising campaign with union locals across the country. While
these actions were essential in laying the groundwork for solidarity,
the committee’s aim was not only to secure donations for the SACTU
strike fund but to provide avenues for Canadian workers to express
solidarity with South African workers. The campaign they developed to
enable this was called “Sanctions in the Workplace,” and drew
directly on their extensive research on trade linkages between Canada
and South Africa.

International labour solidarity is premised on the idea that groups of
workers in one place can utilize their collective power to support
workers elsewhere. This principle informed many of the labour
solidarity actions against apartheid in the 1970s and 80s.
Longshoreman in San Francisco refused to offload South African ships,
and retail workers in Ireland refused to stock shelves with South
African products. The committee saw its role as providing
opportunities for Canadian workers to express solidarity with South
African workers. How to do this required research and creative
thinking. While it is easy to imagine what solidarity might look like
for a dockworker in Vancouver, what did it mean for a nurse in Toronto
or a teacher in Regina?

Through their trade research, the committee was able to trace the flow
of South African products, mostly canned fruit, into workplaces and
government institutions across the country. The committee saw this as
an opportunity to go beyond an individual consumer boycott and, in
Traynor’s words, “give workers themselves an opportunity to enact
solidarity, rather than just having your union do it.” They
encouraged workers to report back to their union and the committee on
South African products coming into their workplaces.

At its 1985 convention, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union
(OPSEU) passed a convention resolution supporting an “apartheid free
zone in Ontario.” One of the outcomes of this resolution was that
OPSEU member and SSC organizer Brenda Wall was seconded to work on a
‘sanctions in the workplace’ campaign for the union. “We’d ask
for strike fund donations, but sanctions in the workplace was
different,” recalls Wall. “We were asking workers themselves to
play a part in identifying South African goods and enforcing sanctions
where they worked.” At planning conferences hosted by district
labour councils in southern Ontario, they developed a ‘refusal to
handle policy’ that supported locals in defending their members who
opposed handling South African goods. When OPSEU members discovered
that provincial ministries in Ontario were purchasing South African
products, they developed bargaining language to support members who
refused to handle these products.

The campaign provides an important example of how creative organizing
and convention resolutions can open spaces to advance workplace
organizing. As Traynor puts it, “Decisions are often made at a
distance from the membership… We were really proud of this work
because it showed that even small actions in the workplace can make
solidarity into a real thing.”

The substance of solidarity

In their wide-ranging history
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the idea of solidarity, Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix emphasize
that solidarity is not sameness, but rather a recognition of our
interconnectedness and the power that we hold collectively to push for
social change. Solidarity requires a recognition of common struggle
without erasing the important differences in our circumstances. How
then did the SSC develop this recognition among Canadian workers?

Boycott apartheid graphic from a March 1984 SSC newsletter.

In the 1960s and 70s, Canadian labour leaders had spoken out against
apartheid. This often took the form of statements condemning egregious
violence by the state, such as the Sharpeville massacre, or the police
response to the Soweto school protests. There was little attempt at
explaining that apartheid was both a political and economic system
which relied on the exploitation of Black South African workers. This
is where the SSC’s work differed. Rather than describing apartheid
as a violation of international human rights, they described it as a
system of racial capitalism in which racist laws facilitated the
super-exploitation of South African workers. Strategically, then,
fighting apartheid would involve more than diplomatic maneuvers in
Ottawa, but targeting those Canadian companies who profited from
racist rule—Canadian workers were well placed to do this.

Ken Luckhardt played a key role in the committee’s education work,
delivering presentations to autoworkers in Ontario and smelter workers
in British Columbia. His approach in speaking with workers was often
to place Canadian workers in the shoes of their South African
counterparts. “There was little knowledge of South Africa, but they
knew what it meant to be a worker. So, I’d talk about the wages and
working conditions, but say, well what would it be like if you, a Ford
Oakville worker, were working for Ford South Africa? So, it was a
worker-to-worker orientation.”

Similarly, Traynor remembers that presenting to workers required tact
and an understanding of the political contradictions of the
membership. “I remember making a presentation to GM workers in
Oshawa, and we knew at the time there was an organized faction of the
union there that supported the fascist Western Guard. So, you have to
get a feel for the character of the membership and say, what would you
do if you were earning these wages and had no political rights?” A
key part of Traynor and Luckhardt’s educational work was
communicating the efforts of other unions. “A lot of what we did was
education about what was happening in South Africa, but our message
fundamentally was, this is what OPSEU is doing this is what the
autoworkers are doing—what are you doing?”

The committee recognized that in order to be effective solidarity
would have to be built largely along class lines. This didn’t mean
that race was ignored; It was central to how they explained the
exploitation of Black workers. Rather, they identified that the common
bond between Canadian and South African workers is that they were
exploited, often by the same companies.

Solidarity lessons

The work of the SSC occurred within a specific historical context, and
any lessons drawn from this period should consider how it enabled and
constrained the committee’s work. The labour movement of the early
1980s was considerably more powerful than it is today, with private
sector unions playing a more prominent role. As has already been
noted, the centralized structure of these unions, along with dedicated
education programs, allowed the committee to make significant inroads.
Equally as important was a parallel and complementary popular movement
against apartheid, in churches, NGOs and on campuses. This movement
infrastructure played a key supporting role and helped shift public
opinion. At the same time, Cold War attitudes and divisions among
unions created barriers in advancing solidarity within certain sectors
of the labour movement.

Nevertheless, it is instructive to draw some broad lessons from their
organizing. First is the importance of dual organizing tactics from
above and below. By identifying sympathetic labour leaders and
building connections with South African labour leaders, the committee
was able to establish its legitimacy and gain access to local union
structures and education programs. Tours by South African worker and
labour leaders personalized the issue of apartheid, creating common
bonds between workers in similar industries. At the same time,
education at the local level allowed the committee to build a layer of
union activists who supported the work and held leadership accountable
if there was any backlash. Fast-forwarding to today, few Canadian
unions have brought Palestinian labour leaders on national tours, and
connections with these networks remain underdeveloped. These linkages
are critical as they allow Palestinians themselves to directly
communicate their struggle and aims to Canadian workers.

Second is the importance of building structures through which
solidarity work can be sustained in unions over the long term. The SSC
was supported by labour materially but remained an independent
structure outside the labour bureaucracy with dedicated staff and
funds. This meant it could not easily be dismantled or undermined by
labour leadership.

Third is the importance of creative and strategic thinking in
advancing international solidarity work. A common tactic among
pro-Palestinian activists today is to mobilize in order to pass
convention resolutions. This approach can create opportunities for
organizing, but it frequently results in resolutions which are purely
symbolic. The SSC’s work demonstrates the critical importance of
going where workers are and organizing at the local and workplace
level. The solidarity in the workplace campaign, for example,
demonstrates the importance of creative and strategic thinking. How
can workers in a diverse array of sectors build and enact solidarity
in their workplaces? How can the boycott, divestment and sanctions
tools be used at the local level, and what protections can be provided
to workers who refuse to handle Israeli goods and services? The
SSC’s work demonstrates that there is precedent for Canadian workers
refusing to engage in work that violates international law.

Drawing lessons from history does not mean we romanticize past
struggles; they too had their failures and tensions. For a new
generation of labour activists, however, they demonstrate that this
work has been done before, and that it requires an array of tactics to
build worker power in different spaces. Importantly, it shows that,
when given the opportunity, workers are interested in issues aside
from bread-and-butter contract negotiations. One of the key challenges
facing us today is not only that unions neglect international
solidarity outright, but that there are increasingly fewer spaces
where members can talk about international issues and practice
solidarity. Advancing the struggle for Palestine in our unions then is
also critical to building a more democratic labour movement.

_Chris Webb is an organizer with MGEU Members for Palestine. He is
writing a book on the meaning and practice of solidarity in the
Canadian anti-apartheid movement.  _

_Canadian Dimension is the longest-standing voice of the left in
Canada. For more than half-a-century, CD has provided a forum for
lively and radical debate where red meets green, socialists take on
social democrats, Indigenous voices are heard, activists report from
every corner of the country, and the latest books and films are
critically reviewed. Our dedicated and longstanding readership is
comprised of activists, organizers, academics, economists, workers,
trade unionists, feminists, environmentalists, Indigenous peoples, and
members of the LGBTQ2 community._

* Solidarity
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* Anti-apartheid
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* labor activism
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* South Africa
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* Palestine
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* Canada
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