ORGANISE OR STARVE!

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: may 2011 :: RMTnews 26 April 22 marked the anniversary of a brutal event in South Africa during the 1987 rail strike. Rail workers, members of our sister union, the South African Railway and Harbour Workers Union (SARHWU), were gunned down by the authorities in a desperate effort to crush the strike. SARHWU members played a heroic role in the fight against the oppressive apartheid regime. NUR members Doreen Weppler and Geoff Revell, were sent to South Africa with funds and messages of solidarity and asked to prepare a report to take deep into the British labour movement. This was achieved. Organised trade unions in South Africa were rightly considered a threat to the apartheid regime because they played an essential part in the liberation movement. Boxes of dynamite were detonated in the basement of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) headquarters by agents operating for the regime. As SARHWU Headquarters operated from within the building they lost all the material apparatus needed to organise. Nevertheless they had an important victory, celebrated as ‘a milestone in labour history’. The support that was campaigned for nationally and internationally by the union’s solidarity initiative Rail Against Apartheid (RAA). RAA played an important part in assisting SARHWU to rebuild its organisation. RAA was created by rank and file members to organise the support and understanding of the South African struggle, clearly held by our membership, with the aim of building a sister union in South Africa. Meetings were held across the country, grades conferences addressed and many energetic campaigns launched to ensure our union was at the forefront of organising international solidarity. I first got involved in RAA in 1987. I was 23 and was attending our union’s Annual General Meeting‘s young members’ course in Dundee. The National Executive member, Brian Whitehead, handed me a RAA campaign leaflet. I thought it was great that my union was making direct links with our sister union so I wanted to help. I teamed up with founder member and RAA organiser Geoff Revell, who was also on our National Executive. A rejuvenated SARHWU was once again in the frontline of struggle in a country living under a state of emergency. Under the cover of that state of emergency the infamous Germiston massacre took place on January 9 1990, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Striking SARHWU members were brutally attacked, killed and maimed by thugs working for the regime. COSATU general secretary Jay Naidoo met with Geoff in London and urged a visit with the same objectives as before. So Geoff and I flew to Johannesburg just days after the massacre. On landing at Jan Smuts airport Geoff was taken away and detained by South African security. Geoff had unknowingly become a ‘listed person’. In the confusion surrounding Geoff’s detention, I managed to slip in and avoided subsequent arrest attempts for a week. I was well protected by the 40 strong strike committee. RAA activists along with the union’s national leadership and our Parliamentary Group of MPs were soon kicking up a storm. One RMT tutor abandoned his course and took direct action at the South African Embassy in London by holding his own sit in. He held a homemade placard that read ‘Release Geoff Revell Now!’ His name was Bob Crow. GERMISTON MASSACRE A train of striking SARHWU members arrived in Germiston station and was met by 1,000 heavily armed vigilantes, set up by the authorities to kill strikers. The police stood at the back and watched as a slaughter took place. Terrified passengers tried to keep the train doors closed by pulling them shut only for their fingers to be hacked off by machetes. After twenty long minutes ORGANISE OR Alan Pottage, Head of RMT organising and education, looks at the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa I had just been advised that Geoff Revell was not getting released from detention