Irish government finds a way to ban South African goods.
At the end of 1985, it was announced that the Irish government had found a way to ban the importation of South African goods. While trade regulations did not allow for bans on political grounds, goods could be banned if they were produced by prison labour, something that would now be investigated.
Charlie Bird gets Mary Manning’s reaction to the news in this report. All the strikers are happy with the initiative. Cathryn O’Reilly says that a nationwide ban on the goods is “a much bigger victory” than what they originally sought, which was simply the moral right to refuse to handle them.
The strikers agreed to lift their picket at the end of that year, though they would not return to work until a ban was in force.
