I move:
That Dáil Éireann aware of the continuance of the repression practised by the racist South African regime and of the evil nature of the apartheid system, which extends into the world of sport, deplores the decision of the Irish Rugby Football Union to send an Irish national touring team to the Republic of South Africa; calls upon the IRFU to reverse that decision in the interests of justice and of Ireland's international reputation, and calls upon the Government to take steps to introduce an immediate and effective boycott on all commercial and trading links with South Africa.
The House will be aware that this motion has been on the Order Paper since we resumed after Christmas. We deliberately did not move it hoping that the IRFU would take heed of it and would respond to the wishes not just of the Oireachtas but of the Irish people. The motion has been moved as close as possible to 21 March, which is renowned as Sharpeville Day, the 21st anniversity of the massacre of South African workers by the white police in Sharpeville on 21 March 1960. In the past this House debated resolutions condemning apartheid but the argument that will ensue in relation to the tour and the question of sanctions requires us to put again on the record the definition of apartheid and our condemnation of it. I will quote from a document published by Trocaire, the Catholic agency for world development, which describes apartheid.
The apartheid system of government decrees that the different racial groups should, as far as possible, be kept apart from each other. In practice this means one set of laws for the whites who rule the country and another set for the Africans and other coloured communities. The laws governing White South Africans have been passed by an all-white parliament and are designed to safeguard and promote white wealth and privilege. The per capita income of whites in 1975, according to a UN report, was $4,200: that of Africans in the same year was $245. Laws governing Africans and others have been passed by the same parliament without consulting those affected and designed to ensure that non-Whites will never have an effective voice in the political, economic and social life of the country.
No country other than South Africa effects such a comprehensive and systematic policy of legal repression and denial of human rights. Many countries infringe upon human rights to a greater or lesser extent, but no other country discriminates exclusively against individuals only upon their race and colour. In the start of the last 20 years of the twentieth century no other internal domestic policy constitutes such a moral outrage to the international community and no other country's internal policy constitutes such a unique danger to world peace.
This argument is not about the enjoyment of games of rugby in a sunny far away country. It is about giving support in whatever shape or form the people of white South Africa wish to obtain; it is about giving support to a regime which is fundamentally unjust and which by the continued perpetration of that injustice constitutes a major danger to world peace and security. We have seen how great powers became involved over the question of Afghanistan or El Salvador, countries with very limited strategic importance and with very little mineral or effective wealth. If the struggle for liberation in South Africa escalates much further and if the major powers are drawn into it, as they have been drawn into other such struggles for liberation, surely this House will realise that the danger to world peace centred around super power involvement in South Africa would be enormous.
This is fundamentally a moral issue, because South Africa is unique among all the countries in the UN. It is also an issue about peace because the failure of the world in general, and particularly the failure of the western world, who have the greater responsibility for what is happening in South Africa, can only put at risk what is now increasingly a tenuous system of world peace. It may sound harsh to put that sort of responsibility onto the executive of the IRFU and it may appear to the 26 players and officials who will travel with them to play the seven football matches a distortion beyond all bounds of credibility. The Labour Party had hoped that it would not be necessary to move this motion here and that the decision of the IRFU over the weekend would have made it redundant. We had hoped that the executive would listen to the considerable representations made by the Government. In replies to questions from me and other Deputies on 28 January last the House warmly congratulated the Minister for Foreign Affairs on his consistent opposition to this tour and on his representations to the IRFU. We have brought this motion to the floor of the House because of the failure of the Minister to convince the IRFU of the danger of this tour. We hope at the end of our two day debate, when we have reached an unanimous decision, that the House will urge the Taoiseach to intervene and to make a last perhaps desperate but, we hope, successful appeal to the executive of the IRFU, and to point out the dangers that the tour will have for our international reputation abroad because it will further extend and support the system of apartheid in South Africa. Nobody in this House would disagree with the first section of our resolution in relation to the tour.
In this country we have three national football games and the commitment, energy and enthusiasm of support tends to be spread across all three. That is not the situation in white South Africa. Support and enthusiasm for rugby verges on a religion among some of the white South Africans. Whether the IRFU like it or not, it is also the single most important link that we have with the Republic of South Africa. Our trading links are so miniscule in terms of volume that they are not listed in the United Nations statistics. Later I will return to the breakdown in detail of those links.
Very few of the nations of the world play rugby with South Africa. We happen to be one of those nations. The white racist minority in South Africa values highly the game of rugby and values extremely highly the continued links between this country and South Africa. Whether the IRFU wish it to be so or not, it is an effective lever. It is not a lever of their creation, but it remains an effective lever. They can choose to use that lever in support of the continuation of an apartheid regime, or as a non-violent means of dismantling and undermining it and bringing it into line with the other nations of the world in terms of racial equality at least.
That is the choice facing the IRFU. They have refused to accept that choice. In their long and detailed statement, published in the newspapers after 3 January when they made their decision, they attempted to say that politics had nothing to do with sport and, at the same time, that the South African Rugby Board had made great strides in relation to the integration of blacks and coloureds into the white dominated system and that, therefore, continuing to play rugby with the SARB would further benefit the social emancipation of blacks and coloureds in South Africa.
They cannot have it both ways. Either rugby and politics are totally separate or they are not. If the IRFU wish to argue, as they appear to wish to argue in their statement, that their continued link with the SARB has brought about some liberalisation in the interpretation by that organisation and that government of the system of apartheid, they are accepting a political role for rugby tours. That is what they have published. Having accepted that political role for the rugby tour — and it is in their own printed statement — and since they have entered into the realm of politics and social justice, they must listen to the overwhelming condemnation of virtually every conceivable organisation in Ireland who are opposed to the Irish tour in southern Africa.
With the indulgence of the House I should like to read onto the record the range of organisations who have formally and officially come out against that tour. I am quoting from the "Sharpeville Day Commemorative Declaration on the '81 Rugby Tour" issued by the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. On page 2 they list the organisations and there are over 100 of them. The range is as follows: The Irish Government and the following political parties: Fianna Fáil, the SDLP, Fine Gael, Labour, the Socialist Labour Party, the IRSP, the People's Democracy, the NILP, the Communist Party of Ireland, Sinn Féin the Worker's Party and Sinn Féin. It goes on to the churches and lists the board of the Presbyterian Church, the Southern Region of the Methodist Church, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, which as we know is the Catholic Church, Trocaire, the Irish Missionary Union, the Dublin Quaker Peace Committee, the Dublin and Munster Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church and the Major Conference of Irish Religious Superiors.
It goes on to the trade unions and lists the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and virtually every major union in the country, the Union of Students in Ireland and many individual student unions and college societies from universities and colleges all over Ireland. Then there is the Confederation of Non-Governmental Organisations for Overseas Development made up of 19 development and aid bodies, the Belfast Humanist Group, the Ulster Community Action Group, the Northern Ireland Women's Rights Group, the Northern Ireland Association for Peace and Detente, the Labour Women's National Council, Conradh na Gaeilge. It then goes on to sports associations. The Irish Racquetball Association, a number of rugby clubs including St. Mary's, Skerries, Birr, Maynooth and Dublin University, and the Leinster and Connacht schools branches of the IRFU.
Literally the list goes on and on, some people outraged by the possibility that a team of rugby players bearing the Irish emblem and carrying the name of being an Irish representative side should represent in a most extended way any Irish citizen in a country which perpetrates injustice in a comprehensive fashion which makes it unique among the nations of the world.
There are others such as the Irish Missionary Union who have detailed knowledge of the extent of the repression and denial of human rights on the ground in the Republic of South Africa or in some of the neighbouring States and have first-hand experience of how important this tour is to the white racist regime and how repressive the regime is which they operate. There are others such as the Department with their own expertise, knowledge and understanding through their diplomatic contacts of the damage that will be done to this country around the world in countries where they think that a national team cannot be other than officially and formally representative of the wishes and will of the Government.
If for that reason only, it is important that this House should support this resolution unanimously to enable our diplomats overseas to attempt to undo some of the damage which will be undoubtedly done if the IRFU persist in ignoring the plea of an elected Parliament and all its Members and all the parties represented here. To conclude this section on the effectiveness of the tour, there is no doubt that it has become a political lever. Whether or not they wish to accept it, on any logical interpretation of their statement there is no doubt that the IRFU recognise the political leverage of rugby tours.
While a certain shift has been made in southern Africa in relation to the relaxation of the interpretation of the separationist and apartheid laws, in the main they have been cosmetic and they have been rejected by all the organisations who have a detailed knowledge of southern Africa. The participation by Irish sporting people in this tour, officials or sportsmen, will have damaging effects upon other sports and will do damage to the international sporting reputation of this country.
It is appropriate that this House should publicly recognise the stand taken by the four players who have refused on moral grounds to participate in this tour. It is a great honour to be picked to play for one's country irrespective of the sport. By general concensus a rugby tour in South Africa, or in Australia, or in New Zealand, is an exciting, enjoyable and fascinating experience. In human terms one can understand the attraction for any young player who is offered the opportunity to go on such a tour. To turn it down on moral grounds is an act of considerable self-denial and this House should publicly recognise that.