The Springboks were used to being idolised.. we turned them into outcasts
NEW BOOK REVEALS HOW CAMPAIGNERS TARGETED RUGBY TOUR AS PART OF FIGHT AGAINST APARTHEID
PETER HAIN’S Stop The Seventy Tour forced the unprecedented cancellation of a major international sporting series through disruptive protest. Instead of playing five Test matches against South Africa’s cricketers in 1970, England were forced to repackage their summer with a series against a multi- racial Rest of the World XI. But the bar for disorder had already been raised forbiddingly high by the anti- apartheid movement’s disturbance of the all- white Springboks’ 1969- 70 rugby tour of Britain and Ireland. Their disruption was so successful that the Springboks squad wanted to abort their trip and only diplomatic pressure persuaded them to carry on. Hain’s crusade gathered momentum in the summer of 1969, as recounted in his new book, Pitch Battles: “Antiapartheid activists were alerted to a private tour by an all- white South African invitation cricket side sponsored by a wealthy businessman, Wilf Isaacs. This tour became the first to be targeted by direct disruption.
“Tense but excited, the group gathered near the small club ground to discuss tactics. Suddenly they ran on the pitch and sat down, unfurling banners as they did so. Play was interrupted for over 10 minutes as players, club officials and spectators reacted with dumbfounded frustration and anger at this unprecedented and unseemly strike at England’s cricketing soul.
“Local groups of the Anti- Apartheid Movement organised even greater and
more successful disruptions at subsequent Wilf Isaacs tour matches in Oxford and at The Oval.
“In Bristol, there was a Davis Cup tennis match between white South Africa and Great Britain. Play was disrupted by invasions and flour bombs. It was the first time white South Africa had been disrupted in an international sports event in front of live TV coverage.”
Hain was branded “public enemy No1” in his native South Africa, but he was already planning to hijack another huge travelling circus – the Springboks’ rugby tour with 25 matches to disrupt.
From the moment the opening match was switched from Oxford to Twickenham because of protesters vandalising the pitch, the tour became a protracted siege. Players’ doors at their Park Lane hotel were gummed up with a solidifying agent so they had to be broken down. One activist, Michael Deeny, took the team bus, chaining himself to the steering wheel and crashing into half a dozen cars while players tried to wrestle him out of the driver’s seat.
At Christmas, two months into the tour, the players voted to go home but the management, under political pressure, ordered them to stay. Hain recalls: “The tour staggered to an end, players bitter and unsettled. For the first time the Springboks, accustomed to being lionised as perhaps the leading team in the world, has been treated as pariahs.”
Pitch Battles, by Peter Hain and Andre Odendaal, published by Rowman & Littlefield.
An activist took team bus and crashed it into cars