May 4 1974
If today’s shrinking world could be said to have a motto it must surely be John Donne’s thoughtful reminder that “no man is an island”. In the midst of the monstrous crimes against flesh and blood committed in the name of abstractions and ideologies which have wracked us here in the past five years, it has not always been easy to tear away our thoughts from ourselves and give them to other people. But to lay claim to the name of Christian we have to remember that every man is our neighbour.
To the credit of the great majority, response to others’ needs has been consistent and generous. There are some circumstances, however, which lie outside the direct action of ordinary people, and yet we have to think about them and to feel involved if we are not to behave like the priest and the Levite who saw the injured man and passed by.
One of these is the matter of apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid in action is too well documented now by too many reputable witnesses to be doubted. The dispossession of land and the exiling of Africans to the aridity and desolation of the Bantustans; the brutality of the migratory labour system which separates families; the deliberate downgrading of education facilities; the hopeless malnutrition; the gruelling conditions of labour; the almost incredible gap in earnings between black and white; the unremitting watchfulness of a ruthless police and brutalised prison force; all these and many other factors which make life intolerable for Africans and ever richer for the white population burden all our consciences.
They come inevitably to mind when a rugby tour is planned which will take Irish as well as British players to play against segregated teams before segregated spectators, and to play five international matches against all-white teams. It is idle to say that politics should not intrude into sport when it so obviously does in South Africa. It is idle too to pretend that the Lions’ tour does not at least imply that the system which selects opponents on a colour basis is an acceptable one and thereby to give heart and encouragement to those who have devised and operate this system.
We in Ireland know a good deal about oppression. In voicing official disapproval of the tour the Irish Government is speaking for most of us. By pushing ahead in spite of this, the tour management and players are dishonouring a fine game and ignoring the deeply felt revulsions of most of the people of these islands.