What's Another Tour? NO TO RACIST RUGBY

Most readers of Socialist Republic probably have never played rugby. Rugby, you see, is a peculiar sport If you belong to certain broad categories-of humanity... well, you're ovt. If you are a woman, for example. That's half of you gone already. If you are from the wrong side of the tracks. If your accent is vulgar and you really don't know your claret. If you didn't go toa good private school. If you are small or lack the necessary aggression. And, in sunny South Africa, if you are black.

So what is all this controversy about the proposed | rish tour about? Why should the doings of fifteen burly executives with time and money to spare concern us? They are drawn from an elite minority segment of the community. If they wish to cart themselves off several thousand miles to the tip of Africa to kick an inflated pigskin up and down a grass field why should we bother? No doubt many of you wish you had the kind of job (that is, if you even have a job) with such attract ive travel and recreation opportunities.

But South Africa is the problem, not rugby. And South Africa is unique. This vicious society is as repressive ond exoloitative as any capitalist country. But with the added dimension of opartheid - racial segregation and discrimination enshrined os a Fundamental nolicy of state. Over 80%of the pooulation are totally and permanently disenfranchised, oppressed ond degraded by the remaining 20%, simply because of skin colour.

In the psyche of the racist minority which presides over this barbarity, rugby plays on important role. All the classic features of the sport are there. Back-slapping bonhomie, character hardening platitudes, the gentlemanly violence of the heaving scrum, stiff upper lips, sexist jokes in the showers after the match, ribald drunken singing over a few brandies on the train home. With one added dimension , all the players, Managers, commentators and spectators are white. Any blacks that do want to play must do it on their own and with inferior facilities.

Far away from the whites’ manicured pitch the black kids are crowded into festering slums. Officially they don't even exist - they are 'citizens' of remote rural native reservations they have never even seen. They kick cans ~cross the dusty bits of burnt earth sandwiched between the shacks. Loiter around the shebeens -the white government kindly subsidises the price of booze for blacks. Stand in mute humiliation while a white cop demands the poss book. Sometimes even get shot or clubbed by the riot police- as the touring do G2 pass itself off as "normal". South Africa is beginning to feel the first whisper of the coming wind as bastion after bastion of white rule and colonialism have fallen. That change did not come through any charm being exuded by a touring centre forward at a Johannesburg cocktail party. It came through the African liberation struggle being waged throughout the continent and the maximum international support for and solidarity with that struggle.

This is the time to isolate South Africa. The proposed Irish tour must be stopped. It is perhaps unfortunate that the debote on the tour, as revealed in the letters to the Irish Times, show a touching side to Irish liberalism which doesn't rise to the same heights when the issue is closer to home in Long Kesh or Armagh. But Socialist Republic isn't the Irish Times so we won't ask you to raise the matter in your local rugby club or at the next Rotary club luncheon. But do raise it and the issue of apartheid (and Western support for it) on your shop floor, among other workers, at your trade union branch, in your women's group, community association.

Workers in Dublin Airport have saic they will refuse to process the travel documents of the rugby players. This is the kind of action that will stop the tour. Actions like these must be encouraged wherever poss -ible.

Because the tour is a diversion. Ag artheid is not. It is the foulest product of centuries of imperialism. delicate negotiations. land frontier.

faced - Britain state has failed" (Fianna Fail Ard Fheis 1980). He has implied that the British can be persuaded to see his point of view, and that he should be trusted with This in itself is an illusion. Thatcher has spelt it out!

While Charlie Haughey implies that great things are being achieved, Thatcher crudely brings the issue down to Ulster earth. She stated in a BBC interview that a "unique relationship" existed between the South of Ireland and what she laughingly calls the "United Kingdom" because the border is the only Time will The truth is brutal but must be intends to stav and will only go if confronted and kicked out. Thatcher would not be holding talks if the British rulers were not facing rserious resistance to their unwanted interference in Ireland. Two days before the talks a giant march to the Kritish Embassy in Dublin was organised by the H-Block/Armagh Committee. It was just one indication of the made crystal clear. Because Haughey wants to keep the evil day from coming he is pretending that something is happening. That is why the minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan has claimed that "everything was on the table" for the joint studies. Unionist protests and British denials were tien avoided.

But two can play at this game. The more recent suggestions that there might be a British-Irish defence pact came from the British side, Haughey's denial has not Clarified matters.

eventually tell. What has taken place so far has not amounted to more than verbal shadow boxing. In the meantime "practical" security collaboration continues and grows more ominous by the hour. Far from getting rid of partition Haughey is helping to prop it rhe question is up. real whether Haughey will have to pay a price to the Trish people for doing Britain's dirty work. al} sakes the sooner our it happens the better.

JAMES CALLACHER