#i'm waiting for a researcher on researchgate to potentially get back to me with a fulltext article on the south african gp

[taffyvontrips]

some thoughts on the 1982 drivers' strike and a little context

So, I’ve been feeling a little odd about the 1982 drivers’ strike for a while, and I’ve been mulling over it. The reason I haven't written this post before now is because I know that a lot of people in this community are attached to the strike! I am not immune to this! It’s a great story, unexpected and fun, rich with lore. I mean, who doesn’t love union action? Who doesn’t love a good strike? 

I really hate to be a buzzkill and I don’t mean to attack anyone—not any users here (definitely not!), not any drivers either really (maybe Bernie Ecclestone though). I guess I just mean this post as a conversation starter. 

Anyway. People like to use the example of the 1982 strike when they’re trying to make points about modern F1. For example, when the race in Saudi Arabia was in question because of airstrikes happening near the track (I still can’t believe that went ahead, but I digress), and when Domenicali made that asinine statement about drivers’ political engagement, a lot of great posts about the strike were suddenly doing the rounds on modern f1 tumblr. Look at what they managed to do before! people were saying. See how ridiculous it is to say that Niki Lauda wasn’t political! Look here! They organised a strike, maybe they’ll do it again! We love a strike! We love a union!

And good for the drivers for sticking up for their workers' rights and so on. Good on Niki Lauda and Didier Pironi for not rolling over.

However.

Something that has always quietly gnawed away at me ever more since first learning about the strike was the fact that it took place in South Africa, in 1982, during apartheid.

If ever there has been a place where F1 should not have raced, it would be South Africa during apartheid. 

The cognitive dissonance is pretty extreme to me. There was an active international campaign going on at the time to try to pressure South Africa into not being a racist backwards hellhole; musical artists were strongly encouraged not to go there as part of a large cultural boycott, trade embargos were in place, the country was excluded from the Olympics and most sports organisations. An exception to this? Formula One. While these very rich white Formula One drivers were gallivanting on Kyalami Ranch or in the Sunnyside Park Hotel, which was whites-only, the majority Black and Coloured* population were being brutally oppressed, deprived of their civil rights, displaced from their homes, and kept in poverty by an explicitly white supremacist regime.

Were the F1 drivers striking over apartheid? 

Were they striking, perhaps, because non-white people did not have equal access to the GP? 

Were they striking, maybe, because the Black employees at Kyalami didn’t have the right to vote? 

No. 

They were striking because they wanted more control over their contracts. 

If the strike had happened anywhere else, I would enjoy the story without reservation. But it didn’t happen somewhere else, it happened in apartheid South Africa. I think it’s maybe good to keep that in mind as an extra dimension when we talk about the strike. It’s also useful when we think about F1’s relationship with politics—internal and external.

F1 is rumoured to race at Kyalami again next year, and I for one am very excited.

Please reblog with any additions and perspectives you may have!

*a term used in South Africa with different connotations than in other places