Conor Sheahan

And it was in London that he wanted to meet these Irish strikers.

So Mary and her friends, they travelled to London to meet him.

Desmond Tutu's endorsement of the Strikers gave them this massive publicity boost and I guess a level of credibility that they'd been missing.

After meeting the Dunstall strikers, Bishop Tutu suggested that they should go to South Africa to see what was going on firsthand.

Turns out that is easier said than done.

In July 1985, Mary and some of her colleagues, they booked flights to Johannesburg via London.

But when they get to Heathrow, their plans are thrown into disarray.

It turns out that the conservative Thatcher government was making it hard for them to go.

The strikers were held for three hours.

It looks like they're about to be turned around and sent home.

They had made it.

But when they touched down in South Africa, they were met with a wall of intimidation.

Mary and her colleagues were held for eight hours.

And back home in Ireland, it was front page news.

The group were eventually deported and put on a plane back to Ireland.

And certainly, Mary says, they were shaken.

But when they touched down in Dublin, they realised that this ordeal had actually emboldened their cause.

What had started out as a unionist directive almost three years before, eventually it became the law of the land.

In April 1987, the Irish government passed national legislation banning imports from South Africa.

Then, in February 1990, the man who was once considered South Africa's most wanted steps out of prison after 27 years.