FRAC, on the other hand, was a non-racial amalgam – black and white ex-communists rubbed shoulders with conservative members of the Coloured People’s National Union (which organised voters threatened with disenfranchisement), coloured workers threatened by the white protectionism of apartheid legislation and others.15 Communists Fred Carneson and Sam Kahn were among the leaders of FRAC, which included among its members a number of former CPSA activists. While the CRL organised petitions and meetings, FRAC concentrated on organising workers and staged a successful one-day strike in the Cape Province in May 1951. Where the CRL insisted on parliamentary methods, FRAC was represented on the planning council of the Defiance Campaign, alongside the ANC and SAIC.
Notions of ‘constitutionality’ were not restricted to more or less conservative white liberals in the CRL, SAIRR and elsewhere. FRAC stressed the ‘constitutionality’ of its actions, by which it meant the legality of extra-parliamentary activity for an unrepresented population. The ANC shared the same view, as stated by its President-General, James Moroka: ‘… a general strike in any civilised country at all is constitutional. Today in South Africa, America, everywhere the white people settle issues by strikes. It is only when a man is oppressed that he is not allowed to strike when the occasion warrants it.’16
In part, this was a defensive discourse, emphasising the legality of protest in advance of a predictably suppressive NP backlash. But it was also a discourse common to white and black liberals, radicals, nationalists and communists.
The effect of the constitutional crisis was to focus white anti-Nationalist attention on the black franchise, albeit via the defence of an inequitable and limited coloured vote. The apartheid onslaught on black rights also obliged liberals to confront political issues they had previously avoided. This was most clearly true of the black franchise, ignored by the liberals in the 1940s but suddenly under threat.
For some liberals, such as Leo Marquard, who had long called for a qualified black franchise, this change of direction was a ‘relief’:
It is a good thing that we have at last been forced by recent events to face this issue squarely. For far too long we have evaded it, gone around it, behind it, and over it. We have pushed it into the background, as an uncomfortable thing, an embarrassing thing, with which we hoped we would not have to deal. Our children and grandchildren perhaps, but not we …17
Marquard was, in most respects, exceptional: it is unlikely his sense of relief at having to confront uncomfortable political realities was widely shared. But liberals also had to change strategy in the new circumstances: appeals to reason had to be supplemented with organisation and mobilisation, traditionally the terrain of the Communist Party and trade unions.
The CRL reflected this change in strategy, with liberals moving from attempting to mediate between political players to appealing directly for public support themselves (albeit while working closely with the UP). The leadership of the CRL comprised senior SAIRR members and its appeal was to English middle-class voters alienated by the NP. The league was an inherently cautious and defensive organisation, committed to retaining the status quo and resisting ‘the inordinate curtailment of the liberties of the individual’.18 This was a long way from demanding full equality. It organised public meetings, and its main activity was a petition signed by 100 000 people opposing the Separate Representation of Voters Bill. As Leo Marquard put it: ‘That was all in public. Behind the scenes we continued to work on the U.P. ...’.19
CRL leaders and senior UP members worked closely together and the CRL failed to offer any political vision or strategy other than to vote UP. The league was soon overtaken by the Torch Commando in leading opposition to coloured disenfranchisement, but both suffered from the same problem – their links with the UP and their failure to offer any options beyond voting UP. The league’s leaders maintained a staunchly ‘apolitical’ stance, claiming ‘[o]ur Constitution is in danger … This threat must be resisted on the grounds that it is immoral’.20
In place of a political platform the League relied on the ‘practical’ approach of the SAIRR and others, which seemed scarcely to welcome any form of racial integration but accepted it as inevitable. The CRL stated: ‘With the economic integration of the Non-European proceeding apace – and this process cannot be stopped – the internal peace of South Africa depends upon amicable relations between the different groups.’21
Within the League there were different tendencies. The CRL attracted a younger generation, politicised by the Second World War, who welcomed the opportunity to articulate clearly a ‘liberal’ racial policy.22 The League’s leaders strove to maintain a ‘moderate’ image in contrast with that of the more strident younger liberals in its own ranks and the ‘radical’ activities of FRAC and other extra-parliamentary organisations. Lewis claimed that the CRL provided ‘impressive support’ for a strike organised by FRAC in Cape Town23 but pressure from younger CRL members for active participation was quashed by the movement’s leaders.24
The Torch Commando
The Torch Commando was formed after a Springbok Legion demonstration at the Johannesburg cenotaph in March 1951, where a symbolic constitution was laid to rest,25 and soon gained a significant following. Legionnaires in the Commando organised the Steel Commando – a convoy of Jeeps which converged on Cape Town from across the country26 for a massive protest meeting – with an estimated attendance of some 75 000.27 The demonstration degenerated into violence, with police baton-charging crowds of coloured sympathisers.
The commando flared brightly but briefly on the political scene, highlighting many of the tensions between radical and liberal whites at the time and subsequently.28 Ex-service organisations began to form protest committees after the early release from prison of Robey Leibbrandt, a Nazi-trained saboteur, and the premature removal of senior English-speaking defence force officers.
Protests organised by the Combined Ex-Servicemen’s Associations drew crowds of 10 000 in Johannesburg and Cape Town.29 Characterising the NP as Nazis, ex-service organisations drew large crowds around the country by playing on the language and solidarity of the war. The Torch Commando, emphasising wartime comradeship, mobilised whites through a clever combination of deliberately vague goals and virulent opposition to the ‘fascists’ in power. As a spokesperson put it, ‘the men who fought did so for principles they can only vaguely express. But we know that legislation like this is a direct negation of what we fought for.’30
Displaying a degree of militancy that was entirely lacking in the CRL, the Legion called for the immediate resignation of the government and threatened to ‘bring the country to a standstill’.31
The Legion’s flair for dramatic street protests invigorated the CRL, giving it an appeal beyond existing party-political affiliations; an appeal later killed off by positioning the Commando too closely to the UP. Joel Mervis noted at the time that the Commando’s ‘great attraction to the ordinary man was the very fact that it was not a political party, for it thus became a haven for people of all political faiths’.32
It is apparent even from this attenuated rendering that similar tensions affected both the CRL and the Torch Commando. On the specific issue of the franchise they blurred their message, concentrating on defending the status quo. The two issues that most directly confronted the Commando, however, were those of open membership and the use of extra-parliamentary means of opposition. The Cape Commando was non-racial, with a large coloured membership,33 but elsewhere it was a white organisation with racial exclusivity the norm, as one of its branches stated: ‘We are South Africans and as such the colour bar is an accepted part of our lives.’34
Alex Hepple, a senior figure in the 1953 electoral pact between the UP, the Torch Commando