We have already glimpsed at the role of workers and trade union organisation in the Congress of the People campaign. In many centres it was worker militants and union organisers who were the most active volunteers. Those volunteers carried a working-class outlook into the townships and rural areas.

But, at the same time, volunteers often found themselves learning from the experiences of organised workers. Reggie Vandeyar, for instance, particularly remembers the women clothing-workers he met while collecting demands in Johannesburg.

Vandeyar: Eyy, man, those women taught us some things! In the coloured areas of Coronationville, Albertsville, Noordgesig you found women who would be able to come out with a lot of grievances about houses and wages. None of the shyness of women we met in other areas. It was because many of them were factory workers. The Garment Workers’ Union was quite a powerful union in those days, with Solly Sachs and Anna Scheepers in the leadership. The coloured women workers would interlink your questions with the demands they were making at work. They would come out and tell us certain things we did not even have in the questionnaire forms – issues of trade unionism, demands for higher wages.

In this connection the whole housing problem was interesting. When we approached an individual we would ask them: “Are you satisfied with the area you are living in? Would you like to live in an area like Houghton?”

Now we were trying to politicise. To get people to say they were against Group Areas. We were trying to get people to say they would like the right to live in a posh area like Houghton. But those coloured women workers showed us it wasn't just Group Areas. They said: “Houghton? Who can live in Houghton? Who's going to pay so much money?” They were demanding full trade union rights and higher wages.

In March 1955, just a few months before the Congress of the People, Sactu was formed. Collecting workers’ demands for the Freedom Charter became the special task of Sactu. In fact the Congress of the People campaign was Sactu's first national campaign.