His father, who immigrated to South Africa from Sunderland in the north-east of England, was a shop steward of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and a leader during its strike action in 1913.
However, the white working class electorate that had supported the Labour Party by and large rejected Hepple's policies.
The Hepples then moved to England where they founded the International Defence and Aid Fund's Information Service, an organization that reported on repression and detentions by the apartheid government.
[1] Hepple died in 1983 in exile in Canterbury, England and was celebrated by the African National Congress whose secretary-general Alfred Nzo, wrote that Hepple "was known and loved by the oppressed people of South Africa for his opposition to the draconian apartheid policies of the South African regime.
"[1] His son, Bob Hepple, was a South African and British academic and lawyer who was "Nelson Mandela’s legal advisor through his 1962 trial".