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Elvis Costello at the AAM’s Festival for Freedom on Clapham Common on 28 June 1986. 250,000 people heard performers including Sting, Billy Bragg, Maxi Priest, Gil Scott-Heron, Audio Dynamite and Hugh Masekela. The programme was organised by Artists Against Apartheid.

Billy Bragg at the AAM’s Festival for Freedom on Clapham Common on 28 June 1986. 250,000 people heard performers including Sting, Maxi Priest, Gil Scott-Heron, Audio Dynamite and Hugh Masekela. The programme was organised by Artists Against Apartheid.

Big Audio Dynamite, Hugh Masekela, Maxi Priest, Madness and Jerry Dammers with AAM President Trevor Huddleston.

Leeds Women Against Apartheid was formed in 1986 to bring together women in support of their sisters in South Africa and Namibia. The group reached out to women’s organisations in West Yorkshire, raising funds for women in Southern Africa, boycotting apartheid goods and holding day schools publicising the situation of women under apartheid. It was linked to a women’s group in Soshunguve township, near Pretoria.  This leaflet advertised a meeting held in Leeds Civic Hall in July 1986.

‘Boycott South Africa!’ flyer advertising the first meeting of Milton Keynes AA Group. The meeting was held in a local church, with a speaker from the national Anti-Apartheid Movement. 

Anti-apartheid supporters displayed a ‘Boycott Shell’ banner at the Shell Centre on London’s South Bank on Nelson Mandela’s birthday, 18 July 1986. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

Supporters of End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA) held a vigil outside outside Church House, Westminster on 29 July 1986. They called on the Church Commissioners, who administered the Church of England’s large investment portfolio, to sell its shares in companies with investments in South Africa.

South Africa diversified its exports in the early 1980s to include textiles and household products. This leaflet asked shoppers to boycott clothes made in South Africa and karakul furs exported from Namibia. In 1985 the TUC wrote to major clothing retailers asking them not to stock clothing made in South Africa. Several chains announced they would not renew their South African contracts. South African textile exports to Britain fell by 35% between 1983 and 1986.