Leaflet asking shoppers in Chiswick in West London to boycott South African goods. The leaflet quoted Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as calling for a boycott and said that public pressure was already having an impact. It cited a South African trade body as admitting that canned fruit exports from South Africa to the UK had fallen by 18% in 1986.
The far-right National Front in the north London borough of Haringey distributed this leaflet urging shoppers to buy South African goods to show their support for apartheid South Africa. The AAM met with virulent opposition from a succession of far-right organisations in Britain throughout its 35-year history.
Leaflet asking shoppers to donate sanitary items for Namibian and South African refugees forced to flee to Angola, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The leaflet asked for items like sanitary towels, soap and antiseptic cream.
The AAM’s Multi-Faith Committee held a carol service in Trafalgar Square on 21 December 1986. The singing was led by the ANC and SWAPO choirs and the London Community Gospel Choir, and other groups gave readings on the situation in Namibia and South Africa. The event was sponsored by the four leading black London newspapers.
Anti-apartheid supporters protested outside the Wembley Arena in 1986 when British boxer Frank Bruno fought South African Gerry Coetzee. Britain’s welterweight champion Lloyd Honeyghan later gave up his world title rather than break the sports boycott by fighting a South African. The protest was backed by the Black British Conference Against Apartheid Sport, chaired by former Sports Council member Paul Stephenson. World boxing champions John Conteh and Maurice Hope also wrote to Frank Bruno asking him to call off the fight.
Leafletting Barclays Bank customers to persuade them to withdraw their accounts was a regular activity for most local anti-apartheid groups. The leafletting sessions were part of the long-running campaign to persuade Barclays to pull out of South Africa. In the photograph supporters of Tyneside AA Group are asking customers at a Barclays branch in central Newcastle to close their accounts. Later in the same year Barclays withdrew from South Africa.
The AAM hailed Barclays Bank’s withdrawal from South Africa in November 1986 as an important victory in the international sanctions campaign. In this press release it stated that the campaign for Barclays withdrawal was the most sustained action ever undertaken against a major multinational company. But it warned that Barclays would continue to support the apartheid economy by continuing to cooperate with its former banking associate and by helping to restructure South Africa’s international debt. The AAM announced it would move ahead with plans to target other companies still involved in South Africa such as Shell.
In 1986 the Thatcher government introduced a Public Order Bill which limited the right to hold public demonstrations. The AAM took part in this protest outside the Houses of Parliament and liaised with the National Council of Civil Liberties to lobby against the Bill.
