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Members of Halkevi Turkish Community Centre in Hackney, north London, joined a picket of a Shell garage on 8 February 1988. On 1 March 1987 the AAM launched a boycott of Shell as part of an international campaign organised with groups in the USA and the Netherlands. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

Repression of trade unionists intensified from the end of 1987, with four union activists held on death row. On 1 February 1988 the AAM and SATIS launched the Joint Campaign against the Repression of Trade Unionists at a demonstration outside South Africa House that coincided with the reopening of the trial of NUMSA General Secretary Moses Mayekiso. In the following months most British trade unions launched their own actions, including the National Union of Mineworkers’ petition for the release of three South African mineworkers sentenced to hang. The petition was signed by over 30,000 people in Britain’s coalfield communities.

Letter from Lynda Chalker, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, telling the AAM Women‘s Committee that the British government had asked the South African government to commute the death sentences on the Sharpeville Six. One of the six was a woman, Theresa Ramashamola. The six were condemned to death for taking part in a demonstration at which a black deputy mayor was killed. They were eventually reprieved in July 1988 after spending two and a half years on death row. 

An international campaign to force Shell to withdraw from South Africa was launched in 1987 by anti-apartheid organisations in the Netherlands, USA and Britain. The AAM called for a boycott of all Shell products. These postcards reproduced campaign materials and were designed to be sent to the managers of Shell garages and Shell executives. As a result of the campaign Shell lost major contracts with local authorities. Its share of the UK petrol market fell by nearly 7 per cent.

Briefing for MPs speaking in the House of Commons debate called in response the banning of the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid organisations in South Africa in 1988. The AAM argued that the bannings showed that the British government’s strategy of encouraging President Botha to negotiate the ending of apartheid lacked credibility.

Hammersmith and Fulham AA Group members held a year-long weekly picket of this Shell garage on Fulham Road in west London. The photograph shows health workers from Charing Cross Hospital at the protest. On 1 March 1987 the AAM launched a boycott of Shell as part of an international campaign organised jointly with groups in the USA and the Netherlands. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

In the late 1980s there was a big increase in the number of political prisoners sentenced to death in South Africa. The African National Congress organised this meeting in London to alert public opinion in Britain.

Leaflet publicising a memorial meeting for Steve Biko and a collection for South African refugees.