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Sheffield AA Group celebrated Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday with a 5-a-side football competition and a birthday party. Special events took place all over Britain as part of the AAM’s ‘Freedom at 70’ campaign. At the end of the campaign a poll showed that Nelson Mandela had become a household name in Britain and 70% of people  supported the call for his release.

All over Britain special events were held to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday. In the photograph, anti-apartheid supporters in Inverness display a giant card in the town’s shopping centre. At the conclusion of the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign, a poll showed that Nelson Mandela had become a household name in Britain and 70% of people  supported the call for his release.

All over Britain anti-apartheid supporters celebrated Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday and called for his release. In Bristol a banner was hung from a housing block facing the Anglican cathedral. At the conclusion of the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign, a poll showed that Nelson Mandela had become a household name in Britain and 70% of people  supported the call for his release.

Nelson Mandela was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Islwyn in South Wales to mark his 70th birthday in 1988. In the photograph Neil Kinnock MP presents a scroll to Mandela’s lawyer Ismail Ayob with Beyers Naude and Imam Esack looking on. The presentation was one of hundreds of honours conferred on Mandela by British local authorities and other institutions in the 1980s.

Cutting a birthday cake for Nelson Mandela at the Mangrove, All Saints Road in west London.

Leaflet publicising a concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70^th birthday organised by Nottingham AA Group. Events like this were held all over Britain.

By July 1988 60 political prisoners were under sentence of death in South Africa. They included young ANC militants, trade unionists and community activists. Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) focused on pressing the British government to intervene with South Africa not to carry out the executions. This leaflet advertised a weekly picket of the British Foreign Office.