Representatives of British local authorities joined a protest against the inclusion of South Africa and Bophuthatswana in the World Travel Market at Olympia in November 1990. One of the few sanctions Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to was a voluntary ban on the promotion of tourism to South Africa and Namibia, but the British government did nothing to put this into practice.
Submission to the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee showing Britain’s failure to enforce the limited restrictive measures it had placed on trade and investment in South Africa.
Southwark AA Group supporters picketed a Shell garage in South London in 1990. After Nelson Mandela’s release, the AAM kept up its campaign for a boycott of Shell and for sanctions to pressure the South African government to agree a genuinely democratic constitution.
Members of Notting Hill AA Group asked shoppers to boycott South African gold in Kensington High Street, West London, as part of the AAM’s Month of Action against apartheid gold sales in December 1990.
ANC president Oliver Tambo accepts a message of solidarity for the ANC’s consultative conference from AAM President Trevor Huddleston in December 1990. Also in the picture are the AAM’s Chair Bob Hughes MP and Executive Secretary Mike Terry.
In 1990 the AAM made tourism a major part of its consumer boycott campaign. It wrote to major British holiday companies about their policy on selling trips to South Africa. Local AA groups campaigned to persuade local travel agents to stop promoting South African holidays. In London local activists held a sit-in next to the South African Airways stall at the World Travel Market in the Olympia exhibition centre.
After Nelson Mandela’s release in February 1990, the AAM campaigned for support for the ANC in its negotiations for a democratic constitution. This leaflet asked students and young people to support the AAM’s ‘South Africa: Freedom Now!’ campaign.
