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This poster reproduced the centrespread of a Special Supplement to the March 1982 edition of the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News. It was produced as part of the publicity material for the AAM’s 1982 campaign ‘Southern Africa: The Time to Choose’.

Activists in the National Graphical Association (NGA) began a campaign in the 1970s to have the South African Typographical Association (SATU) expelled from the International Graphical Federation (IGF) until work in the South African printing industry and membership of the appropriate trade union was not defined by race. These extracts from the verbatim reports of the NGA’s Biennial Delegate Meetings of 1982, 1984 and 1986 tell how the initiative of activists within the NGA led to SATU’s expulsion from the IGF in 1986.

British trade unionists picketed South Africa House on May 11 1982 calling for the release of three leaders of the South African Agricultural Workers Union detained without trial. Left to right: Roger Ward from the draughtsmen’s union TASS, Muriel Turner from the clerical union ASTMS and ASTMS General Secretary, Clive Jenkins.

SATIS-ACTION was a scheme that alerted subscribers to new political trials and death sentences in South Africa and Namibia. Supporters were asked to send letters and telegrams to the South African government and to ask the British government to intervene.

In 1982, the AAM and British trade unionists campaigned for support for striking South African workers at Wilson-Rowntrees, a subsidiary of the British confectionery maker Rowntree- Mackintosh. Southampton AA Group distributed this leaflet asking supporters to protest to the company’s managing director about the treatment of its black workers.

In February 1981, 500 workers at Wilson-Rowntree’s East London factory were sacked for striking in protest at the dismissal of three colleagues. Wilson-Rowntree was a subsidiary of the British company Rowntree-Mackintosh. The AAM campaigned with the British unions GMWU, USDAW and TGWU  to make the company reinstate the sacked workers and recognise the South African Allied Workers Union (SAAWU). This leaflet publicised a march in York, where the company had its headquarters.

Anti-apartheid supporters marched through York on 3 July 1982 in solidarity with workers sacked for going on strike at York-based Rowntree-Mackintosh’s South African subsidiary. The demonstration was part of a long-running campaign by British trade unions and the AAM to make the company reinstate the sacked workers and recognise the South African Allied Workers Union.

Agenda and registration form for the annual NUS/AAM student conference held at City University, London in June 1982.