1980s

Memorandum to the British government showing how British companies exploited loopholes in the UN mandatory arms ban. The memorandum set out a comprehensive list of measures needed to enforce the embargo.

These healthworkers asked Portsmouth Area Health Authority to phase out the purchase of South African and Namibian produce in January 1986. When the management refused, they refused to handle tinned food from South Africa supplied for patients’ meals. Area Health Authority van drivers and 130 other workers joined the boycott action. They were supported by the public service workers union NUPE, health workers union COHSE and transport workers union TGWU.

Lenny Henry and David Yip were among the 200 entertainers at the launch of Performers Against Racism on 26 January 1986. They pledged to boycott all links with apartheid South Africa. The launch was triggered by a referendum in the actors union Equity seeking to relax the cultural boycott. Performers against Racism called for the boycott to be extended to films and video as well as radio and television.

Anti-apartheid supporters in Penzance, Cornwall ask passers-by not to bank with Barclays in February 1986.

Over 500 women demonstrated outside the South Africa Embassy on International Women’s Day, 8 March 1986. They called for the release of Theresa Ramashamola, sentenced to death by the apartheid regime, and sanctions against apartheid. They also demanded immediate independence for Namibia.

Demonstrators at Twickenham protested against the inclusion of Springbok rugby players in one of the teams in the International Rugby Board centenary match on 19 April 1986. Springbok supporters came from South Africa to Twickenham and Cardiff Arms Park for the centenary. In Cardiff, Wales AAM organised a big protest at the centenary game held on 16 April.

A South African Springbok rugby supporter taunts anti-apartheid demonstrators at Twickenham. The demonstrators were protesting against the inclusion of Springboks in a team taking part in the International Rugby Board centenary match on 19 April 1986. The Springboks were sponsored by the all-white South African Rugby Board. Springbok supporters came from South Africa to Twickenham and Cardiff Arms Park for the centenary.

SATIS (Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society) held a vigil for the Sharpeville Six on the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields in April 1986. The Six, five men and one woman, were sentenced to death in December 1985 for taking part in a demonstration at which a black deputy mayor was killed. They were reprieved in July 1988 after spending two and a half years on death row.