1980s

Elvis Costello at the AAM’s Festival for Freedom on Clapham Common on 28 June 1986. 250,000 people heard performers including Sting, Billy Bragg, Maxi Priest, Gil Scott-Heron, Audio Dynamite and Hugh Masekela. The programme was organised by Artists Against Apartheid.

Billy Bragg at the AAM’s Festival for Freedom on Clapham Common on 28 June 1986. 250,000 people heard performers including Sting, Maxi Priest, Gil Scott-Heron, Audio Dynamite and Hugh Masekela. The programme was organised by Artists Against Apartheid.

Big Audio Dynamite, Hugh Masekela, Maxi Priest, Madness and Jerry Dammers with AAM President Trevor Huddleston.

Anti-apartheid supporters displayed a ‘Boycott Shell’ banner at the Shell Centre on London’s South Bank on Nelson Mandela’s birthday, 18 July 1986. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

Supporters of End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA) held a vigil outside outside Church House, Westminster on 29 July 1986. They called on the Church Commissioners, who administered the Church of England’s large investment portfolio, to sell its shares in companies with investments in South Africa.

South Africa diversified its exports in the early 1980s to include textiles and household products. This leaflet asked shoppers to boycott clothes made in South Africa and karakul furs exported from Namibia. In 1985 the TUC wrote to major clothing retailers asking them not to stock clothing made in South Africa. Several chains announced they would not renew their South African contracts. South African textile exports to Britain fell by 35% between 1983 and 1986.

Commonwealth leaders met in London, 3–5 August 1986, to discuss further sanctions against South Africa. Earlier in the year a Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group mission concluded that the apartheid government was not prepared to negotiate an end to minority rule. The AAM mounted an intensive campaign to show that public opinion in Britain rejected Prime Minister Thatcher’s anti-sanctions policy. It held a three-day vigil outside the summit and published an Emergency Declaration in the Observer newspaper. On the opening day of the summit ANC leader Alfred Nzo and Trevor Huddleston led a march from an inter-faith service at St James’s, Piccadilly to Marlborough House.

ANC Secretary General Alfred Nzo and AAM Chair Bob Hughes MP at a vigil held outside the mini-summit of Commonwealth leaders at Marlborough House, 3–5 August 1986. They placed a wreath on a coffin symbolising all those who had died in South Africa’s attacks on the frontline states. At the mini-summit the Commonwealth imposed a package of sanctions against South Africa.