1980s

From August 1985 the Scottish AA Committee held a weekly Friday picket of the South African consulate in Glasgow. The consulate was on the fifth floor of the Glasgow Stock Exchange. In 1986 the street was renamed Nelson Mandela Place, and the consulate set up a post office box number to avoid using the new address. The consulate was shut down in the early 1990s.

South Devon AA Group mounted an exhibition about the lives of women and children under apartheid in the high street in Totnes, Devon in 1989.

William Ntombela was one of several South African trade unionists sentenced to death in 1989. The British shopworkers union USDAW launched a petition for his release, signed by 5,000 members.  In the photograph USDAW General Secretary Garfield Davies (left) displays the petition. Partly as a result of the campaign the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Actor Glenda Jackson launched the AAM Prize Raffle in 1989, with first prize of a Citroen car. Fundraising was an important part of the AAM’s activities – it depended entirely on small donations and fundraising projects and received no grants from government or major donor institutions.

Troops in armoured personnel carriers terrorised young people living in South Africa’s black townships in the mid-1980s. This T-shirt was produced by Artists Against Apartheid, set up by Jerry Dammers and Dali Tambo in 1986.

By the 1980s South Africa was heavily dependent on loans from US and British banks. After the apartheid government declared a moratorium on the repayment of its foreign loans in 1985, the AAM and End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA) stepped up their campaign to stop the banks rescheduling South Africa’s debt.

This list of honours conferred on Nelson Mandela by British organisations was issued by the Nelson Mandela Reception Committee after Mandela’s release in February 1990. It includes honorary degrees, honorary life memberships, and roads and venues named after Mandela. Mandela was honoured by towns and organisations all over Britain, from Exeter in the south-west to Aberdeen in northern Scotland.

In January 1987 the AAM launched a campaign for a boycott of Shell products as part of an international campaign to make Shell withdraw from South Africa. This leaflet was published shortly after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. He endorsed the boycott and said that continued economic pressure was necessary to force the apartheid government into negotiations.