Local AA groups

Brent AA Group supporters with their local MP Ken Livingstone asked shoppers to boycott South African goods sold by Tesco in February 1987 on the eve of the AAM’s March Month of Action for People’s Sanctions.

Nottingham AA Group converted a local bus to publicise the campaign for a boycott of South African goods and of Shell. 

This conference for trade unionists was one of many regional initiatives in the mid and late 1980s. It brought together local trade unionists and anti-apartheid activists. The conference focused on campaigning for sanctions and the role of the ANC in South Africa and SWAPO in Namibia.

Anti-apartheid demonstrators marched through Birmingham on 21 March 1987 in support of the AAM’s March Month of Action for People’s Sanctions. They were remembering the South Africans shot by the police at Sharpeville in 1960 and at Langa in the Eastern Cape in 1985.

Leaflet distributed by Exeter AA Group advertising events held as part of the AAM’s March Month of Action for People’s Sanctions in 1987.

Waltham Forest AA Group organised this meeting in north-east London to win local support for the AAM’s Month of Action for People’s Sanctions in March 1987. The meeting featured speakers from the ANC and SWAPO.

Hounslow AA Group was formed at the end of 1985. Its 1987 AGM report highlighted the AAM’s 24 March day of protest action and reported on the local council’s funding for an anti-apartheid campaign event as part of the national ‘ten days of anti-apartheid action’ planned to take place in June 1987.

Marks and Spencer became the focus of the South Africa boycott campaign in Greater Manchester after it refused to discuss its purchasing policy. In 1987 local anti-apartheid campaigners collected 10,000 signatures to a petition asking it not to sell South African products. The petition was presented to the store by the Bishop of Manchester. M&S also had links with the South African company Wooltru, which stocked M&S merchandise.