Barclays and Shell

Reading Anti-Apartheid Campaign leaflet asking local people to take action in support of the campaigns for the reprieve of the Sharpeville Six, sentenced to death in South Africa, and the release of trade unionist Moses Mayekiso, one of five people charged with sedition. The leaflet also advertised the Shell boycott and the AAM’s national ‘Sanctions Now!’ demonstration on 24 October 1987.

Shell co-operated with the South African authorities in Namibia, in defiance of the UN termination of South Africa’s mandate. It also supplied fuel for the South African Defence Force in its war against guerrilla fighters from the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in northern Namibia. This leaflet was distributed during the international Week of Action on Namibia organised by the AAM and Namibia Support Committee, 27 October–3 November 1987.

Members of Halkevi Turkish Community Centre in Hackney, north London, joined a picket of a Shell garage on 8 February 1988. On 1 March 1987 the AAM launched a boycott of Shell as part of an international campaign organised with groups in the USA and the Netherlands. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

An international campaign to force Shell to withdraw from South Africa was launched in 1987 by anti-apartheid organisations in the Netherlands, USA and Britain. The AAM called for a boycott of all Shell products. These postcards reproduced campaign materials and were designed to be sent to the managers of Shell garages and Shell executives. As a result of the campaign Shell lost major contracts with local authorities. Its share of the UK petrol market fell by nearly 7 per cent.

Hammersmith and Fulham AA Group members held a year-long weekly picket of this Shell garage on Fulham Road in west London. The photograph shows health workers from Charing Cross Hospital at the protest. On 1 March 1987 the AAM launched a boycott of Shell as part of an international campaign organised jointly with groups in the USA and the Netherlands. Shell was joint owner of one of South Africa’s biggest oil refineries and a lead company in its coalmining and petrochemicals industries.

Tyneside AA Group asked spectators to boycott Shell products at Newcastle upon Tyne’s May Day carnival in1989. 

In May 1978 the South African Defence Force massacred over 600 people at a SWAPO refugee camp at Kassinga in Angola. They included 120 children. This leaflet accused Shell of being complicit in the killings because they supplied fuel for the SADF in its operations in Namibia and Angola. The leaflet was distributed on the 11th anniversary of the massacre in 1989.

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.