Artists

Leaflet publicising a concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday organised by Nottingham AA Group. It featured La Danza Continua. Events like this were held all over Britain.

Flyer advertising a gig at the Assembly Rooms, Derby in September 1988. The concert was organised by Derby AA Group in partnership with the Afro-Caribbean community organisation, The Hadhari Project, which provided care for elderly people. The gig featured bands from Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, and was advertised throughout the East Midlands. Half the proceeds were given to the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College.

This edition of Merseyside AA Group’s newsletter reported on a concert celebrating Nelson Mandela’s birthday by the local community in Liverpool 8. The concert headlined Ministry of Love and the Bhundu Boys. The newsletter asked for support for the Sharpevile Six and publicised the group’s regular pickets of the local branch of Tesco and Shell garage.

Front cover of a booklet about the ‘Sisters of the Long March’, a South African theatre group that toured Britain, September–December 1988, to win support for South African workers in their long-running dispute with the British-owned company BTR Sarmcol. The Sisters were a seven-woman song and dance group from Natal. They took their show to over 20 venues all over the country. The year before, a theatre group set up by the BTR workers brought their play about the strike ‘The Long March’ to Britain. Both tours were sponsored by the British TUC and supported by the AAM. 

London AA Committee flyer publicising a concert at The Fridge, Brixton in December 1988. It featured Jonah Moyo and Devera Ngwena from Zimbabwe and was sponsored by the journalists trade union NUJ.

Actor Leonard Fenton, a stars of the TV soap EastEnders, presented the first prize of a holiday in China in the AAM’s 1988 Prize Raffle. 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.

Local AA groups all over Britain organised activities as part of the AAM’s ‘Boycott Apartheid 1989’ campaign. Tyneside AA Group asked the supermarket chain William Laws to reinstate a local worker sacked for refusing to handle South African fruit. This leaflet publicised its Boycott Conference and a fundraising concert for workers on strike at BTR in South Africa.

Poster advertising a benefit concert at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill, West London organised by Notting Hill Anti-Apartheid Group. The gig featured ska/rap band Ruff Ruff and Ready. The AAM received no government or large institutional grants and depended on membership subscriptions and events like this for funding.