Local AA groups

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.

Glenys Kinnock opened Sheffield’s Southern Africa Resource Centre in February 1988. The Centre provided educational resources on Southern Africa for the city’s schools and community groups, as well as a headquarters for Sheffield Anti-Apartheid Group. Sheffield AA was one of the most active of the AAM’s local groups throughout the 1980s. With Glenys Kinnock are the Provost of Sheffield, Rev. Frank Curtis, and the Centre’s Co-ordinator, David Granville.

Leaflet advertising a meeting and film show to mark South Africa Freedom Day, 26 June 1987. The meeting was sponsored by Camden Council's Race and Community Relations Committee. It took place during the 'ten days of action against apartheid' called for by the AAM, 16–26 June.

Local authorities all over Britain mounted ‘ten days of action against apartheid’, 16–26 June 1987. In the London Borough of Hounslow, the local council joined with Hounslow and Chiswick AA groups and community organisations to organise a programme of arts events and meetings. Hounslow Council said it was expressing its commitment to good race relations in the borough, as well as its opposition to apartheid. Other centres which took part in the ten days of action included Camden, Southwark and Lewisham in London, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh in Scotland, and Manchester and Sheffield.

Most local AA groups distributed regular newsletters to their supporters. This newsletter was published by Cheltenham AA Group in January 1988.

Tyneside AA Group supporters told Zola Budd she should not run for England at Gateshead Stadium on 30 January 1988. The sprinter continued to live in South Africa but obtained a British passport to get round the sports boycott against apartheid.

Leaflet advertising a concert with music by South African jazz musician Dudu Pukwana's group Zila to celebrate South African Heroes Day in December 1987. The leaflet listed the regular meeting dates of local anti-apartheid groups in the Greater Manchester area and the local branch of the Namibia Support Committee.

This leaflet was distributed by anti-apartheid supporters in the west Midlands district around Nuneaton. The local AA group held regular pickets of Barclays Bank, Shell garages and Tesco supermarkets asking residents to boycott apartheid goods. It also campaigned for an end to South Africa’s occupation of Namibia.