Local AA groups

Leaflet publicising a public meeting organized by Haringey AA Group on Education in South Africa. The speakers were Roger Diski, editor of ‘The Child is Not Dead: Youth Resistance in South Africa’ and educationist Elaine Unterhalter. The meeting highlighted the ongoing brutality of the South African police after the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Supporters of North Shropshire AA Group marched through Shrewsbury in January 1987 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress.

Action calendar listing activities planned by Islington Anti-Apartheid Group for the first quarter of 1987. They included a ‘mega-picket’ of a Sainsbury’s local branch as part of the AAM’s March Month of Action for People's Sanctions, and a public meeting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the ANC.

Members newsletter circulated by Chester AA Group in January 1987, announcing the launch of fortnightly pickets of the local Tesco branch, to ask shoppers to boycott South African goods, and a series of public meetings. The group held a concert ‘Rock against Apartheid’ on 9 December 1986 – ‘probably the best gig in Chester for some time’. Chester AA Group was formed in 1986.

Leafletting Barclays Bank customers to persuade them to withdraw their accounts was a regular activity for most local anti-apartheid groups. The leafletting sessions were part of the long-running campaign to persuade Barclays to pull out of South Africa. In the photograph supporters of Tyneside AA Group are asking customers at a Barclays branch in central Newcastle to close their accounts. Later in the same year Barclays withdrew from South Africa.

Leaflet asking shoppers to donate sanitary items for Namibian and South African refugees forced to flee to Angola, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The leaflet asked for items like sanitary towels, soap and antiseptic cream. 

The far-right National Front in the north London borough of Haringey distributed this leaflet urging shoppers to buy South African goods to show their support for apartheid South Africa. The AAM met with virulent opposition from a succession of far-right organisations in Britain throughout its 35-year history.

Leaflet asking shoppers in Chiswick in West London to boycott South African goods. The leaflet quoted Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as calling for a boycott and said that public pressure was already having an impact. It cited a South African trade body as admitting that canned fruit exports from South Africa to the UK had fallen by 18% in 1986.