Local AA groups

Sheffield Southern Africa Resources Centre provided educational resources on Southern Africa for the city’s schools and community groups, as well as a headquarters for Sheffield AA Group. Sheffield AA was one of the most active of the AAM’s local groups throughout the 1980s.

All over Britain people celebrated Nelson Mandela’s release on 11 February 1990. These two young women were taking part in a vigil on the steps of Sheffield Town Hall.

The Southern Africa Coalition brought together a wide range of organisations, including trade unions, churches, overseas aid agencies and the AAM. In Tyneside, north-east England, local branches of the organisations that made up the coalition organised a week of anti-apartheid events in February 1990.

Ealing Anti-Apartheid Group produced this brochure to encourage local residents to boycott South African products in protest against the detention and torture of children by the apartheid police. It was produced with support from the London Borough of Ealing’s Race Equality Unit.

South Devon AA Group mounted an exhibition about the lives of women and children under apartheid in the high street in Totnes, Devon in 1989.

This booklet was produced by the London Borough of Lambeth in south London. It gave advice to Lambeth residents on how to check if goods on sale in local shops came from South Africa or Namibia. It was carefully worded so as not to break new laws restricting the powers of local authorities to support consumer boycott campaigns.

The AAM’s ‘Boycott Apartheid 89’ campaign extended the consumer boycott to tourism. London students and the London Anti-Apartheid Committee called for South Africa to be excluded from the World Travel Market at Kensington’s Olympia exhibition centre, 28 November 1989. The AAM wrote to the ten top British travel agents asking them not to book holidays in South Africa.

This Festival brought together speakers from the Namibia Support Committee and Wales AAM with the Cuban ambassador, who spoke about his country’s support for Angola against South African aggression. The conference was followed by an evening concert with music from the Cardiff Red Choir and singer songwriter Maria Tolly.