The call for boycott and disinvestment from South Africa was at the centre of global anti-apartheid campaigns. Now the Conservative Government has introduced a Bill making it illegal for any public body to impose a boycott against another country. DAVID KENVYN shows how the legislation carries forward the Thatcher government’s hostility to campaigns for justice in the wider world.
Launching the apartheid boycott
On 26 June 1959, the Anti-Apartheid Movement was founded as the Boycott Movement. Campaigns for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions against South Africa were the heart blood of what we did over the next 35 years. Individual anti-apartheid supporters turned out week after week to picket supermarkets that were selling apartheid goods. They persuaded shoppers not to buy Cape apples and Outspan oranges, and so the numbers of people boycotting apartheid goods grew. Eventually, the large supermarkets like Sainsburys and Tesco found it necessary to supply alternatives, and the Co-op banned them altogether.
From the beginning, we asked local authorities not to buy South African goods because they were tainted with racism. By the mid-1960s, 54 councils were banning South African fruit from their canteens and schools. In Scotland, the huge Strathclyde Regional Council imposed a ban in 1975.
Apartheid free zones
In 1981, Sheffield became the first local authority to pledge that it would end all links with apartheid. It withdrew pension fund investments from companies with South African subsidiaries and barred South African sports teams from its playing fields. Others followed, including Cambridge, Newcastle and Glasgow, and most inner London boroughs.
Local Authorities Against Apartheid (LAAA) was set up to coordinate local authority action and by 1985 more than 120 local councils had taken some form of anti-apartheid initiative. By 1987 over half of all local authority pension funds – totalling £13 billion – placed restrictions on investing in South African-related companies.
Also in 1981, Glasgow became the first city in the world to make Nelson Mandela a freeman of the city. Glasgow was followed by eight other UK local authorities before Mandela was elected as President, and by numerous cities in the rest of the world. Camden Council renamed the street in which the AAM had its headquarters Mandela Street.
Boycott Barclays
Barclays Bank was the largest high street bank in South Africa. The AAM launched a campaign asking people not to bank with Barclays until it divested itself of its South African connection. The campaign was endorsed by the National Union of Students and Barclays was banned from freshers fairs. This was important because although students were not financially well-off, they generally went on after graduating to well-paid jobs. The loss of those accounts proved decisive in persuading Barclays to withdraw from South Africa in 1986.
After US-wide campus and State disinvestment campaigns, Chase Manhattan Bank refused to roll over the apartheid debt, bankrupting the South African government. After a period of economic turmoil and uprisings, the government released Nelson Mandela and entered into negotiations for a democratic constitution. This is the conclusive proof that campaigns for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions do work.
But all this earned the wrath of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 1988 the Conservative Government legislated to prevent local authorities from taking into account ‘non-commercial considerations’ in procurement decisions, in effect banning them from boycotting apartheid goods. The fact that it had to legislate showed quite clearly that the moral and ethical argument had been lost.
The government argument was that local authorities had no right to ‘interfere’ in foreign policy even when it came to their own expenditure. The legislation was an attempt to undermine the right of local authorities to make decisions in support of human rights – an appalling attack on their right to take moral and ethical interests into account when making decisions.
The new Boycott Bill
The new ‘Economic Activity of Public Bodies’ Bill extends this legislation. It will make it illegal for all public bodies to take procurement or investment decisions ‘in a way that indicates political or moral disapproval of a foreign state’. It will stifle action on a wide range of issues – opposing arms sales, supporting climate justice, human rights, international law, and international solidarity with oppressed peoples struggling for justice.
Extraordinarily, although the Bill gives the government powers to exempt countries like Russia and Belarus, it states specifically that these powers cannot be used to exempt Israel – or the illegally occupied Palestinian territories and Golan Heights.
The rationale for this is that calling for a boycott of Israeli goods could encourage anti-semitism. It’s hard to see how advocating sanctions against Israel because it is implementing apartheid in areas settled in defiance of UN resolutions can lead to hostility to the Jewish community in Britain. Or that calling for a boycott because of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza fosters anti-semitism. As a statement by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign points out, no-one suggested that the AAM’s sanctions campaign was driven by a hatred of white people.
Extraordinarily also, the Bill in its present form forbids public authorities to make any statement about boycott and disinvestment campaigns. So if the Bill becomes law, it will be illegal for a local council or student union to say that although they have decided to abide by the law, they would otherwise impose a boycott.
Widespread opposition
The debate on the Bill’s second reading, held in early July, demonstrated widespread concerns. This included some Conservative MPs. Outside Parliament, nearly 70 civil society organisations have come together to oppose it. Because of our history, former activists in the AAM and supporters of its successor organisation ACTSA well understand that boycotts work and how important it is to work together to stop this Bill.
As ACTSA says: ‘Democratically elected local authorities should be able to use their resources in ways that do not sustain regimes where human rights are violated. It follows that the principle of the right to boycott continues to be a powerful tool to progress human rights, wherever they are under threat’.
The Bill goes forward to its committee stage in September 2023. Quite apart from grounds of principle, it is shot through with inconsistencies and legal pitfalls. Even if our morally bankrupt government can’t be persuaded to ditch it on grounds of principle, it would still make sense for it to abandon it.