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Poster publicising a march past the headquarters of companies involved in Southern Africa – Unilever, Anglo American, the Daily Telegraph, Shell, Plessey and Barclays Bank – on 28 June 1969. The march was organised by the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, a coalition of militant youth and student groups set up in 1969 in the wake of the 1968 student demonstrations in France and other European countries. 

The AAM marked its 10th anniversary with a conference on guerrilla warfare in Southern Africa on 6 July 1969. Speakers included historian Basil Davidson and representatives of ZAPU, MPLA and ANC. The conference was a turn to the left for the AAM. Paul Foot argued that it should stress the links between ‘exploiters in South Africa and in the UK’. Ruth First stressed the ‘indivisibility’ of the guerrilla struggle in Southern Africa and of the white response. Left to right: Tennyson Makiwane (ANC), Edward Ndhlovu (ZAPU), Basil Davidson.

Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) was set up to campaign against the all-white South African tour scheduled for the summer of 1970. This press release announced the launch of the group at a press conference in Fleet Street on 10 September 1969. The cricket tour was preceded by an all-white South African rugby tour of Britain and Ireland in 1969–70. STST organised direct action against the tour.

Anti-apartheid supporters protested at all 24 games played by the South African Springbok rugby team in their 1969/70 tour of Britain and Ireland. The demonstrations combined direct action which disrupted some of the games, co-ordinated by Stop the Seventy Tour (STST), and mass marches organised by the AAM. 200,000 copies of this leaflet were distributed outside the grounds.  

Ernest Rodker was active in Stop the Seventy Tour and helped organise direct action against the Springbok rugby tour of Britain in 1969–70. He was arrested on several occasions and was part of a group that organised undercover action to disrupt the tour. He was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in its earliest years and in the anti-nuclear Committee of 100, as well as in the campaign against the Vietnam war.

This is a complete transcript of an interview carried out as part of the ‘Forward to Freedom’ AAM history project in 2013.

Ernest Rodker was active in Stop the Seventy Tour and helped organise direct action against the Springbok rugby tour of Britain in 1969–70. He was arrested on several occasions and was part of a group that organised undercover action to disrupt the tour. He was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in its earliest years and in the anti-nuclear Committee of 100, as well as in the campaign against the Vietnam war.

In this clip Ernest describes his involvement in a protest at Twickenham as part of the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign.

Alan Brooks was the Anti-Apartheid Movement’s Organising Secretary, 1967–70 and Deputy Executive Secretary, 1987–91. In 1988 he organised the Nelson Mandela Freedom March from Glasgow to London. He also worked as the head of the International Defence and Aid Fund’s research department and for the Mozambique Angola Information Centre (MAGIC). In the early 1960s he served two years as a political prisoner in South Africa.

In this clip Alan Brooks talks about the campaign against the all-white South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969–70.

John Sheldon was the General Secretary of the Public and Civil Service Union. As a student at Ruskin College, Oxford, he helped set up the Ruskin College Kitson Committee to campaign for the release of gaoled trade unionist David Kitson and took part in the demonstrations against the 1969–70 South African rugby tour.

This is a complete transcript of an interview carried out by Christabel Gurney in 2000.