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Anne Page lived in South Africa as a teenager and was recruited to the staff of the Anti-Apartheid Movement as Information Officer during the Rivonia trial in 1963–64. She helped organise the Trafalgar Square demonstration held on 14 June 1964 to demand clemency for Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. In 1965 she became the founding editor of the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News. As a councillor in the London Borough of Islington in the late 1970s, she was the first Chair of the council’s Race Relations Committee.

This is a complete transcript of an interview carried out as part of the Forward to Freedom history project in 2014.

Anne Page lived in South Africa as a teenager and was recruited to the staff of the Anti-Apartheid Movement as Information Officer during the Rivonia trial in 1963–64. She helped organise the Trafalgar Square demonstration held on 14 June 1964 to demand clemency for Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. In 1965 she became the founding editor of the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News. As a councillor in the London Borough of Islington in the late 1970s, she was the first Chair of the council’s Race Relations Committee.

In this clip she tells how the Anti-Apartheid Movement distributed information about the accused in the Rivonia trial and campaigned for their release.

Anne Page lived in South Africa as a teenager and was recruited to the staff of the Anti-Apartheid Movement as Information Officer during the Rivonia trial in 1963–64. She helped organise the Trafalgar Square demonstration held on 14 June 1964 to demand clemency for Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. In 1965 she became the founding editor of the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News. As a councillor in the London Borough of Islington in the late 1970s, she was the first Chair of the council’s Race Relations Committee.

In this clip she describes how it was widely expected that Nelson Mandela and the other Rivonia trialists would be condemned to death.

After Nelson Mandela and seven of his co-accused were convicted of sabotage on 11 June 1964 there was a real danger that the trial judge would impose the death sentence. Supporters in London kept up a three-day vigil opposite South Africa House and 50 MPs marched from the House of Commons to present a petition to the South African ambassador. The vigil culminated in a rally in Trafalgar Square on 14 June. When the sentence of life imprisonment was announced on 12 June it was seen as a victory for the international campaign to save the lives of the eight men.

This leaflet asked people to join a three-day vigil outside South Africa House when the verdict on the Rivonia accused was announced on Thursday 11 June 1964, followed by sentencing on the following day. It also advertised protests in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Reading University and Ireland.

After Nelson Mandela and seven of his co-accused were convicted of sabotage on 11 June 1964 there was a real danger that the trial judge would impose the death sentence. Supporters in London protested at South Africa House and 50 MPs marched from the House of Commons to present a petition to the ambassador. The actions culminated in a rally in Trafalgar Square on 14 June. The sentence of life imprisonment announced on 12 June was seen as a victory for the international campaign to save their lives. 

Leaflet publicising a walk and silent vigil in support of Nelson Mandela on 14 June 1964, after he and the other Rivonia trialists were sentenced to live imprisonment on 12 June. It asked people to walk from Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park to the South African Embassy and hold a 30-minute silent vigil outside the Embassy. The protest was organised by the London section of the Committee of 100, set up to organise direct action against the British government’s decision to build a nuclear bomb. 

Sussex University students marched from Brighton to London on 12 and 13 June 1964, on the eve of the sentencing of Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. The march was organised by Thabo Mbeki, whose father Govan Mbeki was one of the accused.