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All over Britain anti-apartheid supporters celebrated Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday and called for his release. In Bristol a banner was hung from a housing block facing the Anglican cathedral. At the conclusion of the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign, a poll showed that Nelson Mandela had become a household name in Britain and 70% of people  supported the call for his release.

Nelson Mandela was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Islwyn in South Wales to mark his 70th birthday in 1988. In the photograph Neil Kinnock MP presents a scroll to Mandela’s lawyer Ismail Ayob with Beyers Naude and Imam Esack looking on. The presentation was one of hundreds of honours conferred on Mandela by British local authorities and other institutions in the 1980s.

Cutting a birthday cake for Nelson Mandela at the Mangrove, All Saints Road in west London.

Leaflet publicising a concert to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70^th birthday organised by Nottingham AA Group. Events like this were held all over Britain.

By July 1988 60 political prisoners were under sentence of death in South Africa. They included young ANC militants, trade unionists and community activists. Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) focused on pressing the British government to intervene with South Africa not to carry out the executions. This leaflet advertised a weekly picket of the British Foreign Office.

Jonas Savimbi, leader of the South African-backed Unita organisation in Angola, was met with widespread protests when he visited London in July 1988. An advertisement was placed in the Independent newspaper and demonstrators picketed the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which hosted a meeting for Savimbi. The British Foreign Office gave assurances that Savimbi would not be officially received.

Many local AA groups produced regular members newsletters. This issue of Edinburgh AA Group’s newsletter reports on the Glasgow to London Freedom march and the campaign to save Robert McBride, sentenced to death in South Africa.