Boycott

Simon Korner was Secretary and then Chair of Hackney AA Group from about 1986 to 1994. The group organised a weekly stall outside Sainsbury’s in Dalston and a regular picket of the local Shell garage in Clapton. It put on major fundraising shows at the Hackney Empire, featuring artists like Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard and the Pogues. Simon was a member of the London Anti-Apartheid Committee, and organised political dayschools and a mass picket of Shell HQ.

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

 

Talal Karim came to Britain from Bangladesh in 1971 and supported anti-apartheid campaigns as a student at Warwick University. He later became a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Islington and a member of its Race Equality Committee. He represented Islington Council on Local Authorities Against Apartheid (LAAA) and was one of the main movers behind the Council’s Declaration on Southern Africa, and support for the African National Congress (ANC) and South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO).

In this clip Talal Karim remembers how he checked that there were no South African products on sale in the Council’s staff canteen.

Christabel Gurney was active in the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1969 to 1994. She joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the late 1960s and took part in demonstrations against the Springbok rugby and cricket tours in 1969-70. She was Secretary of the Dambusters Mobilising Committee, which gave rise to the campaign to persuade Barclays Bank to pull out of South Africa.  She edited the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News in the 1970s and was later secretary of Notting Hill Anti-Apartheid Group. More recently she has researched and written about the history of the AAM. 

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

Bob Hughes MP was the Chair of the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1976 to 1995. He was the Labour MP for Aberdeen North from 1970 to 1997 and served as Under Secretary of State for Scotland in 1974–75. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Hughes of Woodside.

In this clip Lord Hughes describes the arguments over boycotting South African products.