Posters

There was widespread support among British trade unionists for striking miners in South Africa and Namibia in September 1987. AAM supporters and the British NUM held daily protests outside the London headquarters of Anglo-American, Consolidated Goldfields and other South African mining conglomerates. Over £75,000 was raised for the miners.

This poster advertised an international conference held in Harare, Zimbabwe on September 1987 about ‘Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa’. The conference brought together representatives of international anti-apartheid movements and activists from within South Africa. They heard testimony from children who had been detained by the South African security forces. The British delegates later formed the Harare Working Group, which organised a conference at City University, London, attended by 700 people. Participants formed groups such as Teachers against Apartheid, Social Workers against Apartheid and Youth & Community Workers against Apartheid.

South African coal exports to Western Europe rose steeply in the mid-1980s. In 1986 West Germany opposed the inclusion of coal in a sanctions package imposed by the European Economic Community. The British National Union of Mineworkers was at the forefront of the campaign to stop UK imports of South African coal. In 1987 it held a joint conference with the AAM and produced a special Coal Campaign Bulletin.

Poster produced for the campaign to pressure British supermarket Tesco’s to stop selling South African goods. The poster uses Tesco’s distinctive brand image. The chain was subjected to regular ‘days of action’, when campaigners handed out leaflets outside its stores asking shoppers to boycott South African products.

Poster advertising meetings with SWAPO President Sam Nujoma in Glasgow and Edinburgh during a tour of Scotland in October 1987.

Poster advertising the AAM demonstration calling for UN mandatory sanctions on 24 October 1987. Thousands marched through central London to an AAM rally in Hyde Park. The speakers at the rally included SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, Johnstone Makatini of the ANC, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Labour MP Bernie Grant and Glenys Kinnock.

Poster produced for placards on a demonstration calling for sanctions against South Africa held in central London on 24 October 1987. Around 60,000 people marched from the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park to a rally addressed by SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, Johnstone Makatini of the ANC, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Labour MP Bernie Grant and Glenys Kinnock.

Poster produced for the campaign to save the lives of the Sharpeville Six, sentenced to death after joining a demonstration at which a black deputy mayor was killed. The six were reprieved in July 1988 after spending two and a half years on death row.