Posters

Poster advertising an AAM fortnight of events to celebrate South Africa Freedom Day, 26 June 1980. The poster provided space for local anti-apartheid groups to insert information about local activities.

Poster advertising a rally on South Africa Freedom Day, 26 June 1980, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. The rally was organised by an umbrella group, the South Africa Freedom Day Committee, and the main speaker was ANC Secretary-General Alfred Nzo. The ANC declared 1980 the ‘Year of the Charter’ and the AAM distributed thousands of copies of the Freedom Charter during the year.

Poster advertising a march through central London on 28 June 1980 to protest against South African police shootings of anti-apartheid protestors in Cape Town. The march was the culmination of a week of daily pickets of the South African Embassy, 20-27 June. Marchers delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street calling on the British government to protest against the South African police policy of ‘shoot to kill’.

Poster produced for the AAM campaign for freedom for Nelson Mandela in response to a petition launched by the South African Sunday Post in 1980. A declaration calling for Mandela’s release was endorsed by MPs, trade unions, playwrights, musicians and academics in Britain. The AAM distributed thousands of badges, leaflets and stickers calling for Mandela’s release. The following year Glasgow became the first British city to award him the freedom of the city. In the 1980s buildings, streets and public gardens all over Britain were renamed in his honour.

Poster produced for a month of boycott of Shell and BP organised by the AAM in June 1981. Oil was the one major commodity that South Africa did not possess. In the 1970s the chief oil exporting countries imposed an oil embargo on South Africa. This was circumvented by the major Western oil companies, including Shell and BP. The two companies were joint owners of South Africa’s largest oil refinery. 

Poster publicising a meeting organised by Hackney AA Group and Hackney CND on 21 July 1981.

In February 1981, workers at Wilson-Rowntree’s East London factory were sacked for striking in protest at the dismissal of three colleagues. Wilson-Rowntree was a subsidiary of the British company Rowntree-Mackintosh. The AAM campaigned with the British unions GMWU, USDAW and TGWU  to make the company reinstate the sacked workers and recognise SAAWU (South African Allied Workers Union). In June 1982 it held a Week of Action in support of the sacked workers and a march in York, where Rowntree-Mackintosh had its headquarters.

Disabled People Against Apartheid was formed in 1981 after the Paraplegic Sports Society banned sportswoman Maggie Jones for distributing anti-apartheid leaflets at the European Paraplegic Table Tennis Championships. This poster advertised a demonstration in July 1982 calling for South Africa to be excluded from the Stoke Mandeville International Paraplegic Games, forerunner of the Paralympics. South Africa was expelled from the Games in 1985.