60s01. Programme of the Anti-Apartheid Committee

On 21 March 1960 South African police opened fire on a crowd protesting against the Pass Laws at Sharpeville in the southern Transvaal. Sixty-nine people died and at least 180 were injured. The British Boycott Movement renamed itself the Anti-Apartheid Committee and its draft programme proposed a ‘Shun Verwoerd’s South Africa’ campaign that took the radical step of moving from an individual boycott of South African goods to calling for UN economic sanctions and the total isolation of South Africa.