1980s

Over 1,000 protesters marched through Cardiff to Cardiff Arms Park on 7 April 1984 to protest against the Welsh Rugby Union’s invitation to South African rugby boss Danie Craven to be guest of honour at a game between Wales and the President’s XI. Three Springboks played in the President’s team. The invitation provoked huge opposition. A ‘Charter Against Apartheid’ was signed by former prime minister and local MP James Callaghan, most Welsh MPs, church leaders, writers and trade unionists.

Demonstration outside the John Player rugby cup final at Twickenham on 28 April in protest against the Rugby Football Union’s tour of South Africa in May–June 1984. Student activists demonstrated at Heathrow on the day of the team’s departure. The tour went ahead in spite of a long-running campaign against it. The Conservative government expressed its opposition to the tour but took no action to stop it.

At a meeting at the Africa Centre in London on 24 May 1984, United Democratic Front (UDF) leader Mohammed Valli Moosa brought greetings from the UDF to the AAM. He said the UDF opposed President P W Botha’s forthcoming trip to Britain in June. Valli Moosa’s visit was the start of close cooperation between the AAM and the UDF in the 1980s.

The Greater London Council and the AAM held a press conference on 30 May 1984 to protest against the Conservative government’s invitation to South African President P W Botha to visit Britain. The GLC played a big role in the campaign against the visit, with national press ads, an anti-apartheid banner outside County Hall and an exhibition ‘Signs of Apartheid’ at the Royal Festival Hall. It sponsored a music festival in Jubilee Gardens after a march through London on 2 June. Left to right: Abdul Minty, Trevor Huddleston, GLC Labour Councillors Paul Boateng, Ken Livingstone, Bob Hughes and SDP-Liberal Alliance GLC Councillor Adrian Slade.

Three local councillors from London’s black community express their opposition to Botha’s visit to Britain in June 1984. Black organisations were prominent in the opposition to the visit. They formed a special mobilising committee and there were many articles in the London black press. The West Indian Standing Conference held on all-night vigil on 1–2 June.

This leaflet publicised a demonstration in protest against P W Botha’s visit to Britain on 2 June 1984. The demonstration marked a step-change in the scale and breadth of support for anti-apartheid action in Britain. Over 50,000 people joined the march and it was widely reported in the British media.

Letter from AAM President Archbishop Trevor Huddleston expressing the widespread opposition in Britain to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s invitation to President P W Botha to visit Britain in June 1984. Thatcher held talks with Botha at her country residence Chequers, rather than at 10 Downing Street, in order to avoid protesters. More than 50,000 people marched through central London on the day of the talks, the biggest anti-apartheid demonstration to date.

President P W Botha’s visit to Britain in June 1984 was the first such visit since South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961. It followed South Africa’s adoption of a new constitution in 1983. This memo sought assurances from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that the British government was committed to universal suffrage in a united South Africa. Thatcher was sufficiently concerned about opposition to the visit to agree to meet a delegation from the AAM.