Photos

In July 1973 Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano visited London to mark the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. The AAM joined with other groups to oppose the visit. On 15 July over 12,000 demonstrators marched through central London calling for an end to British government support for the ‘unholy alliance’ of Portugal, South Africa and Rhodesia. They included trade unionists and a delegation from the Black People’s Freedom Movement.

In July 1973 Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano visited London to mark the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. The AAM joined with other groups to oppose the visit. On 15 July over 12,000 demonstrators marched through central London calling for an end to British government support for the ‘unholy alliance’ of Portugal, South Africa and Rhodesia in Southern Africa. They included trade unionists and a delegation from the Black People’s Freedom Movement.

In July 1973 Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano visited London to mark the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. The AAM joined with other groups to organise protests at every event during the visit. The photograph shows a demonstrator taunting Caetano with a fascist salute during his visit to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich on 16 July 1973.

The umbrella group Stop All Racist Tours (SART) was launched at a press conference on 31 July 1973. It was set up to campaign against the British Lions rugby tour of South Africa planned for 1974. Its sponsors included the AAM, ANC, SANROC, National Union of Students (NUS) and the Catholic Institute of International Relations (CIIR). In the photograph are Ron Taylor, Dennis Brutus and Wilfred Brutus.

Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) was a coalition that worked for the release of political prisoners in Southern Africa. Its founding conference, attended by 200 people on 8 December 1973, split into workshops like the one in the photograph addressed by former political prisoner Hugh Lewin. The conference set up a campaign that brought together the AAM, International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), National Union of Students, and the Ruskin and AUEW (TASS) Kitson Committees. For the next 20 years SATIS worked on behalf of Southern African political prisoners and for the release of all those detained without trial. In the 1980s it led campaigns to save the lives of political activists sentenced to death by the apartheid government.

Anti-apartheid demonstrators asked rugby players not to take part in the British Lions tour of South Africa in 1974. The photograph shows a protest at the England v Wales match at Twickenham on 16 March. Other protesters displayed banners on the roof of the RFU’s headquarters. Welsh international John Taylor refused to take part in the tour.

Counter-demonstration by members of the far-right National Front at Twickenham, 16 March 1974. Anti-apartheid supporters were protesting against the British Lions tour of South Africa.

AAM supporters held a 24-hour vigil on the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields on Good Friday, 11–12 April 1974 to call for the release of all South African political prisoners. They collected over 2,500 signatures for a petition to be presented to the UN in June. The vigil and petition were part of the campaign launched by Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) at its founding conference in December 1973. In the photograph are Kay Hosey, mother of political prisoner Sean Hosey, and Rev Paul Oestreicher.