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Labour MPs outside South Africa House on Nelson Mandela’s 60^th  birthday on 18 July 1978. The Embassy refused to accept a birthday card signed by British politicians and trade unionists. In the photo are MPs Joan Lestor, Barbara Castle and Bob Hughes, Chairman of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Agenda for the seventh NUS/AAM student conference held at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in July 1978. Every year through the 1970s and early 1980s the NUS/AAM student network held an conference to discuss campaign priorities.

Solomon Mahlangu was sentenced to death on 2 March 1978 after being present at an incident in Johannesburg during which two white bystanders were killed. The AAM organised weekly demonstrations outside South Africa House calling for his release. Thousands signed a petition asking the British government to intervene. This picket was held on 2 August 1978. In the photograph are Bob Wright, Assistant General Secretary of AUEW (Engineering), Jim Slater, General Secretary of the National Union of Seamen (NUS) and members of the NUS Executive.

Forty former South African political prisoners held a 24-hour fast in support of Solomon Mahlangu on the steps of St Martin’s in the Fields, Trafalgar Square in August 1978. They collected signatures to a petition asking Prime Minister James Callaghan to intervene with the South African government. Mahlangu was sentenced to death on 2 March 1978 for being present at an incident in Johannesburg during which two white bystanders were killed.

Solomon Mahlangu was a young ANC freedom fighter sentenced to death in March 1978 for his involvement in a gun battle with police in which two men died. The judge accepted that he had not fired the fatal shots. Together with the ANC, the AAM campaigned in Britain against the sentence. As a result, the British Foreign Secretary David Owen intervened with the South African government. Despite worldwide demands for clemency, Mahlangu was hanged on 6 April 1979.

Leaflet publicising a memorial service for Steve Biko on 12 September 1978, the first anniversary of his death. Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) hung a banner from the roof of St Martin’s in the Fields, next to the South African Embassy, listing the names of all those who had died in detention in South Africa.

On the first anniversary of the death of Steve Biko on 12 September 1978, Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) unfurled a 90-foot banner from the roof of St Martin’s in the Fields. It listed the names of all those known to have died under interrogation by the South African Security Police. Inside the church a special service commemorated Steve Biko’s life.

The Bingham Inquiry found that British oil companies Shell and BP had supplied oil to Rhodesia in contravention of UN sanctions. This memorandum asked the British government to ensure that the companies restricted oil supplies to South Africa to pre-UDI levels to prevent the re-export of oil to the illegal Smith regime. It called for the extension of sanctions to South Africa unless it gave assurances that it would implement UN sanctions against Rhodesia.