Sport

Leaflet listing the fixtures in the South African Springbok cricket team’s 1960 tour of England. The leaflet asked people to protest to the South African Cricket Association at its selection of a whites-only team. There were protests at many of the games, including Sheffield, where activists planned to paint anti-apartheid slogans on the walls of the stadium.

The all-white South African Springbok cricket team that toured Britain in the summer of 1960 met with widespread protests. Andrew Burchardt remembers the dramatic events of the night when protesters in Sheffield took action against the Yorkshire v Springboks game scheduled for 6 August 1960.   

AAM supporters protest at a match played by a white South African tennis player at Wimbledon. On the right is Dorothy Robinson, Anti-Apartheid Movement Secretary in the early 1960s. Also in the photograph is AAM founder member Rosalynde Ainslie.

Leaflet calling for a boycott of the 1965 South African Springbok cricket tour. Demonstrations were held at every game. The AAM sent a delegation led by Labour MP David Ennals to the MCC on the first day of the test match at Lords. The Queen and Prime Minister Harold Wilson broke with tradition and did not attend the game.

AAM supporters asked spectators to boycott the Springboks v Glamorgan cricket match at St Helen’s, Swansea, 31 June 1965

This young anti-apartheid supporter was asking cricket fans to support an arms embargo against South Africa outside the St Helen’s cricket ground in Swansea in 1965. Inside the ground the all-white South African cricket team was playing Glamorgan.

Protesters from the National League of Young Liberals and Young Communist League stopped play in the Britain v South Africa Davis Cup Inter-Zone semi-finals on 17 July 1969. The demonstrators ran onto the court with banners and leaflets and then sat down, delaying the game for several hours. Eventually they were carried off by police.

Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) was set up to campaign against the all-white South African tour scheduled for the summer of 1970. This press release announced the launch of the group at a press conference in Fleet Street on 10 September 1969. The cricket tour was preceded by an all-white South African rugby tour of Britain and Ireland in 1969–70. STST organised direct action against the tour.