1980s

Young AAM supporters at a vigil for the Sharpeville Six in front of Nottingham Town Hall on 13 April 1998.

AAM activists, miners from Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire and Women against Pit Closures protested against a visit by a delegation from the South African coal industry on 21 April 1988. The delegation had come to London to lobby against coal sanctions against South Africa.

Over 60 British companies withdrew from South Africa in 1986–88. This report examines the reasons behind disinvestment and its impact on the South African economy.

South Africa’s rule over Namibia was illegal under international law. The AAM focused on this in calling for the British government to support UN mandatory sanctions against the apartheid regime.  

In 1988 the AAM launched a new initiative for Mandela’s release, ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’. It was discussed at the ANC’s international solidarity conference in Arusha, Tanzania in December 1987 and developed into the biggest campaign ever organised by the AAM. It began with a birthday tribute concert at Wembley on 11 June and culminated in a rally attended by 250,000 people in Hyde Park on 17 July, the eve of Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday.

Supporters of Greater London Pensioners call for the release of the Sharpeville Six outside South Africa House in June 1988. The Six were condemned to hang because they were present at a protest where black collaborators were killed. After a big international campaign their sentence was commuted in July 1988.

The Nelson Mandela 70th birthday tribute concert held at Wembley Stadium on 11 June 1988 was attended by a capacity audience of 72,000 and broadcast to over 60 countries. The concert was the opening event in the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign. The concert programme carried features on the artists taking part, including Stevie Wonder, Whoopi Goldberg, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Sting, Dire Straits and Simple Minds.

This brochure set out the key events in the ‘Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70’ campaign. The day after the Wembley Stadium concert on 11 June, 25 freedom marchers set off from Glasgow on a 5-week march stopping at 32 towns and cities. On 17 July over 50,000 people joined the marchers on the last leg of the march to Hyde Park, where a crowd of a quarter of a million people heard Desmond Tutu call for Mandela’s release. The AAM produced 1 million ‘Free Mandela’ badges for people to wear on Mandela’s birthday. The campaign was the biggest ever organised by the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It projected Nelson Mandela as the future leader of a non-racial South Africa in the eyes of people throughout the world.