Local AA groups

Leaflet advertising a May Day fundraising social for the AAM organised by Haringey AA Group and Haringey Trades Union Council on 3 May 1986. The evening included live music sponsored by the Musicians Union and a speaker from the African National Congress.

This issue of the City of London AA Group’s newsletter advertised a torchlight protest at the group’s non-stop picket of the South African embassy on the day of the AAM’s March and Festival for Freedom at Clapham Common. The newsletter highlighted the upsurge of resistance to apartheid by school students in South Africa since 1984 and the brutal repression of young children by the South African police. CLAAG was formed as a branch of the AAM in 1982, but internal arguments led to its disaffiliation in February 1985.

Leaflet asking Dundonians to boycott South African goods. The leaflet publicised a day of action in Edinburgh on 22 March and a picket of Dundee-based supermarket chain William Low on 29 March. It also advertised a demonstration outside Dundee District Court to support two Dundee AA Group members for allegedly obstructing the police during the group’s weekly picket of Tesco in the Wellgate Shopping Centre. The Group set up the Wellgate Two Defence Campaign to protest against the arrests. The two were later acquitted.

Islington AA Group supporters asked shoppers to boycott South African products outside Sainsbury’s in Holloway Road, north London, on 14 June 1986.

This leaflet was produced as part of a citywide London campaign to persuade Sainsbury’s to stop stocking South African goods. The London AA Committee set up a special boycott group which met Sainsbury’s directors to put the case for a boycott. Sainsbury’s claimed to have reduced their South African products to less than 1 per cent of total sales.

Many local AA groups formed links with trade union branches. In 1986 Brent AA group circulated this leaflet to local unions asking them to affiliate and asking trade unionists to join as individual members.

Leeds Women Against Apartheid was formed in 1986 to bring together women in support of their sisters in South Africa and Namibia. The group reached out to women’s organisations in West Yorkshire, raising funds for women in Southern Africa, boycotting apartheid goods and holding day schools publicising the situation of women under apartheid. It was linked to a women’s group in Soshunguve township, near Pretoria.  This leaflet advertised a meeting held in Leeds Civic Hall in July 1986.

Like many of the larger local AA groups, Aberdeen AA group published an annual report of its activities for local members.