Local AA groups

Local residents in the Forest Fields and Hyson Green district of Nottingham declared the area an apartheid-free zone in 1986. They asked local shops to not to stock South African goods and called on local people to boycott them. Like St Paul’s, Bristol, Hyson Green was a multi-racial area with a history of racial tension and community protest.

Local residents in the Forest Fields and Hyson Green district of Nottingham declared the area an apartheid-free zone in 1986. This poster asked people to support the campaign. Like St Paul’s, Bristol, Hyson Green was a multi-racial area with a history of racial tension and community protest.

Local residents in the Forest Fields and Hyson Green district of Nottingham declared the area an apartheid-free zone in 1986. This letter was sent to local shopkeepers explaining the aims of the campaign. It told them that thousands of local residents supported a ban on South African goods and offered to discuss the issues raised by the boycott.

Leaflet asking shoppers in Chiswick in West London to boycott South African goods. The leaflet quoted Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as calling for a boycott and said that public pressure was already having an impact. It cited a South African trade body as admitting that canned fruit exports from South Africa to the UK had fallen by 18% in 1986.

Leaflet asking shoppers to donate sanitary items for Namibian and South African refugees forced to flee to Angola, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The leaflet asked for items like sanitary towels, soap and antiseptic cream. 

Leafletting Barclays Bank customers to persuade them to withdraw their accounts was a regular activity for most local anti-apartheid groups. The leafletting sessions were part of the long-running campaign to persuade Barclays to pull out of South Africa. In the photograph supporters of Tyneside AA Group are asking customers at a Barclays branch in central Newcastle to close their accounts. Later in the same year Barclays withdrew from South Africa.

Supporters of North Shropshire AA Group marched through Shrewsbury in January 1987 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress.

Leaflet publicising a public meeting organized by Haringey AA Group on Education in South Africa. The speakers were Roger Diski, editor of ‘The Child is Not Dead: Youth Resistance in South Africa’ and educationist Elaine Unterhalter. The meeting highlighted the ongoing brutality of the South African police after the 1976 Soweto uprising.