Students

Leeds students produced this badge for their campaign to persuade Leeds University to sell its shares in companies with South African interests. They set up Leeds University South Africa Anti-Investment Group as part of a campaign co-ordinated by the NUS-AAM student network in the 1970s. In response to student pressure, the university sold its holdings in ICI in 1973 and agreed to disinvest from firms whose South African involvement exceeded 5% of their total interests. 

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.

The National Union of Students elected Nelson Mandela as its Vice-President after he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial in 1964. In 1971 the NUS set up a student network to campaign on Southern Africa jointly with the Anti-Apartheid Movement. This poster was produced as part of its Southern Africa Campaign.

In September 1971 the National Union of Students, AAM and Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guiné set up a student network to coordinate student campaigning on Southern Africa. Every year through the 1970s and early 1980s the network held an annual conference to discuss campaign priorities. This notice publicises the conference held at the University of Warwick in July 1979. The conference programme included seminars on armed struggle, disinvestment, scholarships for students for Southern Africa and the internal settlement in Zimbabwe.

The eighth NUS/AAM annual student conference, held at the University of Warwick in July 1979, took place just after the Conservative Party won the British general election. This conference paper asked students to campaign against a British government ‘sell-out’ on Zimbabwe, to oppose Britain’s economic links with South Africa and to raise material support for the Southern African liberation movements.

From 1970 the National Union of Students worked closely with the AAM, and students all over Britain joined anti-apartheid campaigns. This poster, showing South African school students in Soweto in 1976, called for a boycott of South African goods and support for the ANC.

The 1980 NUS/AAM annual student conference, held at Coventry Polytechnic, discussed on the new situation in Southern Africa after the independence of Zimbabwe. One of its main focuses was the need to set up more student anti-apartheid societies.

On 14 March 1981 the National Union of Students organised a National Day of Action against British Nuclear Fuels contract for the supply of uranium from the Rossing mine in Namibia. In the photograph are protesters at the Department of Energy in Millbank, London. The day was marked by 30 demonstrations all over Britain outside Electricity  Board depots. The action was part of a long-running campaign co-ordinated by the Campaign Against the Namibian Uranium Contract (CANUC). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Britain imported Namibian uranium in contravention of UN resolutions.