Students

Poster publicising a march past the headquarters of companies involved in Southern Africa – Unilever, Anglo American, the Daily Telegraph, Shell, Plessey and Barclays Bank – on 28 June 1969. The march was organised by the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, a coalition of militant youth and student groups set up in 1969 in the wake of the 1968 student demonstrations in France and other European countries. 

This leaflet advertised a fundraising event held on the evening of the AAM’s conference on liberation and guerrilla warfare, at the Round House in Camden, north London. It featured a film about Bob Dylan’s England tour ‘Don’t Look Back’ and poetry and music groups The Scaffold, Yes and Dry Ice. 

In 1967 and 1968 ANC and ZAPU guerrilla units joined forces to try and fight their way through Zimbabwe to South Africa. This leaflet advertised an AAM conference that emphasised armed struggle as the main strategy for achieving liberation in Southern Africa. It gave a platform to representatives of the liberation movements from all the countries of the region. The conference took place in the climate of youth militancy that followed the 1968 student demonstrations in France and other European countries.

Thousands joined a march to Welford Road rugby ground in Leicester on 8 November 1969, to protest against the Springboks game against Midland Counties East. They included students and a big contingent from Leicester’s Afro-Caribbean community. Later, demonstrators tried to stop the game by running onto the pitch and two people were wounded in clashes between the police and protestors. There were anti-apartheid protests at all 24 games in the 1969/70 Springbok tour of Britain and Ireland.

More than 7,000 people took part in a march to protest against the South African rugby Springboks game against North West Counties on 26 November 1969. Many of the marchers were students from Manchester and Liverpool Universities. This poster was produced by Manchester students. Around 2,000 police were deployed to stop protesters running onto the pitch. There were anti-apartheid protests at all 24 games in the Springboks 1969/70 tour of Britain and Ireland.

Members of the rugby club at UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) joined the 7,000-strong march at the North West Counties v Springboks game in Manchester on 26 November 1969. The march also included local priests and members of the university Conservative Association. It was led by students carrying a coffin painted with the words ‘Remember Sharpeville’.

Leaflet asking London students to support a fundraising appeal for the ANC and ZAPU in 1969. Fundraising for the liberation movements was one of the main student activities on Southern Africa in the late 1960s and 1970s. The appeal was organised by the Radical Student Alliance, a coalition of left groups which backed the resolution calling for a boycott of South Africa passed at the 1970 NUS conference.

In March 1970 Liverpool students occupied the university’s Senate House to press five demands that included disinvestment from South Africa and the resignation of the University’s Chancellor, the Marquess of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury was an outspoken supporter of the minority white regime in Rhodesia. The sit-in lasted 10 days and got national press coverage. Nine students were suspended and one, Pete Cresswell, was expelled. This issue of Sphinx, the student newsletter, explains the background to the sit-in.