A brief history of the Non-Stop Picket

From 1986 – 1990 the supporters of the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group [City Group] maintained a Non-Stop Picket outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square calling for the release of Nelson Mandela. City Group was formed by Norma Kitson (an exiled ANC member), her children, friends and supporters (including, crucially, members of the Revolutionary Communist Group) in 1982. City Group’s unconditional solidarity with all liberation movements in South Africa and Namibia (not just the ANC and SWAPO, but also the Pan-Africanist Congress and AZAPO amongst others) and its principled linking of the struggle against apartheid with anti-racism in Britain led to group’s eventual expulsion from the national Anti-Apartheid Movement. City Group deployed diverse tactics, including direct action, to express its solidarity with those opposed to apartheid. Its support for those sidelined by the exiled leadership of the ANC was valued by activists in South Africa. The Picket played a key role as a ‘convergence space’ through which transnational activist discourses and practices addressing the politics of race were articulated. As such, an analysis of its political culture is important and overdue.

The Picket was a highly visible protest against apartheid. Through its constant presence, the Picket developed a distinctive appearance, culture and sense of community. Bright hand-sewn banners (often in black, green and gold, the colours of the ANC) provided a backdrop to the Picket, declaring its raison d’etre and picketers carried placards which declared their solidarity and commented on topical events and campaigns in South Africa. Members of the picket would leaflet and petition passers-by, whilst others made impromptu speeches on a megaphone or sang South African freedom songs. Larger themed rallies were held on Friday evenings, and on Thursdays the Picket’s numbers swelled as supporters danced to the music of a group of street musicians, the Horns of Jericho. The culture of the Picket not only conveyed its political message of solidarity, but helped individual participants define their personal identities.

Norma Kitson, June 1987 (Source: Gavin Brown)

Positioned on the pavement directly outside South Africa House, the picket was strategically placed to draw attention to apartheid and bring pressure to bear on the regime’s representatives and allies in the UK. The Embassy repeatedly brought pressure on the British Government to ban the protest, and for nearly two months in 1987 (6th May – 2nd July), the Picket was removed from outside the Embassy by the Metropolitan Police (following an action in which three City Group activists threw several gallons of red paint over the entrance to the Embassy). During this period, the Picket relocated to the steps of nearby St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church and activists repeatedly risked arrest to break the police ban on their protest and defend the right to protest outside the Embassy. The police used an arcane Victorian bylaw, “Commissioner’s Directions”, which allowed the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to curtail public gatherings within a mile of Parliament, to allow MPs free movement to go about their business, to ban the Picket during this period. Eventually, the ban was broken when four MPs protested outside the Embassy alongside other picketers and the police were unable to justify the ban any longer. In total 173 people were arrested during City Group’s campaign to break the police ban and defend the right to protest. All charges were eventually thrown out of court.

City Group’s activism was not restricted to Trafalgar Square: picketers took direct action against apartheid across the UK and toured the country mobilising solidarity. These extended campaigns of direct action away from the Non- Stop Picket included ‘trolley protests’ against the sale of South African goods in supermarkets across London, where activists filled trolleys with South African produce, took them to the checkout and then refused to pay for them. At their most effective, these protests could tie up the majority of checkouts in a targeted supermarket simultaneously. In a similar vein, City Group organised frequent occupations of the South African Airways (SAA) offices in Oxford Circus through their “No Rights? No Flights!” campaign. These offices were frequently closed through successive occupations several times in a day. As the security staff at the SAA offices increasingly recognised protestors, activists needed to utilise more and more imaginative disguises to enable their initial access to the premises – during one women-only protest on South African Women’s Day in 1988 a large party of women, varying in age from their mid-teens to their seventies, occupied the SAA offices dressed as nuns and a class of convent girls. Finally, City Group activists took direct action at sporting venues around the UK, including pitch invasions at various athletics tracks and cricket grounds, in protest at sportsmen and women who had broken the sports boycott of South Africa.

The geography of the Non-Stop Picket extended beyond its location and its relationship with the struggle in South Africa. The combination of the Picket’s central location and its expression of solidarity through confrontation with the representatives of apartheid attracted a broad and diverse group of (mostly) young activists from the UK and beyond. The Picket provided ‘uncommon ground’ through which friendship networks developed that crossed boundaries of nationality, ethnicity and social difference. At times, the Picket became something of a haven for young street homeless people living in the West End, although their involvement was often shortlived and marked by the reassertion of social hierarchies by more settled and privileged members of the Picket. The social and political life of the Picket had a particular emotional geography through which individuals overcame social isolation, transformed their sense of self, and enjoyed being ‘unruly’ in public space. These entangled personal and political motivations are crucial to a holistic analysis of the Non-Stop Picket and transnational solidarity activism more broadly.

“Fair Exchange”: the Non-Stop Picket in fiction

Earlier this week I received a copy of Fair Exchange, a novel from 1998 by Lynne Reid Banks.  Until recently, I was not aware of the novel, but I am glad it has been brought to my attention.  Lynne Reid Banks was a good friend of Norma Kitson‘s and, indeed, this novel is dedicated to her.

The novel is of interest to our research for two reasons.  First, one of the central characters, Judy, is clearly based, to some extent, on Norma Kitson (although, of course, this is a fictional narrative, not a biographical account).  Second, several key events in the book occur in the context of the ‘West End Group’s Perpetual Picket’ of the South African Embassy in the 1980s.  It’s not too difficult to guess who and what that might refer to! Here, the author’s ethnographic eye for detail comes to the fore in some rich descriptions of the Picket, its characters, and its relationships with the police.  In the opening chapter, the action occurs on the (fictional) Picket’s 1000th day.  The events described in those few pages are clearly based on the (actual) Picket’s celebration of its first anniversary – the daffodils and the particular dynamics of the police action against the rally are the clue here.

The whole wide sidewalk outside the South African Embassy was crammed; the tiny brave spots of yellow waving everywhere over the heads of the crowd – little earthbound specks of April sun.  It was she who had suggested the daffodils , a token of peaceful solidarity with the prisoners on this thousandth day of the picket.

As she came up with the fringes f the demo, she noticed many of the daffs had already been dropped and crushed underfoot, their spring-proclaiming trumpets mere smudges on the unheeding London asphalt. [...]

She tried to push through it.  It was a good-natured crowd but of necessity packed tight.  They were unavoidably blocking the pavement, but were trying, at the stewards’ urgent behest, not to block the road.  The police had set up barriers, Judy now saw.  There was a ‘thin blue line’, perhaps thirty of them, men and women constables standing with their backs to the white building, and in front of them were metal crowd-holders, leaving a couple of feet in between to allow pedestrians to pass 0 only not many were.  Everyone who came up to the crowd seemed to be joining in.  Well, good, it wouldn’t hurt them to listen.  They might learn something.  (Banks 1998: 1-2).

Later, and closely mirroring the events of the April 1987 anniversary rally, readers are told,

At that very moment, quite unbeknownst to her [Harriet, the other central character], the police were driving a wedge into the suddenly ruptured and screaming crowd outside South Africa House. (Banks 1998: 8).

Daffodil sound system on the first anniversary of the Picket, April 1987 (Source: Gavin Brown)

I do not know if Lynne Reid Banks was present when the Non-Stop Picket celebrated its first anniversary, and a flying wedge of police officers forced their way through the crowd to remove a makeshift stage, but she certainly visited it on other occasions.  When City Group mobilized its supporters to defy an attempt to prevent the Non-Stop Picket using its megaphone to amplify speeches, songs and chanting in August 1986, Lynne Reid Banks joined them, as this article from City Limits at the time attests:

Until recently the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square has refused to lodge an official complaint, which would oblige its staff to appear in court to give evidence. That position has now changed, and City of London AA, which has organised the non-stop picket, were informed that from 9.00am on Monday August 18 onward, any picketer singing or using a megaphone could have their names and addresses taken by police with a view to prosecution. At noon on 18 August, about 50 picketers (including Jo Richardson MP, Peter Tatchell and David and Norma Kitson), took off the white gags which they had been wearing and sang and chanted, accompanied by an assortment of instruments…Jo Richardson, City AA convenor Carol Brickley, writer Lynne Reid Banks and David Kitson addressed the picket through a megaphone…after about half and hour a message was replayed via the Chief Steward that the police would not be taking any action over the “defiance”. (City Limits, 28 August – 4 September 1986)

Having encountered the Picket on this occasion, and risked prosecution in its cause, Banks wrote to Polly Toynbee encouraging her to read Norma Kitson’s autobiography and spend a few nights on the Non-Stop Picket.  Several years later, when City Group hosted a speaking tour of the UK and the Netherlands by Lydia Nompondwana, representing the relatives of the Upington 14, Lynne Reid Banks organised a meeting for her near her Dorset home.

We hope to interview Lynn Reid Banks this summer to hear about her friendship with Norma Kitson and her encounters with the Non-Stop Picket.  Watch this space.

 

Who we have interviewed (so far)

Last week we passed a significant milestone on the Non-Stop Against Apartheid project – we ‘interviewed’ the 40th former supporter of the Non-Stop Picket about their experiences of anti-apartheid protest in London in the 1980s.  This means that, with about five months of fieldwork still to go on the project, we have already surpassed the number of interviews we planned for the project as a whole.  More importantly, it means that we have recorded the memories of a wide range of the people who became involved with the picket outside the South African embassy.

More than half the participants (23) have been interviewed face-to-face; but as many now live outside the UK, fourteen completed extended qualitative questionnaires (essentially the interview schedule used face-to-face) over the internet, and three have been interviewed via skype.  We anticipate that most of the remaining interviews we conduct will be held face-to-face.

A Friday Rally on the Non-Stop Picket, May/June 1987 (Source: Gavin Brown)

We have recorded the stories of former picketers who currently live in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Iceland, Iraq, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the USA. Some of those people have emigrated from the UK since their time on the Non-Stop Picket, while others have returned to live in their country of origin.  Ten of the people whose stories we have recorded had either only recently moved to the UK at the time they joined the Picket or were actually still permanently resident in other countries (having encountered the Picket whilst visiting London as a tourist or an exchange student).

We have interviewed participants spanning a forty-year age range, with the oldest person being 83 years old. Most are in their forties or early fifties. This fits with the youthfulness of the picket at the time (now more than a quarter of a century ago).  It also reflects the different stages at which our participants became involved with the Non-Stop Picket: fourteen had been involved with the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group before the Non-Stop Picket started; sixteen joined the Picket during its first two years (April 1986 – 1988); and the others joined during the final two years of the Picket.

To date we have interviewed almost equal numbers of men (21) and women (19).  This reflects the leading role that women played in the leadership of the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group and the day-to-day running of the Non-Stop Picket.  All but four of our participants so far are ‘white’.  While the majority of those who sustained the Non-Stop Picket over the four years of its existence were white, the significant contribution of Black and Asian picketers is currently under-represented amongst the interviews we have conducted.  Several of the interviews lined up for the coming weeks will begin to redress this, but we have more work to do in this area.

At least fifteen of the people we have interviewed served on City Group’s committee at some stage during their involvement.  In part, this is because we prioritized interviewing ‘core’ activists and leaders of the group first.  The proportion of committee members in our sample also attests to City Group’s success in developing young protesters and drawing them into the leadership of the group, at least for a short while. However, it is important for our research that we record the memories and experiences of people who committed to the Non-Stop Picket in a variety of different ways.

In total, fifteen of the people we have interviewed so far were members of the Revolutionary Communist Group at some stage during their involvement with City Group and the Non-Stop Picket.  Of them, four are still closely associated with the RCG, two having become involved through their involvement in City Group.  The City of London Anti-Apartheid Group was often accused, at the time, of being little more than an RCG front organisation.  In some ways the high number of former RCG supporters in our sample adds weight to those accusations; but, in reality, the situation was more complex.  The RCG played a key role in the political leadership of City Group and their members put significant time into maintaining the Picket.  Through this leadership they did recruit many new members via contact on the Non-Stop Picket (some stayed involved for years afterwards, others only briefly). However, members of other organisations were also involved in City Group at different times. Of the other political organisations that had a long-term commitment to the Non-Stop Picket, we have interviewed one former member of the Humanist Party but not (yet) anyone who was involved with the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press).  We hope to interview more (former) members of both organisations over the coming months.  

With forty interviews in the bag (or, rather, saved to a secure server), we have recorded a broad, but not fully representative, sample of stories from those activists who maintained the Non-Stop Picket from April 1986 to February 1990.  While we want to continue recording as many interviews as possible in the time remaining, we are also mindful that there are some significant gaps and imbalances in our sample that we still need to address.

If you want to tell the story of your involvement in the Non-Stop Picket, and we have not yet been in touch, please get in contact with Gavin and Helen so that we can arrange an interview with you.

‘Black Londoners’ celebrate two years of the Non-Stop Picket

The Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy (which began on 19 April 1986) celebrated its second anniversary on Saturday 16 April 1988 with a march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square.  We have recently (re)discovered a recording of a report made by Jon Kempster on that day.  The report was broadcast on the Black Londoners programme on BBC Radio London on 20 April 1988.  Here we present some extracts from the transcript of the recording.

Jon Kempster began his report by offering some contextual information to his listeners:

About one thousand people came from all over Britain to mark the second anniversary of the non-stop picket, which has remained outside the South African embassy every day and night since April 1986.

Next an unnamed picketer (although we think we can identify the voice at as that of Anil, the group’s Legal Officer) explained further the political demands of the Picket:

Well it was founded in response to the second state of emergency in South Africa. The demands of the picket are for the release of Nelson Mandela, the release of all Southern African political prisoners and detainees. It’s also calling for sanctions, its calling for the closing down of the embassy. We have not only increased public awareness in this country, especially over the Sharpeville Six, but we also get reported in the South African press so they know about the picket and as a result it gives them morale there.

David Kitson addresses the Non-Stop Picket (Source: City Group)

There then follow two excerpts from speeches made by members of the South African liberation movements.  David Kitson, who had been the longest-serving white political prisoner in South Africa and whose family were centrally involved in founding the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group, is heard to explain,

comrades and friends we are here today to celebrate two years of the Non-Stop Picket outside South Africa House. And believe you me, every freedom fighter in South Africa and every political prisoner in South Africa is watching this picket keenly because they regard it as a part of their struggle for liberation. There was once a non-stop picket before in 1982 run by the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group. That was when I was in gaol, and after 86 days we were moved to a better prison and the prison authority told me that we had been moved because of requests from the South African embassy who were irritated by the picket outside its gates.

His words were greeted with loud cheers from the crowd. David Kitson’s sentiments were echoed by Molefe Pheto, who explained why he was there to mark the second anniversary of the Picket.

I am here on behalf of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania, which is one of the liberation movements from that part of the world. I stand here to congratulate politically the City Anti-Apartheid movement for their courageous stand in the campaign for the Sharpeville Six. But the struggle is not over yet. This is not the end, it is only the beginning and we want to warn you, we who come from that part of the world, that this is serious business. You have only started, so gird your loins for much more heavier work, but the struggle is escalating in that part of the world.

Jon Kempster explains that the picketers ended their rally with a sit-down protest in the road outside the Embassy.  The voice of a police officer is heard warning the crowd over a megaphone:

Attention and attention, this is an official police message: You are obstructing the highway and unless you move away from the area you may make yourself liable to arrest. Please leave the area now.

Non-Stop Picketers’ sit-down protest, 16 April 1988 (Source: City Group)

As Carol Brickley explained to the Radio London listeners, contextualizing the more-than-600 arrests that had been made since the Non-Stop Picket started two years earlier,

The main obstacles to us being here actually have been the British police and their interpretation of the law and the right to demonstrate and on a number of occasions they’ve attempted to move us from outside the embassy and prevent us from demonstrating here despite the fact that we do have the right to be here under British law. A sort of attempted wearing down process, if you like.

The recording cuts straight to Norma Kitson addressing the crowd.

When you stand up to the police, by sitting down and saying “we don’t move”, they bugger off. That’s a lesson to you all comrades; that if we stand together then we win the day. We’ve had over 600 arrests in the past year [sic] and 94% acquittals in the courts. 94%! Ok, so we’ll just sit down and continue the picket.

Buoyed on by Norma Kitson’s words of encouragement, the picketers stayed put. The radio audience were then treated to the following exchange between Jon Kempster and an unnamed picketer:

Picketer:‘I think it’s very important on the day of two years of non-stop action against apartheid that we’re here seen to be dedicating ourselves to that struggle. I believe I have a right and a duty in this country to do all I can to support the fighting people of South Africa.’

Jon Kempster: ‘You’ve just had the police message over the speakers that you’re liable to be arrested. What are you going to do now?’

Picketer: ‘Carry on sitting here until they drag us away.’

Picketer is arrested, 16 April 1988 (Source: City Group)

Another picketer politely declines to give an interview, saying, “I am just about to get arrested, I’m sorry, I really would love to…”  With that, we hear the police officer give a final warning and arrest them.  A woman with a French accent is heard to declare,

We refuse to move because this is a protest against apartheid and as far as I am concerned apartheid is fascism, apartheid is a crime against humanity.

The same police warning is repeated and she too is arrested – one of thirty-one picketers who were arrested for participating in the sit-down protest that afternoon.  On the recording, we hear the crowd chanting “The Sharpeville Six must go free!” As the names of each of the six South Africans who were facing execution are chanted by the crowd, the track fades and the report is over.

This radio news report by a sympathetic journalist (who regularly attended the Non-Stop Picket) gives a good sense of what life on the Picket was like during major rallies.  Its carefully edited interviews offer a feel for the personalities and political perspectives of key players in the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group as well as the commitment of ‘ordinary’ picketers to take direct action against British collaboration against apartheid.  The major rallies, like those that took place on or around the anniversary of the start of the Picket, were an opportunity for the supporters of City Group to come together and collectively renew their commitment to anti-apartheid protest – often through acts of direct action or support for those taking such action.  These acts held the picketers together and kept them focused on their cause.

Launching the Non-Stop Picket, 19 April 1986

The Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy started on 19 April 1986. The proposal for the Non-Stop Picket had been made at the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group’s Annual General Meeting in January of that year and plans for the launch event had quickly gathered pace.  A few days before the launch, on 15 April, the US bombed Tripoli in Libya and many core activists feared the protests against the American military action might detract from their plans to launch the Non-Stop Picket.

Leaflet for the launch of the Non-Stop Picket, 19 April 1986 (Source: City Group)

In recent months, many of the people we have interviewed were present on the first day of the Picket and have shared their memories of that day and the build-up to it.  James Godfrey described the period immediately prior to the launch of the Non-Stop Picket as ‘really exciting’.

I remember particularly planning meetings, because I was on the committee of the group at that stage.  …  We had several meetings, because we’d been having weekly demonstrations on Fridays and other demonstrations on particular commemorative occasions, and my recollection is that Norma Kitson (and/or in conjunction with Carol Brickley) came up one day and announced their proposal.  I think it was Norma.  …  Announced the strategy that, as they had done before, we should organise a Non-Stop Picket demanding the release of Nelson Mandela and others.  And I think there was a pause as people took in the ramifications of what was being proposed.  How long would we be outside the South African Embassy for? Would Nelson Mandela every be released? And the enormity of the task that we would be potentially embarking upon.  However, having said that, [there was] enormous excitement and enthusiasm as the time got closer and closer to the launch date of 19 April 1986.  (James Godfrey, interview recorded 30 January 2013)

Footage of that first day can be seen here.  The opening sequence of that video shows the launch demonstration marching up to the site, in front of the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square, where the Non-Stop Picket would be established.  Carol Brickley, City Group’s Convenor, remembers the first day in the following terms:

We had a march down from Camden or Red Lion Square down to Trafalgar Square and there were lots of children holding a banner that Norma [Kitson] had made. It was nice, it was exciting; it was a good day. (Carol Brickley, interview recorded 21 February 2013).

Like Carol, others who were present on that day have only vague memories of where the demonstration started, but several of them have a vivid memory of the children carrying the hand-sewn banner at the head of the march. The demonstration actually started at Camden Town Hall in Bidborough Street near Kings Cross.

I distinctly remember it.  I will always remember it, because there was a march – a very short march, actually; possibly from Malet Street to Trafalgar Square. And there was a very, very colourful banner at the front which was held by children and it was a remarkable sight.  There were, to my view, about 1500 people on that march. And we marched down to Trafalgar Square and there was this remarkable sight at Trafalgar Square because there seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of people waiting for us to arrive there to start the Non-Stop Picket. So, it was a remarkable event. (David Yaffe, interview recorded 5 April 2013).

On the first day of the Non-Stop Picket we had a march from Camden Town Hall to Trafalgar Square and Carol was the Chief Steward and I was the Chief Steward’s Assistant.  … It was a really amazing day.  We had planned the demo but then the US bombed Libya the same week.  So there was a big demo at the US embassy on the same day, and lots of people who might have wanted to go to one or the other were, obviously, a bit torn.  But, it didn’t matter.  We had a great demo and then lots of people came down afterwards from that and we carried on. (Nicki, interview recorded 27 March 2013)

One of those people who came to the launch of the Non-Stop Picket from the demonstration at the US Embassy was Cat, who stayed involved throughout the Picket.

I’d come up to London for a demonstration outside the US Embassy against the bombing of Libya and I met [someone] selling FRFI on that and he said “Oh, do you know there’s a demonstration later today outside the South African Embassy?” And I think I was with a friend who slightly knew someone who was involved in City Group … and so we eventually peeled off from the US Embassy demonstration.  We weren’t on the march when the Non-Stop Picket began but we were outside the Embassy waiting for it to arrive.  I can’t remember hugely what it was like but it was exciting, it was fun, it was noisy.  There was singing. (Cat Wiener, interview recorded 5 March 2013)

Placard announces the Non-Stop Picket (Source: City Group)

In preparation for the arrival of the demonstration, a small number of City Group activists were delegated to transport and set up the equipment needed for the Picket and its launch rally.  Beyond this technical role, one of their key tasks was to claim and secure the group’s preferred site for the protest in front of the Embassy gates.  One of the picketers who took on this role, described his experiences that day:

I remember thinking there were lots of people in Trafalgar Square, just ordinary tourists, and I’m expecting these people to march in at some time from the American embassy – I hope they come, quite soon, because there’s quite a few cops here.  But clearly the cops were also deployed outside the American embassy, because they were expecting protests (not just from City Group), quite rightly.  …  I don’t remember much about the first day really, except for getting there early and setting things up – I’m not technically-minded, but I knew how to plug things in.  …  And, I was quite relieved when people turned up. (‘Vincent’, interview recorded 1 December 2012)

As well as claiming space and putting the Picket’s minimal infrastructure of banners, placards and supplies of publicity material in place, the planning for the launch of the Non-Stop Picket had also involved preparing a number of contingencies to ensure that the first evening, the first overnight and the shifts on the follow few days were covered.  As James explained, for him, there were mixed emotions as the launch rally came to an end:

It was filled with the exuberance of doing what we’d said we’d do and what we’d planned to do for a while.  And then, arriving there, there were the inevitable peaks and troughs that were going to take place (which I hadn’t thought about beforehand) …  And I remember, as nightfall came and everyone had thrown their big energies into the day, we had contingencies in place and people lined up to do the evening and night shifts, and those of us who had been busy all day moving stuff around took breaks.  It was a bit strange to be going away – there had been so many people before and now there were so few.  Are we going to be able to do it? (James Godrey, interview recorded 30 January 2013)

Richard, a veteran of City Group’s 86-day Non-Stop Picket in 1982 remembers feeling more prepared and more optimistic about the tasks ahead of the group:

It was quite exciting. Because we’d already had a Non-Stop Picket before that and so, to a certain extent, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. There were a lot of high hopes, high spirits and a great deal of optimism for the future. (Richard, interview recorded 22 March 2013)

Carol Brickley, one of the more experienced activists involved in launching the Picket was perhaps more realistic in her assessment of the challenge City Group had set itself.  While many of the younger picketers remember the excitement of the day, in her capacity as the group’s Convenor, she offered a political assessment of the role of the Non-Stop Picket, linking it clearly to events in South Africa:

I thought it was something that you take on, but you don’t project yourself to the end of it. You don’t say I am doing this because it’s possible, because frankly it didn’t seem altogether possible. But the value of it was in the doing of it rather than in the end of it. Especially given what was going on in South Africa. I mean, it’s not that you decide that sort of thing in isolation. There was an enormous build up of militancy in the townships in South Africa from 1985 onwards which was extraordinary and very different from what had gone before. So that was the background to us making any decisions. (Carol Brickley, interview recorded 21 February 2013).

The Non-Stop Picket did not just appear out of nowhere.  It built upon the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group’s experience of regularly picketing the South African Embassy (at least weekly, but often more frequently) since early 1982. During the previous four years, City Group had fought to defend the right to protest outside the South African Embassy and were determined to maintain that right.  Their call for a Non-Stop Picket of the Embassy responded to growing anti-apartheid militancy inside South Africa and captured the imagination of young people in Britain who wanted to play an active role in opposing apartheid.  While the potential conflict with the US Embassy demonstration on 19 April 1986 understandably made City Group activists fearful that their plans to launch the Non-Stop Picket might be undermined; in the end, the coincidence probably worked in their favour by attracting additional young activists along on the day who were open to City Group’s anti-imperialist analysis of the need to oppose apartheid.

Margaret Thatcher: friend of apartheid

‘Every day the blood of our children flows. While all this is happening, Reagan and Thatcher continue to call themselves friends of black people while in effect they are the friends of racists.’ (Winnie Mandela,6 April 1986)

Helen Yaffe writes: Winnie Mandela’s statement was made less than two weeks prior to the start of the non-stop picket outside the South African Embassy in London. Set up by the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group (City Group), the picket’s demands were the release of Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners, and the end of the apartheid regime. It was City Group’s response to the intensification in South Africa both of the struggle against apartheid and of the regime’s repression. City Group’s convenor, Carol Brickley, explained:

‘There was an enormous build up of militancy in the Townships in South Africa from 1985 onwards…an enormous community uprising, effectively. In Alexandra Township they had workers’ councils; they were talking about making South Africa ungovernable at one point. The Non-Stop Picket was a response to that…a way of bringing people’s attention to what was going on in South Africa. Not only with the prisoners, but also the sheer brutality of the regime – they were murdering people. And also the role that the British government was playing in supporting that situation. It was Mrs Thatcher’s heyday.’ (Interview, 21 February 2013).

Under Thatcher’s eleven-year term as Prime Minister, Britain remained the main political and economic backer of apartheid South Africa. In its 1985 pamphlet on South Africa, the Revolutionary Communist Group, which helped to found City Group, described how Britain benefited from investments in South Africa.

‘British companies’ stake in apartheid gives an average rate of profit of some 21 per cent. This is extremely high compared to a 6-7 per cent average return on investment in Britain. So it is no surprise that 500 British companies invest in South Africa…British banks and companies earned £1bn last year from their investments in apartheid…Shell and BP control 40 per cent of oil sales in South Africa…British banks had claims of $5.562bn (£4.7bn) on South Africa (end June 1984), a rise of $1.02bn (£0.92bn) or 22.5 per cent on the previous year. Britain’s stake in apartheid is enormous. And precisely because investment in apartheid is so profitable, British collaboration with apartheid will not be easily broken.’ (South Africa: Britain out of Apartheid, Apartheid out of Britain, Larkin Publications, p. 20)

The RCG pamphlet went on to say: ‘A total financial and oil boycott of South Africa would bring it to its knees. But it would also destroy the foundation of those massive profits that the imperialist banks and companies get from their stake in apartheid. Faced with growing international demands for economic sanctions against South Africa, the international backers of apartheid are seeking a strategy to force cosmetic changes on the apartheid regime and to appease international opinion.’ (South Africa, p. 21).

Demanding action against apartheid (Source: City Group)

This approach was adopted by Thatcher, who obstructed and undermined international support for sanctions. ‘In a league table of foreign investors in South Africa, published in August 1985, Britain headed the list with £12 billion invested. South Africa accounts for more than 10% of British foreign investment’ (South Africa, p. 54). Despite the fact that the call for sanctions came from the liberation movement itself, Thatcher claimed that economic sanctions were immoral because black workers would lose their jobs. In June 1984, she hosted President P.W Botha, the first visit in 23 years by a South African premier. At the Commonwealth Summit in October 1985, Thatcher came under pressure from 41 heads of state to implement sanctions. Threatened with the break up of the Commonwealth, she conceded only, in her words, ‘a tiny little bit’, but British links with apartheid continued.

Of course, Thatcher’s ruthless agenda impacted every area of life and many of the activists who joined the non-stop picket would have counted themselves among the victims and opponents of both her economic and foreign policies. The Thatcher era saw industries closed, rising unemployment, privatisations, cuts to welfare benefits, the intensification of class divisions and increased (state) racism. Thatcher battled the miners and the trade union movement in general. She waged war with Argentina over the Falklands/Las Malvinas and with the Irish Republican movement, whilst giving support to Chilean dictator, Pinochet. Angry rebellions exploded as inner cities riots of, mainly, black working class youth and in response to the Poll Tax. All these issues were reflected in the composition of City Group and the activists on the non-stop picket, as well as in the political relationships City Group built with other campaigns: with miners, Irish republican activists, anti-racist and anti-deportation campaigns, and so on.

Linking struggles in Britain and South Africa (Source: City Group)

For the activists on the non-stop picket, who saw evidence of British government collusion with the representatives of the South African embassy, Thatcher was synonymous with support for apartheid and the police harassment they experienced on a daily basis. On 8 April, at news of her death, street parties broke out from Brixton to Glasgow, while the Durham Miner’s Association described it as ‘a great day for miners’. It would not be strange to find non-stop picketers among those celebrating or sharing the sentiments of Pallo Jordan, the ANC’s chief propagandist in exile during the apartheid era, who was quoted in The Guardian as saying: ‘good riddance…She was a staunch supporter of the apartheid regime.’

A tale of the homeless and ‘disarmingly cheery revolutionaries’

Last week I re-read an old magazine feature about the Non-Stop Picket.  The article was originally published in the Mail on Sunday‘s You magazine in late 1988, just as the Picket was about to celebrate its 1000th day and night outside the South African Embassy in London.  In April 1989, a syndicated version of the article was reprinted in the Johannesburg Sunday Star.  This is one of the few occasions that we know of where the Non-Stop Picket received press coverage in a mainstream South African newspaper.

The Non-Stop Picket and South Africa House, 1988 (Photographer: John Cole)

At the time, I am sure that many supporters of the picket read the article, penned by Kim Fletcher, as a hatchet job.  It does not start well:

For two and a half years, day and night, the picket outside South Africa House has campaigned for Nelson Mandela. While some of this highly-organised band are there from the most altruistic of motives others, like homeless alcoholic Spider, have less than a full grasp of the issue at stake.

While the article’s tone is not wholly sympathetic to the Non-Stop Picket, it does offer a fairly rich description of the range of people who participated in the Picket and the range of motivations (and chance encounters) that drew them to anti-apartheid protest. Nevertheless, with so much of the first quarter of the piece devoted to Spider’s story, it feels as if the article is front-loaded to appeal to the conservative prejudices of the Mail on Sunday’s readers in Thatcher’s Britain.  The second and third paragraphs continue in this vein:

Often there are singers, sometimes a jazz band and once or twice even a Labour MP.  But on this Sunday afternoon the campaign to free Nelson Mandela is in the unwashed hands of Spider.  Spider sits on an upturned plastic box, cradles a battery-operated megaphone and rants in a rasping Scottish accent.

His address is difficult to decipher, but includes a rhyming couplet that sounds like “British police and CIA, how many men did you kill today?” Passing tourists peer from a safe distance at the crudely-inked cobwebs that decorate the sides of his throat; two bored constables watch with disdain and the Portland stones elephants and lions peer down impassively.  No curtain twitches on the mighty facade of the South African embassy to indicate whether any ‘racist murders’ are home to hear his words.

A paragraph on (in which some background to the length and purpose of the Picket is provided) and we’re back to Spider’s tale.

Spider – his real name William Wilson – a homeless, 24-year-old, self-confessed alcoholic, became one of its stalwarts last year when the police briefly moved the protest away from the embassy to the steps of neighbouring St. Martin’s Church, a centre for dossers.  Since then there is no questioning Spider’s enthusiasm, though some doubt about his understanding of the issue.

“Hang on,” he days, breaking off his explanation of how he and his jobless, homeless friends have kept the demonstration going. “I’ll see if these two Chinks will sign the petition”.

While the casual racism of Spider’s remark grates and feels out-of-place, for those of us who remember encountering him on the Picket, it is unlikely to have been invented by the journalist for effect.  Most members of the Picket were conscious anti-racists, and challenged racist language when they heard it used by other picketers; but that is not to say that some participants did not have more contradictory understandings of race and racism.

Having focused on the experiences of Spider and ‘his jobless, homeless friends’, the article moves on to address the political tensions between the Non-Stop Picket and the national Anti-Apartheid Movement.  Readers are told that the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group which organised the Picket was expelled from the national movement because of “concerns about the real aims of the revolutionary communist group that controlled it”.  If that wasn’t enough to alarm the readers of the Mail on Sunday, they are then informed that,

The party’s newspaper, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism, on sale on the embassy picket line, supports not only Nelson Mandela but also the Provisional IRA.

The article briefly quotes Lorna Reid, “a disarmingly cheery revolutionary” about City Group’s perspective on the politics behind its expulsion from the AAM, before continuing with the following warning (tailored once more to the prejudices of the Mail on Sunday readership):

It would not be the first time that left-wing groups have exploited both causes and people for their own ends. Here there is plenty of promising material. David, 20, an engaging, if rather feckless-looking boy, has been coming here for seven months. His grandmother threw him out of her home, he lost his job, started sleeping rough and discovered the picket. So did Declan, a 19-year-old Irishman festooned with anti-apartheid badges.

Only at this stage, half way through the article, does attention turn to picketers with whom the paper’s readership might have some more sympathy – those who it describes as defying “the Rent-a-Mob or Dave Spart categorisation”.  Amongst others, the readers are introduced to Sandy, a Quaker and qualified doctor in his late 30s who was retraining as an artist; and Alex, a jazz pianist and singer.  But several column inches are reserved for interviews with “Sharon and Georgina, two middle-class 19-year-olds who are best friends from Orpington”.

“We came by accident when it started,” says Georgina, a small, cheerful blonde, “We knew about the American embassy picket because of the Libyan bombing but we couldn’t find it and then we came by this one.”

Sharon looks briefly dismayed at the honesty of the explanation: “We just continued coming, learning more, getting angrier, doing what we could.  Our parents support the picket but they just don’t like the idea of our being involved in it.”

“My dad doesn’t actually support the picket,” says Georgina and she suddenly defies the mannerisms that bracket her as a bimbette stooge of the left by delivering a cogent account of factionalised in-fighting. “The picket is important,” she says.  ”If it only makes people stop and think for two minutes about South Africa and apartheid, it has achieved something.”

The article also offers some indication of the international mix of young people attracted to the picket, offering quotes from Andrea, a German au pair; Hermina, from Yugoslavia; and, Theo, from the Netherlands.

In a single paragraph, it offers a rich insight into the everyday lived experience of being on the Non-Stop Picket.

Suddenly Sharon dashes in [to the cafe] to say a Transit of diplomatic protection police has arrived and she is nervous of being on the picket with just Georgina. Back on the picket, there is no panic, the police stare out of their van.  Spider slopes off to the off-licence for his first strong lager of the day and Sandy takes up his sketch book to draw his companions.

While it pains me a little to quote an article from the Mail on Sunday at such length, this piece does offer some interesting insights into how the Picket and its participants were seen, by those outside the Left, at the time.  The article tells a story shaped for its readership, but the dozen or so picketers that it quotes and describes are broadly representative of the range of people who sustained the Picket in its later years.  As I have said several times before, the South African Embassy’s location in Trafalgar Square made the Picket visible and accessible to a wide range of people in London at the time.  That the Picket offered a means for ‘self-confessed alcoholic’ homeless men to protest alongside Quaker doctors, middle-class young women looking for something more than the suburbs could offer them, and ‘disarmingly cheery’ revolutionaries is to its credit.  It positions the Picket firmly within the social and political geography of London in the Thatcher era.

Picketers and police, from Mail on Sunday, 1988 (Photographer: John Cole)

The Poll Tax Riot and the burning of the South African Embassy II

Last year, I wrote about how the South African Embassy was attacked, with its windows smashed and a tourist display set ablaze, during the Poll Tax Riot in Trafalgar Square on 31 March 1990.  Recently we have obtained new photos of this incident (taken the following day) and unveiled some more archival material related to it.

Damage to the South African Embassy, 31 March 1990 (Source: anonymous donor)

It is not clear how the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group obtained this document but, among the papers in the archive we have discovered a statement by Philip Brian Ian Milnes, a senior administrative officer at the South African embassy, regarding the damage to the building on 31 March 1990.

There were numerous panes of glass smashed and broken throughout the building. Forty two clear 14 inches x 9 and a half inches panes, nine Flemish 14 inches x 9 and a half-inch panes, five display window panes, one secondary glazing pane and six other types of pane. The total cost of replacing those windows is £6325 plus £238.35 for boarding up. On the lower ground floor of the building, facing the STRAND, four window displays were destroyed by various missiles being thrown through the windows from outside. One of these window displays was also destroyed by fire and I would estimate, from quotes given, that this would amount to about £3000 of the £1500 total…the cultural centre itself needs redecorating because of the smoke damage at a cost of £5350. On the aspect of the building facing TRAFALGAR SQUARE, there is also a damaged granite balustrade, where the stones have been forced into the wall of the building along with other damage, which will cost around £4600. Also damaged on Saturday 31/03/90 was a closed circuit television camera, external [sic] positioned…a component dislodged due to being hit apparently by some form of missile, costing £75 to repair….The total, estimated, cost of repair to the building is £33,023.35…no one can provide any details of who in particular caused any of the damage to any part of the building…’

Fire damage to South African Embassy tourist displace, 31 March 1990 (Source: anonymous donor)

A number of City Group activists were arrested during the riot, some in the vicinity of the Embassy (although none were, as far as we know, charged with the damage to the Embassy itself).  It is likely that this statement was presented as evidence during one of the subsequent trials.

At the time of the Non-Stop Picket, the protest’s left critics (such as members of the Socialist Workers Party) often argued that it was distracting good militants from struggles in Britain.  That criticism is too simplistic.  That over sixty of the embassy’s windows were smashed during the Poll Tax Riot and the fabric of the building sustained other damage that day is suggestive of two things: first, that the resistance to apartheid in South Africa was entangled with class struggles in Britain at the time; and, second, that the volume of the damage points to the fact that more than a handful of anti-apartheid militants from the Non-Stop Picket understood this link.

Many former Non-Stop Picketers have recounted stories from their experiences of Trafalgar Square on the day of the Poll Tax Riot in the interviews we have conducted with them over recent months.  When we catch up with ourselves and have transcribed all these interviews, we will post further narratives and analysis about that day.