Commemorative issue (City of London Anti-Apartheid Group, February 1990)

To mark the end of the Picket a special issue of the group’s newsletter, Non-Stop Against Apartheid,was produced.  On its front page, surrounding the now iconic photo of Nelson Mandela walking out of Victor-Verster Prison, hand in hand with Winnie Mandela, both of them giving clenched fist salutes, the headline was a call to further action.

On the back cover, City Group offered a more thorough assessment of the situation in South Africa and renewed their pledge to continue campaigning:

On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Other veteran prisoners had been released in the previous year, including Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada of the ANC and Jafta Masemola and President Zephaniah Mothopeng of the PAC.  On 2 February 1990 the ANC, PAC, AZAPO and SACP were unbanned.  City AA welcomes all these reforms, won by the freedom struggle led by the black majority.  Nevertheless we know that there is a long way to go in the struggle. All the main pillars of apartheid remain in place, and majority rule is yet to be won.  Thatcher has quickly moved to lift sanctions against the regime.

We have remained on the Non-Stop Picket, as we pledged to, until Nelson Mandela is free.  Now that the Non-Stop Picket is ending we have pledged ourselves to continue and to escalate our solidarity.

The article went on to list City Group’s planned actions for the coming months – pickets of the Embassy from midday on Saturday until 6.00pm on Sunday every weekend;  a major rally on 21 March 1990 with Jafta Masemola of the PAC to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre; and, a demonstration on 26 May in support of the Upington 14 campaign.  Part of the intention of the Non-Stop Picket ‘victory’ rally was to keep supporters engaged in campaigning against apartheid.  Although the Picket’s focus on calling for Mandela’s release resonated with a wide layer of people and made it (relatively) easy to engage them in anti-apartheid activism, in hindsight, it also made it harder to sustain large numbers of activists in solidarity work during the remaining years of the transition to a post-apartheid state.  City Group continued to campaign against apartheid until 1994, but its membership and the size of the core activist group tailed off in the years after the Picket ended.

The rest of the commemorative issue of Non-Stop Against Apartheid mostly contains photos of key events from the four years of the Non-Stop Picket, along with short, year-by-year commentaries on City Group’s campaigning.  Many of the events noted in the issue will be familiar to regular readers of this blog (and others will become so over the coming months), but they give a good indication of the events that City Group activists viewed as significant at the time. 

For 1986, the start of the Non-Stop Picket was of course central, but the newsletter also charts the Picket’s struggle to establish itself, physically and politically, contending with police attempts to restrict the amount of space it could take up, curtail the collection of donations and the use of megaphones.  The newsletter records how picketers survived during the coldest winter in 47 years (1986/87), including the attempts to light a brazier on nights when the temperature was sub-zero.

Events from 1987 noted in the newsletter largely centre on the removal of the Picket from outside the gates of the Embassy, and City Group’s successful campaign to defend their right to protest there.  But 1987 was an eventful year and City Group’s intervention in the Anti-Apartheid Movement’s Annual General Meeting, the March for Mandela on 14 March 1987, and the campaigning for Moses Mayekiso and the Alex 5, culminating in a demonstration on 10 October 1987, also get remembered. 1987 was the year the Non-Stop Picket was voted ‘Best Demo’ by readers of City Limits magazine. 

Many of the events from 1988 recalled in the newsletter are ones I have yet to cover in this blog, but they included: campaigning for the Sharpeville Six, Ivan Toms and Simon Nkoli; the ‘No Rights? No Flights!’ campaign of direct action against South African Airways; a 700-strong rally on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre addressed by Gora Ebrahim of the PAC; and a demonstration to celebrate two years of the Non-Stop Picket.

In 1989, City Group celebrated 1000 days and nights on the Non-Stop Picket.  Not surprisingly, that was a key event celebrated in the commemorative newsletter.  1989 was also the year that City Group repeatedly took direct action against the members of Mike Gatting’s boycott-busting rebel cricket tour of South Africa; surrounded the South African Embassy on 16 June to remember the school children’s uprising in Soweto in 1976; and blocked the road outside the Embassy for two hours on the evening of the last whites-only election in South Africa (6 September 1989).

Graffiti on pavement from last day of the Non-Stop Picket (Source: Gavin Brown)

Out of the hundreds of photos of the Non-Stop Picket that I have examined so far during this research project, there are only two that I can definitively place as being from the last day of the Picket.  They are both shots of graffiti scrawled on the pavement beneath the Picket by picketers who were screened from police surveillance by the weight of the crowd at that closing rally. These entangled texts, written in black indelible ink, link the Picket’s political cause closely to its location.  The first proclaims “We won the fight, Amandla!” quickly followed by the promise “If your [sic] lying we’ll be back!!”  The South African slogan, ‘amandla!’ (power) and the threat that the Picket would return, if necessary, demonstrates the stretched spatiality of the Non-Stop Picket, linking the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa with solidarity activists in the heart of London.  The second piece of graffiti celebrates the duration of the Picket – “City AA ’86 – 90″ – but stakes a territorial claim over that stretch of pavement, indeed the whole of Trafalgar Square – “We won the Square”.  Over the four years of the Non-Stop Picket, that stretch of pavement became more than just the location of a solidarity protest related to a national liberation struggle thousands of miles away, it became a home of sorts to the eclectic mix of (mostly, young) people who joined the protest. 

“We won the Square” graffiti, 24 February 1990 (source: Gavin Brown)

Some of them were deeply committed to the anti-apartheid cause before they joined the Non-Stop Picket; others were angry or lonely and came to understand the issues involved in apartheid through the companionship they found on the Picket.  Whatever else was going on in their lives, for many of the young (and not so young) activists who sustained it, the Picket was somewhere they could feel they belonged.  The prospect of that sense of belonging ending with the end of the Non-Stop Picket was deeply unsettling.

Given how important the Non-Stop Picket was in their lives, I find it fascinating that none of the former activists we have interviewed so far, who were present on that day, have very clear memories of the Picket’s final celebration.  Nicole had the following to say:

Yes I was [there], but I don’t really recall it apart from afterwards where I have recollections of being on the tube singing songs….I’ve no idea where we were heading.

Similarly, Francis recalled,

my memory isn’t totally clear.  We had a march, which included walking down Whitehall. There was a party afterwards, (I can’t remember where) but I do remember that comrade Virman Man was on particularly impressive form as he led City Group Singers with his fine strong bass voice. Comrade Rene turned to me and said “no-one can stop City Group”!

I would suggest that these hazy memories are precisely a measure of the confusion and contradictory emotions many participants experienced that day.  In contrast to the clear memories they hold of other events surrounding the Non-Stop Picket, that final rally was disorienting. While City Group members wanted to celebrate their achievements, many experienced a sense of anti-climax that the Picket was finally over.  Having been ‘non-stop’ for nearly four years, many picketers found themselves contemplating what it would mean to lead their lives at a different pace and without the comforting knowledge that they could always find companionship on a pavement in Trafalgar Square.

Paul has set up a Non-Stop Picket flickr account where people can share their photos of events on and around the Non-Stop Picket. Please share details of this site and feel free to comment and add details to the photos that are already there. If anyone wants to upload images please email cityaa@btinternet.com for log in details.

In his book, Mason makes much of the role of the ‘networked individual’ –  proficient in using Twitter, writing blogs and multitasking on social media – in recent protest movements.  The 1986 article reminds us how activism was pursued before the revolution in social media technologies of the last decade.  The fact that it was published in a cheaply printed, four-page, A4 gate-fold newsletter sold on the Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy (and related protests) for 10 pence is in itself indicative of how social movement communication strategies have changed in the last twenty-five years.

The article opens with the following assessment:

Many new people have become involved for the first time in the struggle against apartheid by joining the Non-Stop Picket.  There are thousands more throughout London and Britain who want to take action.  We have to let them know about the Non-Stop Picket. City Group is organising for that. We need you to help.

It goes on to list six actions that supporters could take to mobilize new people to take action against apartheid with and through the Non-Stop Picket.  None of these techniques has completely disappeared from activist repertoires; but, almost all of them have now been eclipsed by the use of the internet and social media both by grassroots activists and professional campaigning organisations.

First, supporters were encouraged to place posters about the Non-Stop Picket around London.  The article suggests placing these in bookshops, community centres, libraries and local shops.  This list in itself describes the social geography of a lost London – where are the radical and community bookshops now?  The checklist studiously avoids calling on activists to flypost posters on the streets – although this was a common practice.  As major rallies approached, flyposting crews would be organised out of City Group’s weekly meetings to cover key areas of London in posters.   At the time, flyposting was a staple means of publicising protests.  Today it is exceptionally rare.  The demise of this practice has much to do with the rise of new communication technologies.  It also a reflection of the increasing privatisation of public space – there are fewer places to paste posters and the surveillance and regulation of this activity is far greater.

City Group leaflet advertising the launch of the Non-Stop Picket

Second, the article called on activists to distribute leaflets about the Non-Stop Picket at local tube stations during rush hours.  Recently, Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign has been mobilising support in this way, but that is largely because he is campaigning about the cost of public transport in London.

The third call to action was for City Group supporters to attend the public meetings of other campaigns to leaflet, talk to people and announce the Non-Stop Picket.  Whilst some campaign groups continue to hold public meetings, there do not seem to be as many as there were a quarter of a century ago, when the London listings magazine City Limits would devote a page each week to protests, demonstrations and political meetings across London.  The fourth call was related to this, and that was to encourage   supporters to get other campaigns and organisations that they were involved with to pledge as a collective to undertake a regular shift on the Non-Stop Picket.  In this way, City Group was actively attempting to foster reciprocal networks of solidarity between campaigning organisations and community groups of various kinds.  There was an implicit assumption within this call that individual activists would be affiliated to and involved with multiple campaigns.

The fifth action called on City Group supporters to place adverts or letters in their local papers and the newsletters of other organisations publicising the Non-Stop Picket.

The final action was directed at supporters outside London.  They were encouraged to book a minibus and organise for a group of friends to visit the Non-Stop Picket.  In exchange, City Group promised to arrange accommodation for visitors travelling from outside London to join their protests.

Panther House, location of City Group's office

In addition to all these mobilizing practices, City Group activists spent many evenings sat on the phone in the group’s small rented office calling supporters and sympathetic contacts, encouraging them to attend rallies and pledge regular shifts on the Picket.  The office served as an additional resource for building networks of activists.  There were many other small, grassroots campaign groups based in the same office building. Over time, through (mostly) chance conversations in the building’s canteen, at print shop based in the building or over a pint in pub opposite, reciprocal networks of support were built between City Group and several of these other campaigns.

While social media technologies clearly have many advantages for activists, I question  whether the relative demise of older, lo-fi techniques have impacted negatively on the ways in which activist groups interact both with each other and with wider publics.  A tweet is quick and has the potential to be spread far and wide with just the click of a button; but there is something important about explaining or defending a political idea through face-to-face interaction.  That these older techniques are used less frequently now is not just a result of the development of new communication technologies, it is also a reflection of the changing social geography of urban public space and the continuing professionalization of much campaigning.

The crowd anticipating Mandela's release (Photo: Jon Kempster)

Something of the atmosphere that day was captured by Tony Benn in his published diary The End of an Era (1994):

Had a phone call telling me that Mandela would be released today and  asking me to go to Trafalgar Square at 12.30. There were hundreds of people gathered there, and the organisers were, of course the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group, who have been picketing outside Trafalgar Square non-stop for 1395 days…  People were singing and waving there arms and kissing and hugging. Somebody had draped on Nelson’s column a banner with the words ‘Nelson Mandela’s Column’…  It was a marvellous event… I don’t think there has been anything like it since 1945 when the war ended. On television live from Cape Town was Mandela, this tall, slim, distinguished man with a strong voice, walking out of prison and reaffirming the need for the armed struggle.

One former City Group activist gives his own account of the day (including an interesting observation about Tony Benn’s reception by some in the crowd):

I arrived fairly early in the morning when it was still very quiet. Other City Group people began to arrive, and it started like a typical City Group rally. ANC people were there too and setting up a stage and amplification equipment. They were actually very friendly and appreciated our presence. As more and more young black South Africans arrived, it became more and more and ANC event.  “Free Nelson Mandela” and Miriam Makeba records were sounded through the amplifiers. Speeches were made, by various people, including Tony Benn, who was heckled by some about the 1967 Namibian uranium incident. The young South Africans started to sing, and then they were toyi toying. It was wonderful! I felt as though I was at a real South African celebration and I was too!  The general atmosphere was electrifying although I did encounter a small amount of hostility when I took a break from singing and dancing to distribute leaflets to the crowd. “I didn’t come here for this!” snarled an indignant woman. But most people were joyful about the great news and full of admiration for what we’d done. (Francis)

For those who had been a regular part of the Non-Stop Picket, this was a day of celebration.  It was the culmination of what they had been campaigning for and provided a genuine sense of victory.  When asked if there were specific days on the Picket that they particularly remembered, many former picketers identified this day:

The demo when Nelson Mandela was released and we just shut London down.  ….  I lost my voice for three days. I still get emotional when I see him on TV (Jacky)

And of course the day Mandela was released. The incredible swell of people, completely taking the police by surprise until we took over Trafalgar Square. … A wonderful day. It started out quite small with a sense of “is it really happening” I think. I can’t quite remember who was on the megaphone when the announcement came over (Richard perhaps?). The crowds grew and grew, the police couldn’t cope. There was impromptu partying and music making on the steps of [St Martin-in-the-Fields church], and just hundreds of people. (Nicole)

Many young people from across the world had been part of the Non-Stop Picket over the previous four years.  For those who had left London by the time of Mandela’s release, not being present on the Picket on the day of his release was (and still is) a source of hurt and regret. Beth’s comments give a clear sense of this:

[I] was already back in Brazil….   I felt as if I had run miles, to fall some inches from the finish line….was awful not to be there.

Large crowd celebrates Mandela’s release (Photo: Annie)

Francis’s comments [above] demonstrate a generosity of spirit and a recognition that that day was a day of celebration not just for City Group activists, but for exiled ANC members and other progressive South Africans in the UK, as well as a far wider layer of people who were against apartheid.  If relations between the ANC and City Group had been tense for many years [as I have outlined in other blog posts], on 11 February 1990 (despite some tense exchanges between individuals) a spirit of temporary cooperation more or less held.  Nevertheless, many regular picketers felt quite territorial about the pavement and pointedly questioned where these hundreds of revellers had been for the previous four years.

Although City Group had always stated that they would maintain the Non-Stop Picket until Mandela’s release, the protest did not end the day he walked free from jail.  The Non-Stop Picket kept going for another fortnight.  In part this extension occurred out of concern that the apartheid regime were not acting in good faith and that restrictions might be placed on Mandela’s freedom, or that right-wing paramilitaries might make an attempt on his life.  The delay also gave City Group time to plan their strategy for campaigning post-Picket and allowed the group to come together to celebrate their achievements, closing down the Picket on their own terms.  The final day of the Picket, as I shall explain in the near future, provoked a far more mixed emotional response from picketers.

Were you in Trafalgar Square on 11 February 1990? What are your memories of the day?

From the release of Walter Sisulu and other leading prisoners the previous October, it had become increasingly clear that Mandela’s release was going to be forthcoming.  Since the 19 April 1986, the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group had maintained a Non-Stop Picket outside the South African Embassy in London and had pledged to stay there until Mandela was released from prison.  With that event finally on the horizon, City Group suddenly had to prepare for the end of this long-running protest and make plans for a new phase of solidarity activism.  Here I include an extract from a letter that City Group sent to its members and supporters on 18 January, outlining they planned to respond to the announcement of Mandela’s release.

City Group plans for Mandela's release

On the day of the announcement, City Group held a celebration rally outside the South African Embassy, as planned.  In typical fashion, the police did not allow the celebrations go unscathed – during the day they arrested one picketer, Leigh, for attempting to tie the black, green and gold colours of the ANC to the gates of the South African Embassy.  The relationship of the anti-apartheid protestors to the space outside the Embassy had always been highly contested and it remained so until the very end of apartheid.

If you were part of the Non-Stop Picket, how did you feel when you heard that Mandela would be released?

City Group responded quickly to the imprisonment of Dave and Simon.  Behind the scenes, the legal team sprang into action to secure their release.  On the streets, City Group demonstrated their solidarity with their imprisoned comrades.  The following day, instead of the normal Friday night rally outside the South African Embassy, City Group converged outside the Lambeth Holding Centre.  In front of the place where Dave and Simon were detained they held a noisy solidarity picket to let them know they were not forgotten.  Although the focus of City Group’s political activism was offering solidarity to those struggling against apartheid in South Africa, at times, the culture of solidarity had to be directed closer to home. This legal solidarity work was (partially) successful.  Dave and Simon only served a few days in gaol, but they were released on stringent bail conditions that restricted their political activity.

Our research is not yet at a stage where we can evaluate what impact a deportation, a death and two imprisonments had on City Group’s work and its membership.  But, it seems unlikely that these three traumatic events within a few weeks did not have an impact on the morale of the Group and interpersonal dynamics within it. 

This case highlights the complex temporalities on life on the Picket.  What did it mean to be ‘non-stop’?  The Picket, from the start, was inspired by the urgency of ending apartheid.  City Group pledged to maintain the Picket until Nelson Mandela was released from gaol.  Undoubtedly, that took longer than key activists anticipated when the Picket was launched in 1986.  Over the (nearly) four years that the Non-Stop Picket existed, it developed a cycle of annual events that structured its political calendar – Nelson Mandela’s birthday, South African Women’s Day, the anniversary of the Soweto uprising, and the anniversary of the start of the Picket itself.  Events were also held to mark milestones in the Picket’s existence – 100, 500 and 1000 days.  Life on the Picket was structured by the shifts on the weekly rota. The relative ease of covering these shifts was affected not just by the rhythms of the (working) week, but also by seasonal cycles.  When the Picket was well-attended and the sun was shining, a six-hour shift could fly by; but time dragged when there were only two people on a shift and the weather was miserable.  But, just as these rhythms and cycles of different duration became somewhat predictable, time also looped in other ways that were less easy to anticipate.  As the imprisonment of these two picketers demonstrates, a chance event on the picket one summer afternoon (resulting from an even earlier disagreement) might lead to an arrest that took some time to come to court, with the consequences not being felt until months later.  The unexpected imprisonment of two activists required City Group to invest time in their defence.  Although people put in ‘extra time’ in response to these emergencies, such events also took time away from other political work.  This project was always established with the intention of studying the spatial aspects of the Non-Stop Picket, but as it has progressed I find myself thinking more and more about how time was experienced in that place – its duration, its rhythms and its varying pace.

As ever, City Group was inventive in thinking about solutions to this problem.  With images of industrial picket lines in their minds, City Group took a decision to try to install a coal-fired brazier on the Picket.  Of course, City Group were aware that this innovation was likely to be hotly contested by the Metropolitan Police, so they ensured that a ‘celebrity’ supporter was there to witness the first lighting of the brazier and so were press photographers. 

In early January 1987, Councillor Bob Crossman, the Mayor of the London Borough of Islington attended the Picket in this capacity.  Once the brazier was set, a regular member of the Non-Stop Picket attempted to light it.  The police on duty promptly threatened them with arrest.  Next, Bob Crossman stepped forward and lit the burner.  The police did not threaten him with arrest, but did quickly extinguish the fire.  He later wrote a letter to the Metropolitan Police complaining about this discrepancy.

Lighting the brazier (Source: City AA Archives)

Following this attempt to light the brazier it was confiscated by the police. City Group spent £300 taking an injunction against them for the return of their property and went to court in pursuit of this case on 16 January 1987.  [Note: our archival research has not yet revealed what the outcome of this court case was - can anyone help us out?].

The next winter a further attempt was made to light a brazier on a cold winter’s evening – this time with comic results.  On that evening in December 1987 the pickets lit the brazier and the police on duty duly called the fire brigade to put it out. When the fire fighters arrived and appraised the situation they refused to extinguish the brazier.  Frustrated by this act of solidarity, the police then tried to extinguish it themselves.  They were not entirely successfully in this, so they decided to remove the brazier from the Picket, and drove off with smoke still billowing from the back of their van.

There is, perhaps, a tendency to think of solidarity as a grand gesture that makes a large political statement.  In contrast, the actions of Bob Crossman and the anonymous fire fighters demonstrate that small acts of solidarity (even if they are ultimately unsuccessful) can still be important.  In both cases, it appears that the Mayor and the fire fighters recognised the importance of the Non-Stop Picket’s cause and undertook small, mundane acts of care that were intended to make the pursuit of that cause easier.  In thinking about the flows of solidarity that passed through the Non-Stop Picket, it is as important to remember these small acts focused on the picket itself, as it is the demonstrations, donations and material aid for the liberation movements in South Africa.

Terry O'Halloran (1 May 1952 - 23 January 1989)

Terry O’Halloran was a journalist.  He had been secretary and then chair of the London Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists and sat on the NUJ’s Ethics Council.  Within the Ethics Council he fought for the union to fully implement its codes of practice to tackle the endemic racism within the British press. He was central to winning the NUJ to a position of supporting all sections of the liberation movement in South Africa.

Terry had a long-standing, regular shift on the Non-Stop Picket. Within City Group, he used his journalistic skills to good effect.  Terry was centrally involved in the production of early issues of the group’s newsletter Non-Stop News – in particular, he wrote about press censorship under apartheid and covered several of City Group’s court cases.  In December 1986, he arranged for four leading members of the NUJ to attend a rally on the Non-Stop Picket with the union’s national banner. This was followed up in January 1987 with a special City Group meeting on the theme of “Apartheid – press censorship” at which Terry spoke alongside Aidan White of The Guardian.

Terry’s partner, Simone, was also a long-term City Group activist and was one of the women picketers subjected to sexual harassment and assault during an arrest in September 1986 [see Hands Off Women Picketers].

Terry had been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group for nearly 14 years, leaving only a few months before his death – although he continued to work closely with them, writing for Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! In addition to contributing to their South African solidarity work, he was central to their Irish solidarity activism and to their work supporting prisoners’ rights.

More than 200 people attended Terry’s funeral on 2 February, squeezed into a tiny chapel at the crematorium in Streatham, South London.  Sinn Fein sent a floral tribute in the form of the Irish tricolour; the RCG a hammer and sickle made from red carnations.  The City Group Singers sang at his funeral, as they had done the night before when City Group laid flowers on the gates of the South African Embassy in Terry’s memory.

Over the coming months, we plan to add a new page to this blog, containing obituaries and memories of former City Group activists who died during the period of the Non-Stop Picket and in the two decades since its end.  Terry O’Halloran will, of course, be amongst them.  For now, I am left wondering what the impact of double blow of Viraj Mendis’s deportation and Terry O’Halloran’s death had on the organisational capacity of City Group at the time.  Of course, Terry’s comrades said “Don’t mourn, organise!” and, to some extent, we did; but, that huge sense of loss must also have impacted on key individuals and affected interpersonal dynamics within the group.

What are your memories of Terry?

Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign confront Thatcher

On 20 December 1986, having exhausted all legal avenues to prevent his deportation, Viraj  took sanctuary in the Church of the Ascension in Hulme, Manchester.  In the early hours of   Wednesday 18 January 1989 the police raided the church and snatched Viraj from his sanctuary.  Within hours, his supporters in Manchester and around the country, including many City Group members were on the streets taking militant action to try to prevent his deportation.  By 9am that morning, 700 of Viraj’s supporters were marching into the centre of Manchester, where they staged a mass sit-down protest.  In London there was a picket of the Home Office and later 300 people protested outside Downing Street.  That afternoon, three young women from City Group (who were also VMDC members) disrupted parliamentary proceedings in the House of Commons in protest at Viraj’s detention.  They were held in the cells until the end of business that night.  A further five VMDC supporters did the same the next day. On the Thursday a twenty-four protest was held outside Pentonville Prison where Viraj was being detained.  Even on the Friday, seven of Viraj’s supporters breached security at Gatwick airport trying to prevent his deportation – five got within a few metres of the Air Lanka plane that was due to remove him from Britain.  The night of his deportation ‘Viraj Mendis will return’ was daubed on the walls of the Sri Lankan High Commission in London and the police attempted to frame two City Group activists for the action.  These actions reveal something of the links established between City Group and other anti-racist campaigns in Britain and suggest the deeply entwined networks of activists the provided mutual solidarity and support to each other’s campaigns at the time.

At the Anti-Apartheid Movements AGM on 1 December 1985, the day before the initial appeal against his deportation was heard, Viraj Mendis was part of a slate of City Group supporters nominated for election to the AAM’s national committee.  Because he was a member of City Group and the Revolutionary Communist Group, AAM officials tried to prevent the distribution of information about his defence campaign at their meeting.  He received 268 votes, but was not elected.

Although he was born into a Sinhala family, as he became politicised, Viraj came to support the right of the Tamil people to self-determination.  Much of his case against deportation was based on his fear that, as a communist and a vocal supporter of the Tamil national liberation struggle he feared for his live, if he returned to Sri Lanka.  Ultimately, those fears were not realised.  Eventually, following his deportation, Viraj was able to relocate to Germany, where he still lives and where he works for a human rights organisation.  In 2010 he was refused permission to return to Britain to attend the funeral of Father John Methuen who had granted him sanctuary in the Church of the Ascension.

To rework a slogan chanted at the time – Viraj Mendis is our friend, we stuck with him until the end!

The dayschool followed a familiar format of discussions, debate and practical workshops designed to draw up plans for mobilising different constituencies (women, youth, trade unionists, anti-racist groups etc.) to City Group’s activities.  At the event Norma and David Kitson reported back to City Group members from their recent trip to Zimbabwe.  There, according to the report in Non-Stop News,

Norma and David were interviewed for radio, television and national newspapers.  The City Group Singers cassette was broadcast over ZBC radio.  Everywhere they went Norma and David received support for the non-stop picket. … The dayschool raffled a T-shirt which summed up the trip – “Zimbabwe Today! Azania Tomorrow!” (Non-Stop News, 25, Jan/Feb 1988)

Report backs from southern Africa and news that word of the Non-Stop Picket was spreading there was always a morale booster for solidarity activists in London.  It placed their efforts in a broader global context and helped consolidate a sense of real connection to  the struggle against apartheid.

One key discussion during the day centred around a panel on the topic of “The Non-Stop Picket and building non-sectarian solidarity.”  Here the debate was about the means to building solidarity with all progressive anti-apartheid movements in South Africa and Namibia, not just the ANC and SWAPO.  In this moment City Group was attempting to differentiate itself from the national Anti-Apartheid Movement not just tactically but politically.  The panel consisted of an impressive range of speakers representing different tendencies within the liberation struggle and those solidarity groups in Britain who were committed to a non-sectarian stance.  The speakers included former South African political prisoners David Kitson and Zolile Keke; Rodney Funeka (the Assistant Chief Representative of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania in the UK); Freddie Koujo (the UK Chair of SWANU – the South-West Africa National Union from Namibia); Frank Lowe of Black Action for the Liberation of Southern Africa; and Dave Lee of the Azania Namibia Forum.  In addition to these speakers, Andy Higginbottom spoke for City Group alongside David Reed for the Revolutionary Communist Group and Mike Howe from the Humanist Party – both political organisations that had strong commitments to the Non-Stop Picket at the time.  Although none of the (British) organisations represented on the panel were very large, the existence of such a range of organisations committed to non-sectarian solidarity with all political tendencies resisting apartheid in South Africa demonstrates that City Group was not alone in challenging the singular association between the national Anti-Apartheid Movement and the ANC.  The debate about the role of British solidarity organisations and how they should most appropriately relate to national liberation movements in the Global South was a real one.

City Group badge - displaying a commitment to non-sectarian solidarity

At the end of the dayschool, City Group committed itself to a renewed round of campaigning throughout 1988 with a clear focus on political prisoners and explicitly a commitment to supporting prisoners from all tendencies within the liberation movement.  The programme of action for the year included a demonstration on 16 April to mark the second anniversary of the start of the Non-Stop Picket; a ‘Remember Soweto – Surround the Embassy’ rally on 16 June; and, plans for a weekend of activities to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday that July.  In practical terms, the dayschool and its reporting in Non-Stop News was also used to collect new pledges from people willing to do regular shifts on the Non-Stop Picket and to encourage supporters to make regular donations via standing orders from their banks.

Norma Kitson’s report from Zimbabwe and the speeches by representatives of the PAC and SWANU on the panel were specifically used to encourage activity and participation:

The Non-Stop Picket now has international recognition and we are determined to use that support and direct it towards building an active and vigorous movement.  All our readers can join in! Remember: PARTICIPATE IN ’88!  (Non-Stop News, 25 Jan/Feb 1988).

A little over a month after the dayschool, the South African government banned 18 anti-apartheid organisations.  City Group responded with a militant campaign of escalating direct action and the slogan ‘Participate in ’88!‘ took on new significance.