Apartheid was a unique system of racial segregation and white supremacy in South Africa. For nearly three centuries Africans were dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948 apartheid (‘apartness’) became official policy. The National Party, elected by an all-white electorate, extended and formalised separation and discrimination into a rigid legal system.
As well as the Anti-Apartheid Movement itself the collection in the TUC Library illustrates the breadth of the campaign against apartheid, both national and international, including much from faith groups, artists, local groups, and student activists. It is particularly strong on the involvement of trade unions, who were involved from the start in the Boycott Movement, but then as the collection shows, sadly to a greater or lesser degree for the next two decades. By the 1980s the TUC and major unions were swayed by the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Black South African Trade Unions’ calls for sanctions and were committed to the total isolation of the regime in South Africa.
Publications and ephemera in the TUC collection illustrate the slow early start and then full on collaboration between British unions, Anti-Apartheid Movement and South African trade unions through workshops, secret delegations, and campaign tours in an attempt to turn the trade union movements’ millions of members into activists against apartheid.
By the end of the decade, almost half of all trade unions affiliated to the TUC were committed to the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Discover further information about the Trade Unions Against Apartheid.
To begin your research we recommend box DT930-942, which includes material documenting the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa, particularly from the perspective of the British labour movement and its allies. Many of the publications were produced or distributed by organisations such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), the African National Congress (ANC), and the TUC itself, among others. Some, however, are the South African Government's own propaganda, attempting to portray a happy prosperous world of "apartness", one the Anti-Apartheid campaign had to battle against.
This material cover a wide range of topics including:
- calls for economic sanctions and divestment from companies operating in apartheid South Africa
- solidarity messages with imprisoned activists like Nelson Mandela
- boycotts of South African goods and sporting events
- reports on labour exploitation and workers’ struggles under apartheid
- documentation of police brutality, state repression, and resistance efforts
- campaigns to expel South Africa from international bodies such as the Commonwealth
