ABSTRACT
The And-Apartheid Movement is more than a pressure group: it is Britain's conscience on southern Africa.2
In Chapter 3, I examined the rise and fall of the South African Department of Information. In this chapter, I consider the activities of the anti-apartheid groups in Britain and the United States. Previous assessments of anti-apartheid campaigns have differed in their conclusions. David Wiley, for example, suggested, in 1979, that 'the movements in the Western nations have been fraught with divisiveness, sectarianism, and an inability of the protagonists to cooperate in common strategies of change. Frequently, the movements have more leaders than constituents and their interpretations of events in Africa frequently reflected more their own ideologies than the realities of the African needs and movements'.3 In contrast, Hugo Young commented of the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) that 'It is hard to think of a single large political campaign which has had anything like so immediate an impact.'4 In an attempt to explain these contrasting assessments, this chapter considers the organisations which opposed apartheid South Africa; their attempts to influence the media representation of the Republic; the coverage of, and the tensions within, the anti-apartheid movements; the historical precedent established by the Clapham Sect and the origins of the Free Nelson Mandela campaign.5
