ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Picket's relationship with the police and examines how picketers took action to defend the existence of the Non-Stop Picket and their right to protest against apartheid in the ways they chose. It explores how, through a two-month campaign of civil disobedience, picketers regained the right to protest directly outside the Embassy gates after the Metropolitan Police once again forcibly moved them in May 1987. City Group fostered a culture of direct action against the representatives of the apartheid regime (and their supporters) in Britain, which was expressed both on and off the Non-Stop Picket. The defeat of the police ban enabled City Group to claim with some legitimacy that they had maintained a continuous protest at the Embassy until Mandela was released – the few short disruptions to the non-stop nature of the protest were a result of the actions of the Metropolitan Police, not the picketers' neglect of their duties.
