ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how picketers learned to be unruly in various ways through the direct actions they took in support of the economic and sporting boycotts of South Africa. In this context, it explores the practices through which City Group offered political and legal support to those arrested on its protests. Both on and off the Non-Stop Picket, City Group encouraged and enabled direct action against the representatives of the apartheid regime (and their supporters) in Britain. These practices were particularly effective – of the more than 700 arrests associated with the Non-Stop Picket, over 90 per cent of cases were (eventually) won by the defendants. The robust nature of their legal support structures ensured that many picketers were prepared to risk (often repeated) arrests in pursuit of their anti-apartheid cause. The chapter also examines some of the circumstances in which these wilful arrests took place.
