Apartheid is Not a Game: Remembering the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign

Christian Hogsbjerg, Geoff Brown

    Research output: Book/ReportBook - authored

    Abstract

    This short pamphlet commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Stop The Seventy Tour Committee (STST), and includes a foreword by Peter Hain, a leading STST member. The STST formed in 1969 and was the catalyst helping to generate an inspiring mass movement from below of international solidarity which included mass non-violent civil disobedience and militant direct action on a scale in the world of sport that had never been seen before in Britain. Focused mainly on the protests against the South African rugby union tour, it was a campaign that in defiance of police brutality and violent racist intimidation successfully halted the white South African cricket tour of England in 1970 and so represents a famous victory over racism in general and the apartheid nature of South African sport in particular. The question of apartheid South Africa helped politicise and radicalise a generation of young activists in Britain. These young activists then in turn amid the wider revolutionary tumult of ‘1968’ and workers and student protest internationally helped turn what was a campaign based on a strategy of ‘respectability’ and appeals to British ideas of ‘fair play’ by elite figures in the world of politics, sport and civil society into a mass movement from below that inspired further anti-apartheid activism internationally and further anti-racist and anti-fascist activism in Britain.
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationLondon
    PublisherRedwords
    Number of pages87
    ISBN (Print)9781912926589
    Publication statusPublished - Jan 2020

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