Dr David Pitt

• I WAS delighted to see your excellent supplement Black History Makers. Reading about my former councillor, Jerry Williams, was a treat.

I thought it was meticulously researched and presented and I have just one quibble: it did not recognise the vital role Dr David Pitt played in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In essence: he gave the movement its first home.

On June 26 1959 a group of South African exiles, together with British supporters, met in the Holborn Hall, on the corner of Gray’s Inn Road and Theobalds Road.

They decided to launch a boycott of South African goods as a means of protesting against the increasing racism of the South African government. But they had nowhere to operate from.

It was at this point that Dr Pitt stepped forward, offering them an office in the basement of his home at 200 Gower Street.

The Boycott Movement was launched in March 1960. It won the support of the Labour and Liberal parties and the Trades Union Congress.

But it was events in South Africa that were to really transform the campaign into a fully-fledged movement. On March 21 1960 police opened fire on a protest by the Pan Africanist Congress at Sharpeville, leaving 69 people dead.

A wave of revulsion swept around the world and thousands protested outside the South African embassy, on Trafalgar Square. The following month Anti-Apartheid was officially born.

Labour MP Barbara Castle became the first president. An arson attack at the Gower Street office (the first of several organised by the South African authorities) led the movement to seek new premises, this time with the National Union of Students, at 15 Endsleigh Street.

From there Anti-Apartheid took on the Pretoria regime. In 1964 the movement, which had grown considerably, moved again: this time to 89 Charlotte Street, behind Goodge Street tube station.

Ronnie Kasrils (later a minister in Nelson Mandela’s government) plotted the downfall of the apartheid government in pubs around the area, while at the same time perfecting small explosions for leaflet bombs on Hampstead Heath.

It was in January 1983 that Anti-Apartheid moved to its final home in Mandela Street. At the time the address was “Selous Street”, which had particularly unfortunate connotations, since the Selous Scouts were an élite unit in the Rhodesian army.

In fact the street was named after the Camden Town artist of the Victorian era, Henry Courtney Selous, but it was clearly an embarrassment.

So, led by Camden councillor Hugh Bayley, a campaign was launched which finally resulted in the street being renamed.

In 1990 Mandela was released from prison and soon the rest of his ANC comrades and those of other liberation movements were freed.

In 1994 elections were held, bringing the notorious system of apartheid to an end. But without the generosity of Dr Pitt could this have been achieved?

MARTIN PLAUT,
NW5