Archives Hub feature for July 2014

The Anti-Apartheid Movement – Archives held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

For over three decades the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) campaigned for a boycott of apartheid South Africa and support for all those struggling against it. Founded in 1959 as the Boycott Movement, the AAM grew into the biggest ever British pressure group on an international issue.

What was Apartheid?

Apartheid was a unique system of racial segregation and white supremacy in South Africa. For nearly three centuries Africans were dispossessed and exploited by Dutch and British colonists. In 1948 apartheid (‘apartness’) became official policy. The National Party, elected by an all-white electorate, extended and formalised separation and discrimination into a rigid legal system.

Most of the land was allocated to whites, and Africans were confined to barren overcrowded ‘homelands’. Black workers in so-called white areas were required to carry passes at all times. They lived in townships outside the city centres and were paid below subsistence wages.

Health and education facilities were segregated and those for blacks were hugely inferior to those for whites. The system was kept in place by a battery of repressive laws, under which people could be detained indefinitely without trial.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK

Some of the most compelling material held in the AAM archive at the Bodleian library has been included in a new website ‘Forward to Freedom: The history of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1959–1994’ at http://www.aamarchives.org.

This site features selected video, photographs, posters and documents from the AAM’s archive at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Highlights are footage of the Wembley stadium Nelson Mandela tribute concert in 1988, iconic posters from campaigns to save the Rivonia trialists from the gallows in 1964 and to stop the Springbok cricket tour in 1970, and letters from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arguing against sanctions on South Africa.

Also included are more than 50 interviews with former anti-apartheid campaigners including musician Jerry Dammers, actor Louis Mahoney, Lord David Steel, (AAM President in the 1960s), and grassroots activists who tell what motivated them to get involved.

It shows the wide range of interest groups who took action against apartheid, from students who campaigned for universities to disinvest in the 1970s to British trade unionists who supported resurgent South African trade unions to church groups who campaigned for South Africa’s withdrawal from occupied Namibia.

Other archives related to the Anti-Apartheid Movement

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK had many affiliate branches, partner groups and organisations working alongside them towards their shared aim of ending Apartheid. Some of these also have their archive descriptions included in the Archives Hub.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement in Scotland

Branches supporting the AAM organisation existed in Glasgow and Edinburgh through the 1960s, with 1976 seeing the establishment of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Scottish Committee.

The object of the Scottish Committee was to further the work of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, especially in Scotland, being responsible for the recognition of local Anti-Apartheid groups in Scotland and their admission into membership of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Activities in Scotland incorporated a number of specific areas that were the focus of international campaigning on South Africa, including sports, cultural, retail and academic boycotts, campaigns against nuclear and military collaboration, loans to South Africa, and for oil sanctions. The Movement’s work was not limited to South Africa. It was one of the first organisations to highlight the “unholy alliance” between apartheid South Africa, the racist regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Portuguese colonial rule in Africa.

This archive is held at Glasgow Caledonian University and belongs to Action for Southern Africa Scotland – their site can be found here: http://www.actsascotland.org.uk/.

Lawyers against Apartheid

Also held at the Glasgow Caledonian University site is the archives for Lawyers Against Apartheid. Lawyers Against Apartheid was formed following a legal conference in December 1986 to mobilise the support of the legal community in Great Britain for the liberation struggles in South Africa and Namibia. Membership was open to all members of the legal community in Britain, including practitioners, academics, students and legal workers. The group was affiliated to the Namibia Support Committee, London, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

The first official meeting of the group was in London in January 1986, where it was decided that their aims were to include exposing the nature and illegitimacy of the apartheid regime to the British legal community, campaigning for anti-apartheid policies and practices within the British legal community, and providing advice and assistance to the local anti-apartheid groups. The group challenged the established ideas of the South African legal system, especially the myth of impartial hearings from an independent tribunal, and also promoted the issue of Prisoner of War status for captured freedom fighters and supported the campaign for Namibia’s independence following South Africa’s illegal occupation.

Lawyers Against Apartheid met quarterly, usually in London, and had sub-groups working on specific issues such as Prisoners of War, Domestic Legal Support, International Law, and Trials & Punishments, until their disbanding in 1996.

The original deposit, which consisted mainly of books, pamphlets, serials, and posters, has been supplemented with two additional deliveries of predominantly archive materials.

Paul Flieshman
Mimas Development Officer

Collections

A selection of the collections relating to apartheid on the Archives Hub:

Records of Anti Apartheid Movement Scottish Committee, pressure group, Glasgow, Scotland. 1965-1994 (predominant 1976-1994). http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1847-aams

Records of Lawyers Against Apartheid, pressure group, London, England. 1977-1996 (predominant 1986-1991).
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb1847-ghjarc/la

Granada Television: Broadcast on Apartheid, 1977-1987. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb101-ics119

Archive of the Bishop Ambrose Reeves Trust, 1965-1996. http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb162-mss.afr.s.2348

Papers of Howard Barrell, 1989-1993.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb162-mss.afr.s.2151

Papers of Mervyn Bennun , Late 20th century.
http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb29-eulms112

All images copyright the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.

=== Browse Barclays Group Archives on the Archives Hub ===

Barclays Group Archives is a living business archive, with material being managed, made available, interpreted, and added to, by a small team of in-house archivists. We encourage external access to our collections, where possible, bearing in mind any necessary restrictions imposed by customer, commercial and third-party confidentiality.

Some history…

Today Barclays PLC is one of the world’s largest financial services providers, offering banking services to customers in over 50 countries. It has come a long way from its foundation in 1690 by two goldsmith bankers, John Freame and Thomas Gould, in Lombard Street, London. In 1736 James Barclay entered the partnership, and the Barclay name has been a presence in the business ever since. In 1896, 19 smaller banks (all but two being private country partnerships) joined Barclays to form a new joint stock bank – Barclay and Company Limited.

Many of the founding banks had been established by families who were members of the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers). As a result, a business and social network already existed between several of the banks, one that was strengthened by marriage ties. Their Quakerism also helped to contribute towards the success of their banks, as Quakers were renowned for their sobriety and trustworthiness. David Barclay (1728-1809) epitomised the Quaker banker with a social conscience, being active in the anti-slavery movement.

The businesses from which the country banks had developed included brewing, iron trading, shipping and shop-keeping, but the most common route to a successful country bank was via the textile industry. The Gurneys, who had founded their first bank in Norwich in 1775, had originally been woollen merchants. Their banks were spread across East Anglia and accounted for eight of the twenty firms that took part in the 1896 amalgamation.

Similarly, the Backhouses of Darlington established their bank in 1774 on wealth accumulated in linen manufacturing. It was the Gurneys and the Backhouses, together with Barclays, who formed the driving force behind the new bank.

In 1896 Barclays had 182 branches and 806 staff. The next 20 years saw a spectacular series of takeovers, such that by 1920 Barclays was ranked third amongst Britain’s ‘Big Five’ clearing banks and with a national branch network. The new bank was organised into a network of Local Head Offices based on the old head offices of the original partnership banks. This helped to ensure a degree of continuity for customers and the retention of local knowledge and experience built up by local staff and partners.

Barclays’ ambitions also lay beyond home shores.  Under the chairmanship of Frederick Goodenough Barclays acquired the Colonial Bank, with branches in the Caribbean and West Africa; the Anglo-Egyptian Bank; and the National Bank of South Africa. In 1925 these were brought together to form a new international subsidiary – Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). Subsequently Barclays established itself in North America and Western Europe, and in more recent decades has expanded into fresh international fields, with a major presence in Asia and the Gulf.

Barclays has been in the forefront of innovation, introducing the UK’s first cash machines, credit and debit cards; was the first bank to order a mainframe computer for customer accounts, and more recently has pioneered contactless card payments and mobile banking.

Recent decades have seen two major domestic acquisitions. Martins Bank, acquired in1968, was itself the result of a 1918 amalgamation between Martins Bank of London, which traced its history back to Elizabeth I’s financial agent Sir Thomas Gresham, and the Bank of Liverpool, a new joint stock bank founded in 1831. In 2000, Barclays acquired The Woolwich, a former building society founded in 1847.

In 1986, Barclays established an investment banking operation, which has since developed into Barclays Capital, a major division of the bank that manages larger corporate and institutional business.

Highlights of the Archives…

Noteworthy collections include:

• Barclays partners’ annual balance books, 1733 onwards
• Martins partners’ letter books, 18^th century (mentions South Sea Bubble)
• Goslings of Fleet Street: customer ledgers, 1717-1900s: one of a handful of surviving complete banking ledger sets for the 18^th-19^th centuries
• Private banking partnership agreements and papers, 18^th-19^th centuries
• Gurney/Barclay letters: social, political and banking life, c1770-c1870
• Complete runs of company minute books from the early days of joint stock banking
• Langton letters (Bank of England and the financial crisis of 1837)
• Bank amalgamation records, 1896 onwards
• Visit and inspection reports, UK and overseas, 19^th-20^th century
• Staff magazines and internal communications, 20^th century
• Photographs of bank premises (including interiors), many showing high street views, over a period of 100 years

• Photographs of overseas bank premises, including views of pioneering bank operations in overseas territories, early 1900s onwards
• Woolwich: one of a handful of readily accessible building society archives, 1847 onwards

Research potential…

As well as contributing to the documentation of British banking over three centuries, the archives offer potential for the following broad fields of research:

• economic history
• company and organization history
• local and community history
• accounting history
• investment
• biography
• commercial architecture
• government regulation
• colonial and post-colonial development
• social history
• employment, training and equal opportunities
• family history

One interesting recent use of the archives has been by two local historians who have for the last few years been examining the income and expenditure of the earls of Warrington during the late-18^th and early-19th centuries, contained in our best surviving set of customer ledgers.

Since the archives service was put on a professional footing in 1990 the collections have been used for a broad variety of research, either wholly or as part of wider projects:

• Women in banking and as investors
• Architecture and building history for Buildings of England series
• Furniture commissioned by Clive of India
• Account of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland)
• Clients of Alan Ramsay, 18^th century Scottish portrait painter
• History of agricultural finance
• Quaker business and family networks
• Decolonisation and post-colonial development in Africa
• Development of English building societies
• Account of Edward Gibbon, historian
• The usury laws in the 1830s
• Banking philanthropy, 1870-1912
• Banking elites
• Emergence and development of professional accountancy in Libya
• Employee casualties in World War One
• Wallpaper makers, suppliers and their clients, 1700 – 1820
• Evidence for women using heavy machinery, early 20^th century
• Terms of business and commercial bank lending in UK, 1885-1925
• International financial regulation and supervision, 1960-1980
• Financial crises at the outbreak of the two World Wars
• Marriage bar in UK employment history
• The public debate about Barclays’ presence in apartheid-era South Africa
• History of commercial advertising

Further information and resources…

Detailed database catalogues are available to consult in person, and bespoke catalogues may be generated on request.

In 2013 BGA has become a contributor to The Archives Hub, and intends to add collection-level descriptions, suitably indexed, to supplement its own detailed database catalogues and indexes.

Official published histories of the Group:

M Ackrill & L Hannah, Barclays: the business of banking 1690-1996 (Cambridge University Press 2001); this volume won the Wadsworth Prize for business history

A W Tuke & R J H Gillman, Barclays Bank Limited 1926-1969 (Barclays 1972)

P W Matthews & A W Tuke, History of Barclays Bank Limited: including the many private and joint stock banks amalgamated and affiliated with it (Blades, East & Blades 1926)

Sir J Crossley & J Blandford, The DCO Story: a history of banking in many countries 1925-71 (Barclays 1975)

[R H Mottram, comp] A Banking Centenary: Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial & Overseas) 1836-1936 (Barclays, private circulation [1937])

anon., A Bank in Battledress: being the story of Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial & Overseas) during the second world war 1939-45 (Barclays, private circulation 1948)

G Chandler, Four Centuries of Banking: as illustrated by the bankers, customers and staff associated with the constituent banks of Martins Bank Limited (Batsford 2 vols. 1964, 1968)

B Ritchie, We’re with the Woolwich 1847-1997: the story of the Woolwich Building Society (James & James 1997)

see also: J Orbell & A Turton, British Banking: a guide to historical records (Ashgate 2001)

Barclays’ history and archives web pages include:

• summary histories of the Group including major acquisitions – Martins Bank and Woolwich Building Society
• topical fact sheets including: Quaker bankers; Barclays innovations (Barclaycard, Cash Machines; Connect Card – UK’s first debit card); Barclays Eagle logo; Lombard Street; Barclays World
• an illustrated timeline of events
• access conditions and full contact details for Group Archives

http://group.barclays.com/about-barclays/about-us#barclays-history

Nicholas Webb
Archivist, Barclays Group Archives

All images copyright the Barclays Group, and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.