‘London Recruits’ and Bristol

In the 1960s it looked as if the opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa had been crushed. Many of the leaders of the African National Congress has been imprisoned and BOSS, the regime’s ruthlessly efficient police force, suppressed any sign of resistance.

But a group of South African exiles in Britain were determined to fight back. Ron Press was one of the 156 opponents of apartheid arrested in 1956 on the charge of high treason – they included Nelson Mandela – and he took part in a hunger strike while in prison. While Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment, Ron Press was eventually allowed to leave South Africa on condition that he did not return. He and his wife Sibyl moved to Bristol where he became a lecturer in chemistry at Brunel Technical College and later at Bristol University. The Bristol Trades Union Council awarded him honorary membership and he helped to develop an active branch of the Anti-Apartheid cause in Bristol with an annual fundraising Soweto walk.

In 1962 a group of South African exiles in the U.K. developed a secret plan to fight back. Young white volunteers from the UK who were sympathetic to the anti-apartheid cause would go into South Africa as if they were tourists and then spread African National Congress propaganda throughout the major cities of South Africa. Later some of the ‘London Recruits’ would also smuggle in arms for Umkhonto We Sizwe, the ANC’s armed wing.

To maximise the impact of the resistance campaign, the volunteers would be provided with rocket-like devices which would explode and scatter leaflets over a wide area. That device was developed by Ron Press using empty shaving cream cans and his test launch was from his back garden overlooking the Ashley Down allotments. “It arched into the sky” he wrote, “ and rose about 20 metres. There was a noticeable flash. The can shot off and the leaflets scattered like rain on the vegetables in the allotments.”

Aware that BOSS had agents in the U.K. – some receiving assistance from MI5 – Ron Press’s further test firings of the devices were in the countryside near Bristol. His friend and fellow Communist Brian Underwood were alarmed, after another test firing, that the sound of the explosion might attract the attention of local farmers and thus the police – and potentially MI5. At the same time, Ron Press was developing a system that could turn a small tape player into a public address system.

In 1969 Bevis Miller, formerly a lecturer at Bristol University, was approached to become one of the ‘London Recruits’. He received, as he put it, “some training specifically on how to make leaflet bombs from an egg timer and plastic bucket and a small loudspeaker system capable of broadcasting a pre-recorded ANC cassette tape.” He and his friend Graham Brown smuggled them into South Africa in 1970 under a large box of Fortnum and Mason biscuits – it was thought that, if searched, this would support the cover story that Bevis and his friend ‘Ginge’ Brown were English ‘toffs’ interested in migrating to South Africa.

On August 13^th 1970 they and other recruits in cities all over South Africa set off the leaflet bombs and triggered their loudspeaker systems. One of them exploded outside the office of the Rand Daily Mail and the story and photographs got front page coverage in this and other South African newspapers. “The broadcasts and leaflet bombs” wrote Ron Press “created a sensation” and gave “an impression of an organisation far in excess of actuality.”

Some of the Recruits were also involved in smuggling weapons into South Africa; a few were caught and given heavy prison sentences. Bevis Miller returned to Bristol undetected and, with Ron Press, became involved in Bristol Anti-Apartheid, one of the largest and most active Anti-Apartheid Groups in the U.K.  Campaigners in St Pauls made the area an Apartheid Free Zone – SPAFZ – and Jagun Akinshegun, chair of SPAFZ said at the time “You hit people where it hurst because you hit the economy, which means you don’t have the money to buy arms to turn on the people.” Every one of the 27 St Paul’s businesses signed up including Tesco’s Eastville branch – the first Tesco’s in the UK to boycott South African goods.

“London Recruits” will be screened at Watershed at 6 p.m. on April 26^th as part of the Bristol Radical History Group Festival on that day. It will be followed by a q and a with award-winning director Gordon Main and two of the ‘London Recruits’ Bevis Miller and Nick Heath. It will also be shown on May 1^st at the Curzon cinema Clevedon, followed by a q and a with ‘London Recruit’ Ken Keable and Sean Hosey. Further information from Colin Thomas of the Bristol Radical History Group colinthomas082@gmail.com