SOUTH AFRICAN FREEDOM
1960The NewsletterAlasdair MacIntyre Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
A blaze of coloured posters showed on the Deansgate blitz site, Manchester, the centre of last Saturday’s protests against the murders at Sharpeville, South Africa.
At 10.30 a.m. the Manchester branch of the Socialist Labour League set up its platform, and a meeting was held continuously until 2 p.m.
In the course of the meeting Brian Behan, National Chairman of the League, speaking as he had done at meetings on the site earlier in the week, denounced the fascist-type govern- -ment of Henriek Verwoerd. He showed that the terror of white imperialism was carried out with but one purpose, to maintain a source of cheap African labour for the white employers and the sharks of the City of London. ‘Profit not the colour of skin is the deciding factor. To divide the working class they will whip up hatred against the Irish, coloured or Jew.’
Under the slogan of ‘White and Coloured Workers Must Unite’, other speakers from the League stressed the need to smash the growing menace of fascism here in Britain, too.
The large crowd around the platform was then joined by student demonstrators who had taken part in a march organized by the Nigerian Union.
Immediately the students were offered the platform of the Socialist Labour League so that they might address the crowd.
This opportunity was taken up by Anyso Kalu, who explained the conditions in which the African lived under Apartheid. ‘We do not want to drive the white man out of