British Sporting Relations with Apartheid South Africa

The transnational anti-apartheid sport boycott of South Africa represented the most prominent, extended, and controversial anti-racism campaign in the history of sport. Spearheaded by prominent British religious and anti-colonial figures and exiled South Africans, emboldened by communist and Global South support, and legitimised by supranational political bodies such as the United Nations, the Organisation of African Unity, and the Commonwealth, the sport boycott helped propel anti-apartheid out of relative obscurity and struck at the very heart of a cultural practice that served an explicitly ideological function in Afrikaner society. Britain held a dichotomous, even paradoxical, role as both prosecutor and defender of white South Africa. This book utilises sport as a critical lens for understanding the dynamics and dichotomies of British attitudes towards the apartheid regime. Debates over whether to continue or to cut sporting links with apartheid South Africa proved bitterly divisive. The considerable weight the subject carried and the degree to which it saturated British political and social discourse for four decades speaks to its impact and importance. British Sporting Relations with Apartheid South Africa represents the first archival-based, historical examination of Britain's sporting relations with South Africa throughout the apartheid era, 1948-1994. Situating the analysis within the shifting multiracial and multicultural landscapes of postcolonial Britain and within global political, cultural, sporting, and ideological debates, the authors trace the origins and evolution of the transnational sport boycott, and examine what inspired Britons to energise anti-apartheid sport campaigns and, in contrast, what drove many others to vehemently oppose them at every turn.

Matthew P. Llewellyn is Professor in the department of kinesiology at the California State University, Fullerton. He earned a PhD in the historical and philosophical aspects of sport and physical activity at the Pennsylvania State University. He has published in journals including the Journal of Southern African Studies, South African Historical Journal, Contemporary British History, and the International Journal of the History of Sport, as well as numerous textbook chapters. He has published several books and edited collections, including Sport and Apartheid South Africa: Histories of Politics, Power, and Protest (Routledge, 2022). He currently serves as editor of the Journal of Olympic Studies and is a Co-Director of the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research (CSSOR). Toby C. Rider is Professor in the department of kinesiology at the California State University, Fullerton. He earned a PhD. in the sociocultural study of sport and exercise at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Toby has published multiple articles, contributed several chapters to scholarly books, and presented his research at numerous conferences. He is the author of Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (University of Illinois Press, 2016), and co-editor of Defending the American Way of Life: Sport, Culture, and the Cold War (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), and Sport and Apartheid South Africa: Histories of Politics, Power, and Protest (Routledge, 2022). Toby is also the Co-Director of the Center for Sociocultural Sport and Olympic Research.

- Introduction - 1: Britain and the Transnational Foundations of Anti-Apartheid Sport Protest - 2: Bridge Building and the Defence of Sporting Links with South Africa - 3: Exiles, Students, and the Growth of Anti-Apartheid Sports Protest - 4: The Stop the Seventy Tour Campaign - 5: The British Response to South Africa's 'Multinational' Reforms - 6: International Sanctions, the Commonwealth, and the Gleneagles Agreement - 7: Thatcher, the New Right, and Rebel Tours in the Early 1980s - 8: The Gatting Tour and the Final Phase of the Sports Boycott