This paper offers a new way of conceptualising how intersectional solidarities are actualised. It recounts and theorises an outbreak of radical internationalism, when working class struggles in Britain and South Africa were unexpectedly linked. It examines how intersectional solidarity was materialised through a process of coming together against the architectural fabric of the South African Embassy and considers the interwoven temporalities that enabled this action to occur. On 31 March 1990, nearly a quarter of a million people demonstrated in London against the Poll Tax that was due to take effect in England and Wales the following day. On the day, the Metropolitan Police lost control of an already enraged crowd and provoked a large scale riot that engulfed the West End of London for several hours. In the midst of the riot, during a short retreat by the police, protesters took the opportunity to attack the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square – many windows were broken and an attempt was made to set the building alight. Drawing on interviews with former anti-apartheid protesters who were present on that day (and who had concluded a four-year long Non-Stop Picket of the embassy a month earlier), this paper explores and analyses their memories of that unexpected moment when their previously symbolic call to ‘burn it down’ was (almost) materialised. In doing so, it contributes new ways of conceptualising the spatiality and temporality of intersectional solidarity.
BellTNtsebezaDB (2003) Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth.
London:
Verso.
2.
Brown G (2017) Anti-apartheid solidarity in the perspectives and practices of the British far left in the 1970s and “80s”. In: Smith E and Worley M (eds) Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.66–87.
3.
Brown G and Yaffe H (2014) Practices of solidarity: opposing apartheid in the centre of London. Antipode 46(1): 34–52.
4.
Brown G and Yaffe H (2017) Youth activism and solidarity: the Non-Stop Picket against apartheid. London: Routledge.
5.
CarbadoDWCrenshawKWMaysVM, et al. (2013)
Intersectionality: Mapping the movements of a theory. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race10(2): 303–312.
6.
CloverJ (2016) Riot. Strike. Riot. The New Era of Uprisings.
London:
Verso.
7.
CraggsR (2014)
Hospitality in geopolitics and the making of commonwealth international relations. Geoforum52: 90–100.
8.
CrenshawK (1989) Demaginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 139: 139–167.
9.
D’ArcyS (2013) Languages of the Unheard. Why Militant Protest is Good for Democracy.
London:
Zed Books.
10.
DaviesA (2013)
Identity and the assemblages of protest: The spatial politics of the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, 1946. Geoforum48(1): 24–32.
11.
DittmerJ (2016)
Theorizing a more-than-human diplomacy: Assembling the British Foreign Office, 1839–1874. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy11(1): 78–104.
12.
DittmerJ (2017) Diplomatic Material. Affect, Assemblage, and Foreign Policy.
Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
13.
FeatherstoneD (2008) Resistance, Space and Political Identities.
Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
14.
FeatherstoneD (2011)
On assemblage and articulation. Area43(2): 139–142.
15.
FeatherstoneD (2012) Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism.
London:
Zed.
16.
FieldhouseR (2005) Anti-Apartheid. A History of the Movement in Britain.
London:
Merlin Press.
17.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (n.d.) City of London Anti-Apartheid Group (CLAAG) – Activities/Non-Stop Picket of South African Embassy, London 1985–1991. Response to FOI Data Access Request. London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
18.
FregoneseS (2012)
Urban geopolitics 8 years on. Hybrid sovereignties, the everyday, and geographies of peace.Geography Compass6(5): 290–303.
19.
FrostDPhillipsR (2011) Liverpool ’81: Remembering the Riots.
Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press.
20.
GuelkeA (2005) Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid.
Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan.
21.
GurneyC (2000)
“A great cause”: The origins of the anti-apartheid movement, June 1959–March 1960. Journal of Southern African Studies26(1): 123–144.
22.
HallS (1980) Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance. In: UNESCO (ed) Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism.
Paris:
UNESCO, pp.305–345.
23.
HallS (1996) On postmodernism and articulation. In: MorleyDChenK-H (eds) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies.
London:
Routledge, pp.131–150.
24.
HetheringtonK (1998) New age travellers and the utopics of the countryside. In: SkeltonTValentineG (eds) Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures.
London:
Routledge, pp.328–342.
25.
HinchliffeS (2007) Geographies of Nature: Societies, Environments, Ecologies.
London:
SAGE.
26.
JacobsJ (2006)
A geography of big things. Cultural Geographies13: 1–27.
27.
JeffersonT (2012)
Policing the riots: From Bristol and Brixton to Tottenham, via Toxteth, Handsworth etc.Criminal Justice Matters87(1): 8–9.
28.
KanngieserA (2012)
A sonic geography of voice: Towards an affective politics. Progress in Human Geography36(3): 336–353.
29.
KatzC (2001)
On the grounds of globalization: A topography for feminist political engagement. Signs26(4): 1213–1234.
30.
KelliherD (2017a)
Constructing a culture of solidarity: London and the British coalfields in the long 1970s. Antipode49(1): 106–124.
31.
KelliherD (2017b) Solidarity, class and labour agency: Mapping networks of support between London and the coalfields during the 1984–85 miners’ strike. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, UK.
32.
KelliherD (2017c) Networks of solidarity: The London left and the 1984–85 miners’ strike. In: SmithEWorleyM (eds) Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956.
Manchester:
Manchester University Press, pp.125–143.
33.
KraftlPAdeyP (2008)
Architecture/affect/dwelling. Annals of the Association of American Geographers98: 213–231.
34.
LeesL (2001)
Towards a critical geography of architecture: The case of an Ersatz Colosseum. Ecumene8: 51–86.
35.
LesterA (1998) From Colonization to Democracy. A New Historical Geography of South Africa.
London:
IB Tauris.
36.
McAdamDSewellWH (2001) It’s about time: Temporality in the study of social movements and revolutions. In: AminzadeRRGoldstoneJAMcAdamD, et al. (eds) Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp.89–117.
37.
McDowellLAnithaSPearsonR (2014)
Striking narratives: Class, gender and ethnicity in the ‘Great Grunwick Strike’, London, UK, 1976–1978. Women’s History Review23(4): 595–619.
38.
McFarlaneC (2009)
Translocal assemblages: Space, power and social movements. Geoforum40(4): 561–567.
39.
McSmithA (2011) No Such Thing as Society. A History of Britain in the 1980s.
London:
Constable.
40.
MamadouhVMeijerASidawayJD, et al. (2015)
Toward an urban geography of diplomacy: Lessons from The Hague. The Professional Geographer67(4): 564–574.
41.
MasseyC (2017) The militant tendency and entrism in the Labour Party. In: SmithEWorleyM (eds) Waiting for the Revolution: The British Far Left from 1956.
Manchester:
Manchester University Press, pp.238–257.
42.
MasseyD (2008) Geographies of solidarities. In: ClarkNMasseyDSarreP (eds) Material Geographies: A World in the Making.
London:
SAGE & Open University Press, pp.311–362.
43.
MorgensenSL (2015)
A politics not yet known: Imagining relationality within solidarity. American Quarterly67(2): 309–315.
44.
NeumannIB (2013) Diplomatic Sites. A Critical Enquiry.
London:
C. Hurst & Co.
RoedigerD (2016)
Making solidarity uneasy: Cautions on a keyword from black lives matter to the past. American Quarterly68(2): 223–248.
47.
RokemJFregoneseSRamadanR, et al. (2017)
Interventions in urban geopolitics.Political Geography61: 253–262.
48.
SeekingsJ (2000) The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa 1983–1991.
Oxford:
James Currey.
49.
SkinnerR (2010) The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States c. 1919–64.
Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan.
50.
SkinnerR (2017) Modern South Africa in World History: Beyond Imperialism.
London:
Bloomsbury.
51.
StevensS (2014) Why South Africa? The politics of anti-apartheid activism in Britain in the long 1970s. In: EckelJMoynS (eds) The Breakthrough. Human Rights in the 1970s.
Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, pp.204–225.
52.
StottCDruryJ (2000)
Crowds, context and identity: Dynamic categorization process in the ‘poll tax riot’. Human Relations53: 247–273.
53.
StottCReicherS (1998)
Crowd action as intergroup process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology28: 509–529.
54.
ThörnH (2006) Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society.
Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan.
55.
TillJ (2013)
The broken middle: The space of the London riots. Cities34: 71–74.
56.
TormosF (2017)
Intersectional solidarity. Politics, Groups, and Identities5(4): 707–720.
57.
TurnerAW (2010) Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s.
London:
Aurum.
