Broadcasting Apartheid

Abstract In postwar Britain, the rise of television as a new technology and cultural form transformed the political landscape, redefining the sites and styles of political communications and creating spaces for viewer participation. Grassroots organizations like the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) recognized television’s potential for activism. Broadcasting Apartheid: The Anti-Apartheid Struggle and British Television, 1950–1990 demonstrates how television shaped public opinion, political discourse, and social engagement about apartheid in Britain. Its case studies show how television’s audiovisual capacities and use of narrative and visuals to evoke emotions such as empathy and solidarity drew otherwise nonpolitical individuals into activism through local AAM branches, trade unions, and local government. The campaign leveraged television’s inherent drama, framing opposition to apartheid in moral terms grounded in Christian ethics and infused with the postwar language of human rights. It also harnessed television’s ability to transcend geographical and temporal boundaries to build a global coalition against apartheid. This research weaves together print and audiovisual sources from institutional, state, and private archives with the analysis of television programs from all genres, revealing how debates over apartheid intertwined with broader discussions about race, immigration, decolonization, and Cold War politics. In so doing, Broadcasting Apartheid provides a new lens on the rise of screen culture in the twentieth century, illuminating both that shift and, more broadly, major cultural shifts with which it was entwined, including changes in identity formation, political awareness, and solidarity building.