By Guillermo Thomas
Bob Newland is a stand out progressive activist of his generation but like many fellow travellers on his journey from young radical to seasoned campaigner and organiser, he kept a low profile. As former Labour MP and fellow campaigner against apartheid South Africa Peter Hain remarks in his foreward to the book, Bob was ‘never seeking a platform, not concerned about self-promotion’. These qualities turned out to be essential to his heroic role in fighting apartheid in the early 1970s. For Bob was a London Recruit and as such his task was to undertake covert activities inside the country to support the efforts of the ANC to bring freedom to the country.
Bob’s contribution to the struggle in South Africa is the centrepiece of this highly readable autobiography. Following the Rivonia trial in 1964 the leadership of the ANC and its armed wing MK were either in prison or in exile, their underground organisation crushed and the mass organisations of the African people were banned. In response, London-based Ronnie Kasrils, a white South African of Jewish descent, committed communist and anti-apartheid campaigner, recruited a band of white young men and women to enter South Africa clandestinely and set off leaflet bombs, play tape recordings, unfurl banners and carry out mass mailings. As Bob explains: ‘the purpose of was to keep the name of the ANC alive while they regrouped and reorganised their underground structures’ and ‘it was important the authorities did not know it was us but believed that it was the ANC inside the country. Maintaining the illusion of an active internal resistance was crucial for morale and to keep the apartheid authorities busy .’
This short but momentous period in Bob’s life is recounted with compelling detail. He was 21 when recruited but it wasn’t a story he was able to tell for decades – he had sworn to absolute secrecy upon agreeing to the mission, but he confesses how much this inability to share it with anyone weighed heavily upon him. Having first been trained how to construct, assemble and detonate leaflet bombs and counter-surveillance techniques ‘essential for operating in a hostile environment where the slightest mistake could lead to arrest or worst’ he set off to South Africa by plane, together with his flat-mate and co-conspirator Peter Smith and the leaflets, hidden in false bottomed suitcases.
We read of many tense, close shaves. But the operation – to set off the four propaganda bombs simultaneously in rail stations, bus stations and taxi ranks at 5pm, where and when the black workforce of Jo’ burg gathered in their thousands to get back to the townships after their day’s labour in the cities – was successful. This was confirmed in the South African papers the next day declaring: ‘11 explosions in SA cities. Pamphlet bombs blast again.’ Others had set off bombs at the same time, unbeknown to Bob and Pete for security reasons. (At the airport home, Bob and Peter recognised two faces from the Young Communist League, and presumed it had been them.)
The extent of the success was only made clear much later. ‘People who saw the bombs go off or were handed one of the leaflets have subsequently confirmed this led them to believe the ANC was alive and kicking and gave them confidence to continue to oppose apartheid. MK militants already underground in the cities also came to believe that they were not alone and there were other units active in the same area. The psychological impact cannot be overstated, it reignited hope and solidarity among the oppressed,’ writes Bob. Perhaps more significantly was that some within the South African police and security forces were ‘convinced that the ANC had re-established itself’.
Bob was very soon back in South Africa on another mission, precipitated in part by the success of his earlier operation. He explains that ‘volunteers were leaving SA to reach MK military training camps in various friendly African countries and many of these were prompted to do so by the leaflets distributed by the London Recruits.’ Bob’s task was to be part of a landing party to meet the newly trained guerillas arriving by ship from Somalia to the Durban coastline and then to transport them to different parts of the country. This operation was not successful ultimately, and Bob had to quickly flee the country.
This is not the first time Bob has told his role in the London Recruits story. The whole operation was a subject of a book where Bob, alongside many recruits told their stories and which was turned into a brilliant film. This book not only provides more detail and insight into the operation but really helps put Bob’s role into a personal, political and historical context. This includes examples of collaboration between the British and South African secret services at a time when Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades were viewed as ‘terrorists’ by the British establishment; UN embargo busting arms deals between France, Israel and South Africa; and terrifying plans to aerial ‘bomb the African townships out of existence should there be a general uprising which threatened the survival of the apartheid state.’
We learn of his personal journey from the beginnings of this political consciousness at the age of 14 with his opposition to nuclear weapons, that brought him to a local CND group, and a guest speaker at his school in his home town of Bognor Regis: Bishop Trevor Huddleston who later became Vice President of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. At the time he was Bishop of Masasi (Tanzania) and had spent many years in South Africa. Bob and his fellow students heard of his experiences of apartheid and particularly the regime’s clearance of Sophietown (for its unacceptable ‘race mixing’) that the ANC vigorously campaigned against and Huddleston backed. In 1965 Bob began his involvement in South Africa solidarity as an activist with a meeting in Chichester opposting racist Rhodesian President Ian Smith’s Unilaterial Declaration of Independence – a move to avoid granting majority rule.
Influenced to join the Young Communist League by the leader of the local communist party, Bob chose his ideological bearings early. He left school without any qualifications in the strong belief ‘real education lay beyond the classroom walls’. He took a job as a trainee manager at a local WH Smith’s. His shift pattern enabled long weekend trips hitchhiked to London which brought him into contact with the left-wing Unity Theatre and figures – Don O’Hanrahan and Barbara Haq – that would lead to his link with the Movement of Colonial Freedom, and subsequently its successor organisation Liberation, a link continues through to today.
Bob volunteered at the MCF office in Holloway Road, Islington, helping with the production, by hand, and then mailing of the organisation’s journal. Later he joined its Central Council and became London Area Secretary, representing the organisation at a number of international confererences and events. Bob also participated in the MCF stewards’ group led by Don: it protected from National Front and other neo-Nazi thugs dozens of meetings with speakers from the African liberation movements, including Oliver Tambo, Amilcar Cabral and Joshua Nkomo, as well as Angela Davis following her acquittal from trumped-up charges in the US.
Bob had first encountered the Morning Star in his first ever job, at WH Smith. Many years later he was hired as circulation and then business manager at the daily newspaper that supported so many of the campaigns Bob was active in or sympathetic to. We learn of the political battles around the newspaper during his tenure in the 1980s and also of his sometimes comic efforts to stave off the collapse of the paper, a cooperative owned by its readers that lacked the deep pockets of the rest of the sector. A highly stressful job, it also took a heavy toll on his health.
Bob was briefly an estate agent and twice worked for public services: London Transport, where as a result he met the late general secretary of the RMT, Bob Crow; and Greenwich council, an experience that left him feeling he had had a positive impact on the local community.
Bob is both frank and reflective throughout the book and draws political and personal lessons from his many and varied experiences of activism and life in general. He describes his upbringing as that of any ‘ordinary’ working class family. His life has proven to be anything but ordinary. As Ronnie Kasrils (declaring Bob ‘one of his finest friends’) states in his introduction to the book, ‘Bob is a working class hero to his fingertips’. This story ought to inspire future generations of working class progressive activists and internationalists.
As Bob writes: ‘Time and again, I’ve seen that it’s often the small acts that keep the movement alive. A single pamphlet tucked under a door, a supportive letter sent to a prisoner, a local boycott that chips away at an oppressive regime’s morale. These moments might seem insignificant in isolation, yet collectively, they can prepare the ground for massive change. It’s easy to focus on the dramatic peaks of history and forget that behind every ‘overnight’ success story stands a decade or more of patient, quiet work.’
Wherever the struggle is: a life of international solidarity, is published by Merlin Press distributed by Central Books
Guillermo Thomas is a Liberation member.
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