'Precept and Example': The Conservative Government and British Sporting Contacts with Apartheid South Africa, 1970-74.

Abstract

Research into the history of the British anti-Apartheid movement and its efforts to isolate South Africa from international sport acknowledges that the 1970s were a 'difficult decade' for campaigners. British athletes and teams still competed regularly in South Africa, while exclusively all-white South African athletes and teams still toured or played in Britain. Although the boycott stalled for various reasons during this period, this article argues that Edward Heath's Conservative government, elected in June 1970, played an important role in maintaining British sporting ties with Pretoria and in empowering a British sporting establishment that preferred to keep politics out of sport. While the Labour leadership under Harold Wilson (1964-70) had denounced sporting relations with South Africa and taken steps to prevent them, Heath and his Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, completely reversed British policy. From 1970 to 1974, Heath's Conservative government openly encouraged British sporting interactions with South Africa, and even went as far as to fund them.