‘Margaret Thatcher said we supported a terrorist organisation’ – Norman Lucas, West Norwood’s anti-apartheid veteran

The Great North Wood’s function room was packed on Friday evening for the launch of West Norwood’s new Apartheid-Free Zone. Activists had come from near and far to watch Comrade …

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Mar 25, 2026 - 10:03
‘Margaret Thatcher said we supported a terrorist organisation’ – Norman Lucas, West Norwood’s anti-apartheid veteran

The Great North Wood’s function room was packed on Friday evening for the launch of West Norwood’s new Apartheid-Free Zone. Activists had come from near and far to watch Comrade Tambo’s London Recruits, the award-winning documentary thriller about young Londoners secretly recruited by exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo to carry out undercover missions inside apartheid South Africa in the early 1970s – and to meet one of them.

In a Q&A session before the screening, Caroline from WN4P spoke with a panel that included Professor Fay Dowker, theoretical physicist at Imperial College London and Secretary of Wandsworth Friends of Palestine; Penny Cartwright, representing the Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone – Europe’s largest grassroots boycott campaign with over 4,000 residents and 60 businesses signed up; Sean McBride from Wandsworth Friends of Palestine – and Norman Lucas, one of Tambo’s original London Recruits.

Now a member of the West Norwood campaign, Lucas drew a direct line between the movement he joined as a young man and the boycott campaign being launched on his doorstep.

[Norman Lucas on S.A. Vaal late 1960s]
He recalled how, after returning from his missions, details of which could not be spoken of for decades, he threw himself into the anti-apartheid movement at home, boycotting South African goods and helping to stop the rugby and cricket tours. “This really hurt the South Africans,” he said, “and it gave tremendous publicity.”

[Nelson Mandela in Brixton 1996]
He drew a pointed parallel with the present. When campaigners in his day were accused by Margaret Thatcher of supporting a terrorist organisation, Nelson Mandela and the ANC, the charge was precisely the same, he suggested, as accusations now levelled at Palestine Action. “There’s nothing new here,” he said.
His advice to the new generation of campaigners was to build the broadest possible alliance – approaching churches, liberals, anyone willing to sign up – and to recruit cultural figures to the cause.

[I Support Palestine Action detainees 09.08.25]
 He remembered filling Clapham Common with 100,000 people for an anti-apartheid concert. “Think about whether there are famous people living in West Norwood that we could approach,” he told the audience. Once the anti-apartheid movement caught fire, Lucas, a former teacher said, it became unstoppable, like an eager student hungry to learn. “It was almost impossible to stop,” he said.

[l-r Prof Fay Dowker WFP, Penny Cartwright Bristol AFZ, Sean McBride, WFP,  20.03.26]
Penny Cartwright was at the launch in her capacity as a representative of the Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone, widely regarded as the pioneer of the UK movement and now the largest in Europe, with over 4,000 residents and 60 businesses signed up. Bristol actively supports new zones as they emerge across the country, sharing the organising model that has since taken root in Sheffield, Brighton, Hackney and Glasgow.

Cartwright described how the campaign began by talking to local shopkeepers and door-knocking to bring together people already boycotting individually, making it visible and coordinated.

[March for Gaza London 09.08.25]
She invoked the London Recruits to make the case for boycott as a form of allyship. A recruit who had spoken at a Bristol event had put it simply, she said: allyship means doing what the oppressed ask of you. “Palestinians have asked for us to boycott,” she said. “So that is what we’re trying to help organise.”

Sean McBride from Wandsworth Friends of Palestine struck a pragmatic note on the demands of grassroots organising. “We could spend an hour talking to someone and maybe get a slight shift in their point of view,” he said, “or we could spend that hour talking to five people who are more likely to come and get involved. It’s about putting your resources in the right place.”

Professor Fay Dowker, theoretical physicist at Imperial College London and Secretary of Wandsworth Friends of Palestine, was characteristically direct on the question of hope. “We can’t despair, it’s a luxury we can’t afford. We’re responsible to humanity and to our planet. So for me it’s not a choice. It’s just not negotiable. I have to stand up against oppression, against imperialism, against genocide, against racism, against apartheid. It keeps me sane.”

The film, which Lucas later told Brixton Buzz took ten years to complete due to lack of funding, ends with Nelson Mandela’s famous 1997 words: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

More Info

The West Norwood Apartheid-Free Zone campaign encourages residents and local businesses to boycott goods complicit in apartheid and genocide: In particular Israeli produce and Coca-Cola products, while directing custom towards businesses that have signed up to the boycott.

QR Codes

West Norwood4Palestine Consumer Pledge.

The pledge is so that we, as consumers, can commit to buying apartheid-free ourselves on our High Street. Then we will send letters to local businesses letting them know that we’ll support them if they choose not to sell Israeli produce/Coca-Cola and/or want to show support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement.

Wandsworth Friends of Palestine

Photography:
Norman Lucas on S.A. Vaal late 1960s courtsey of inthesetimes.com
Nelson Mandela in Brixton 1996 photographer  unknown
All other photos by Phil Ross

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