The Anti-Apartheid Campaign

British Quakers were united in their opposition to apartheid. The Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned vigorously to boycott Barclays Bank, which had banked for London Yearly Meeting for many years. This aspect of the campaign divided both British and South African Friends. Successive letters in The Friend urged readers to seek that of God in both Piet Botha and Margaret Thatcher, and to eschew the use of economic pressure against South Africa. Others, urged on by Young Friends, pressed for a Quaker boycott of Barclays and of South Africa.
Meeting for Sufferings temporized, clearly reluctant to condemn the Quaker bank with which they had long worked happily. Eventually they yielded to pressure, transferring their funds from Barclays to the Cooperative Bank. The decision seems to have been taken discretely. The writer has been unable to trace any mention of it either in The Friend or in Meeting for Sufferings reports to Yearly Meetings.

In retrospect it is clear that some Friends saw the boycott of Barclays and of South Africa both as a means of coercion and as a matter of conscience. The final decision of Meeting for Sufferings may have been as much a capitulation to activist pressure as a principled decision. Interestingly, over twenty years later, Diana and John Lampen, who were in South Africa at the time, still maintain stoutly that Barclays should not have been targeted for a boycott.
The Apartheid boycott is commonly cited as an example of nonviolent coercion which “worked”. As such it has helped to inspire current anti-Israeli boycotts.

Are there parallels between the Apartheid economy of South Africa and the present-day economy of Israel?

Note other Quaker boycotts.

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