“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Nelson Mandela

By the mid 1960s the African National Congress’ (ANC) underground networks in South Africa had been smashed up by a political secret police that was compared to the Gestapo, something many of its officers would probably have considered a compliment. They freely used torture, murder, blackmail and coercion and boasted of being omnipresent in the movements opposing the apartheid state.

The ANC’s leadership in exile, headed by Oliver Tambo, set to work to rebuild its internal organisation. The London Recruits describes how one of the ways that was done was by sending young British socialists and anti-apartheid activists to South Africa to conduct propaganda events. Militants from the United States and France were also involved, with a French comrade spending fourteen years in prison.

Ronnie Kasrils, a young member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), was sent to London where he enrolled at the London School of Economics.  Most of the people he recruited for missions to South Africa were members of the Young Communist League, an organisation which had significant numbers of young working class members. John Rose and Mike Millotte of the International Socialists were also among the recruits. The willingness to work with socialists from the Trotskyist tradition reflects well on the pluralism of the SACP at that time. Tragically, John Rose died on the day the film was screened as part of the Film Africa week. Like all the other young women and men who risked so much to contribute to the smashing of apartheid, his internationalism and willingness to risk everything are inspirational.

With a mix of archive footage and dramatic reconstructions we see how the activists were persuaded to take part, the sort of basic training they received and how the propaganda stunts were done. Following some comically inept attempts to develop a rocket which was tested on Hampsted heath, they settled upon a contraption involving a bucket from which leaflets would be ejected by exploding some cordite (see diagram). Building something like that now would probably get you twenty years in Belmarsh, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

In all, about sixty foreigners agreed to take part in these ANC missions. Most got away with it. John Rose relates a story about how he and Mike Milotte dodged arrest by his indignant assertion that they were British tourists, a good example of using the enemy’s prejudice against him.

Sean Hosey, a member of the Young Communist League, wasn’t so lucky and his story needs to be more widely known. He was lured into a police trap on his second mission and arrested. He was badly tortured, taken into the bush where an open grave was waiting for him. With a gun at the back of his head he was asked to turn informer but refused. At his trial he took full political responsibility for his actions and received a five year sentence. These were serious people.

As a piece of film making The London Recruits is a bit uneven. The first two thirds in which the scene is set, we meet some of the recruits and see how the missions were conducted is very compelling and worth the ticket price. The ending feels a little bit rushed and we don’t get to find out the reasons why this phase of activity ended.

No one comes out of the film thinking that these activists were responsible for defeating apartheid. We are left in no doubt that that was the work of black South Africans, but those young socialists were internationalists inspired by the rising revolutionary tide of the late 1960s and early 70s. Looking around the contemporary political scene we see the same internationalism and willingness to pay  a large personal cost in the activists of groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil.

It is a measure of how much more illiberal the British State has become that none of the returning London Recruits seemed to have faced any prosecutions or police investigations. In 2024 the Starmer government is harassing journalists who vocally oppose genocide.

The film closes with the famous Mandela quote on Palestinian freedom, a reminder that the solidarity and internationalism lived by these remarkable young people of a former generation still needs to be a living reality.

The London Recruits goes on general release in Britain on November 22^nd.  It is the perfect excuse for a pre-Christmas political and social event.