This article examines the Notting Hill Consultation on Racism organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC), held in London in May 1969. The meeting framed racism as an urgent global problem. Its innovative "Program to Combat Racism" (PCR) acknowledged the historical complicity and benefit of the Church with imperial conquest. The Program's special fund for liberation movements signaled a shift from verbal protest against apartheid to actions such as disinvestment in South Africa and material support for resistance movements. I use a rich archive of WCC reports, correspondence, speeches, and press coverage to offer the first major examination of the Notting Hill Consultation and its influence on the wider historical development of anti-apartheid protest. I demonstrate how a host of challenges from black power activists in Britain and the USA, nonwhite WCC delegates, and from British white supremacists made during the week-long consultation, shaped the WCC's methods of protest and its PCR. KEYWORDSSolidarity; religion; anti-apartheid; World Council of Churches; racism On a Thursday in late May 1969, British newspaper readers found reports of two dramatic events in the daily press. The London Times reported a heated exchange between the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey and one of the leaders of the British Black Power movement, Roy Sawh. 1 The confrontation occurred in an unexpected settingthe international meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) during its Notting Hill Consultation on Racism in London. Both men had been invited to the week-long conference that was convened to tackle the problem of racism: the Archbishop as a delegate and Sawh as a "consultant." Sawh's intervention arose in response to a speech about race relations in Britain given by Labour Minister with special responsibility for race relations, Mr. Merlyn Rees. Sawh stated that "without a voice from the black people it would be possible to leave the conference having heard Mr Rees and to believe that things were being done to solve the problem" of race relations. 2 Sawh protested that he had not been able to question the Minister because the latter had left the venue before the Archbishop had permitted him to speak. The altercation ended with Sawh storming out of the meeting hall;

In October 1969, a debate between anti-apartheid activist Bishop Trevor Huddleston and Tory MP Enoch Powell was broadcast on British television. It presented viewers with opposing ideas about immigration, dignity and duty. This article claims that Huddleston's invocation of apartheid as an extreme case of racism turned the debate into a key moment for educating Britons about apartheid and about resistance to it. The paper argues that the debate presents an opportunity to address the absence of television from current scholarship concerning the role of culture in the global anti-apartheid struggle. In addition, it shows that Huddleston used the emerging genre of the televised debate as a platform to appeal for solidarity. Thus this event and the public reaction to it serve as a case study to explore solidarity as it was recently framed by David Featherstone. Huddleston and Powell's screened encounter fused domestic and post-imperial concerns: its analysis thus helps to problematise artificial divides between domestic and imperial historiographies. From a methodological point of view, the analysis of the debate as text and performance is juxtaposed with letters from viewers as well as newspaper coverage. This method illustrates first, the growing place of television as a site of political debate. Second, it positions television recordings as a new archive for scholars working both on the anti-apartheid movement and on racism in Britain. Third, it serves as a lens onto the impact of Powell's and Huddleston's policies on the lives of Britons.

This special issue proposes to juxtapose accounts of anti-apartheid protest and solidarity efforts with the field of celebrity studies in order to deepen our understanding of both through their conjunction. As our contributors show, opponents of apartheid in South Africa and beyond were cognisant of the importance of cultivating ties with local and global media, as well as with individuals who enjoyed easy access to the media as a consequence of their "celebrity capital" (Olivier Driessens, 2013). This introduction to the special issue revisits the notion of "networked celebrity" (Fred Turner and Christine Larson, 2015) in order to set the stage for the case histories that follow. Rather than considering the actions of individual women and men of renown with respect either to their individual "consecration" as celebrities (Bourdieu, 1994), or their capacity to extract individual benefit from it, the emphasis falls on understanding various manifestations of celebrity culture that take their bearings from the collaborative and decentred nature of the global protest against apartheid. The special issue challenges the individualising emphasis of celebrity studies and its predominantly metropolitan orientation, offering 2 in the process a new set of perspectives on the transnational dimensions of the global anti-apartheid struggle.