West Norwood: Apartheid-Free High Street launch with film screening and Eid celebration, Friday 20th and Saturday 21st March 2026

Lambeth locals are launching an Apartheid-Free High Street this weekend with two community events – a free film screening on Friday evening and an Eid celebration on Saturday afternoon. Friday’s …

Mar 20, 2026 - 08:02

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West Norwood: Apartheid-Free High Street launch with film screening and Eid celebration, Friday 20th and Saturday 21st March 2026

Lambeth locals are launching an Apartheid-Free High Street this weekend with two community events – a free film screening on Friday evening and an Eid celebration on Saturday afternoon.

Friday’s event at the Great North Wood starts at 7pm with a discussion on the importance of boycotting Israeli produce and Coca-Cola, featuring Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone – widely regarded as the pioneers of the UK’s apartheid-free movement, with over 4,000 residents and 60 businesses signed up in what is believed to be Europe’s largest grassroots boycott campaign.

They’ll be sharing the doorstep organising model that has since been exported to Sheffield, Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow and now West Norwood.

The discussion will be followed by a free community screening of Comrade Tambo’s London Recruits, the multi-award winning documentary thriller that tells the true story of how young Londoners were secretly recruited by exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo to go undercover inside apartheid South Africa in the early 1970s, disguised as honeymooners, holidaymakers and business travellers.

Winner of Best Documentary at the Johannesburg Film Festival 2024, Variety called it ‘an edge-of-your-seat documentary thriller.’ Welsh director Gordon Main will be present for the discussion.

Saturday’s Eid celebration runs from 12-3pm in the West Norwood Picturehouse Community Room, with children’s activities including colouring, poster and badge-making, and henna, alongside Zaytoun Palestinian food tasting, Gaza Cola and Palestine Lemon & Orange drinks, free halal food and chai, and a Peckham Keffiyeh for the community to colour.

Wandsworth Apartheid-Free Zone will also be sharing their successes in going apartheid-free, and there’ll be a People’s Pledge for those who want to commit to buying apartheid-free in West Norwood.

*[Andrew Feinstein with local campaigner Ruby Bukhari, Brixton 05.02.26]*

The weekend launch comes as pro-Palestine and apartheid-free campaigners step up their mobilisation ahead of the May 7th local elections. Last month, Jewish Voice for Liberation told a packed inaugural Lambeth Votes Palestine meeting in Brixton that it had officially dropped Labour, while veteran anti-apartheid campaigner and former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein backed the new grassroots campaign to mobilise tactical voting in Lambeth.

*[Streatham’s Martin Abrams speaks to WN4P 11.09.25]*

With recent modelling forecasting that Labour could lose flagship London boroughs including Lambeth and Southwark to a Green surge on May 7th, with the party’s stance on Gaza identified as a key driver of voter defection, the apartheid-free movement is increasingly linking boycott campaigning to electoral action ahead of the polls.

Locally, Labour has alienated large sections of the community over numerous Palestine-linked issues including its treatment of Councillor Martin Abrams, suspended and blocked from re-standing after voting for a Gaza ceasefire, then smeared as a ‘fake Jew’ by colleagues before quitting the party. Among many other slights was its refusal to debate a 5,000-signature petition calling on the council to divest its pension fund from companies complicit in Israel’s breaches of international law, in what campaigners called a flagrant disregard of the council’s own constitution.

More Info

West Norwood Apartheid-Free High Street – Launch Weekend
Friday 20 March, Free Film Screening: 7pm – The Great North Wood (see map below)
Saturday 21 March, Eid Celebration: 12–3pm – West Norwood Picturehouse Community Room (see map below)