Lord Bob Hughes was the Chair of the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1976 until its dissolution in 1994. He was the Honorary President of the AAM’s successor organisation Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) from 1994 until his death on 7 January 2022.

He was born in 1932 in Pittenweem on the east coast of Scotland and in 1947 went with his parents to South Africa, where he started an engineering apprenticeship in Howick, Natal. He returned to Scotland in 1954 and shortly after joined the Movement for Colonial Freedom. 

The Boycott Movement was founded in June 1959 and became the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1960 following the Sharpeville Massacre.    As a Labour Party Aberdeen local councillor in the late 1960s he introduced a motion calling on Aberdeen City Council to boycott South African goods. 

From 1970 to 1997 he was the Labour MP for Aberdeen North.  He served as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in 1974–75 and shadow Secretary of State for Transport in 1985-1988.

He played a critical role in the Anti-Apartheid Movement, as an influential Labour MP who made anti-apartheid campaigning his political priority. With Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, AAM Executive Secretary Mike Terry and Hon Secretary Abdul Minty, Bob Hughes was a key member of the team which turned the British AAM into a mass movement of solidarity with the Southern African liberation movements in the 1980s and led to the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994.

Bob (he much preferred being known as Bob rather than Lord Hughes of Woodside), as AAM Chair, was more often than not, out in the streets with all who recognised the injustices in Southern Africa from colonial land grabs, racist labour laws and bigotry to the modern manifestation of that in apartheid laws, corporate practices and so called ‘petty racism’. 

Under his guidance, AAM grew from a small dedicated team of activists from across the globe, who were based in the UK, to one of Britain’s largest campaigning organisations. He was a modest and humble leader, typically putting others in the front row in public.  

Under his chairmanship the Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned against the  Thatcher government's refusal to impose sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s and organised the 1988 ‘Free Mandela’ concert at Wembley Stadium which was televised by the BBC and broadcast around the world. Hughes attended the independence celebrations in Namibia in 1990 and acted as an observer at South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994.

Bob never faltered in his commitment to the elimination of apartheid and true independence for the frontline states of Southern Africa.  In 1994, with one person one vote and the end of apartheid, Bob continued to lead the goal to eliminate the legacies of apartheid and colonialism in the region and took on the role of Chair of Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), and then its President. He remained involved, even when struggling with ill-health.  He was also an active Parliamentarian in support of social and political equality and justice. Supported by his wife Margaret until her death in 2021, and family including son John, he continued to advise ACTSA and his co-activists, our vice presidents Lord Peter Hain and Chi Onwurah MP.   Bob was clear that the work needed to continue after the first democratic elections in 1994, and so it has proved.

Along with Peter Hain and Chi Onwurah, our members, advisory council and trustees are grateful to Bob’s leadership and his faith in the power of people who protested, persevered, and peacefully demanded justice.