Letter: Lone campaigner

Sir: May I add to James Cusick's article (27 June) on the historic achievements of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, of Peter Hain and, above all, of Archbishop Huddleston, by recalling that in 1946 - two years before the introduction of apartheid - the Rev Michael Scott, almost single- handedly, began his long struggle to put South Africa racial policies on the international agenda.

During that year alone he was arrested for living among Africans in a Johannesburg shantytown, Tobruk; he was imprisoned with Indians for joining their passive resistance campaign in Durban and he was almost lynched by enraged farmers after he had exposed slave labour conditions in the Eastern Transvaal. And, when the then South African government threatened to incorporate South-West Africa and prevented tribal leaders from petitioning the UN, it was Scott who, with no organisation to back him, and despite the opposition of all the Western powers, after three years succeeded in testifying on their behalf.

In 1950 he also appealed for apartheid to be referred to the Security Council as 'a threat to peace and racial harmony'.

Yours etc,

MARY BENSON

London, NW8