It was 20 years ago today

What were you doing, assuming you are old enough, 20 years ago today? For those of us of a certain age and political persuasion, 11 February 1990 was one of those days that will remain forever engraved on the memory. After 27 years in captivity, Nelson Mandela was finally freed from his apartheid prison cell and so began one of the most remarkable – and peaceful – overthrows of oppression in human history.

The newsreels from that time still have the power to bring tears to my eyes, as does the song that – more than any other – epitomised the worldwide campaign for his release: ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by Special AKA (the Specials, who are now performing again, though sadly still without Jerry Dammers, the song’s composer and the band’s inspiration). You can revisit it in all its power and righteous glory, with dancing to die for, in this video.

It’s worth recalling that only three years previously the Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher led a party that preferred apartheid to those fighting for equal rights. ‘The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo land,’ she said in 1987.

The shirt (pictured) is Philosophy Football’s anniversary celebration of the cause, available here in aid of Action for South Africa, the successor to the Anti-Apartheid Movement

This interview, with ITN's Brian Widlake on 21 May 1961, is also worth revisiting. It is believed to be the first filmed interview with Mandela.

Aidez Haiti

Philosophy Football's latest shirt 'Aidez Haiti' offers another way help raise much needed funds for Haiti, this time via the TUC Aid Eathquake Appeal. All profits from the shirt will go to the appeal for emergency relief and long-term rehabilitation of the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Photographer Jess Hurd is someone Philosophy Football has worked with in the past year, collaborating on exhibitions. Recently returned from the earthquake zone, she warns that her photos should be viewed with caution; they are extremely harrowing, view them here.

For background on how a natural disaster is made much worse by avoidable human impoverishment, read Seumas Milne here;and for how the Haitian people have been cruelly misrepresented by the media, read Andy Kershaw's powerful antidote to the standard misrepresentations here.

Wearing your politics on your chest

Philosophy Football’s splendid t-shirts have been getting the sort of free publicity that the big corporations would pay serious fortunes for on Celebrity Big Brother. The former Scottish Socialist Party MSP Tommy Sheridan, who is still awaiting trial on perjury charges arising from his £200,000 libel victory over the News of the World in 2006, must have packed a whole suitcase of them to take into the Big Brother house and has been wearing them virtually every day. He’s even got some of the other housemates to model the shirts, including La Toya ‘My contract says you can’t film me without make-up’ Jackson, who was sporting one featuring Nelson Mandela.

Philosophy Football’s Mark Perryman says Sheridan must have bought some of the shirts ten years or more ago as they’re no longer available. You can still buy one of my personal favourites, though: the Bill Shankly shirt, which Sheridan modelled the other day. (‘The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life.)

And the ‘sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction’ have just produced one that Mark says ‘is partly inspired by one of the hundreds of hand-written anonymous placards carried at the 3 January demonstration in London. The Palestine 09 design expresses vividly the cycle of despair that has turned the tiny Gaza strip into a war zone of Israeli reprisals using its overwhelming military might.’ Priced at £16.99 and helping to raise funds for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it’s available from http://www.philosophyfootball.com/